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You point out all the logical reasons why double barrels are inefficient and counterproductive, however people always forget the soft factors of how much I want one and how cool they are.
Cons: -Weight -Procedure for loading ammo -Ammunition conservation -Dubious utility of two underpowered cannons vs one that can penetrate armor -Dubious utility of two powerful cannons that could both penetrate armor, but are both heavy and take up more space -Complications with aiming either using set convergence, parallel barrels with two offset sights, or a complicated and vulnerable convergence/rangefinder combo -Need for heavy duty turret motor... possibly suffering from slow rotation and elevation -If lost or damaged you are losing two large, expensive guns instead of one Pros: -It's cool -Aint no kill like overkill I'm pretty sure these concerns were somewhat answered by the concept of adding a coaxial sub-cannon for lighter targets.
There's also "If the barrels are close enough together, firing 2 very powerful cannons close together will cause the shells downrange to have a wildly varying dispersion, ala the problems found with certain battleships"
Coaxial sub-cannon also seems to be a more complicated solution than adding another type of ammunition for the main gun. Though I must admit that those types of ammunition (like HE-DP or HE-MP or barrel-launched ATGMs) are a relatively more modern invention, and adding a second gun still makes more sense in case of a large caliber disparity (like say a 140mm main gun with a 20mm or a 25mm coax). Though, again, such a small weapon would make even more sense as a separate remotely-controlled weapon station.
In fiction we have the iconic Mammoth and apocalypse tanks of the Command and Conquer series. In addition to twin turrets, they use multiple independent suspension units. Which leads to the question of "how do four (or more) smaller track sections compare to just two large ones?"
In Command and Conquer Red Alert, I could just modify the Rules.ini file to make the Mammoth tanks fire AP or HE guided dogs, set is bio? to O so they work against vehicls and buildings.. 🐕 Roolfff! 💀 Guided Dog missiles out of a Yak was the funniest though...I almost died laughing when I tested it.
Generally speaking poorly , if one tracks blows you can't move the tank , you add more moving parts . One of the few benefits is the increased torque , which helps to overcome some slopes , i remember seeing a UGV that had four tracks and it had a great climbing ability , some walking excavators has four tracks , but at that point you are a hybrid and not a purely tracked vehicle
In my younger days, I thought of a twin gunned tank for my fictional world. Once I learned more about tank design, I realized that a turret capable of taking the recoil of two guns... could handle a much larger one.
@@arostwocents No PDF. It orbits a distant star and is similar to Earth, but with different geography and societies. The twin gunned tank was for a WWIII type engagement, back when I didn't understand much about tank design... or even much familiarity with modern( in the seventies) tanks.
@@rya7886 It changed as time went on. Maybe 1970, then 1980, 1990. Then I decided that they don't have a WWIII for a lot of the same reasons we didn't.(knock on wood)
In the case of the U. S. Heavy Tank M6, I believe the inclusion of a coaxial 37mm was intended as an ammunition conservation measure. The 37mm M6 was a vehicle-mounted variant of the M3 towed anti-tank gun. As such it was designed to fire solid-shot AP rounds and anti-personnel canister (e.g. the Marines in the Guadalcanal campaign). The Ordnance Branch believed the 37mm would be more frequently used than the 3-inch M7 gun, given the AFVs used by the Wehrmacht in France in 1940 and in the ongoing battles in North Africa. The envisioned targets of the M7 were fortified positions and, especially, German anti-tank artillery positions. Out of the 75 rounds of 3-inch ammo carried by the Heavy Tank M6, most would be HE suitable to such targets, plus a reserve of AP ammo in case the rare German heavy tank showed itself. The 37mm M7 gun had a supply of 202 rounds. Being small, these could be stowed in many locations within the tank. Most of these would be solid-shot AP rounds. However, canister rounds were also to be carried as means to deal with enemy infantry on the flanks or otherwise invisible to the bow gunner.
Kinda like the French Char, their hull mounted howitzer was intended as a bunker buster while the turret was for anti tank work An insight into French military thinking at the time is that the hull mounted gun was actually considered the primary armament while the turret was the secondary
@@gabespiro8902 The Heavy Tank M6 was designed when the "tank destroyer" doctrine was prevalent. The U.S.A. Ground Forces commander, Leslie McNair thought of tanks as primarily infantry support weapons, consequently, tank-on-tank combat was seen as a misuse of armor. Only a few M6 tanks were built. I'm quite certain that high-velocity 3-inch gun made McNair suspicious.
@@gabespiro8902 The Medium Tank M3, better known as the Lee/Grant was designed around the same doctrine that emphasized dedicated "tank destroyers" for the anti-tank role. Just like the M6, the M3 had a 37mm gun for dueling with German AFVs and a much more powerful gun firing HE rounds for dealing with fortified positions and FlaK-88s. However, being much simpler to build en mass and much easier to transport by sea, 30 tons to lift by crane versus 50, McNair could completely justify his position regarding the M6 Heavy.
The DBT was seriously discussed in tank design in the late seventies / early eighties. The reason was having a real fast follow up shot when the first one misses. We are talking about seconds after observing the first shot. Double firing would be a no go as the support structures in the tank would have been much, much to heavy. The final solution was laser targeting and computerized auto correction to increase hit propability.
It's basically the same as a double barreled shotgun for shooting skeet/clay pigeons. Most of the time you'll hit with the first round (assuming proficiency) but the optional 2nd makes it unlikely that you'll fail to clear the targets before they go out of sight
One fact that also makes it difficult for double barrel tanks to be effective is the aiming itself. When shooting at targets from longer ranges, there is a high likelyhood that shooting will cause one or both rounds to miss (crosshair/ sight is on target but the guns technically arent). When firing you have to adjust for each gun seperatly because of the distance between the 2 guns. If they are close to eachother the effect is less noticable, but if they are further away the problem becomes larger. Simply putting a sight on one side is difficult, having 2 is cumbersome having to switch and putting one in the middle might be difficult. I hope i explained it somewhat understandibly but in short: due to gun placement, aiming is made more difficult because you now have to adjust trajectory and distance between the sight and barrel for each gun seperateyl. (English is not my main Language so i do apologize)
This "feature" is present in the game, as when you are switching guns in "sniper mode", a vigenette can be seen briefly, indicating the switching of aiming optics. It's possible that changing aim of the gun to be relatively simple, since most sights are offset from the gun, a second gearing for horizontal correction (for the other gun) can be added. Though this is still a problem for salvos.
