Try watching these episodes live. You can ask Woody all sorts of questions that come up and somehow he manages to answer them whilst hosting the show.

@hendrikvanleeuwen9110

2 жыл бұрын

It really is a dream format- just wish I new enough to ask a decent question!😆

@philbosworth3789

2 жыл бұрын

@@hendrikvanleeuwen9110 Keep watching and you'll gain knowledge and also find a topic you know enough about to ask something half sensible

@philbosworth3789

2 жыл бұрын

Just remember, the only stupid question is the one you didn't ask

@hendrikvanleeuwen9110

2 жыл бұрын

@@philbosworth3789 don't worry, if they do an episode of 'digging holes in ww2' I might be able to come up with something! (Actually that could be a pretty good episode- they did dig a lot of holes, literally and figuratively!)

@philbosworth3789

2 жыл бұрын

@@hendrikvanleeuwen9110 That's the spirit

Brilliant. Loads of technical details well explained. Thank you. Look forward to seeing Pete again.

PzJgr 38(t) was a longer and wider hull. It's not just a matter of tacking on a supplental piece of steel to achieve the needed extra width and length and Hetzer had its own road wheels that look like the pre war 38t but they are scaled up. I'm fairly certain the engine, gearbox and differential were all different parts from pre war 38t.

Thanks for the great episode! Just a few additional info on Yugoslavia. Initially, both main armored units deployed in the Balkans - 12th Special Purpose Armored Company (later Battalion) and 1st Battalion/202nd Armored Regiment (later: 202nd Armored Battalion) were equipped with French tanks: in the period September-October 1943, they had between them about 80 Hotchkiss 38, Somua 35, Renault 35, and Char B2. Beginning in the spring of 1944, these were being slowly phased out and replaced by M15/42 (45 per battalion) and L6 (as a temporary relief). Still, the process would not be over until the end of the year. The 12th, for instance, still had 10 French tanks on 1 November (plus 15 Italian). On 1 April 1945, the 202nd had only 19 operational M15, but has been promised 10 Hetzers. This helped raise the moral of the men, which had been shaken during the recent battles on the north bank of the Drava, where they had to face German-made, Bulgarian-owned medium tanks and "the heaviest" Soviet assault guns in their obsolete equipment.

Yet another episode that is worth watching.

A good host picks good guests and asks good questions. That initial question about the "obsolete tanks only in hindsight" is really good. Nice.

@WW2TV

11 ай бұрын

Thank you

Another great show from WW2TV that allows experts to provide their detailed knowledge. Great work!

Another fine broadcast of WW2TV on a subject worthy of study. I agree with Pete that the early conversions of PZ 38 (t) chassis to the Marder II and Marder III had a significant impact at the front. I am particularly reminded of the Battle of Gazala. The Marder IIs were the only vehicles able to tackle the Matilda IIs during the battle. There were several engagements in the East Front were these vehicles stopped the KV1s and T34s of the Soviets as well. Pete has set the example of how the research of armored vehicles should be done. Thank you Gentlemen for your work; Pete for his presentation, and Paul for his mediation of the discussion.

The final remarks "send the book/article to experts and integrate their corrections" is very true, being deep in all branches is near impossible if not outright impossible and checking with all branches will take forever.

Great information provided by Pete on the challenges of AFV recovery.

@WW2TV

2 жыл бұрын

Absolutely

Another excellent show, Paul. Pete certainly knows his stuff and I for one took much from his presentation, a fascinating choice of topic, too. Well done to all involved.

Just watched the stream as a rerun.Thank you Pete for this presentation, I really enjoyed this one, such an eye opener for what the Germans did with their armoured vehicles. I must praise Pete for his knowledge and research. Bring him back Paul if you can. Once again WW2TV at the top of its game. Thank you both.

@WW2TV

2 жыл бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it

Impressive presentation! Pete's research on this subject is amazing. Sorry I had to miss the live program today. Thanks for all your hard work Pete! Thanks for another great episode Paul!!

Absolutely great episode. Informative, very easy to follow, simply outstanding as usual.

@WW2TV

2 жыл бұрын

Much appreciated!

Great show again, Woody, did not know about the salvage and recovery of German armour during the war.

