An alternate method for determining armor thickness is to wait for a senior NCO to be sitting inside the vehicle, then using a hammer to hit the section of armor you are trying to measure. The actual measurement is determined by how long it takes for the angry non-com to pop out of the vehicle and start screaming at you. Naturally, the calibration is affected by a number of factors, including the NCO's general level of cafeination, time of day, what the nonsense lieutenant has been up to lately, whether a junior enlisted received a DUI the night before, and perhaps most importantly, the non-commissioned officer's "base hate level."
@@Electronick7714 Leather lasts long enough in most conditions, a leather thong is cheap and easy to replace (buy a boot lace, trim to length needed, save remainder). Leather can also literally last centuries in display conditions as long as it is kept oiled to preserve its integrity.
Little known fact. The main gun on this tank actually folds out into a giant sword, a battering ram, a wine barrel opener, and a pair of hedge clippers.
A number of Porsche designs including the Ferdinand/Elefant used horizontally mounted belleville washer suspension units. The proposed E-10/E-25 tank destroyers were to use the same system as on the Panzer 61. Presumably the Swiss studied the designs and decided to give it a try.
..and a place for the fondue bowl, rack & spirit burner; unless the crew prefer a raclette grill/griddle-plate...wh Although for the latter, I suppose there could be a adapter attatchment to one of the exhaust cover boxes made by a maintenance section - for part-cooking the rations.
that was found to be a fault, so on later models we fitted the gun so it could be folded back and instead you could fold out corkscrew, knife, saw, canopener, if needed. the toothpick and the pinzette were stowed on the fenders... The problem with this model was then that the gun was folded in at wrong moment, because you can't fight enemy's with toothpicks, since jörg sprave isn't swiss...
Very well researched, thank you. Another peculiarity of this tank is the restricted width, which is only 3 meters, due to the insistence of an important parliamentarian of the then tank committee on the vehicle being able to use tertiary roads. This caused many problems later in the Pz 68, the tank being very cramped and having no development capability. There is a large collection of army vehicles in Burgdorf near the capital Berne in the collection of historical material of the Swiss Army, the Stiftung HAM. The collection is only open to the public in guided tours in groups, I am happen to be one of the guides. The collection consists of over 450 vehicles on display, including all the tanks the Swiss Army used, in addition to a host of M109 and M113. Plus trucks, light vehicles etc. etc. So when you happen to be in country I would be honored to show you the collection, filming can be arranged.
Hi Hunter, i do a similar role here in the UK as a volunteer at bovington and also take small groups to the Armys DCC center, would you be happy to do a small group from the UK?
Has HAM finaly fixed their problems (getting rid of a certain person) or is the future cooperation with the Bund still uncertain? I havent yet decided to donate but im within 200m of the main place in Thun.
"I just fed the turret monster a bunch of batteries" Turret Monster: Om-Nom-Nom! Wait you want back? No can have, all offerings to turret monster final!
@The_Chieftain The Panzer 68 suspension vertical travel for each wheel was 206 mm (bump) and 70 mm (rebound) for a total of 276 mm. The transmission of the Panzer 61 featured a sophisticated double-differential steering system with a hydrostatic steering drive (easy to drive)
Nick getting tongue there a bit with his Pz 51's and stuff, but its not easy to do. the suspension is to keep the narrow profile. torsion bars can do this but have their own problems and are more hastle than their worth, Horstman types are good as they take up no internal space but you end up with a wider vehicle, this allows a best of both option with no internal space taken up but narrower profile to keep the doctrine of using Swiss tunnels. one final note is the armour should have a air pocket at the back end with diesel fuel cells in it, as they offer additional protection from SC attacks, this will effect ur ultrasound.
There's something to be said for universal military service, especially when designing domestically produced equipment. The guy designing it most likely has been the guy who had to use it.
At around 4 minutes when the Chieftan mentions the tracks were made of cast manganese, which didn’t make sense to me as you can see corrosion on the track links consistent with steel or iron. I’ve heard him before mention the composition of tracks before as manganese and say he didn’t know what it meant so I did a google search on cast manganese. It turns out the tracks are made of a steel alloy containing around 13% manganese called mangalloy or Hadfield steel which has priorities that makes it an ideal material for making tracks out of. Funny the rabbit holes you go into when you hear a weird piece of information in a video. 🙂
I was really curious about the belleville washer suspension. Apparently, the Germans (in WW2) were going to equip their ENTIRE E-series with it. I can see several pros to it (maintenance and a lower overall vehicle - than torsion bars, anyway). But so far, I cannot find a con. Must be some though.
Manganese is like perverted anime cartoons...it's manga-knees! Used in engine block and heads of VW Type 1....common as well in many aircooled 2 cycle engines as well(lawnmowers etc)
Track tension adjustment is automatic by means of a hydraulic system. Nothing needs to be done (nor undone :-) ). The suspension made for a very comfortable ride. You can easily figure out the full travel by the position of the end stops. The only problem was that you could shear off the bolts securing the suspension of the first road wheel to the hull, thereby loosing said wheel along with its suspension, if you hit a large solid obstacle at high speed. While the automatic tensioner kept the track firm on the tank and the loss of one wheel had no immediate impact on the mobility of the tank, it meant you had to go pick up the heavy piece of shit while your mates were chasing the birds in town, extract the remainders of the bolts from the hull and put the assembly back up. The ammunition port in the turret is not an ammunition port, it’s a case eject port. It is part of the casting and was there from the very beginning. It wasn’t present in the very similar looking predecessor, the Panzer 58, of which I don’t think there exist any outside the Swiss Panzermuseum. There is an ammunition port too, you can see it on the left side in the hull, just above the suspension of the third road wheel. The bowden-ish linkages connect the steering wheel, shiftlevers and pedals with the transmission, where all the shifting and steering happens. The common language of the Swiss military is swiss, german, french and italian.