The problem isn't as much to aim the two barrels into the same target even at the same time, the problem is more about the complexity of the system to do so. The solution is the same as with airplanes with guns in wings, gun harmonisation. The wing guns do not shoot straight but they are aimed inward so the projectiles meet after some distance, as in the guns can be moved horizontally to create convergence point into which the aiming circle is also set. With planes thing is rather easy, just loosen a bolt and tilt the gun and calibrate the sight for the new distance. With tanks this is a lot of trouble, not only do you need to make beefier gun mounts that could be turned horizontally to make the gun harmonisation possible and handle the weight and the recoil of the guns but you also need to make a system that can change the angle of the guns to move the convergence point according to the distance set into the tank sight because, unlike planes, tanks cannot engage enemies only at the right distance for their guns. Also tank rounds are rather big and most of them would completely loose their impact if they were to hit with another one half-way to the target.
How is it any different with one gun? The sight is offset anyway and the distance between the gun and sight isn`t enough to make a difference, especially at range where the guns precision would be wider than the offset.
One other issue (which is probably secondary to turret space for two recoiling breaches) is that closely spaced muzzled tend to cause shell deflection during simultaneous fire. IIRC, the British cruisers famously had to shorten the center barrel on their three rifle turrets to prevent shell deflection during salvo fire. Also, can you imagine the load on the turret ring, brakes, and suspension when two guns fire simultaneously?
Either that or put a few nanoseconds delay between the trigger for each barrel, they may appear to fire simultaneously in real time, but in slow motion one shell would exit the barrel first and be a about a half a meter ahead of the other one all the way downrange.
With regard to British cruisers, while it appears from the outset that the middle barrel is shorter, it isn't actually any shorter than the surrounding barrels as the cannon is just inset into the turret.
@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785This would cause more problems of its own, unfortunately. The shell firing second would be flying through the shock front generated by the first shell. Basically, the second shell will see "dirty air". This can cause huge deviations in the trajectory of the second shell and will probably make it useless for hitting anything accurately.
@@poqqery8950 good point. still, i wonder...how about a coaxial chain gun, 25-40mm, that fires a 3-5 round HE burst, just a half second before the main gun fires? the dirty air may be negligable, and the smaller rounds can set off the ERA, allowing the main round to hit clean. like "brrrt Boom!" or something like that?
The Italians also had a similar issue because they designed their turrets to hold the barrels closer to eachother, which together with poor propeller quality control and the barrels suffering higher wear from firing higher velocity rounds, resulted in the infamous lack of accuracy
One other thing that could be a problem with two main caliber guns is that if they are side by side then if fired independently it would torque the turret every time the gun is fired, which could damage the turret ring and rotation mechanism as well as reduce accuracy. This would mean they could only really be fired in tandem at which point a larger gun would probably be better. They could be mounted on top of each other, though that presents it's own problems such as an absurdly tall turret.
There were a number of multi barrel anti aircraft guns but when it comes to anti tank guns adding a second barrel and all the other hardware only serves to make a vehicle larger, heavier, more complex and ultimately less combat capable.
As I mentioned on screen they don't really suffer from the same problems as the vehicles we usually associate with the term "double barrel tank". The idea behind them is fairly similar though
@@user-op8fg3ny3j And autocannons don't require the same degree of precision, either, since you're putting a burst of shells in the vicinity of the target with the intent that at least some of them are going to hit.
I did not perceive that you mentioned this, but I have always had a concern about the torque on the turret. Off center gun(s) will twist the turret on firing and put a great deal of stress on the turret traverse mechanism, which is bad because turret traverse is an important part of precision aiming. Having a turret traverse mechanism that is much more robust to handle the off center torque and yet maintain the delicate precision needed to make an accurate shot would be a very hard technical problem to solve. With two guns, the firing of either would twist the turret and require re-aiming the gun system for the next shot which may be counter productive for the whole purpose of two guns. If the the guns were on top of one another, this would not be a problem. But then, there are other technical problems that would occur. This is how I perceive one of the problems.
They look soo cool in sci-fi genre because they look intermediating with the examples of the Apocalypes tank, Overlord tank, Mammoth tank and Grizzly tank from Halo.
Double barreled tanks, very impractical but by god do they look so cool. Before WoT even introduced double barrel tanks, I believe it was the Command and Conquer franchise the popularized it. From Mammoth Tanks to Apocalyse Tanks, and the Overlord Tanks.
Yeah man I was playing Command and Conquer and there was like the Chinese tank that when upgraded by a certain general had 2 barrels and a group bonus, and of course the overlord too
Tanks are pretty much as small as possible while squeezing the gun in. Battleships were as big as possible and filled with the largest guns we could get.
Battleships actually went through a similar thing. Pre-dreadnought battleships were covered in main battery turrets at every which angle. Like multi turret tanks just on a much larger scale. Dreadnoughts (which is the current form of battleships) realized it’s a lot more space efficient to mount a few very large turrets with the biggest guns they could find. Much like modern day tanks.
Before watching, what reasons I can think of: - Turret Space for the guns themselves and the crew to load them - Neglectable firepower gain compared to one, bigger gun - More points of failure - More strain on all components due to higher weight two guns + other accomodations to make them feasable - Much bigger frontal surface that has to be armored and provides a bigger target for the enemy Edit: Yay, I was pretty much on point!
