TIK is a relative newcomer to the CZcams Historian scene. In the interest of creating MOAR CONTENT, at TankFest a few months ago, I put him in front of a tank, and we had a chat...
That's what I was thinking. It's easy to say that you really only need so much armor and that you really don't a whole lot of it when you're not the one who has to man the bloody thing. I'm sure that if he was told that he had to design a tank and then take said tank into battle he would probably design with as much as he can possibly put on it and still make it mobile.
The Chieftain kept his head mostly/always out of his tank, why not use his necessary armor? Accompanying infantry, airplanes, whatever don't hide behind such massive amounts of armor.
Well, TIK has a point regarding Harris. The Brits have their own way around things. Harris was the sole 'main' Brit on the field Marshal Level that was not made a peer. I am quite sure the brutal bombing of Dresden was among the arguments that accumulated into not giving him such an honor
3:11 I first stumbled upon Chieftan's channel in his presentation on why the Sherman was what it was. Also dispelling myths of American Armor. There's nothing better than an avid historian going straight to the source material and sharing their own insights.
Incidentally, I just finished watching one of TIK's earlier videos. Have just recently subscribed to him. Would love to see more future collaborations :)
T-26's were actually pretty extensively used in the Far East 1945 and beyond, to be fair they were a match for most Japanese Armour in theater, the Finns and Romanians were also definitely using their T-26's to the end of the war.
Could they perhaps have intended for the older "obsolete" tanks to get taken out first on the front lines? If you have a bunch of old stuff that you wanna get rid of, you could potentially send that first into battle, hopefully giving you more time to make more new stuff. Though I suppose with tanks and vehicles in general, you could recycle some of the material. I'm not that knowledged on vehicles, so pardon my ignorance on the subject.
@@LUR1FAX The Far Eastern Front had been training on its kit for a long time, and all their logistical and repair assets were set up for use with T26's, and a lot of roads and bridges could take the 10 ton T-26 but not 32 ton T-34. With the limited time before the offensive, the pre-existing units stuck with their guns. The Finns and Romanians would have switched, but they lacked the industry to produce better, they had to stick with what they captured. I probably missed the Chinese, who kept the odd T-26 running. Generally most countries moved obsolete vehicles to training, where the intensive usage by unfamiliar crews can wear them out in short order. Turrets can be used in fortifications and the chassis can be the basis of tank destroyers or ammo carriers. All else failing, you can melt them down for scrap or use them as targets. So overall I don't think the Soviets deliberately expended their T-26's on the front line, I think they would have quite cheerfully moved them to second line units if production of newer types was sufficient and time was not pressing.
G'day Nicholas & TIK, OK, I studied history at uni and after a short time in the ADF, and many other writing jobs, I became a military historian who has worked for the last 10 years on military documentaries dealing with major military figures back then, who are little known or unknown now. One of the first and most basic rule of any historian, I believe, is to never, ever look at history though the eyes of today's 'culture' and moral values. Sure, one can voice one's disapproval of actions back then but this must never taint the presentation of facts that must, I reckon, always be backed up by genuine period documents, witness accounts and any archival material of that era which tell the story. TIK is right, everyone, on all sides took actions that are either questionable or downright illegal now but that's immaterial. The Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, plus the Italian fascists -- all the 'bad guys' -- had crimes against humanity written into their policies, administration and in some cases, the reason for their existence. Of course, history now would have been a very different thing if, back then, the Axis forces had won. (Open fora like these just wouldn't exist, I'm guessing.) The paradox of one person's 'freedom fighters' are another person's 'terrorists', still exists today. All we can do, as historians, is present the facts from the most reliable and verifiable sources and let the reader, student or viewer make up their own minds -- being armed with the best information available. A good case in point can be found in the military documentaries and books created before the Enigma code traffic became public information and those that were created after that revelation. This filled in many gaps and missing pieces of the jig-saw puzzle that was WW2. A modern trend in history now is to rely (too heavily, I think) on accounts of the ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen who were keen enough to keep diaries or are, or were, still alive in recent decades. While the information provided by the common fighting men and women is highly valuable, increasingly it is being used to extrapolate and to 'lay over' accounts of military history that used to belong, exclusively, to the history of regimes, governments and command level information that, your average soldier on the ground could never truly know about. A single general in WW2 could generate, literally, a truck load of documents and other material that can be used to cross-reference and verify accounts by other generals, world leaders, and upper level commanders. However, I digress. Good ideas brought up in this video. Thanks, Chieftain, keep these videos coming, on any military subject, not only tanks. Cheers, BH
agreed, but I think it is wrong to say "The Nazi committed war crimes, and the US committed war crimes so whose to judge" sounds a lot like "Both are the same and the Nazi's are not any worse than the Americans". We should 100% admit that all sides did terrible things, but we should also showcase how terrible the Nazi regime was. There are already people trying to say "well the holocaust wasn't that bad" or "the Nazi's did good things too"...yeah no
Glad to see the T-26 get some love. I went and saw the Market-Garden video and I liked it. Gavin may get a tad too much blame BUT the logic holds. Personally I put the real single point of failure on the Brits ignoring the intel that showed panzers were there. I also blame the air arms for not allowing immediate air support at all times. They can tell a C-47 from a JU-88. Ultimately it was just too ambitious and optimistic.
The earliest study referred to, was actually a part of the pre-war Dutch Staff College syllabus . Candidates were set the problem and the route taken by XXX Corps was considered to be the "wrong" answer on the part of a Candidate
Yup. In terms of 6-ton light tanks the T-26 was one of the if not the best tank available, even though most other nations had their own designs one way or another for the weight class.
Pretty decent in the East too, iirc. The Japanese were somewhat surprised by the 45mm guns they, and the BT-series tanks, carried. Edit: bit of a shame that they didn't go into that particular machine's history. It's quite interesting. It seems to have Anti-tank rifle exit-holes in the back of the turret.
Outdated in 1940 though. The finns knocked them out with tank rifles, molotov cocktails and logs in 1939. 15 mm of armour is just enough to stop small arms fire, but anything heavier goes right through.