I missed the days of blessed youth gone by when there were regular expositions and the tanks and other vehicles became a quasi playground for children. For a long time Ive had forgotten the fun that was climbing around on armored vehicles. Then I got drafted as armorer and got to embrace these joys of the youth, jumping from deck to deck in the heights, as well as encountering the horrors of maintaining some of these sometimes neglected giants.
Yay, been waiting for that one. You just made me a realy happy panda, Chief! Even though I am swiss, I never heard of the unique suspension of this vehicle. I just assumed it was torsion bar. Teaches me to reley on assumptions... That strip of leather securing the latch is actually quite common in swiss military gear of that era, you see it everywhere. As to the language thing, well my dad served as a career officer before he retired, and afaik there is no official lingua franca. Officers are expected to speak at least two of the four offical languages plus english, and proficiency in aditional langages is very good for your career I would presume. My dad needed german, french, italian and english to do his job, with german being the most common, given that about 60% of the swiss population speaks german. English being needed for the whole NATO/PfP stuff, as well as probably serving as an inofficial lingua franca ("military english" is a part of the official curiculum in the swiss military).
As for languages, I got a letter from the Australian Government the other day and while English is our official language, it contained something like 14 other languages details and they are just the most common languages.
@Mark Fryer PfP Partnership for Peace, as Chieftain said, switzerland is a member. 14 languages being used in official correspondence? That sounds rather inconvenient. And here i thought my country has a problem with 4...
14:56 Holy shit you can just buy one of those to measure the armour of a tank...? Dear god, keep those things away from me or I'll start squatting in a tank museum, spending weeks on end going over every tank ; - ;
Just book a spot on a RoRo vehicle carrier ship and specify your port of disembarkation. Getting through Customs could have been a tad tricky given a certain 105 mm but it was accomplished somehow.
@@markfryer9880 $200 tax stamp as a destructive device plus paperwork requesting Curio & Relic Collectible status determination. Can't be an actual C&R, until after the DD tax registration gets approved and paid, but then C&R can be applied to grease import.
I know I'm really late, but I think I can add my own two cents to the Belleville washer rarity. I was looking into the system in modern use and the basic problem is, from what I understand, is that it's a high friction system--each washer has a high surface area of contact both with the other washers and its retaining material, whether it be a containing cylinder or a shaft. Any amount of dust or abrasive, ie from the washers wearing, quickly wears down washers, and you can't just replace them or you'll get early failures of the replacement; you need to get rid of all the dust. This isn't a problem in machine or civilian use because these systems do not need to be airtight like tanks need to for NBC protection. The advantages then are just the compact nature, easy tuning, and cheap maintenance as far as normal life is concerned--it's just a few rings of metal. So, it's a high maintenance system in an area of the tank that is hard to get to in the field, in the military where crew maintenance is not always the highest priority. Leftover material causing early failure is also a problem of torsion bars or so you've said, but it's a lot easier to pull out fragments than trying to clear dust out of a tank suspension. On the tank itself: the fit and finish is lovely! At least physically, everything looks to be well crafted, at least if we exclude the infamous electrical problems.
That makes little sense as far as I understand the whole system. The bellevile washers are in essentially tubes bolted to the side of the hull. Wether they're airtight or not doesn't impact the interior of the tank being airtight or not, the whole system is situated outside the hull. This also makes the suspension actually pretty easy to maintain or repair in the field if they're designed with an eye towards it: Pull the roadwheel pair, unbolt the unit for that roadwheel pair, bolt a new one into its place and put the roadwheels back on. Apparrently the only notable problem with the system the Swiss experienced was that if the tank hit a solid object at significant speed, it could shear off the bolts securing the front-most unit, causing it and the roadwheel pair to fly off. This didn't immediately immobilsie the tank, but was a bit of a hassle to fix, especially in regard to getting the remaisn of the shorn-off bolts out of the side of the tank.
The high contact area applies only if the washers are piled in the same direction, i.e., convex to concave. If they are piled in series (alternately back-to-back and front-to-front) they are only in contact at the centres or the edges and the surface-to-surface movement is minimal: two concave surfaced pushing against each other expand ideally at the same rate. I've shot old 152mm Canet coastal guns with Belleville springs in the return mechanism. Admittedly the stack was quite a bit longer than in the tank springs, but the 7.5 tons of barrel and breech recoiled back and forth around a foot and a half in a split second, so the springs were very efficient indeed. The springs were not encased, but then rust was more of a problem in the coastal environment than dust.
Always great to hear the Irish Shh as in Sh-tuff .. especially explaining the complex simplicity of the Swiss Army Knife idea - mounted on a tank. Make way there for Shlattery's Mounted Futtt .. Huzza (with an -ay sound, it seems not with an -ah; like Jose and a wee cuppa tea: Yeah! hurray!) It's OK, I'm daft - certified and all.
The engine compartment monster is the cousin of the turret monster. It prefers to eat the maintenance crew's tools and personal items instead of human legs.
Chieftain, since you were over the engine deck at the time. I believe the recipient of your impromptu battery offering was indeed the "Hull-Monster", A distant but equally ravenous kin to the "Turret-Monster". Nothing like pulling a power-pack to get back your treasured articles. >_
Yes, the Panzer 61! Right now, I am proud to be Swiss. A beautiful little tank. Unfortunately most of them are just standing somewhere in the rain and are nothing more than rustbuckets by now...
Switzerland in the 1960ies had so many military bases and instalations all over the country, that maybe it was deemed extremely unlikely, that a tank crew would ever get into a situation, where they had to sleep on the tank?
You don't sleep on the tank, you sleep under the tank. (1) Protection from artillery while you're unconscious. (2) After cleaning track and pulling maintenance, not to mention ammo transfer, cannot lift arms high enough to climb up.