Great show, Beutepanzer always fascinate me

@WW2TV

2 жыл бұрын

Me too!

Yet another terrific show! Thank you, Paul!

Another great episode, caught the second half live and have to go watch the first. I don’t know if this got touched on and maybe I missed it but I’m curious about how effective some of the vehicle conversions were (ex Marders). You see pictures of them knocked out, abandoned, etc Normandy and you get the impression that they were just brushed aside, easily destroyed. Maybe it’s because obviously the Germans lost the battles of Normandy, France, etc and the allies controlled the battlefield in the end or maybe because the Allie’s tended not to photograph their own equipment losses. Maybe also there aren’t German records regarding effectiveness because as they were losing and retreating reports weren’t being made about such things. Just some thoughts I always have about the “human” element behind the equipment. Well done as always Woody, Cheers

This is for me being a model maker perhaps you ultimate from Paul and Peter. Just like to add the Swiss army used Hetzers after the war, they upgraded the engine and put a muzzle brake on the gun.. And some Tiger 1s were converted to Bergetigers or recovery vehicles.

A really interesting episode on a niche subject thankyou Pete.

Great stuff as ever. Always great to see data driven discussions included. (I was also in the Hetzer camp....)

This was very enjoyable thanks!

Another fantastic show, and another interesting subject

An absolutely outstanding show. Pete gives an an incredibly detailed presentation with some excellent slides.

@WW2TV

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you kindly!

I did notice Pete's model kit boxes in the background. I have to be honest. I'm working on one now.

Howdy there folks. Informative and enjoyable discourse on the hodgepodge of German armor equipment in WW2 and how they tried to manage it. This is the best history channel on KZread. The best.

Great show Paul and Pete, research on this subject must have been interesting to dive into logistics, maintenance issues and the continued manufacturing of the chassis, lots of good details. A Stug show would be fun, have been doing a little research on my own as well as Panzer III gonna do some models. Cheers!

great episode. I learned a lot but would like to know more about how captured French armor was repurposed too

@WW2TV

2 жыл бұрын

That may come up in a future show

Great Show and great to see Pete back with his knowledge. This leads me to ask you Woody; has anyone done a presentation on Armored and/or motorized field maintenance during the war. It would be fascinating to know how each side handled this really important task. Such as maintaining logistics for parts and moving the field units as the divisions moved. In the case of the Axis side how close were they to the frontline. It seems in quite a few personal accounts (taken with a grain of salt) from Panzer crews they always had praise for their maintenance crews who would somehow get as many damaged vehicles back in service at critical times. It makes me wonder how American, Brits, Aussies, Soviet etc. units handled this

Great vid .. I often wonder how and where these hulks were dealt with after battles 🤔

Enjoyed every minute of that!

Paul/Pete, Thanks for such an interesting subject. A subject that I never really thought about in detail. Bob

Fascinating. Thanks for uploading.

There was a Hetzer in the Tankfest Arena (Bovington Tank Museum), just the day after this presentation. Sadly, it showed its age and broke down.

@PeteBlanchard

2 жыл бұрын

It *is* a shame when that happens, isn't it? It's not a rare occurrence with these vehicles when they run. They're near on 80 years old and even with the best care and attention, things still go wrong.

@gwilymmorgan5115

2 жыл бұрын

@@PeteBlanchard Of course. I do admire the dedicated people who get these machines running and keep them going. You'll know a lot more about this than I do, but I expect that even a relatively reliable WWII AFV like the Hetzer broke down fairly frequently when new.

Me as an Australian lol we've got enough iron ore for a million years

The German iron ore problem was not just quantity. It was also quality. The Swedish iron ore was important because it was a higher grade ore, meaning a higher iron content. The subject of natural resources is important. There is a lot of discussion of oil, but in fact, Germany lacked or had insufficient quantity of virtually every important natural resource needed to conduct war--except coal. And even coal supplies became tight after the first year of the war because Germany had to use some of its coal to keep the economies of the occupied countries running. This was not magnanimous on their part, but if the economy of an occupied country collapsed, it could not be exploited. (Before the War, many of these countries imported British coal which was obviously cut off.)