It was always an infantry support light tank, essentially a self-propelled 45mm paired with a machine gun. It was obsolete due to its mobility and 2man turret and not so mutch its armour (when considering its role), especially when you fstcir in the t26e with its upgraded armour (45mm of armour in 1941). -its why it replacement vehicles fo used on mobility. They wanted something more moble than the t36 but cheaper and/or better than the bt series. Its why it was eventually replaced by the worse t60 (in terms of direct combat power) rather than the t50 (a design good enough they considered replacing the t34 with it for a time, although flaws came up which soured their opinion of it to take it that far), they wanted low cost and moble more than anything, even at the cost of firepower.
Brief remark on the Market-Garden thing: I think TIK raises a good point. The 82nd screwed up. If they had taken the bridge in a timely manner, the operation would have had a decent chance of success. HOWEVER: the plan was still terrible to start with, and not just because of the single road. What TIK's video misses is that the Germans should never have let the bridge fall into Allied hands intact. In fact they TRIED to blow the bridge, but they waited until XXX Corps was literally crossing the bridge, at which point they discovered that, either due to faulty engineering or sabotage from the underground, the explosives would not detonate. Well, if the Germans had just tried to blow the bridge before XXX Corps was already crossing it, they could easily have fixed that problem. So: Yes, this is a case of 'If only Gavin had taken the bridge faster, MG would have worked...' except it misses the 'If only the Germans had not been idiots, they could have repaired the explosives detonator and XXX Corps would have been unable to even cross at Nijmegen at all, meaning what Gavin did _should_ have been moot.'
I like your comment, because it highlights one of the problems they were talking about in the video, which is that we tend to look at operations succeeding or failing based on what our side knows about the engagement. In most of history, we never get to see the opposing side's version of events because there are no records or they are destroyed, but the more modern wars allowed us(once information was released and dissected) to see factors we wouldn't necessarily know before.
Gavin didn't manage to take the bridge, which was a failure, but it was one among many. To claim one road in bad terrain was a good plan is idiotic. To think that infantry starved brit tank units could fight through towns was dumb, and to think that three airborne divisions could all succeed at their objectives is insane. Laying blame on Gavin's outfit alone shows a lack of understanding.
Yeah, I agree, but especially, to think the 82nd could take the bridge without its destruction was ridiculous, and the only reason it worked was that: 1. The wiring was faulty and/or sabotaged, which could easily have been fixed except 2. The Germans waited until it was too late to fix any problems before blowing it. Had the wiring worked or had the Germans not waited until XXX Corps was literally crossing the bridge to try it, Gavin would have had no chance to take the bridge, and the 82nd's efforts would have ended the same way the 101st's efforts did (except this river would have been far harder to throw up temporary bridges on). Ultimately, Monty's plan worked way BETTER than it had any right to do, largely because the Germans were bad. And it was still a failure.
If Monty had pulled it off, we'd all be talking about how brilliant a plan it was. And it would justify the strategy in future operations. Thank God it failed
I'm just reading Sonke Neitzel's book Soldaten. I think he's saying that in war violence becomes your everyday job and the boundaries between what is right and what is wrong disappear. At the beginning of the war we dropped leaflets and at the end was Dresden. If you read the transcripts of the bugged Luftwaffe prisoners they boasted about machine gunning women with prams but expressed regret at machine gunning horses. They killed them both regardless. Were the RAF on the same level?
I would have preferred they focused on the attributes of the tank. Debating the relative morality of the major combatants is a much more divisive topic and would require several dozen batteries to record. Case in point, the Dresden bombing. Some will argue it was pointless and needlessly costly in civilian lives. Others will claim it was a vital commutations center, and the civilian death toll was greatly exaggerated. Modern audiences might be appalled by any argument involving "acceptable" levels of innocent deaths. By contrast, my late cousin would merely have shrugged. She witnessed the bombing firsthand from a cattle car on a railway siding as she awaited transport to her next concentration camp. It's all a matter of perspective.
I would like to add that Dresden was a mayor nodal point for the transportation of war important material to the eastern front, since it was in Dresden where one of the last intact railroads towards the front began. So even though Dresden wasn't as important of an production site, it still was a valuable target with high importance. And therefore it really isn't a wonder that the RAF bombed Dresden. They even tried to constrict their bombing to the military targets without destroying everything else. But the Flak/AA defense forced the bombers into higher altitudes and therefore reduced their already poor accuracy even more.
The T-26s were used in rather large numbers during the Vyborg-Petrozavdosk Offensive in 1944. Most likely because they wouldn't get stuck as easily on the poor roads of the Karelian Isthmus and Eastern Karelia
Hello! Well that was to be expected... The meeting I mean. :-) I don't recall an "inside the hatch" with the T-26. That would be interesting. T-26 was not a bad tank for its time and was pretty representative for the Soviet armour. Finns got a lot of them, as one can easily notice here... (And then... Should we hope for TIK's top 5 tanks sometime?... I know that my question is rather rhetorical, in this context, but I couldn't help it.)
Market Garden?? Wait what?! The operation market garden video was how, my lady and, I discovered TIK. We found our selves discussing it for a few days afterwards and then even watched A bridge too Far. It's a thought provoking deconstruction of the events. It's why I watch TIK's stuff now. My takeaway from this is that criticising a US general is what's controversial.. ~ laughs ~
The moral issues of history should be addressed based on the relevance to the history being presented. When you are talking about objects unless the moral question is about what the object represents, how it was constructed or how it was used then that should be included. However if we are just looking at it place mark in the development of the type of object then the morality question because less important. A tiger Tank for instance could be looked at as a Tank which contributed to the over all design of modern tanks by showing the engineers things that worked verses things that do not. In this instance the Morality does not need to be addressed. However if you go into the history of who used it and the hows/whys the morality is a huge part of the story.
That is more or less my opinion as well. However, it is not universally shared, and the idea that the objects cannot be viewed dispassionately outside of context is not a fringe opinion.
Great technique: Find a historian, put him in front of a tank (At Tankfest, at a Cross-stitch Jambouree, put them in front of a Quilt) hold up a mic, and start talking...
You realize the allies did in fact commit war crimes (quote me if im wrong but some were even tried for said crimes) You can criticize something without supporting the other thing, shocker I know.
The biggest crossover in history (that we need): the_chieftan, potential history, TIK, lindy beige, MGB ,the iron armenian, the history of military aviation and simple history :)
Btw. The Book they are talking about at around 11:45 is this one: www.amazon.com/Storm-Steel-Development-Doctrine-1919-1939/dp/0801479487 There is also another Book called "Storm of Steel" which is about the First World War.