Also an ammunition hatch, same as on the turret side. You have to turn the turret a certain angle and undo the webbing of the turret basket and you can easily fill the ammo racks beside the pilot and the guys outside the tank don't need to lift the shell too high (a 105mm APDS weighs 28 kg...)
Are there wandering around any ex-servicemen of Swiss Army tank corps, to explain how good ride this tank did give? I would like to hear about those Belleville washers, as from POV of servicemen.
def recognise some of the lights and stuff.. you can commonly see them on swedish vehicles from the same era :P the searchlight on the turret is the headlight of a swedish PBV302 APC :P or atleast identical in apperance :P guess the swiss did take some advise and bought some parts from the swedish :P well.. in fact.. they allways have i think... dont know what we buy from the swiss though.. watches maybe? or maybe we get a discount on ski trips :D
Somehow this one skipped my viewership till now. Cool little device you got there at the end to measure hull thickness. would like to know more about it. Also i hadn't heard the term Manganese in a while. I remember clearing out a warehouse full of that stuff a decade ago, Brings back memories.
@@venator5 no, but give you lot of training and practice in doing so; way more in comparison to the usual conscript. Maybe in part tow we learn about how to avoid this problem ... maybe not. See you next time.
Could you find a way to make a video about the « char de de grenadier à roues 93 » known as the piranha ? Which I think is one of the finest Swiss armored vehicles...
You know, i wonder how effective a 20mm cannon would be in a coaxial mount compared to a standard .30 cal machine gun. It could give alot of versatility. For example for infantry support. You could use the cannon to HE in a close support role as a 20mm doesnt have a large blast radius that may wound your own guys
They came to conclusion the 20mm was making too much smoke and carried not enough ammo to give a long enough suppressive fire. That's why they downgraded to the 7.5 mm MG on the Pz68.
I love neutral countries design (Switzerland, Sweden etc.) for the cool features that fighting powers couldn't afford at the time (both ww2 and cold war). They also may have these excessive design / naive unique features.
Gotta hand it to the Swiss, they sure do know how to make a neat and tidy tank - I'm guessing their ergonomics will be top notch too, but we'll have to wait for part 2 to find out!
interesting video - I guess the travel lock would be called in German "das Marschlager" - that is what we called the very part on a M109 - I assume they would also have designed in a Nespresso coffee machine if they would have existed already at the time ;-)
My wife is from Switzerland and speaks German, French, Swiss, a little Italian and now English. Depending on where you live in Switzerland, the main language spoken will vary between German, French, Italian, the Swiss dialect of German and in a remote canton where her mother came from speak a form of Latin, known as Romish, I think that's how its spelled.
Nicholas Dobos That also make the tank bit lighter and smaller and what would you do with that extra space anyway? Big box is a waste of space and material.
Didn’t the Panzer 68 have some massive technical flaws when introduced, like the radio causing the turret to randomly move or turning on the crew heater causing the main gun to fire?
Be a better story if it was the tank phone when switching to radio that caused the main gun to fire. The blame would be on some self important grunt officer for the accidental discharge of the weapon.
@Pit Friend Yes. Most flaws were with the electric and electronic systems - though there were some issues with the running gear and the transmission as well. The Pz 68 contained a lot more electrics and electronics and swiss tank designers didn't have much experience with the stuff yet. So mistakes were made. And it took them longer than it should have to fix them. I think that was mainly a political issue, as the funds needed for this were not made available until after the whole mess was made public. After the fixes and the upgrades to the Pz 68/88 version, it was at least a decent enough tank. However, it was found that a domestic tank development program was simply to expensive for a small country, and so tank development was discontinued.
Is the infantry telephone obsolete? I can't remember seeing them on more modern in-service tanks. That doesn't mean they weren't there, it just means I didn't see them. I honestly wasn't looking for them at the time either.
Is it my imagination or does it look more than just a bit like an American Patton tank that shrunk in the wash? Other then the turret bustle on the Patton and all the accessories on the Panzer 61 you could mistake them at some angles if you didn't have something for scale.
That APU (auxiliary engine), since it is used to start the main engine, would be better referred to as a Pony Motor. Pony Motors were commonly used in-lieu of an electric starter on construction equipment back in the day, and most Soviet tank designs incorporated their use, due to them having to cold-start all the time.
@@TheChieftainsHatch Quite true. Pony Motors may have gone by the way-side, but they were actually quite useful. Also, on the old diesels that they're found on, you don't need an electrical system to run the engine itself. They run on compression, so as long as everything's mechanically sound and it's getting fuel, it'll run. To my knowledge, pre-'50s dozers and such didn't even have electrical systems in them. You don't need any angry pixies when you've got a Pony-started diesel.
@@TheChieftainsHatch That's one hell of a limp, that motor would barely drag a 2 ton automobile around. I suppose backing into cover at walking speed is better than not backing up at all though...
Belleville washer suspension. The Germans tried the design on the E-10 prototype(?) I presume they made one to test, this is where most references claim the Swiss got the idea. I cannot find any engineering discussion of why its not widely used, probably weight limits, and range of motion limits. Or maintenance headaches. Theres a drawing on a site related to the German E-75 'what-if' tank, I guess they made drawings or concepts and stuff. It appears very complicated per usual German designs.
From what I have seen in the comments, the big downsides is that it's a high friciton system. So debri and stuff could cause failure.. But that's only what I picked up from the comments
I do not think range of motion is the issue here, if it were so, they could have just added more washers and make a longer assembly. After all, the bump stop shows the complete travel distance of the road wheel. My personal hypothesis is that it is just a case of path dependency for the other tank building nations: They had experience with a suspension system that worked, so switching to a different one would be more cumbersome than keeping the present one.