@oriontaylor

5 ай бұрын

And even German coal was not a panacea, as a good portion of their production was quite low quality.

@dennisweidner288

5 ай бұрын

@@oriontaylorAbsolutely correct. In addition, Germany did not have enough coal to meet the deficit created by the loss of high-quality British coal. Plus it created shortages in the Reich.

Excellent presentation

Great episode 😊

Another great show. Very informative

@WW2TV

2 жыл бұрын

Glad you think so!

Great videos; big up !

Some of his details are wrong. the Pz III was not designed with a 37mm gun in mind. It was designed with a 50mm gun in mind. the 37mm was a stop gap until the 50mm gun was ready to be used.

Ohhhh.. Stugs 3 and 4, yes please.. ❤️❤️👍👍👌👌

@WW2TV

2 жыл бұрын

We are planning a Stug show

Any list of reasons that the Germans were short of vehicles has to include German industrial policy. The Germans were reluctant to introduce assembly line mass production techniques. And it was not just vehicles, other areas of production were affected. Given the size of the German steel industry, they should have massively out-produced the Soviet Union in tanks, artillery, and other areas.

The French allowed all their armour to be captured. They also allowed Rommel to snag their gasoline supplies. Few things easier to demolish than gasoline. You can even use it to demolish AFVs.

Very interesting discussion on the dilemma for the Germans what to do with their obsolete tanks/ beutepanzer.

Sweden used Turrets from it's Pz38(t) variants and emplaced guns into the 1990's used to defend objects like airfields. The in Service date of the JAS 39 Gripen and the out of service date of the last Värnkanon m/41 overlaps as ww2 turrets where used until 1999 in this role. There was a bunch of these on service trolleys in the motor pool area of the Boden garrison in 1997/98 when i did my military service there. We had an externally mounted machine gun on our CV90 and the same gun range safety book we used when firing it was the same as for these old WW2 tank turrets from m/41 m/41 m/42 and Strv 74 tanks and it had instructions for all of them. Some of the Swedish order was confiscated by Germany for their own use so all Strv m/41 was built in Sweden with some german technical assistance, it used the Swedish Bofors 37mm gun though.

Really interesting presentation, especially as I knew very little about the subject. I thought it was good to have some of the background to why Germany was re-purposing so many of its' own & captured AFVs and the 'case study' of the 38T was really good. It would be interesting to know if the Allies did the same with captured AFVs, as I have not read of any instances, apart from the very occasional ad hoc use. I hope you can get Pete or another researcher back to do the mentioned show about the STUG 3 & 4 (Sturmgeschutze).

Strangely enough it was the Avalon Hill war game "The Longest Day" which had a very detailed armored unit pieces which alerted me to the weird make-up of the Wehrmacht AFV's in Normandy, especially the 21st Panzer Division, an excellent unit in Normandy, which also got smashed by the RN. Go Navy, sink Army!

Seems like the 38T got grabbed for a lot of the Jobs the Allies would use Stuarts for (recon, gun tractor etc). Probably for similar reasons (good automotives, obsolete vehicle).

Thanks for the topic and discussion, great video. The Germans didn't waste old tanks that's for sure, such as using 37mm French tank copulas in fixed fortifications at Normandy.

The Wehrmacht-the most studied and revered army; and the most reviled.

@WW2TV

Жыл бұрын

Ain't that the truth

@terraflow__bryanburdo4547

6 ай бұрын

Soviets might be more reviled.

As to decision making on the strategic economic scale the German's were building their frontline panzers, aircraft, artillery, and small arms all out. The problem was that the need was greater than the resources and that is why the Wehrmacht is armed from horse-drawn artillery to tanks that were obsolete by Case White in 1939. It was a Frankenstein Army. If you look at World War II from an economics viewpoint Nazi Germany put a fully loaded and chambered Luger to its head and pulled the trigger! Of course, humanity is greater than crass materialism, but at the same time I know from my studies of history that the US War Department put a lot of time and effort into its development of material and occasionally got it right, but when you look at what Nazi Germany did it was always schnell, schnell, Rauss, Rauss. Everything they did was for the moment and for the immediate need. As for Britain, hit and miss just like the US, but at the same time the process was correct, most of the time.