There is not much accurate information about that front and that is why I find it interesting. I found the Market Garden video very interesting and I agree with your opinion.
T26 was a good tank, nowt wrong with it! It was actually the best tank in the field in Spain just before the war. It was copied right around the world in the mid 30's, admittedly it was obsolescent in 41 and obsolete in 42 but so was every other pre WW2 tank.
About revisionism....anyone can have facts and figures. It's the context and presentation of those facts and figures that helps create revisionism. 3 people can tell 3 different stories using the same facts and figures. To say nothing of the omission of facts and figures.
Regarding the decision to push the ground part of the operation Market Garden down the single road - I remember reading somewhere, long time ago, that the Dutch before war were training their commanders in a similar manoeuvrer and the commanders who decided to advance like the Allies did were not passing the test. I can't recall the source though. Is anyone familiar with that and could point me to somewhere were I could read more about it?
In the book titled "A Bridge to Far" it is mentioned and discussed. The Dutch said that the road that was chosen by Monty was impossible, and that the correct route of advance followed a different road.
I think the reason the Germans went for the large tanks must be political/doctrinal. More than anyone else, they were trying to win the war by way of tanks. MilitaryHistoryVisualized has pointed out that once the Wehrmacht started running out of Infantry pretty much immediately after Barbarossa, the idea in some places, certainly for Hitler, was to just replace them with tanks. And of course the Panzers more than anywhere else had a propaganda function. So given all that, it‘s sort of inevitable that from their point of view, they have to make sure their tanks are specifically better than anyone else‘s. Plus they were just interested in having superior technology in general. And of course, being outnumbered there was always the idea that „each of our guys has to kill ten of them“ which again means trying to have better weapons than everyone else. At any rate, how do you make a tank that‘s better than everyone else‘s tank? Of course, by making it bigger and more expensive with a higher-caliber gun and terrible suspension. Was this probably a bad move? Very likely. Was there any better move that had any reasonable chance of winning? No. There was no possible way to win as long as the USSR was in the war. Which btw, was not a given even after Barbarossa. Stalin was actually a huge pushover internationally and was basically making back-to-status-quo peace offerings, I think, even up to 1943. taking that might still have changed the entire outcome of the war, and I am almost positive it would have ended Stalin‘s reign pretty quickly.
Hi, Chieftain. I have a question about the approved item names of M4 Sherman in supply catalog designation. I know the approved item names of M4 should be like "Tank, Medium, M4, 75mm Gun, Dry" or "Tank, Medium, M4A3, 76mm Gun, Wet". But what about the HVSS? Should it be "Tank, Medium, M4A3E8, 76mm Gun, Wet" or "Tank, Medium, M4A3, 76mm Gun, Wet, HVSS"?
It may well have been reasonable to make a Panther sized tank as the future German main line battle tank. I'm not sure that it was reasonable to make the vastly heavier Tigers. Transportation, the resources consumed, and powering the things kind of limited them. I do agree that going to war against most of the planet at the same time was most likely an unwinnable move which renders many other questions moot.
If you have a tank and the other guy doesn't you're ahead. It depends if you assault you need armor if you defend less. Hull down with 5 yards of dirt in front of you at least the driver feels pretty save.
Twirlip Of The Mists, correct with hindsight we can see it was naive taking on the USA, Great Britain and Commonwealth that had significant GDP’s greater than them. They supported Russia to prevent its collapse by lend lease. However, they did not think that way until mid 1942, the Axis powers were winning on all fronts. Midway, Starlingrad and El Alamein put pay to that.
Hitler attacking Russia and declaring war against the United States........ignorance and stupidity on a historical scale never to be witnessed again by mankind.
@@DC9622 Hang on there a moment.... There is no way Japan could've won the war in the Pacific. Even if they had destroyed 100% of the American fleet in Pearl Harbor and destroyed them permanently, the US would still have outbuilt Japan in terms of shipping. Of most ship classes the US produced more than double the numbers Japan did. There was no way they could've ever won, not since day 1. However, it is true that the eastern front would've likely been an Axis victory without lend-lease and pressure in other theaters.
Blah b Correct, indeed, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was apposed to War with the USA for that reason, he understood that Japan would ultimately be defeated. He told the Emperor, he could run riot for 6 months after which there were no guarantees. Given, the hindsight of our historical knowledge and time looking back across all events and sides, we can see it was doomed. However, has I pointed out at the time the Axis political leaders did not think that way, otherwise they would never had started it in the first place and to mid 1942 they were advancing on all fronts which reinforced their original decisions, which in many ways were based more on luck than judgment. Put it another way there luck ran out Mid 1942 starting with Midway, it was downhill from then has the American’s manufacturing and operational logistics started in volume.
A good military plan should allow for one or many things to go wrong and still have a high chance of success. When a military operation fails, it is usually because the plan was bad or too many things go wrong. You shouldn't be able to blame it all on one specific element.
Chieftan; you're 100% right on the only winning move is not to play. The current assessment among many historians is that the reason that the Soviets were so unprepared in 1941, was because they had determined that the Germans could not defeat them, so they should not prepare for defensive warfare. Therefore the only reason they were able to go so far, was because the Soviets were unprepared to stave off the initial thrust, and everything after that was doomed to failure. The subsequent destruction of ~30 million people by the Wehrmacht and SS, in the midst of the territories that they occupied on what would always be a temporary basis should go down as the greatest war crime of all time, and one that justified all attempts to defeat them, no matter how severe.
If germany had waited the soviet union would have finished their preparations to steamroll all of europe... was preparing for attack---> was in shit shape for defense+ worried as fuck about a japanese attack from the other side....
They should have learned from Hindenburg and Ludendorff on how to beat the Russians when it was it's strongest and fought them on a defensive attritional war. The Germans victory in France gave them a false sense of superiority and tried to do a Napoleon.
Well I don't agree with all TIK's vids but he does make a very compelling case that the two day delay caused by Gavin failing to follow his orders was by far the main reason that Market Garden failed. Here's one of his vids here: czcams.com/video/fr92BwihIoU/video.html if you're interested whether he can convince you. Generally speaking TIK does a great job at research and I think his Market Garden series was some of his best work.