The question is less 'why are double-barreled turrets impractical on tanks?', and more, 'why *are* they practical on warships?'. The answer is, they really weren't; rather, they were a work-around on issues of barrel size and loading of extremely large ship cannons. In the late 19th and early 20th century, when armored barbette turrets were introduced, the cannons were already approaching the feasible technical limits at which you could build artillery pieces, and while that technology did rapidly improve as the First World War approached, you still had a situation where a gun larger than 14"/355mm quickly became unwieldy to load and aim even with mechanical assistance. While much larger artillery pieces were possible, it wasn't really needed, as the existing guns could penetrate any practical ship's armor of the time. While the size of the guns did increase to 16"/381mm and eventually 18"/458mm on the _Yamato_ class, the fact that these sizes were neither necessary nor practical in ship to ship combat meant that the focus came to be on volume of fire, range, and accuracy. As a result, ship designers turned first to multiple turrets, then to multiple multi-barreled turrets. By the time ship-borne artillery had reached its zenith in the early 1940s, carrier-based aircraft were making battleships obsolete anyway, and soon after that, guided missiles became sufficiently powerful, long-ranged, and accurate that ship's armor became redundant. Consequently, ship guns actually became smaller, designed more for point defense against air attacks and small watercraft than for ship to ship clashes. Tank guns have very different limitations than ship-borne weapons, mostly regarding weight and mobility. Unlike ship guns, practical tank guns never completely overmatched practical tank armor, and unlike a large ship, a tank has to be light enough to be able to cross bridges and other obstacles. A ship's turret could and often was larger than any practical tank ever could be. Trying to apply ship design to tanks simply doesn't work.
It absolutely was bot a workaround. You had 15" guns by the revolutionary war. 17" mortars were commonplace by the 1910s, and 18 or 20" single pieces existed. The reason they wernt used on warships, is that they wernt necesseary. The only time you wanted anything larger than a 6" was against a battleahip, and even there, a 12" got you there until the late 20s. No serious design was ever drawn up with an armament larger than 16", despjte the Karl Gustav being a thing. No the Yamato is not a serious design. You will see multiple weaponsystems of the same rype being used, whenever making the existing one larger is unnecesseary, and further mechanizing it to improve its function is unfeasable. Similarly, you will see multivarelled organ launchers for ATGMs and AShCMs in basically every instance of their mounting on vehjcles, because putting on a larger one is plainly unnecesseary. Same with anti air guns. Tanks will start getting multiple main guns, as soon as one with the firepower of a 6" gun can be miniuturized to the point a pair of them and their loading mechanism fits into the space and weight of what a 5" tank gun currently takes up.
Same with all shown potato tanks. Absolutely cursed abomination, that never existed outside of "Ha ha funny, lets draw another barrel". Same with ST-II, they took a looong look at it and send designer to finally get sober, a punishment worse then death.
The Guns themselves are complex engineering......Having too many guns on one platform is like too many eggs in one basket. It's better to have 2 single barrelled tanks the one twin barrel from a tactical stance also, If one tank is lost you still have another gun, if a twin is lost that's 2 guns out of the fight. There really are a whole bunch of reasons why twin barrelled tanks aren't really a thing
@@cattledog901 There is an "Efficiency", you just have to look hard for it :) Like transportation for example, moving one tank into the battle with twin guns is more efficient that moving 2 tanks into the battle......but the pros of a twin barrelled tank are outweighed by the cons for sure
@@Tommy-he7dx Resource wise it makes no sense. Twin gun tanks will be less efficient tactically because of the negative effects it brings to the individual tank (crew will be less efficient with less space, tank will be heavier and more complicated, less ammo, aiming issues) while also not being efficient on a strategic level. Like you said makes way more sense militarily to have more single barrel tanks than less double barrel tanks. It distributes the lethality across a larger force. Even the fire rate of a double barrel tank would not be more efficient since you would to load both guns, reducing the ROF. A single cannon tank could surpass its ROF easily simply because of crew efficiency.
@@Tommy-he7dx two tanks are better than one tank with twin cannons. One tank is just one, either if it has two or more guns won't change the fact it's just one tank. You lose one then you got no tanks left, that's why the soviets won the eastern front
ZSU 57-2 Sparka has probably seen more use in its ground engagements than the originally intended AA role. But its turret lacks a roof, as it is not mechanically ventilated and cooled and its very high rate of elevation would make a solid turret roof difficult to design (the roof would probably bring its own problems with selecting, tracking and aiming at targets). However, it is lightly armored (weighs about 30 metric tonnes) and thus quite vulnerable in frontline combat situations. But it has a high rate of fire and can devastate soft-skinned targets. It is also useful for targeting enemy positions on higher ground, e.g. in mountainous terrain or urban settings. A single-barrel 57 mm autocannon has recently been shown as one of the possible main armaments in a remotely operated turret placed on top of the heavy IFV T-15 Armata design.
Multi barrel designs make sense for AA guns because you need the higher rate of fire to strike such a fast moving target. That's why you'll find double, triple, and quad AA configurations as far back as WWII at least. The ZSU-57-2's successor, the ZSU-23-4 was a quad design for that very reason.
When I was a kid Command and Conquer came out and my buddy and I would take turns playing on his computer… the reverence we had for the mammoth tank was magical lol just because 2 barrels!
I was happy to see the unique M50 Ontos mentioned but surprised you didn’t also mention the 1950s era Type 60 tank destroyer with two side by side recoilless rifles.
Something about having more than loader: it doesn't mean both loaders are loading the guns, it could be a relay system, with one loader passing rounds/charges from the hull to the turret, or some other form of team based work.
Why? Because it's grossly inefficient. High rates of fire are the only reason for multiple barrels, and you're NOT going to get any higher rate of fire out of a tank main gun by doubling the weight and work needed to serve them.
According to another video I saw on the topic, there are more practical issues with the concept. One is that the gunner would need to offset the aim every time they use the second barrel, if he wants to hit anything. Firing both guns at once would pretty much guarantee one of them misses, on top of the double recoil probably tearing the turret off the vehicle (maybe not immediately, but mechanical strain adds up). On top of that, MBT cannons have enough firepower that doubling it is not worth the cost. A hit will either disable the target or do little damage depending on impact location and angle, and a second barrel so close to the first won't really change these factors. So you get either two glancing hits, or two killing blows, for the cost of double the ammo and other issues. Multiplying barrels is a viable option with some weapons however: imprecise artillery that rely on saturating an area with somewhat light payloads; saturation weapons designed to provide cover against and for infantry or act as air deterrent weapons; and light calibre anti-vehicle, fast-firing weapons that use repeated impact on a target to "slowly" get through light armour. These weapons are much smaller and require small ammunition (except the artillery ones, but they're mounted on lightly armoured, slow and sometimes open-topped chassis) so issues posed by the concept are much less apparent. In a setting in which landships exist, however, those -and tank destroyers designed to counter them- would likely find more use in having one double-barreled "turret" (TDs would likely have fixed guns). Such "tanks" would provide massive targets that might require more than one high calibre direct impact to disable. The thing is, those never existed despite some attempts covered on this channel (iirc).