An alternate method for determining armor thickness is to wait for a senior NCO to be sitting inside the vehicle, then using a hammer to hit the section of armor you are trying to measure. The actual measurement is determined by how long it takes for the angry non-com to pop out of the vehicle and start screaming at you.
Naturally, the calibration is affected by a number of factors, including the NCO's general level of cafeination, time of day, what the nonsense lieutenant has been up to lately, whether a junior enlisted received a DUI the night before, and perhaps most importantly, the non-commissioned officer's "base hate level."
Seems like alot of variables to have to take into account
@@lonesurvivalist3147but its the best way to measure it in a field environment (carpool)
8:59 that little piece of leather is on almost every swiss army box or crate out there, we really like those
Swedish army crates and boxes made pre 1990 has the same locking system and leather tong especially common on tent boxes
Panzerfan93 how exceedingly Swiss. 🇨🇭
Noice
I would think leather would be a bad choice for anything that's going to be out in muck, water, hot weather, rain etc.
@@Electronick7714 Leather lasts long enough in most conditions, a leather thong is cheap and easy to replace (buy a boot lace, trim to length needed, save remainder). Leather can also literally last centuries in display conditions as long as it is kept oiled to preserve its integrity.
Came for the track tension...
Stayed for the tank.
Why is everyone funnier than me... waah! Nice one.
@@neilwilson5785 They just used an overused meme format in context of the video.
3:32 Is it just me or is this section full of sexual innuendos?
Little known fact. The main gun on this tank actually folds out into a giant sword, a battering ram, a wine barrel opener, and a pair of hedge clippers.
And sell cleaning.
No toothpick?
@@zerstorer335 it had one but like usual it's lost.
For those of you confused like me: BII stands for Basic Issue Items.
The Canadian army (likely the British as well) equivalent is EIS - Equipment Issued Separately.
@@minuteman4199 British Army is C.E.S. Complete Equipment Schedule.
A number of Porsche designs including the Ferdinand/Elefant used horizontally mounted belleville washer suspension units. The proposed E-10/E-25 tank destroyers were to use the same system as on the Panzer 61. Presumably the Swiss studied the designs and decided to give it a try.
Migration is wrong
Ferdinand had horizontal torsion bar suspension.
Finally I can hear what you're saying.Thank you for ditching the music.
Dr. Love Sweet Sweet Silence.
This one isn't paid by Wargaming.
This one is on his own channel and wasn't edited by Wargaming, so there very much will still be the loud music still on the sponsored videos.
With it being Swiss I was hoping to see a small file, a corkscrew and a screwdriver etc in the stowage bins
No need, every swiss citizen is expected to carry a swiss army knife with those accessories at all time anyway.
..and a place for the fondue bowl, rack & spirit burner; unless the crew prefer a raclette grill/griddle-plate...wh
Although for the latter, I suppose there could be a adapter attatchment to one of the exhaust cover boxes made by a maintenance section - for part-cooking the rations.
that was found to be a fault, so on later models we fitted the gun so it could be folded back and instead you could fold out corkscrew, knife, saw, canopener, if needed. the toothpick and the pinzette were stowed on the fenders...
The problem with this model was then that the gun was folded in at wrong moment, because you can't fight enemy's with toothpicks, since jörg sprave isn't swiss...
@@tigercat418 Der Kardinal hat dir nicht das Gehirn rausgefickt, weil er schwul war, sondern ein Pedo.
In other words, the tank would be a _TRANSFORMER._
😊😊😊
Thumbs up if you DO NOT miss the background music of the otherwise excellent 'Inside the Chieftain's Hatch' videos?
I can take it or leave it. Never bothered me
i liked the music from the earlier videos, its was what they changed to more recently that i could do with out.
These aren't being done by wargaming, that's why there's no music.
I can’t watch the ones with the music, it’s super annoying. Love the change.
Kinda like a whatchamacalit
Very well researched, thank you. Another peculiarity of this tank is the restricted width, which is only 3 meters, due to the insistence of an important parliamentarian of the then tank committee on the vehicle being able to use tertiary roads. This caused many problems later in the Pz 68, the tank being very cramped and having no development capability.
There is a large collection of army vehicles in Burgdorf near the capital Berne in the collection of historical material of the Swiss Army, the Stiftung HAM. The collection is only open to the public in guided tours in groups, I am happen to be one of the guides. The collection consists of over 450 vehicles on display, including all the tanks the Swiss Army used, in addition to a host of M109 and M113. Plus trucks, light vehicles etc. etc. So when you happen to be in country I would be honored to show you the collection, filming can be arranged.
I will try to remember to take you up on that, next time I'm in that neck of the woods.
Hi Hunter, i do a similar role here in the UK as a volunteer at bovington and also take small groups to the Armys DCC center, would you be happy to do a small group from the UK?
ed francis hi Ed / would be a pleasure. Please contact me at pesam©hispeed.ch. cheers
Has HAM finaly fixed their problems (getting rid of a certain person) or is the future cooperation with the Bund still uncertain? I havent yet decided to donate but im within 200m of the main place in Thun.
@@huntermirage5171 will have a go, have you got an email hunter. PM me, be great to chat, ed.
I know far more about track tensioning than I ever thought I would. Thanks Chieftain.....I guess. 😉
"I just fed the turret monster a bunch of batteries"
Turret Monster: Om-Nom-Nom! Wait you want back? No can have, all offerings to turret monster final!
Damn I was going to make a comment like this but yours was much funnier.
Walks away muttering and grinding teeth.
@@markfryer9880 >>> _"muttering and grinding"_ -- the _language_ of the _turret monster?_
😊😊😊
Maybe we ought to start another challenge...
"Oh bugger I dropped the batteries"
So, in short,
The French - We do things different because we are French.