The problem with a Bridge to Far is in my view strategic. The problem Eisenhower faced was the ability to get supplies and reinforcements from the USA. There was a dearth of ports - because the Germans obviously had mined the ports - clearing mines is a long and dirty process. The prospect of capturing another port with ok facilities - is probably worth a gamble. After the invasion: Not only was there a problem with getting supplies to the tanks etc. There was a significant civilian population with an agriculture that was more or less in ruins. The failure to secure the bridges at Arnhem meant the there was real starvation in the Nederlands at the end of the war - the country is small; but is/was one of the densest populations. The actress Audrey Heburn was one those starving children - of course disease struck as well. Another example is the fighting in the Baltic States at that point. The first same-sex marriage in Denmark were to former(?) SS volunteers and convicted pedofilies - of course they should have been executed out of hand at the end of the war - having been in that area without commiting war crimes? As SS. You must be joking! Well I'm divided here: A) Having had an uncle that was tortured by the Gestapo for (among other things) killing SS in their barracks and was driven out to be executed - i.e. untill he suddenly remembered a previous appointment and left the car. B) On the other hand they truly butchered communist on the Baltic front - we are talking russian casualties of 10-20:1. Killing communists cannot be said to be a bad thing? At least some of my old schoolteachers were communist nazies (pretending to be something else) and I heartedly want/wanted them to have an early, drawn out and painfull death - especially the painfull part should be as pronounced as possible.
perhaps one problem many people have is thinking of Ike as a strategic officer. His actions don't show that being his strong point, but rather being a politician. He did manage to get many of the most stubborn men of the war to function as a team, but he didn't seem to really play much into any idea of brilliant strategy.
If their sights were such a problem how did they such a expressive knock ratio of Axis tanks. I'm not saying your wrong, but the crews must have a work aroung
First time I've heard historical morality debate on these tank fan sites. Give it a little more preparation and you could have something really interesting.
Hello, The_Chieftain, I came across interesting info/claim, that Soviet T-26 tank later models were equipped with vertically stabilized sights(as opposed to stabilized canon) called in Cyrillic(Not English) letters TOC-1. The way it worked gunner aimed those sights on the target, and as gun aligns itself with sight then - either canon shots, if or signaling lights going "On" to indicate that its time to clear canon tube. What do you think about it? If that any help(I know its probably not), but here is the source: otvaga2004.ru/tanki/tanki-concept/suo-sovetskix-i-nemeckix-tankov/ Thank you in advance!
BTW, how come you let TIK get off the hook so easy, without making him divulge the rest of his top 5 tanks list? BTW Red Army had an array of cute little light tanks here is a few picks: Here is T-70 that later became SU-76 czcams.com/video/CxIo_jqYqNY/video.html How about T-70 predecessor T-60 with 20mm automatic canon czcams.com/video/GIgHOQ49cKw/video.html Here is T-30 czcams.com/video/kfxdB52Cqu8/video.html ... and grand daddy of them all T-37(Yeah, with its British roots) czcams.com/video/5sfjq10X6S4/video.html
One man asks, "How much is armor protection really necessary?" to a man who had to sit in that armor.
The Chieftain's face says it all.
That's what I was thinking. It's easy to say that you really only need so much armor and that you really don't a whole lot of it when you're not the one who has to man the bloody thing. I'm sure that if he was told that he had to design a tank and then take said tank into battle he would probably design with as much as he can possibly put on it and still make it mobile.
In soviet army... man is expendable.
Soviet Tankies were chosed on size so could be made to fit. No lanky US/Irish required.
All depends on the specific battlefield. You cant compare tanks back then to modern MBT.
The Chieftain kept his head mostly/always out of his tank, why not use his necessary armor? Accompanying infantry, airplanes, whatever don't hide behind such massive amounts of armor.
TIK's Stalingrad series is so popular because it is the most in-depth analysis of the battle in video, ever. A wonder to watch.
Arthur "Nazis tears grease my gears" Harris
If you grease your gears with salt water the only one crying will be you.
Well, TIK has a point regarding Harris. The Brits have their own way around things. Harris was the sole 'main' Brit on the field Marshal Level that was not made a peer.
I am quite sure the brutal bombing of Dresden was among the arguments that accumulated into not giving him such an honor
Wow your interview skills noticeably improve with every video. These videos are super compelling. Thank you for making youtube awesome.
You both make brilliant videos, big thanks for the work and effort you put in!
Amen:.
Great conversation here! I very much enjoy both of your CZcams channels. Keep up the good work.
I thought we were going to see a video about the T-26 with TIK, not a video about TIK.
3:11 I first stumbled upon Chieftan's channel in his presentation on why the Sherman was what it was. Also dispelling myths of American Armor. There's nothing better than an avid historian going straight to the source material and sharing their own insights.
Great work always enjoy your content and I appreciate your knowledge and zeal for tanks especially track tension keep it up thank you
Wait what, Tic was a Tankfest. I would have liked to have said hi if i knew he was around.
Why hello there
The Iron Armenian aka G.I. Haigs TIK*
Man it’s TIK 0:38 T I K
Dat english.
He announced it in advance in at least one of his Patreon videos.
Great video! And thanks for putting the T-26 in a bit of spotlight.
So....where was Gun Jesus?
The Crusading Slav at the ROCK ISLAND AUCTION company
Finland. Aren't you following inrange? :P
I've been busy and didn't have time to catch up on this stuff
finish brutality is over it took place around the 08.08 to 09.08
Probably not at Tankfest?
yeah, can tell this was a while ago at "what's your most controversial opinion so far?" XD
Yes, he's certainly beaten that one since.
felt so bad for him reading through the comments, like a tsunami of deluded chickens just washed over him in a clucking, pecking, shitting wave XD
I'd never heard of him before now. What did he say besides his Market Garden statements?
He insists that Nationalsozialismus is socialism and therefore leftist. which is straight up ludicrous
@To Bias then you weren't listening to what he explained, at length and repeatedly, in his video
I like TIK's videos, really in depth.
Didn't expect to see Tik to appear in Chieftain. I've been following his channel for years.
Strategic mic failure!
Tactical uniform coordination
The T-26 was a terrible tank in 1941, but it was a beast until 1939 and very well liked in Spain. Mostly because it had a cannon while Pz I's didn't
The T-26 was an Ideal tank for urban warfare, light, small and maneuverable.
I didn't know you knew it was my birthday, Chieftain! Of course, any day is a good day for a Chieftain vid.