Multiple barrel armored vehicles are good when saturation is needed ... a lot of rounds in a very short time. For example this is what the Wirbelwind did with 4 autocannons and this is what today the Gephard does. Sturation with HE rounds is achieved by MLRS and not tanks and saturation by AP rounds is not that useful ... you hit the other tank twice with smaller caliber possibly not penetrating either ... better hit once and pen.
Have to agree with you. The only purposes are where you need a "shotgun effect" (including dispersion and a "beaten volume"/"beaten zone over time") or barrel firing is interleaved to assist walking shots on to a target (typically this is only useful for aa).
By the same logic, double barrel battleship turrets are also impractical. The Maus design could already have supported a heavy cruiser turret, and once made twice as big - Maus Ausfuehrung-B - it could have supported the triple barrel turret of the Scharnhorst. With a weight appr. 400-480 tons, Maus Ausf.-B would have been indestructible by enemy tanks, which was the principle behind the Maus concept, so speed and agility would haven been a moot point in light of its overwhelming firepower and armor.
Maus would have been a miserable failure, especially if they decided to put a warship's turret on it, I assure you. Battleships are an entirely different class of vehicle with a different set of limitations and requirements for service, it's not a valid direct comparison.
Its actually kinda surprising. They have a double barrel shot gun, i do not think it would be much harder. Its on mark, both probably using the same recoil system so it would be easy to get that second round very close to the same mark. Granted weight might be a factor, they always wanted to get the largest(heavy) cannon in most of the tanks. Two might be to much weight in the end.
It's too much weight for negliblely more firepower. you get 2 shots but then you'll reload at the same rate unless you have 2 loaders which means a bigger and heavier tank. But most of all, you could just have 1 bigger gun, less weight, complexity, and the only issue is less ammo capacity.
The recoil and effect of a 12 gauge double barrel is much much much less than the forces generated by firing even two smaller tank guns. Seriously, you could lose a hand or get killed by concussive force just being near the barrel of a tank gun as it's firing. That causes shells to get deflected by those forces if fired simultaneously. Firing a double barrel shotgun also rocks the gunner, and you're much less likely to hit your target due to the greater recoil. Unless you're a massive mountain man, at any rate.
About your auto-loader statement,there is a way to actually do that. If you use just one source of ammo,which probably means only one ammo type(depending on how actual auto-loaders do it when it comes to the different ammo types),and only load the guns when both are emptied,you could just have only the actual manipulators that pick up the shells and stuff them into the breech duplicated whilst the ammo simply moves an extra step for the second manipulator. So for about the same reload speed during each reload and some extra weight,you can have the same quantity of ammo but two rounds ready to go either at once for that sweet double whammy or a quick one two punch that occurs faster then the time taken to load each round at once. Since you don't need to worry too much about space for the loader,the only remaining factors would be making the turret wide enough for the two guns in question,along with the associated weights and forces that come with it. In our current era,though,since it is now possible to have the gunner not actually be in the turret,that would mean you don't need to much space beyond that for the second gun,whilst also meaning you can now have optics that automatically compensate for the even more offset weaponry...BY HAVING THE SIGHT BETWEEN THE GUNS!,no need to worry about fitting the gunner head between the guns too. Now if further complexity ain't an issue,then perhaps making the guns adjustable so that their point of convergance can be changed so that they always merge at about the point of impact and you'd get a lovely concentration of firepower. Probably not viable above 75 mm right now,but perhaps if power potent shells can be made without increasing calibre size,then they could be equivalent,like how the 90 mms are in Halo.
@@kooperativekrohn456This is what i find bad about war thunder players......they act more like "elites" one thing,realism doesn’t really make the game better....it only makes it different,WOT is placed as an arcade game for people who want to have a simpler experience......war thunder is placed as realistic game for people who want to have a more complex and real experience........it's really a nerd move to compare them.......
@@samsuddin8249 I've been playing WOT for ten years and I'm telling you (very seriously) that WT is better. Because WOT launched fake tanks with too much information that could not be confirmed.
Besides the weight and maintenance problems that would occur in a double barrel tank, the fact that you need to make more room and such makes it easier to hit the tank do to the profile becoming bigger. And the weight of the guns would ld make the turn speed on the turret a lot slower and also increase maintenance if you didn’t make a whole new kind of tank were everything is specifically made for those tanks, and that increases the cost If the infrastructure to make tanks are already built for normal ones. But the up side would be that the two guns would be like having two tanks in one and that one tank being worth 1,5 tanks in cost and also decreasing the amount of resources because you don’t have to build two tanks for two guns but instead just one, but if both guns would be damaged then the time to repair or replace them increases drastically mostly in time because the tanks are so specialized but if the nation literally makes there tank infrastructure just for them then the time would be only maybe 0,5 more time to repair the barrels but replacing the tank would probably cost 1,5 times more than the enemies tanks, do to the specifications of the tank. But if the infrastructure is still for normal tanks then the cost of one double barrel tank would by my guess be between 2 to 3 times more expensive but 5 to 7 times more at the most if the infrastructure for the tanks are being destroyed. But I’m probably being biased and I’m not a person who researches or stuff like that, and I’m basing my assumptions in the Second World War. So the worse case scenario for this tank would probably be a King Tiger Tank in Berlin 1945 big, expensive, hard to maintain and an ammunition shortage, but I would se this kind of tank more as a ambush tank like the Stug. My best scenario for this tank would be that you remove the turret and make a Stug tank with double barrel and adding some stuff that makes it easy to put a tarp or something over it so rain doesn’t affect it as much then put it on a hill near a field camouflage it and wait. But if you made the tank a bit taller so the cannons are further up then you could probably get a decent depression and the name of pointing the gun upwards and if you had a larger spacing between the guns then you could fire one gun and turn a lot less to point the other gun and shoot and with a good crew you probably have the first gun loaded when the second has fired. This would make the tank a great ambush tank especially for convoys of enemy tanks or with some good HE-shells then they would be great for support convoys and if you made the tank longer for more space you could probably come with MG-crew and ammunition for them or you could just try to cram in them in the tank to reduce cost which has already been done by removing the complicated turret and the roof and by being an ambush tank you could decrease the amount of armor and reduce the cost that way as well and also increases the speed. If the crew is given the proper training, supplies and equipment they could make a complicated ambush bye digging and camouflaging the ambush place and shot maybe 3 shots back up and drive to another position near them park and shot in the new position. But this is just what I thought of for a double barrel tank, I’m not super into tanks or such things but I like thinking about them. But I won’t/can’t give specifics about the tank I’m thinking about, I’m not that good. Thanks for reading if you come all the way here and I’m sorry if I have written with bad grammar and/or spelling English isn’t my first language
Yes, the obvious point. Think the Panzer III when it was upgraded to the 5 cm gun. At some point you have the longer barrel 5 cm gun, which still struggled to penetrate the armor of T-34s. So is the solution to make a larger tank, like the Tiger, with two such guns? Trying to overcome stronger armor with rate of fire? I guess if you are the US Navy, you do (More guns, always add more guns).