The Swiss - Challenge accepted.
But did you get the batteries
Once you give it to the turret monster, you DON'T get it back.
@@ekscalybur There is a hope the Turret Monster was sleeping at the time.
@The_Chieftain The Panzer 68 suspension vertical travel for each wheel was 206 mm (bump) and 70 mm (rebound) for a total of 276 mm. The transmission of the Panzer 61 featured a sophisticated double-differential steering system with a hydrostatic steering drive (easy to drive)
That sloping engine deck is perfect for sleeping on if you got gastric reflux disease from eating alot of cheese fondue.
That was oddly specific
hello from switzerland! nice to see something from our land!
Gotta keep the Turret Monster happy! :D
Can't wait for episode 2!
That infantry phone looks like the one we had on the M60A1 and 3. It had the radio function. The labels were in English.
12:54 I completely tuned out when I spotted that MiG-21 stalking the Panzer.
MiG-21PFM Manufacturer Serial 94A7809 Local Serial Number 7809 FAA N221GL
@@FirstDagger ...and only $20,000 - $30,000!
Me: "Oh goodness how I am I going to stay calm during my finals."
Tank Jesus: *uploads*
Me: "Praise be the savior!"
_Oh bugger, the deadline is on fire!_
My first Final is in 5 days, so this sort of comes at the right time.....
Bene Wagner good luck man.
I prefer St. Pattrack
I think David Fletcher is a more appropriate candidate for tank jesus
It's really fascinating to learn about some of these less well known tanks, excellent video
Residing in Switzerland I never knew the country produced its own tank. Now I know thanks to Chieftain.
*MacReady:* _"Hey, Sweden!"_
*Dr. Copper:* _"They're not Swedish, Mac. They're Norwegian."_
*-- THE THING [1982]*
😊😊😊
Hi, I'm Ian and I'm in here Rock Island aucti...
Oh wait, wrong channel.
Nick getting tongue there a bit with his Pz 51's and stuff, but its not easy to do. the suspension is to keep the narrow profile. torsion bars can do this but have their own problems and are more hastle than their worth, Horstman types are good as they take up no internal space but you end up with a wider vehicle, this allows a best of both option with no internal space taken up but narrower profile to keep the doctrine of using Swiss tunnels. one final note is the armour should have a air pocket at the back end with diesel fuel cells in it, as they offer additional protection from SC attacks, this will effect ur ultrasound.
There's something to be said for universal military service, especially when designing domestically produced equipment. The guy designing it most likely has been the guy who had to use it.
Or his child. Even more reason to design it well.
@@hansmueller3029 Add to that that he was Swiss, and boom, an incredibly well designed tank.
At around 4 minutes when the Chieftan mentions the tracks were made of cast manganese, which didn’t make sense to me as you can see corrosion on the track links consistent with steel or iron. I’ve heard him before mention the composition of tracks before as manganese and say he didn’t know what it meant so I did a google search on cast manganese. It turns out the tracks are made of a steel alloy containing around 13% manganese called mangalloy or Hadfield steel which has priorities that makes it an ideal material for making tracks out of.
Funny the rabbit holes you go into when you hear a weird piece of information in a video. 🙂
Manganese steel. The Tank museum TH-cam channel got it correct:
th-cam.com/video/Sy-ZPUmit9w/w-d-xo.htmlsi=-F1RFiUd4SQYFzGc&t=495
I was really curious about the belleville washer suspension. Apparently, the Germans (in WW2) were going to equip their ENTIRE E-series with it. I can see several pros to it (maintenance and a lower overall vehicle - than torsion bars, anyway). But so far, I cannot find a con. Must be some though.
"What sort of hickey's the do-hickey's do." Now that's a technical term you don't hear everyday. 🤣
I'm presuming cast manganese steel, pure manganese tracks might be a tad expensive/brittle?
niels lund manganese not magnesium
Manganese is like perverted anime cartoons...it's manga-knees!
Used in engine block and heads of VW Type 1....common as well in many aircooled 2 cycle engines as well(lawnmowers etc)
Track tension adjustment is automatic by means of a hydraulic system. Nothing needs to be done (nor undone :-) ).
The suspension made for a very comfortable ride. You can easily figure out the full travel by the position of the end stops. The only problem was that you could shear off the bolts securing the suspension of the first road wheel to the hull, thereby loosing said wheel along with its suspension, if you hit a large solid obstacle at high speed. While the automatic tensioner kept the track firm on the tank and the loss of one wheel had no immediate impact on the mobility of the tank, it meant you had to go pick up the heavy piece of shit while your mates were chasing the birds in town, extract the remainders of the bolts from the hull and put the assembly back up.
The ammunition port in the turret is not an ammunition port, it’s a case eject port. It is part of the casting and was there from the very beginning. It wasn’t present in the very similar looking predecessor, the Panzer 58, of which I don’t think there exist any outside the Swiss Panzermuseum. There is an ammunition port too, you can see it on the left side in the hull, just above the suspension of the third road wheel.
The bowden-ish linkages connect the steering wheel, shiftlevers and pedals with the transmission, where all the shifting and steering happens.
The common language of the Swiss military is swiss, german, french and italian.
thats some very archaic knowledge, and well appreciated!
I missed the days of blessed youth gone by when there were regular expositions and the tanks and other vehicles became a quasi playground for children. For a long time Ive had forgotten the fun that was climbing around on armored vehicles. Then I got drafted as armorer and got to embrace these joys of the youth, jumping from deck to deck in the heights, as well as encountering the horrors of maintaining some of these sometimes neglected giants.
Yay, been waiting for that one. You just made me a realy happy panda, Chief!
Even though I am swiss, I never heard of the unique suspension of this vehicle. I just assumed it was torsion bar.