Whether or not you believe the Germans did their absolute best with what they had, they never mastered the art of mass production, they implemented a plunder economy which ended up costing them the ability to replace their losses. They could have built German factories in the countries of co-belligerent and Axis partners to increase production and standardise AFV’s. The simple fact is they didn’t produce cost efficient vehicles save for a couple of examples.

Very good info for someone new to the period or the breadth of what Germans used the captured vehicles for. I guess he is assuming people had no real knowledge on the subject?

@WW2TV

2 жыл бұрын

Well yes, we are not a specialist armour channel like the Chieftain

@adambrooker5649

2 жыл бұрын

@@WW2TV regardless very well done

I think the covenantor was one of the prettiest in WW2. Best looking the Brits made. It's just sexy idk

@davemacnicol8404

Жыл бұрын

You know what it is, it's that turret curves and that big front end 😉 Lol it is described on wiki and other sources as a "lozenge" type turret 🤣 Although it goes well with the name of the thing. Something completely innocent and incapable of harm. Covenantor. One who makes covenants?!

Didn’t the army tell Hitler that they wouldn’t be ready for war until 1944? 1942 at the earliest? What would a post 1938 -1942- ‘44 peacetime German army look like? No one has ever really answered that question in my travels

I’ll never understand why the Germans didn’t turn their open topped vehicles into a vehicle like the jagdpanzer and jagdpanther or the Russian JSU series 85,100,122, and 152. For example the sturer Emil, Nashorn, Marder, etc could have been converted with a closed superstructure.

@terraflow__bryanburdo4547

6 ай бұрын

Then they would be shrugs or jagdpanzers, which they had lots of already. Resource limitations plus separate roles.

The entire tiger program was a waste. The Tiger I was produced from late ‘42 and only 1200 were produced. The panther was produced from mid ‘43 and nearly 7,000 were produced. The sturer Emil chassis could have been an excellent basis for a jagdpanzer/assault gun, along with the Czech 38t, and Pz III/IV. The Russians basically only produced two types of MBT - the T34 and SU/JSU series. The JS 2 weighed about 45 tonnes as was the panther: which should have been the weight limit. So the point is if production focused on the panther chassis they could have conceivably built 3-4 times the number of tanks. No need to mount more than the 88-this was sufficient.

@terraflow__bryanburdo4547

6 ай бұрын

Panther teething issues affected this. Tiger 2 was a complete folly though.

Italy got some French built s35s and went on a death ride in Sicily

Back in the early days of Barbarossa, rumor has it the bulk of the 2nd SSPanzer Division tanks were early model T-34s they got from a captured maintenance/rebuild factory🤔

For Maj Becker see: D-Day Through German Eyes (Johnathan Trigg) pages: 48-50,93,98,155,169,184,195,197,199,219,234.

@WW2TV

Жыл бұрын

One of the worst books on Normandy I have ever read unfortunately

I just wonder if the design departments of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler were available to the Wehrmacht in the mid 1930's if German production of the PzKfw-III's would have been significantly better? One of the big points for American production of war machines was reliability. I do think the big three auto manufacturers, who also produced a lot of planes, and their competitiveness with each other for the domestic US auto market had very much to do with American mechanical reliability. Just a biased American's viewpoint.

Can't get enough tank talk. Panzer palaver. Armored vehicle verbiage!

Just watched your Sturmgeshutz vid, can't help how this differs. Not grossly, but many of your guests do have an agenda.

@WW2TV

9 ай бұрын

What agenda do you think Pete had?

@duwop544

9 ай бұрын

@@WW2TV Shit, just lost a detailed reply. Short answer: Poor word choice, Focus would be better, sorry bout that.

Russian Rails had wider Guage.

@WW2TV

2 ай бұрын

Yep, we've covered that on other WW2Tv shows

oz Matildas in borneo in 45 Paul not stuarts

@WW2TV

Жыл бұрын

Stuarts at Sanananda was what I was (trying) to refer to

Czech tank more reliable than German. Ego blow I am sure.

Keep in mind 90 from a Swedish order were confiscated and a production license was granted. 220 of two different models were produced. Many were converted to APCs. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_38(t)