@@iansneddon2956 TBF, the issue with ships is that they're very long, so you hit the limit of how big a gun you can fit for the weight of the ship. Also at the longer ranges ships fight at, you're probably going to miss a lot of shots, so you compensate by firing more shots per salvo.
@@Appletank8 Yes, but I was taking a dig at the USN taking this a bit far. Imagining US naval architects waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with the thought that they might have missed some deck space on which they could have mounted another gun.
I think the real problem aren't really the mechanics themselves. The true issue is manning the guns. Extra loader takes space that could be replaced with other stuff. Single loader will take double the time to load the rounds. You can give the single loader the extra space you took for the extra gun + extra loader and allow the single loader to just load single gun faster. Also the extra gun could be put on a different tank, and now you have two tanks instead of one. The only advantage you get from two barrels is a fast followup on the first shot you fired, giving you more chance to kill your target before it could kill you. An advantage that is pointless if you get surprised by the enemy or get shot at with RPG's
As far as I'm aware, the British & German WW1 breakthrough tanks all had atleast two cannons mounted, including multiple machine guns mounted to the sides, which eventually seemed very effective in the clearing of trenches, sure the tanks had some reliability issues, but the French light tanks with only one cannon and a rotatable top had these too, after all tanks were still just an early invention. So I guess it really depends on the base of the tank & the combat it's being used in, but they definetly aren't always as ineffective as some people think, especially knowing that the for example. mark V british tank (2 cannons on each side of the tank) made massive changes during the first world war and probaply was the only thing during the war that managed to break through trenches & defensive lines without sacrifing a million troops, also changing the doctrine of war. These were things that for example the light French tanks I mentioned before with only one cannon could have never done. The double cannons & multiple machine guns were WAY more effective in doing these jobs than any tank with a single turret would have ever done.
Yes very similar. I actually wish I had included that comparison in the video but I didn't think of it until I was already editing. I'll probably do a video like this specifically for multiturreted tanks as there are a few other reasons those fail as well.
Yes, because the armament of a tank makes up a much larger proportion of its overall weight than on a warship. Thus, adding more turrets or more guns per turret is much harder to do. It just turns out that tanks fall right in the size category where such concepts don't really work. And it's not remotely practical to built a tank that's big enough for double or triple-barrel turrets to be actually feasible. Land vehicles are just smaller than ships.
The whole consept of double barrel tanks takes place way before world war 2 starts the first double barrel tank was the VT 1-1 now having double barrel tanks had a lot of isues. Like if a tank has to many crew mates they would have to work hard, and plus the more turrets it has the more heavier it is. So it would not work
Even if it is doable for artillery use, I still think the logistical issues surpass the usefulness, a self-propelled artillery with two guns would consume double the ammo, would be difficult to set and aim, even though it could have better volume of fire and even effect, is questionable how much would it, even more if used for different targets, which is a different scenario when we talk about mortars and recoilless rifles, that indeed is really useful mostly because of how they are used, closer ranges, firing for effect, fast target requisition, the reason why the latter isn't as used today is because the logistical issues of the recoilless guns, their ammo is different, not really share with other units and the list goes on, those guns were extremely effective after the WW2, when artillery was too heavy to be easily airlifted for the planes of that time, making some really light artillery units that could have limited range, but it was enough for their purpose, but things change, artillery accuracy increase, so as the ergonomic handling of those, as the airlifting stuff, so those guns became redundant and out of standards pretty quickly.
The issue is you are putting 2x the complexity and problems of having a gun in the first place, while being half as useful. A commander would rather have 2 tanks than 1 double gun tank. It also means that if you lose tank you are losing 2 guns worth of firepower. Also tanks are generally firing at LOONG ranges, where precision is more important. There is a reason we do not have double barreled sniper rifles. What would be better is some kind of double shot system where you could fire 2 rounds back to back with 1 trigger pull. So if you know you will have a hit you can load the second shot.
Given the nature of the armour/gun race, if you've got space and weight margin for two medium-sized guns, then you're almost always better off fitting one much bigger gun instead. It'll have more range and penetration, and you'll probably still be able to carry more single shots for the big gun than you can carry two-round salvoes for the twin guns. Having a pair of different guns that do different things is more sensible though. I've always rather liked the BMP-3 armament system. Giving the 100mm low-velocity gun a serious APFSDS round would mean carrying full-sized rounds with very sub-calibre penetrators, the big sabots being basically wasted space. Fitting a 30mm with a long barrel braced to the 100mm is probably a better solution: you get the same anti-armour capability, more compact ammunition, and, being a belt-feed autocannon, it doesn't significantly add to the crew's workload.
Funny fact: the Object 703 - II originally was supposed to used the 100mms like the IS-2 II and was actually designed based on that armament in mind and iirc exists in the game files. However the reason it uses 122mms was because it would sell better for wargaming's benefit.