Teaches me to reley on assumptions...
That strip of leather securing the latch is actually quite common in swiss military gear of that era, you see it everywhere.
As to the language thing, well my dad served as a career officer before he retired, and afaik there is no official lingua franca. Officers are expected to speak at least two of the four offical languages plus english, and proficiency in aditional langages is very good for your career I would presume. My dad needed german, french, italian and english to do his job, with german being the most common, given that about 60% of the swiss population speaks german. English being needed for the whole NATO/PfP stuff, as well as probably serving as an inofficial lingua franca ("military english" is a part of the official curiculum in the swiss military).
Sorry but PfP is not known to me?
As for languages, I got a letter from the Australian Government the other day and while English is our official language, it contained something like 14 other languages details and they are just the most common languages.
Partnership for Peace, I do believe.
@Mark Fryer
PfP Partnership for Peace, as Chieftain said, switzerland is a member.
14 languages being used in official correspondence? That sounds rather inconvenient.
And here i thought my country has a problem with 4...
@@Bird_Dog00 amateur, try the UE burocracy... more than 31.
After doing the ultrasound, did you find out the sex of the tank ?
It’s ammosexual.
It started as male, then transisioned when the 20mm was replaced with the 7.5mm.
@@Cybrludite Hahahahahahaha!!!
Obviously a girl, tanks wear skirts after all.
it could be a scottish tank, scots wear kilts
Well that’s a bizarre number for a Panzer. I’m used to them having Roman Numerals
And being German instead of swiss ;)
Panzer LXI
Happy?
@@ProudToBeNoob Panzer Lexi
Hitler liked his Roman numerals
@Preston Henson wait what
There is usually one running at Tanks in Town, Mons, Belgium for those interested.
The one at Mons is a Pz68 as I remember
14:56 Holy shit you can just buy one of those to measure the armour of a tank...? Dear god, keep those things away from me or I'll start squatting in a tank museum, spending weeks on end going over every tank ; - ;
Sir, what do you plan to do with all that lube in our museum?
@Tom Meakin >>> Your comment is _thicc._
😊😊😊
Man, shipping that big boy to US must have been helluva fun
Just book a spot on a RoRo vehicle carrier ship and specify your port of disembarkation. Getting through Customs could have been a tad tricky given a certain 105 mm but it was accomplished somehow.
@@markfryer9880 $200 tax stamp as a destructive device plus paperwork requesting Curio & Relic Collectible status determination. Can't be an actual C&R, until after the DD tax registration gets approved and paid, but then C&R can be applied to grease import.
I got to see the Pz. 61 and Pz. 68 up close at a tank museum field day last year. I enjoyed it thoroughly but I didn't get to inspect the interior.
I know I'm really late, but I think I can add my own two cents to the Belleville washer rarity. I was looking into the system in modern use and the basic problem is, from what I understand, is that it's a high friction system--each washer has a high surface area of contact both with the other washers and its retaining material, whether it be a containing cylinder or a shaft. Any amount of dust or abrasive, ie from the washers wearing, quickly wears down washers, and you can't just replace them or you'll get early failures of the replacement; you need to get rid of all the dust. This isn't a problem in machine or civilian use because these systems do not need to be airtight like tanks need to for NBC protection. The advantages then are just the compact nature, easy tuning, and cheap maintenance as far as normal life is concerned--it's just a few rings of metal.
So, it's a high maintenance system in an area of the tank that is hard to get to in the field, in the military where crew maintenance is not always the highest priority. Leftover material causing early failure is also a problem of torsion bars or so you've said, but it's a lot easier to pull out fragments than trying to clear dust out of a tank suspension.
On the tank itself: the fit and finish is lovely! At least physically, everything looks to be well crafted, at least if we exclude the infamous electrical problems.
That makes little sense as far as I understand the whole system. The bellevile washers are in essentially tubes bolted to the side of the hull. Wether they're airtight or not doesn't impact the interior of the tank being airtight or not, the whole system is situated outside the hull. This also makes the suspension actually pretty easy to maintain or repair in the field if they're designed with an eye towards it: Pull the roadwheel pair, unbolt the unit for that roadwheel pair, bolt a new one into its place and put the roadwheels back on.
Apparrently the only notable problem with the system the Swiss experienced was that if the tank hit a solid object at significant speed, it could shear off the bolts securing the front-most unit, causing it and the roadwheel pair to fly off. This didn't immediately immobilsie the tank, but was a bit of a hassle to fix, especially in regard to getting the remaisn of the shorn-off bolts out of the side of the tank.
The high contact area applies only if the washers are piled in the same direction, i.e., convex to concave. If they are piled in series (alternately back-to-back and front-to-front) they are only in contact at the centres or the edges and the surface-to-surface movement is minimal: two concave surfaced pushing against each other expand ideally at the same rate. I've shot old 152mm Canet coastal guns with Belleville springs in the return mechanism. Admittedly the stack was quite a bit longer than in the tank springs, but the 7.5 tons of barrel and breech recoiled back and forth around a foot and a half in a split second, so the springs were very efficient indeed. The springs were not encased, but then rust was more of a problem in the coastal environment than dust.
Very T54ish looking at it from the side
Just my observation of this thing
I best get saving my pennies!
To my shame, I’d never heard of the panzer 61. Cheers chieftain 👍
To my own shame I'd only heard of these Swiss vehicles a few months ago, they aren't really in the spotlight as much.
These are so nice without that WarGaming music. Thanks for doing more!
Ive seen similar leather retainers on various swiss army rucksacks and bags.
3:30, seductive stepdad pose to get to the track tensioning system. The Chieftain is now Panzer Daddy.
*Thou shall not speak of Panzer Jesus on such blasphemous manner!*
He's going to LOVE this. Someone call him this at the next Tankfest.