Incidentally, I just finished watching one of TIK's earlier videos. Have just recently subscribed to him. Would love to see more future collaborations :)
Please watch his recent videos about how Nazism is Socialism. Saved you one subscription ;)
T-26's were actually pretty extensively used in the Far East 1945 and beyond, to be fair they were a match for most Japanese Armour in theater, the Finns and Romanians were also definitely using their T-26's to the end of the war.
Could they perhaps have intended for the older "obsolete" tanks to get taken out first on the front lines? If you have a bunch of old stuff that you wanna get rid of, you could potentially send that first into battle, hopefully giving you more time to make more new stuff. Though I suppose with tanks and vehicles in general, you could recycle some of the material. I'm not that knowledged on vehicles, so pardon my ignorance on the subject.
@@LUR1FAX The Far Eastern Front had been training on its kit for a long time, and all their logistical and repair assets were set up for use with T26's, and a lot of roads and bridges could take the 10 ton T-26 but not 32 ton T-34. With the limited time before the offensive, the pre-existing units stuck with their guns. The Finns and Romanians would have switched, but they lacked the industry to produce better, they had to stick with what they captured. I probably missed the Chinese, who kept the odd T-26 running.
Generally most countries moved obsolete vehicles to training, where the intensive usage by unfamiliar crews can wear them out in short order. Turrets can be used in fortifications and the chassis can be the basis of tank destroyers or ammo carriers. All else failing, you can melt them down for scrap or use them as targets.
So overall I don't think the Soviets deliberately expended their T-26's on the front line, I think they would have quite cheerfully moved them to second line units if production of newer types was sufficient and time was not pressing.
G'day Nicholas & TIK, OK, I studied history at uni and after a short time in the ADF, and many other writing jobs, I became a military historian who has worked for the last 10 years on military documentaries dealing with major military figures back then, who are little known or unknown now. One of the first and most basic rule of any historian, I believe, is to never, ever look at history though the eyes of today's 'culture' and moral values. Sure, one can voice one's disapproval of actions back then but this must never taint the presentation of facts that must, I reckon, always be backed up by genuine period documents, witness accounts and any archival material of that era which tell the story.
TIK is right, everyone, on all sides took actions that are either questionable or downright illegal now but that's immaterial. The Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, plus the Italian fascists -- all the 'bad guys' -- had crimes against humanity written into their policies, administration and in some cases, the reason for their existence. Of course, history now would have been a very different thing if, back then, the Axis forces had won. (Open fora like these just wouldn't exist, I'm guessing.) The paradox of one person's 'freedom fighters' are another person's 'terrorists', still exists today. All we can do, as historians, is present the facts from the most reliable and verifiable sources and let the reader, student or viewer make up their own minds -- being armed with the best information available. A good case in point can be found in the military documentaries and books created before the Enigma code traffic became public information and those that were created after that revelation. This filled in many gaps and missing pieces of the jig-saw puzzle that was WW2.
A modern trend in history now is to rely (too heavily, I think) on accounts of the ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen who were keen enough to keep diaries or are, or were, still alive in recent decades. While the information provided by the common fighting men and women is highly valuable, increasingly it is being used to extrapolate and to 'lay over' accounts of military history that used to belong, exclusively, to the history of regimes, governments and command level information that, your average soldier on the ground could never truly know about. A single general in WW2 could generate, literally, a truck load of documents and other material that can be used to cross-reference and verify accounts by other generals, world leaders, and upper level commanders. However, I digress.
Good ideas brought up in this video. Thanks, Chieftain, keep these videos coming, on any military subject, not only tanks.
Cheers, BH
agreed, but I think it is wrong to say "The Nazi committed war crimes, and the US committed war crimes so whose to judge" sounds a lot like "Both are the same and the Nazi's are not any worse than the Americans".
We should 100% admit that all sides did terrible things, but we should also showcase how terrible the Nazi regime was. There are already people trying to say "well the holocaust wasn't that bad" or "the Nazi's did good things too"...yeah no
Glad to see the T-26 get some love. I went and saw the Market-Garden video and I liked it. Gavin may get a tad too much blame BUT the logic holds. Personally I put the real single point of failure on the Brits ignoring the intel that showed panzers were there. I also blame the air arms for not allowing immediate air support at all times. They can tell a C-47 from a JU-88. Ultimately it was just too ambitious and optimistic.
This is great!
Loved TIK's Market-Garden vids.
You two are exceptionally well spoken and knowledgeable
Very interesting discussion I liked it. Wouldn't mind seeing more like this. Thanks
Excellent video
The earliest study referred to, was actually a part of the pre-war Dutch Staff College syllabus .
Candidates were set the problem and the route taken by XXX Corps was considered to be the "wrong" answer on the part of a Candidate
hey you ran off before i could, was creeping around the luchs while you made this
Good to hear about this! I think the T-26 is underappreciated.
Yup. In terms of 6-ton light tanks the T-26 was one of the if not the best tank available, even though most other nations had their own designs one way or another for the weight class.
It was good in Spain.
Pretty decent in the East too, iirc. The Japanese were somewhat surprised by the 45mm guns they, and the BT-series tanks, carried.
Edit: bit of a shame that they didn't go into that particular machine's history. It's quite interesting. It seems to have Anti-tank rifle exit-holes in the back of the turret.
Outdated in 1940 though. The finns knocked them out with tank rifles, molotov cocktails and logs in 1939. 15 mm of armour is just enough to stop small arms fire, but anything heavier goes right through.
It was always an infantry support light tank, essentially a self-propelled 45mm paired with a machine gun.
It was obsolete due to its mobility and 2man turret and not so mutch its armour (when considering its role), especially when you fstcir in the t26e with its upgraded armour (45mm of armour in 1941).
-its why it replacement vehicles fo used on mobility. They wanted something more moble than the t36 but cheaper and/or better than the bt series. Its why it was eventually replaced by the worse t60 (in terms of direct combat power) rather than the t50 (a design good enough they considered replacing the t34 with it for a time, although flaws came up which soured their opinion of it to take it that far), they wanted low cost and moble more than anything, even at the cost of firepower.
Wait, I can get David Fletcher's autograph at TankFest? Man, I gotta get over there next year...
Epic. These two chaps.
Of course I am three years late. Sigh
I’d like to see you do insider of the t-26.
It be nice to see the inside and the outside of it.
When can you expect it?