Tanks simply don't have the luxury of ample hull space beneath double or even triple and quadruple gun turrets battleships used to have to store all of the ammo and house most of the loading machinery. In addition, tanks also they lack the buoyancy bonus of water, since they have to move over rough terrain. Limited mass and limited space mean less ammo for double the rate of fire. It is almost impossible to design twin barrel tank guns to independently engage two targets simultaneously. Maybe, the logic behind a hypothetical twin barrel tank would be to have 2 different types of ammo, 1 for the left- and 1 for the right-hand-side gun, with corresponding left and right magazines (and autoloaders), so as to always have 2 rounds at hand: 1 HE-frag and 1 AP, for instance, or to have 2 guns firing 2 rounds (of the same or different types) in short succession or at the same time, but with a slight offset of line of fire, so as to overwhelm APS on an armored target or hit it in two spots. But the weight, complexity and reliability penalties of such a system would render this concept rather impractical.
another reason that we don't have irl double barreled tanks that you didn't mention is irl we don't have hit points like we do in video games. IRL if a tank is penetrated it probably dies or is combat ineffective. in video games like WOT if a tank is penetrated it has hit points that says its either fine or destroyed depending on how much damage was done. so hitting a tank twice at the same time has a gameplay advantage because it is doing double the damage to the tank's hit points.
Irl we do have hits points , but the stats are different, tanks have a high defense stat (Front and sides) but not as high health , so when you attack a tank with a attack that doesn't penetrates it , the attack did close to zero damage , however when it penetrates it bypass the defense (since the hit was really strong) and now it can damage the tank health itself, and as you said , kill it or incapacitate it
The Gamilas in Space Battleship Yamato 2199 had a triple barrel tank, but it is an interesting design that would make a good Friday video. Or an April Fools video.
I think the prevalent thoughts on this topic are that in almost every situation imaginable an already well designed tank would benefit more if any weight added to it's design came in the form of improved/additional/heavier armor with possibly a larger/more powerful main gun and or a larger ammunition storage capacity. An extra gun means extra maintenance, and assuming both guns are used equally then barrel replacement means 2 barrels. Sure, theoretically it may fire twice as many rounds as a single barrel version before needing to be replaced but it means that the tank will be offline for twice as long, and the financial expense is doubled each time. The economic factor may be offset by the fact that it should happen at twice the amount of time but it means that the logistics of transporting 2 barrels at a time which requires more room on transport vehicles...Replacing your car tires is much less painfull if you can spread the replacement of each tire out over say 4 months rather than all in one payment, barrels on a tank would be a similar situation. Replacing one barrel every 10k rounds fired, and having your tank down for one barrel replacement every 4 months of combat vs paying for 2 barrels and having your tank down for 2 barrel replacements for 20k rounds fired every, plus the added wear and tear on engines, transmissions, suspension, drive wheels, tracks, turret components etc... all adds up and with no additional armor protection to make it more survivable means youve got a heavier, slower, more maintenance intensive tank that is just as easily destroyed as it would've been with the same armor and a single gun.
Not to mention that most likely it would be impossible to fire two large caliber guns simultaneously without wrecking something on the tank. Firing sequentially would still necessitate reaquiring the target after firing the first gun.
battleship regularly fire 3 barrels gun at the same time, why are they okay but not tank ? or is this more of issue of the relative size of gun to the main supporting body ?
@@keenheat3335I’m not an expert or anything, but you are probably right. Battleships are huge in size and they are built big enough to withstand recoils of their cannon. Tanks in other hand has much more limited capacity on weapons they can hold.
@@keenheat3335 If you look at battleships a turret on an Iowa class has a weight of around 2450 tonnes. The ship displacement is around 58,000 tonnes fully loaded. It also sits in water that the impulse can be transferred to. The ships are not standing on tracks with a supposition system that can move The secondary 5 inch =127 mm guns are close to the same caliber as a tank gun today. They were twin mount and the weight was 77,400kg. That is more than a tank today. And they are attached to a large ship. Tank guns are a lot larger part of the vehicle than ship guns are. There is likely a diffrence in the recoil absorption system. Tank is quite limited in size so you can fit a good and large system in them
I suspect there may be an added issue with firing both guns simultaneously in a double-barreled tank. I think it only makes sense at point-blank range, when accuracy is not an issue, and it actually decreases the chance to hit anything at range. Here's why: it's a known issue in warship turrets that the blast wave of one gun in the same turret can interfere with the shell trajectory of its neighbour (and vice versa), when guns are placed relatively close together. Different solutions have been enacted by different nations, but I doubt any of these would make sense in a tank: 1. (US solution) - put an automated timer on the guns, making each gun automatically fire a fraction of a second after its neighbour; 2. (UK solution) place the middle gun in a three gun turret somewhat deeper in the turret (this can still be seen on HMS Belfast, for example), so the respective blast waves occur farther away from each other. Either solution, though, would exacerbate the already existing space issues in a tank turret.
It’s worth noting that tanks rarely fight alone, so engaging multiple opponents would be such a rare occurrence that it’s still not worth doubling up. I know you haven’t done a fake tank Friday in a while, but could you do a vid on the ridiculous super heavy tanks from the movie “The Creator?”
Two main guns fired at the same spot at once(or at split second intervals) might be a worthwhile way to get through reactive and active defenses. Though you'd need the mechanisms to be able to angle them inward.
Basically it's because enemy targets don't have hit points like in a video game. Two guns do not kill a target twice as fast. Your gun can either kill an enemy or it can't, two of them won't change that. What you need then is a _better_ gun, not two.
The best use case I can think of is if you a low to moderate chance of getting a 1st round hit due to limited optics/range finding/etc. You fire once, and hopefully hit the target. If not, you make the slight adjustment and fire again without having to wait for a reload. However, if this were a significant concern, I'd imagine that it'd be far more beneficial to have something like a 3 round revolver style gun instead of a double barrel. It'd be far lighter, give you an extra shot if you needed, and take up less space internally.
11:27 Westwood Studios came up with those in Command & Conquer: Red Alert Retaliation (1996) real-time strategy game. Russia and Ukraine are having double barrel heavy tanks and double barrel Mammoth tanks in this game which gave the idea to other game developers in the future. They look cool and they are very powerful.
I've been following your channel for some time, but I don't speak English, and so sometimes I feel like I'm missing part of the explanations because of the quality of TH-cam's automatic subtitles. So, could you dub your videos into Portuguese? It is very difficult to find quality content like yours in Portuguese on this subject.