Tank Jesus: **applies lube to sensor**
Tank: yes daddy
Tank Jesus: Wtf
Hahahahahaha!!!
Always great to hear the Irish Shh as in Sh-tuff .. especially explaining the complex simplicity of the Swiss Army Knife idea - mounted on a tank. Make way there for Shlattery's Mounted Futtt .. Huzza (with an -ay sound, it seems not with an -ah; like Jose and a wee cuppa tea: Yeah! hurray!) It's OK, I'm daft - certified and all.
Been wishing you'd do this tank.. Thanks!
Does the engine deck really count as a turret monster?
What monster doesn't have a backyard to play and poop in?
I remember he called it something like a engine monster.
The engine compartment monster is the cousin of the turret monster. It prefers to eat the maintenance crew's tools and personal items instead of human legs.
@@junsengjs just please don't feed it a Molotov cocktail for they are poisonous to the engine deck monster
Chieftain, since you were over the engine deck at the time. I believe the recipient of your impromptu battery offering was indeed the "Hull-Monster", A distant but equally ravenous kin to the "Turret-Monster". Nothing like pulling a power-pack to get back your treasured articles. >_
track tension and the turret monster.2 of 3 boxes checked need the on fire test for the trifecta
I have good news for you, then...
Came for the track tension... Stayed for the tank.. Gotta keep the Turret Monster happy! :DCan't wait for episode 2!.
@The_Chieftain
Pz. 68 suspension vertical travel : 276 mm = 206 mm (bump) + 70 mm (rebound)
It seems some Tiger IIs used a belleville washer suspension as a test for the E series plans.
Yes, the Panzer 61! Right now, I am proud to be Swiss. A beautiful little tank. Unfortunately most of them are just standing somewhere in the rain and are nothing more than rustbuckets by now...
Very interesting tank, I am looking forward to part 2. Can we get any more info on the odd belleville washer suspension?
Switzerland in the 1960ies had so many military bases and instalations all over the country, that maybe it was deemed extremely unlikely, that a tank crew would ever get into a situation, where they had to sleep on the tank?
You don't sleep on the tank, you sleep under the tank. (1) Protection from artillery while you're unconscious. (2) After cleaning track and pulling maintenance, not to mention ammo transfer, cannot lift arms high enough to climb up.
When a clock makers inner tanker comes out, this is what you get
4:25 Any idea what the port in the side of the hull next to the bumpstop is? Between the second and third road wheels.
Also an ammunition hatch, same as on the turret side. You have to turn the turret a certain angle and undo the webbing of the turret basket and you can easily fill the ammo racks beside the pilot and the guys outside the tank don't need to lift the shell too high (a 105mm APDS weighs 28 kg...)
Hey, Chieftain, engine pack out in only an hour! shouldn't take too long to get them batteries back...
Is that some sort of an access hatch between road wheels 2 & 3? (time stamp 4:41) Inquiring minds want to know.
i always love the track tension segment in the videos
It is a highly anticipated segment judging by comments on previous videos.
I have seen similar leather retaining straps on Swiss army accessory bags. I have a Swiss gas mask bag with the same straps on the buckle .
Very great video, Nick.
Wait, is that turbo and compressor separate and connected by a shaft running through the V? What’s old is new again.
Are there wandering around any ex-servicemen of Swiss Army tank corps, to explain how good ride this tank did give? I would like to hear about those Belleville washers, as from POV of servicemen.
belleville washer idea is interesting especially for the time and using softer steel it makes sense
I served on the Pz 68/75/84 as Lieutenant or Platoon Commander. If you have questions, please let me know :)
def recognise some of the lights and stuff.. you can commonly see them on swedish vehicles from the same era :P
the searchlight on the turret is the headlight of a swedish PBV302 APC :P
or atleast identical in apperance :P
guess the swiss did take some advise and bought some parts from the swedish :P
well.. in fact.. they allways have i think...
dont know what we buy from the swiss though.. watches maybe?
or maybe we get a discount on ski trips :D
8:30 in french it's called a "chaise de route" -- "road-chair" in english (rough translation)
Somehow this one skipped my viewership till now. Cool little device you got there at the end to measure hull thickness. would like to know more about it. Also i hadn't heard the term Manganese in a while. I remember clearing out a warehouse full of that stuff a decade ago, Brings back memories.
That's the nicest made tank ever. It's like the insanely machined guns that they had. Quality equipment, very unusual for a conscript force.
It had some cool features but also bad ones. I don't like that drivers hatch. The barrel could prevent you from opening.
Standing Militia, it's different; more like the US National Guard.
@@M.M.83-U It does not change the fact that you have to get out fast from the tank.
@@venator5 no, but give you lot of training and practice in doing so; way more in comparison to the usual conscript.
Maybe in part tow we learn about how to avoid this problem ... maybe not.
See you next time.
Could you find a way to make a video about the « char de de grenadier à roues 93 » known as the piranha ? Which I think is one of the finest Swiss armored vehicles...
You know, i wonder how effective a 20mm cannon would be in a coaxial mount compared to a standard .30 cal machine gun. It could give alot of versatility. For example for infantry support. You could use the cannon to HE in a close support role as a 20mm doesnt have a large blast radius that may wound your own guys
See AMX-30.
They came to conclusion the 20mm was making too much smoke and carried not enough ammo to give a long enough suppressive fire. That's why they downgraded to the 7.5 mm MG on the Pz68.
I love neutral countries design (Switzerland, Sweden etc.) for the cool features that fighting powers couldn't afford at the time (both ww2 and cold war). They also may have these excessive design / naive unique features.
That infantry phone system is straight off the M48/M60s, which also allowed the user to transmit over the tank's radio.
Where's the part "Oh my God the tank's on fire"? Great video all round and great to see a Switz tank.