Greatest crossover of all time
Also if I ever get around to attending a tankfest I'll be sure to look you up!
TIK's Channel is really good for history buffs.
"Whats your most controversial opinion?"
"That I've said?"
Hahaha! Yeah... Some things are best left unsaid, even if correct.
Americans DO understand the word 'Shite' , Chieftain.
Brief remark on the Market-Garden thing: I think TIK raises a good point. The 82nd screwed up. If they had taken the bridge in a timely manner, the operation would have had a decent chance of success.
HOWEVER: the plan was still terrible to start with, and not just because of the single road. What TIK's video misses is that the Germans should never have let the bridge fall into Allied hands intact. In fact they TRIED to blow the bridge, but they waited until XXX Corps was literally crossing the bridge, at which point they discovered that, either due to faulty engineering or sabotage from the underground, the explosives would not detonate. Well, if the Germans had just tried to blow the bridge before XXX Corps was already crossing it, they could easily have fixed that problem.
So: Yes, this is a case of 'If only Gavin had taken the bridge faster, MG would have worked...' except it misses the 'If only the Germans had not been idiots, they could have repaired the explosives detonator and XXX Corps would have been unable to even cross at Nijmegen at all, meaning what Gavin did _should_ have been moot.'
I like your comment, because it highlights one of the problems they were talking about in the video, which is that we tend to look at operations succeeding or failing based on what our side knows about the engagement. In most of history, we never get to see the opposing side's version of events because there are no records or they are destroyed, but the more modern wars allowed us(once information was released and dissected) to see factors we wouldn't necessarily know before.
Gavin didn't manage to take the bridge, which was a failure, but it was one among many. To claim one road in bad terrain was a good plan is idiotic. To think that infantry starved brit tank units could fight through towns was dumb, and to think that three airborne divisions could all succeed at their objectives is insane. Laying blame on Gavin's outfit alone shows a lack of understanding.
Yeah, I agree, but especially, to think the 82nd could take the bridge without its destruction was ridiculous, and the only reason it worked was that:
1. The wiring was faulty and/or sabotaged, which could easily have been fixed except
2. The Germans waited until it was too late to fix any problems before blowing it.
Had the wiring worked or had the Germans not waited until XXX Corps was literally crossing the bridge to try it, Gavin would have had no chance to take the bridge, and the 82nd's efforts would have ended the same way the 101st's efforts did (except this river would have been far harder to throw up temporary bridges on).
Ultimately, Monty's plan worked way BETTER than it had any right to do, largely because the Germans were bad. And it was still a failure.
@@blakewinter1657 single road through a river delta.... tactically a big risk.
If Monty had pulled it off, we'd all be talking about how brilliant a plan it was. And it would justify the strategy in future operations.
Thank God it failed
I'm just reading Sonke Neitzel's book Soldaten. I think he's saying that in war violence becomes your everyday job and the boundaries between what is right and what is wrong disappear. At the beginning of the war we dropped leaflets and at the end was Dresden. If you read the transcripts of the bugged Luftwaffe prisoners they boasted about machine gunning women with prams but expressed regret at machine gunning horses. They killed them both regardless. Were the RAF on the same level?
Love tiks work
Top 10 crossovers.
Awesome!!!
I would have preferred they focused on the attributes of the tank. Debating the relative morality of the major combatants is a much more divisive topic and would require several dozen batteries to record. Case in point, the Dresden bombing. Some will argue it was pointless and needlessly costly in civilian lives. Others will claim it was a vital commutations center, and the civilian death toll was greatly exaggerated. Modern audiences might be appalled by any argument involving "acceptable" levels of innocent deaths. By contrast, my late cousin would merely have shrugged. She witnessed the bombing firsthand from a cattle car on a railway siding as she awaited transport to her next concentration camp. It's all a matter of perspective.
I would like to add that Dresden was a mayor nodal point for the transportation of war important material to the eastern front, since it was in Dresden where one of the last intact railroads towards the front began. So even though Dresden wasn't as important of an production site, it still was a valuable target with high importance. And therefore it really isn't a wonder that the RAF bombed Dresden. They even tried to constrict their bombing to the military targets without destroying everything else. But the Flak/AA defense forced the bombers into higher altitudes and therefore reduced their already poor accuracy even more.
The T-26s were used in rather large numbers during the Vyborg-Petrozavdosk Offensive in 1944. Most likely because they wouldn't get stuck as easily on the poor roads of the Karelian Isthmus and Eastern Karelia
Hello!
Well that was to be expected... The meeting I mean. :-)
I don't recall an "inside the hatch" with the T-26. That would be interesting. T-26 was not a bad tank for its time and was pretty representative for the Soviet armour. Finns got a lot of them, as one can easily notice here...
(And then... Should we hope for TIK's top 5 tanks sometime?... I know that my question is rather rhetorical, in this context, but I couldn't help it.)
Market Garden?? Wait what?!
The operation market garden video was how, my lady and, I discovered TIK. We found our selves discussing it for a few days afterwards and then even watched A bridge too Far. It's a thought provoking deconstruction of the events.
It's why I watch TIK's stuff now.
My takeaway from this is that criticising a US general is what's controversial..
~ laughs ~
First video I saw with TIK was Order No.227 love his videos
The moral issues of history should be addressed based on the relevance to the history being presented. When you are talking about objects unless the moral question is about what the object represents, how it was constructed or how it was used then that should be included. However if we are just looking at it place mark in the development of the type of object then the morality question because less important. A tiger Tank for instance could be looked at as a Tank which contributed to the over all design of modern tanks by showing the engineers things that worked verses things that do not. In this instance the Morality does not need to be addressed. However if you go into the history of who used it and the hows/whys the morality is a huge part of the story.
That is more or less my opinion as well. However, it is not universally shared, and the idea that the objects cannot be viewed dispassionately outside of context is not a fringe opinion.
Great technique: Find a historian, put him in front of a tank (At Tankfest, at a Cross-stitch Jambouree, put them in front of a Quilt) hold up a mic, and start talking...
10:11 Give that man a medal!
Another man I would like to sit down with and pick brains of.
There could be a good few things I could learn.
Like how Nazi's were actually socialists....and how both sides committed war crimes, and probably more pro-Nazi things.
You realize the allies did in fact commit war crimes (quote me if im wrong but some were even tried for said crimes) You can criticize something without supporting the other thing, shocker I know.