From what I can tell it’s from Russia or Germany circa 1917 and is a “land battleship” (also called a landship?) which is… basically what it sounds like. There was the idea that battleships work, and tanks are also cool, so make a huge tank. Hope this helps, the whole landship thing looks like an interesting mini research project tbh.
For a good concept for a twin-gunned tank, I look at two models from the Command and Conquer franchise; the Mammoth, and the Overlord. Both of these lean toward a mounting system akin to the Gepard, with the guns mounted apart from each other and the crew inside the turret between them. They are large, slow, heavily armored machines, and in both cases use split track configurations to overcome the ground pressure effect (and include additional weaponry, such as guided missiles or a roof-mounted anti-air gun system.)
I hate me some WoT. It's a mobile game that can be played on a console or PC. But they're paying our man to make some videos so I think we can muscle through it.
If the tank chassis was a little bit bigger it could have a huge mortar build into it. Also then the turret could be allowed a little more width and depth and be able to house two support guns on either side of the maingun. The size would call for wider tracks to carry the weight without bugging down and bigger roadwheels to allow for greater torque, so the additional weight of adding a missilerack on top of the turret along with a third support cannon and also a quad-barrel AA machinegun would be ok. If the roadwheels were then made just a little bigger, each could be fitted with snubnosed autocannons with 45 degree overlapping fire-archs as well as rows of blade sticking out in 90 degree angles to protect against infantry trying to swarm the tank. Yeah. And also with the tracks as wide as this, the tank would need to be longer as well or it would look out of proportion and slightly stupid and so would not be taken seriously as an instrument of war, death and destruction. So with that in mind, there's both reason and room for adding crew compartments for a squad to close quaters specialists that would be a better option for dealing with enemy infantry than attached, spinning blades would. These would obviously have flamethrowers in addition to their sidearms. If it weere made big enough, there could be a full platoon with additional vehicles that could be launched for local scouting missions. When not on point defense duty, of cause. Enemy ground personel is the biggest threat to tanks on the battlefield, and defending against them would be the primary assignment.
I don’t know if you’re a huge halo guy, but I’d LOVE to see a cursed by design series from the “failed” lore variants of the scorpion (the sun devil), and the Grizzly (halo’s own twin barreled tank)!
One very significant limitation is the regular need for rail transport, which has limited tank width from time tanks were first developed. A side by side needs a wider turret. In a vertical stack layout the turret becomes significantly taller. Manual loading becomes nearly impossible & slow, even tank stability is compromised.
regarding wot: if you look at the end of the gun (in the turret) you should ask yourself: how can two big canons (above 75mm) be so close? there, at the start of the canon, must be enough place for two loading mechanisms side by side. next problem: how can the second gun be loaded, while the first is firing? try to hold a grenade safe, while one barrel fires with recoil... and you have to wait, until it's fired, otherwise you're really near to the recoil, with a big safety issue: holding a grenade, that is sharp or perhaps with all the stress during a battle, you have your hands in the way of the recoil of the other canon, cause the commander is looking through the binocular and giving command to fire for the other gun, not able to see, that you're in the way loading your side... the canons would have to be separated much more, like you can see with vt tank. and then you need a much bigger turret (width), if you want a rotating one. everything else would just be possible, when firing is only enabled, when both barrels are loaded simultaneously. and firing both guns together would never be possible: the recoil is real stress for crew and tank with all the motion the tank has to withstand. the double recoil and you need complete other parameters for all components of the tank! a big gun and a smaller one may be possible, but 2 big guns, the way the mechanics is idealized in wot: nope. otherwise the germans would have mounted their 88mm on their panzer I + II + III + IV - but they engineered the tiger tanks (p + h) which were this big, because all has to fit together. otherwise it would have been a "one-shot-wunderwaffe" ;)
I think maybe one of the biggest problem is how diminishing the returns are. If you add a second gun, you either need to add another loader or do you practically just have an extra shot for your first fire in an engagement? Both aren't exactly the best option besides that, how close to each other can you even fire? The first shot will likely move your tank slightly, so you will have to reaim and maybe even wait for the smoke to go away. Or you shot both at once, which also doesn't really do much
I have an idea for defeating modern composite armor: Like tandem charges against ERA, a tank should have an over-under barrel configuration, one firing DU capped APFSHE (in theory wouldn't penetrate the armor itself, but it would explode in a specific point of the composite armor creating a cavity) and the other firing regular APFSDS with a trigger delay to compensate for the slower speed of the APFSHE round, and in theory it should hit the same weakened spot on the tank.
There are one potential, and one definite issue that I didn't catch you covering. The potential issue is blast interference when simultaneous firing due to the extremely closely placed guns. This was definitely an issue with closely spaced naval guns, causing excessive dispersion of the salvo, leading to designs like the staggered depth triple turret on the Royal Navy's Town-class light cruisers or the delay coil retrofit for various US Navy battleships (like the Pennsylvania-class). However it is possible that the much shorter range of tank engagements would mitigate much of the dispersion issue. The definite issue is that (all else being equal) for a given tonnage of gun you can carry two smaller guns or one bigger gun and the bigger gun's shells should be better at armor penetration (and probably high-explosive capacity) that a pair of smaller shells -- so if you're willing to add all the mass of a 2nd gun you'd almost certainly be better off with upsizing the single gun
Before I watch any bit of this I’m going to make a guess. It’s for a multitude of reasons but the ones I can think of are the impracticality of them, double the guns means double the reload times. It would also mean double the ammunition carried and many more loaders which all adds extra weight and takes more space. Speaking of space, a guns breach takes up a lot of space giving crews less space to work with.
Also a reason why you see them in games is because tanks have an hp bar in those, they don't just instantly explode and thus there would actually be an advantage in having 2 quick shots available. As we know irl they are made expressly to one shot, either the round goes in or doesn't. Plus in the real world there is usually only one loader and he can't do it at 2x speed so in actuality the fire rate would be the same. Also unless you could individually aim them the shots would converge at some range, If not they would just fly straight which would also be bad since at longer ranges one would always miss.