Probably in Part 2 when he review the interior...
pz 61: lovechild of the T55 and M60 pershing (depending on which angle you're looking at from)
M60 was Patton, not Pershing.
I love how that lock for the engine hatches uses keymod essentially, the Swiss, always ahead of their time
WTF?! ALL the BII intact and IN the proper stowage?! What black magic made THAT happen???
Gotta hand it to the Swiss, they sure do know how to make a neat and tidy tank - I'm guessing their ergonomics will be top notch too, but we'll have to wait for part 2 to find out!
Swiss precision!
interesting video - I guess the travel lock would be called in German "das Marschlager" - that is what we called the very part on a M109 - I assume they would also have designed in a Nespresso coffee machine if they would have existed already at the time ;-)
My wife is from Switzerland and speaks German, French, Swiss, a little Italian and now English.
Depending on where you live in Switzerland, the main language spoken will vary between German, French, Italian, the Swiss dialect of German and in a remote canton where her mother came from speak a form of Latin, known as Romish, I think that's how its spelled.
It's spelled Romansh. And there are multiple Swiss German dialects. Almost 1 per canton.
@@lucariolps277 yes I am well aware of that.
Angling the rear engine deck downwards allows for better gun depression when turret is aimed rearwards
Fair point
Nicholas Dobos
That also make the tank bit lighter and smaller and what would you do with that extra space anyway? Big box is a waste of space and material.
Shouldn't the Video Description say Part 1? Nice to have a Inside the Hatch without the music. Thanks for your great content Cheftain.
Good catch. Fixed.
Tank god doing it again
You should do the swiss Panzer 68 next
Yes, as a former 68 TC I'd be very proud and happy
@@denisegloff6760 My dad was a truck driver, in a bridge tank division, with panzer 68's chassis.
@@swisstraeng I was in Compagnie de Chars 1/15 from 1984 to 1988
Are the letters on the hatches for maintenance, I wonder. Doohickey needs replacing? Oh, it's under left D.
Didn’t the Panzer 68 have some massive technical flaws when introduced, like the radio causing the turret to randomly move or turning on the crew heater causing the main gun to fire?
Be a better story if it was the tank phone when switching to radio that caused the main gun to fire. The blame would be on some self important grunt officer for the accidental discharge of the weapon.
@Pit Friend
Yes. Most flaws were with the electric and electronic systems - though there were some issues with the running gear and the transmission as well.
The Pz 68 contained a lot more electrics and electronics and swiss tank designers didn't have much experience with the stuff yet.
So mistakes were made. And it took them longer than it should have to fix them. I think that was mainly a political issue, as the funds needed for this were not made available until after the whole mess was made public.
After the fixes and the upgrades to the Pz 68/88 version, it was at least a decent enough tank.
However, it was found that a domestic tank development program was simply to expensive for a small country, and so tank development was discontinued.
Reminds me of the Churchill 1. An AT gun of some sort, plus a 75mm aux. weapon.
Is the infantry telephone obsolete? I can't remember seeing them on more modern in-service tanks. That doesn't mean they weren't there, it just means I didn't see them. I honestly wasn't looking for them at the time either.
Anyone notice that Chieftain’s shirt matches the panzer 61?
Id love to see an inside the hatch on something like either an m7 priest or the wespe.
Turret monster is fed and well i see. Good.
Is it my imagination or does it look more than just a bit like an American Patton tank that shrunk in the wash? Other then the turret bustle on the Patton and all the accessories on the Panzer 61 you could mistake them at some angles if you didn't have something for scale.
My thought was that it looks a bit like a T55, the cast turret does anyway.
@@minuteman4199 sort of yes but the hull front and turret sides where they flare is what got my attention first.
How many batteries were lost in the filming of this episode?
"..A great many..." end (though is really at the start of her sentence) of Mon Mothma quote
They angle the back slightly down to make it easier to sleep without a pillow because the bustle basket was too small to store pillows too.
The slop on the engine deck was designed to help snow to slide off in the Swiss alps
That APU (auxiliary engine), since it is used to start the main engine, would be better referred to as a Pony Motor. Pony Motors were commonly used in-lieu of an electric starter on construction equipment back in the day, and most Soviet tank designs incorporated their use, due to them having to cold-start all the time.
Fair enough. I have also since been informed that the engine is connected to the drive system, and they can limp on the aux motor.
@@TheChieftainsHatch Quite true. Pony Motors may have gone by the way-side, but they were actually quite useful. Also, on the old diesels that they're found on, you don't need an electrical system to run the engine itself.
They run on compression, so as long as everything's mechanically sound and it's getting fuel, it'll run. To my knowledge, pre-'50s dozers and such didn't even have electrical systems in them. You don't need any angry pixies when you've got a Pony-started diesel.
@@TheChieftainsHatch That's one hell of a limp, that motor would barely drag a 2 ton automobile around. I suppose backing into cover at walking speed is better than not backing up at all though...
Belleville washer suspension. The Germans tried the design on the E-10 prototype(?) I presume they made one to test, this is where most references claim the Swiss got the idea. I cannot find any engineering discussion of why its not widely used, probably weight limits, and range of motion limits. Or maintenance headaches. Theres a drawing on a site related to the German E-75 'what-if' tank, I guess they made drawings or concepts and stuff. It appears very complicated per usual German designs.
From what I have seen in the comments, the big downsides is that it's a high friciton system. So debri and stuff could cause failure.. But that's only what I picked up from the comments
I do not think range of motion is the issue here, if it were so, they could have just added more washers and make a longer assembly. After all, the bump stop shows the complete travel distance of the road wheel.
My personal hypothesis is that it is just a case of path dependency for the other tank building nations: They had experience with a suspension system that worked, so switching to a different one would be more cumbersome than keeping the present one.