It was Poles who had modified Vickers 6t. Czech had in that time only their own designs.
holy shit he stuck to tanks
I saw a Bridge too far...looked like they where advancing down Salisbury Plain to me! 😉
I like the T26, because it's basically a Vickers 6 tonner!
there were more T34 in 1941 than Panzer III, StuGs and Panzer IV combined...
TIK talk? Time flies ...
will you make inside the chieftain's hatch for Panzer IV plz?
The biggest crossover in history (that we need): the_chieftan, potential history, TIK, lindy beige, MGB ,the iron armenian, the history of military aviation and simple history :)
you could probably throw in Military History Visualized & Military Aviation History too..?
Don't forget Forgotten Weapons.
Lloyd does connect to a lot more people..
Lloyd hasn't got a fecking clue what he's talking about. He's the Commando Comics version of history.
The fact you can not stand the bias from potential history but is totally ok with simple history speaks volumes......
myself and two friends have been building a full size all steel replica of one of these.
Btw. The Book they are talking about at around 11:45 is this one: www.amazon.com/Storm-Steel-Development-Doctrine-1919-1939/dp/0801479487
There is also another Book called "Storm of Steel" which is about the First World War.
There is not much accurate information about that front and that is why I find it interesting. I found the Market Garden video very interesting and I agree with your opinion.
T26 was a good tank, nowt wrong with it!
It was actually the best tank in the field in Spain just before the war.
It was copied right around the world in the mid 30's, admittedly it was obsolescent in 41 and obsolete in 42 but so was every other pre WW2 tank.
"It's a terrible tank".
It's a very good tank, an improved, upgraded Vickers.
Tik is a celeb at Tankfest. Well done mate. You deserve it.
Have either of u guys been to cobbaton combat collection?
i would love to see/hear a discussion between you guys
"Americans don't understand the word" lol
About revisionism....anyone can have facts and figures. It's the context and presentation of those facts and figures that helps create revisionism.
3 people can tell 3 different stories using the same facts and figures.
To say nothing of the omission of facts and figures.
FINNISH TANK!!!
Tank already finished.
*finnished
Regarding the decision to push the ground part of the operation Market Garden down the single road - I remember reading somewhere, long time ago, that the Dutch before war were training their commanders in a similar manoeuvrer and the commanders who decided to advance like the Allies did were not passing the test. I can't recall the source though. Is anyone familiar with that and could point me to somewhere were I could read more about it?
In the book titled "A Bridge to Far" it is mentioned and discussed. The Dutch said that the road that was chosen by Monty was impossible, and that the correct route of advance followed a different road.
Yeah, it could have been the book I've seen it in. But it was ages ago. Do you remember if it provided a source?
Chieftain meets Tik nice.
This might be because I take too much Arabic but does it sound like the Cheiftan says “In sha allah, yes the battery is still in there” at the end
Yes, I did.
Oh Bullsheight!
I think the reason the Germans went for the large tanks must be political/doctrinal. More than anyone else, they were trying to win the war by way of tanks. MilitaryHistoryVisualized has pointed out that once the Wehrmacht started running out of Infantry pretty much immediately after Barbarossa, the idea in some places, certainly for Hitler, was to just replace them with tanks.
And of course the Panzers more than anywhere else had a propaganda function. So given all that, it‘s sort of inevitable that from their point of view, they have to make sure their tanks are specifically better than anyone else‘s. Plus they were just interested in having superior technology in general. And of course, being outnumbered there was always the idea that „each of our guys has to kill ten of them“ which again means trying to have better weapons than everyone else.
At any rate, how do you make a tank that‘s better than everyone else‘s tank? Of course, by making it bigger and more expensive with a higher-caliber gun and terrible suspension.
Was this probably a bad move? Very likely. Was there any better move that had any reasonable chance of winning? No. There was no possible way to win as long as the USSR was in the war. Which btw, was not a given even after Barbarossa. Stalin was actually a huge pushover internationally and was basically making back-to-status-quo peace offerings, I think, even up to 1943. taking that might still have changed the entire outcome of the war, and I am almost positive it would have ended Stalin‘s reign pretty quickly.
why to like t26 and not the bt
Hi, Chieftain. I have a question about the approved item names of M4 Sherman in supply catalog designation. I know the approved item names of M4 should be like "Tank, Medium, M4, 75mm Gun, Dry" or "Tank, Medium, M4A3, 76mm Gun, Wet". But what about the HVSS? Should it be "Tank, Medium, M4A3E8, 76mm Gun, Wet" or "Tank, Medium, M4A3, 76mm Gun, Wet, HVSS"?
The latter. "E8" was the experimental designation.
Thank you.
It may well have been reasonable to make a Panther sized tank as the future German main line battle tank. I'm not sure that it was reasonable to make the vastly heavier Tigers. Transportation, the resources consumed, and powering the things kind of limited them. I do agree that going to war against most of the planet at the same time was most likely an unwinnable move which renders many other questions moot.
Golden three: Chieftain, Tik and MHV.
I understand the word!
Of course I grew up on Monty Python, Blakes 7, and Doctor Who...
Doctor WHo blows.
If you have a tank and the other guy doesn't you're ahead. It depends if you assault you need armor if you defend less. Hull down with 5 yards of dirt in front of you at least the driver feels pretty save.
I thought TIK would be taller..
But compared to Chieftain, everyone else is short. :)
I agree with Chieftain. Once Germany started the war, it hardly mattered what tanks they made, what strategy they tried... Dumbest move ever.
Twirlip Of The Mists, correct with hindsight we can see it was naive taking on the USA, Great Britain and Commonwealth that had significant GDP’s greater than them. They supported Russia to prevent its collapse by lend lease. However, they did not think that way until mid 1942, the Axis powers were winning on all fronts. Midway, Starlingrad and El Alamein put pay to that.
Hitler attacking Russia and declaring war against the United States........ignorance and stupidity on a historical scale never to be witnessed again by mankind.
John Hancock you are so correct
@@DC9622
Hang on there a moment.... There is no way Japan could've won the war in the Pacific. Even if they had destroyed 100% of the American fleet in Pearl Harbor and destroyed them permanently, the US would still have outbuilt Japan in terms of shipping.
Of most ship classes the US produced more than double the numbers Japan did. There was no way they could've ever won, not since day 1.
However, it is true that the eastern front would've likely been an Axis victory without lend-lease and pressure in other theaters.
Blah b Correct, indeed, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was apposed to War with the USA for that reason, he understood that Japan would ultimately be defeated. He told the Emperor, he could run riot for 6 months after which there were no guarantees. Given, the hindsight of our historical knowledge and time looking back across all events and sides, we can see it was doomed. However, has I pointed out at the time the Axis political leaders did not think that way, otherwise they would never had started it in the first place and to mid 1942 they were advancing on all fronts which reinforced their original decisions, which in many ways were based more on luck than judgment. Put it another way there luck ran out Mid 1942 starting with Midway, it was downhill from then has the American’s manufacturing and operational logistics started in volume.
A good military plan should allow for one or many things to go wrong and still have a high chance of success. When a military operation fails, it is usually because the plan was bad or too many things go wrong. You shouldn't be able to blame it all on one specific element.
Unfortunately for the internet, the internet only blames on specific things
Good show. Good interview. TIK looks really happy, which is cool.
Chieftan; you're 100% right on the only winning move is not to play. The current assessment among many historians is that the reason that the Soviets were so unprepared in 1941, was because they had determined that the Germans could not defeat them, so they should not prepare for defensive warfare.
Therefore the only reason they were able to go so far, was because the Soviets were unprepared to stave off the initial thrust, and everything after that was doomed to failure. The subsequent destruction of ~30 million people by the Wehrmacht and SS, in the midst of the territories that they occupied on what would always be a temporary basis should go down as the greatest war crime of all time, and one that justified all attempts to defeat them, no matter how severe.
If the Nazis would have hit Russia right away with there full power Russia would have folded within months.
The Soviets were only part way through their military reforms. By 1943 they would've been in an even stronger position comparatively.
If germany had waited the soviet union would have finished their preparations to steamroll all of europe...
was preparing for attack---> was in shit shape for defense+ worried as fuck about a japanese attack from the other side....
They should have learned from Hindenburg and Ludendorff on how to beat the Russians when it was it's strongest and fought them on a defensive attritional war. The Germans victory in France gave them a false sense of superiority and tried to do a Napoleon.
First diesel engines run on plant oil. Why Germans did not use plant oil and wood alcohol for fuel ?
Although I disagree with TIK on some things I still enjoy seeing his perspective from his videos.
Well I don't agree with all TIK's vids but he does make a very compelling case that the two day delay caused by Gavin failing to follow his orders was by far the main reason that Market Garden failed. Here's one of his vids here: czcams.com/video/fr92BwihIoU/video.html if you're interested whether he can convince you. Generally speaking TIK does a great job at research and I think his Market Garden series was some of his best work.
The problem with a Bridge to Far is in my view strategic.
The problem Eisenhower faced was the ability to get supplies and reinforcements from the USA. There was a dearth of ports - because the Germans obviously had mined the ports - clearing mines is a long and dirty process.
The prospect of capturing another port with ok facilities - is probably worth a gamble.
After the invasion: Not only was there a problem with getting supplies to the tanks etc. There was a significant civilian population with an agriculture that was more or less in ruins. The failure to secure the bridges at Arnhem meant the there was real starvation in the Nederlands at the end of the war - the country is small; but is/was one of the densest populations.
The actress Audrey Heburn was one those starving children - of course disease struck as well.
Another example is the fighting in the Baltic States at that point. The first same-sex marriage in Denmark were to former(?) SS volunteers and convicted pedofilies - of course they should have been executed out of hand at the end of the war - having been in that area without commiting war crimes? As SS. You must be joking!
Well I'm divided here:
A) Having had an uncle that was tortured by the Gestapo for (among other things) killing SS in their barracks and was driven out to be executed - i.e. untill he suddenly remembered a previous appointment and left the car.
B) On the other hand they truly butchered communist on the Baltic front - we are talking russian casualties of 10-20:1. Killing communists cannot be said to be a bad thing?
At least some of my old schoolteachers were communist nazies (pretending to be something else) and I heartedly want/wanted them to have an early, drawn out and painfull death - especially the painfull part should be as pronounced as possible.
perhaps one problem many people have is thinking of Ike as a strategic officer. His actions don't show that being his strong point, but rather being a politician. He did manage to get many of the most stubborn men of the war to function as a team, but he didn't seem to really play much into any idea of brilliant strategy.
If their sights were such a problem how did they such a expressive knock ratio of Axis tanks. I'm not saying your wrong, but the crews must have a work aroung
Tank Jesus Speaks Again!
*Military Vehicles & Weapons Jesus
First time I've heard historical morality debate on these tank fan sites. Give it a little more preparation and you could have something really interesting.
Hello, The_Chieftain, I came across interesting info/claim, that Soviet T-26 tank later models were equipped with vertically stabilized sights(as opposed to stabilized canon) called in Cyrillic(Not English) letters TOC-1. The way it worked gunner aimed those sights on the target, and as gun aligns itself with sight then - either canon shots, if or signaling lights going "On" to indicate that its time to clear canon tube. What do you think about it? If that any help(I know its probably not), but here is the source:
otvaga2004.ru/tanki/tanki-concept/suo-sovetskix-i-nemeckix-tankov/
Thank you in advance!
BTW, how come you let TIK get off the hook so easy, without making him divulge the rest of his top 5 tanks list? BTW Red Army had an array of cute little light tanks here is a few picks:
Here is T-70 that later became SU-76
czcams.com/video/CxIo_jqYqNY/video.html
How about T-70 predecessor T-60 with 20mm automatic canon
czcams.com/video/GIgHOQ49cKw/video.html
Here is T-30
czcams.com/video/kfxdB52Cqu8/video.html
... and grand daddy of them all T-37(Yeah, with its British roots)
czcams.com/video/5sfjq10X6S4/video.html
Why did the USSR do t60 and t70 at all, instead of continuing to make t26?
What is that black or dark grey vehicle behind them?
One of the LVT Amtracks, I can't recall which one off the top of my head
Thank you very much, Nicholas!
Sept 2022!
TFW you forget about the Holocaust when talking about who had the moral high ground during WW2
I just have to ask - when will Chieftain make a video reviewing the backbone of all WWII German tanks, the Panzer IV?
Filmeda special version in April. Sitting somewhere in the WG editing queue, no schedule for release.
The_Chieftain Awesome, can't wait!