Another thing about making the turret bigger to house 2 guns is if your already doing that why not just house 1 bigger gun. Then you have complexities of more maintenance with 2 guns producing 2 different types of guns they'll have to be loaded from different sides unless you make the turret wider and space them so
The M50 Ontos had six guns on a very small turret. It had a turret and was used as a light tank with some firepower to support infantry instead of hunting tanks in Vietnam. When all six guns fired together, the firepower was simply devastating and the Marines loved it.
Interestingly I find my problem lies in symantics. Thinking about the M3 grant, or Various Spaags and Armored combat support vehicles (thinking the russian Predator) I understand another barrel can be needed due to a wish for higher ROF or added time for barrelcooling... I think I remember the Sussians had aCannon array for planes and helicopters where the recoil of the first barrel reloaded the second and the other way around to reach very high ROF for short periods with 2 barrels instead of a Rotary cannon. This brings us to the rotary cannon and variants. There have been M113s with a Vulcan for close range air defence (Don't recal the numbers (M163?)) which are multibarrel vehicles as well. I could in theory imagine a tank chassis witha AK-130 dual 130mm shipcannon mounted, however, since this is automated ship artillery, and not an AT gun it would likely be impractical. A ship can house a magazine for 300+ rnds for this gun, A tank could not carry a magazine for 300 130 mm shells, and where a ship could counter the recoil of the 2 barrels spewing out 90 RPM combined, most tanks would likely shove to a side... A normal MBT would carry 45-90 rnds, which would be depleted in 60 seconds if you have a triggerhappy gunner, leaving the unit defenceless.
This video reminded me of something, I know a while back you did some research to find where the panzer of the lake was also the tonk. I’m not sure, but it might be an interesting video idea to see if you can find the tank memorial from the video where the guy says “I’m in a tank and you’re not.” I don’t know just an idea. Great video though. Really informative. Love it!
You briefly showed the AMOS and I think that might be pointing toward one way we could see practical double-barrelled tanks in the future, maybe even in the very near future - imagine an MBT-sized double gun-mortar carrier that could indirectly fire a rapid burst of guided shells from outside the current range of most tank guns and ATGMs, so that a dozen or so armored targets designated by drones could be struck in their top armor simultaneously, and our vehicle could be well on its way to its next firing position before the impact. Such a vehicle would rely on its mobility and staying out of direct fire combat to avoid taking hits and so it wouldn't need heavy armor and the weight of a second gun would be less of a concern while the added fire rate from the second gun would directly impact its survivability and effectiveness. I think the lessons of armored warfare in Ukraine are pointing toward this sort of concept as one of the directions tanks may be evolving in the future.
Thanks to World of Tanks for supporting the channel and my ability to cover this interesting topic. Download World of Tanks for free today and get a special bonus: tanks.ly/49lMC1a
Have you ever heard of the ZSU-57-2 a Russian SPAA with two 57mm guns that fired APHE and HE
I knew it. Updated WOT and saw your video
World of Fakes.
ah, you're grifting for this ruzzian cash grab too? Luckily I don't have to play this dreck
Warthunder much better and more realistic
You point out all the logical reasons why double barrels are inefficient and counterproductive, however people always forget the soft factors of how much I want one and how cool they are.
I wish I could have a modernized Maus. :(
@@dubuyajay9964How about Object 279 ?
@@Raptorblue21 ?
@@dubuyajay9964You don't know object 279?
@@gabrielho1874 Just looked it up. Still prefer a modernized Maus.
Cons:
-Weight
-Procedure for loading ammo
-Ammunition conservation
-Dubious utility of two underpowered cannons vs one that can penetrate armor
-Dubious utility of two powerful cannons that could both penetrate armor, but are both heavy and take up more space
-Complications with aiming either using set convergence, parallel barrels with two offset sights, or a complicated and vulnerable convergence/rangefinder combo
-Need for heavy duty turret motor... possibly suffering from slow rotation and elevation
-If lost or damaged you are losing two large, expensive guns instead of one
Pros:
-It's cool
-Aint no kill like overkill
I'm pretty sure these concerns were somewhat answered by the concept of adding a coaxial sub-cannon for lighter targets.
There's also "If the barrels are close enough together, firing 2 very powerful cannons close together will cause the shells downrange to have a wildly varying dispersion, ala the problems found with certain battleships"
@@novatopaz9880only if shot at the same time.
Coaxial sub-cannon also seems to be a more complicated solution than adding another type of ammunition for the main gun. Though I must admit that those types of ammunition (like HE-DP or HE-MP or barrel-launched ATGMs) are a relatively more modern invention, and adding a second gun still makes more sense in case of a large caliber disparity (like say a 140mm main gun with a 20mm or a 25mm coax). Though, again, such a small weapon would make even more sense as a separate remotely-controlled weapon station.
@@novatopaz9880 Machine gun and Autocannon and Rocket can go multiple by 4s but not cannons due to weight and stability issues.
There are more benefits to it though like an increased rate of fire, though even more downsides. Or in short, it's not viable.
Even from the earliest ages, the quest for more Dakka is unending
There is never enough dakka!!
@@Usinghealer099 Amen!
WAAAAGH!
Vegeta approves
Interesting to think about how influenced our culture as a whole is by NOT 'AVIN ENUFF DAKKA
In fiction we have the iconic Mammoth and apocalypse tanks of the Command and Conquer series. In addition to twin turrets, they use multiple independent suspension units. Which leads to the question of "how do four (or more) smaller track sections compare to just two large ones?"
Adding more gears decreases top speed but increases torque iirc.
You want torque when it comes to moving something heavy, seems on the right *track*
In Command and Conquer Red Alert, I could just modify the Rules.ini file to make the Mammoth tanks fire AP or HE guided dogs, set is bio? to O so they work against vehicls and buildings.. 🐕 Roolfff! 💀
Guided Dog missiles out of a Yak was the funniest though...I almost died laughing when I tested it.
the answer is "poorly"
Those were what I thought of immediately when I saw this video, along with the Overlord from Generals
Generally speaking poorly , if one tracks blows you can't move the tank , you add more moving parts . One of the few benefits is the increased torque , which helps to overcome some slopes , i remember seeing a UGV that had four tracks and it had a great climbing ability , some walking excavators has four tracks , but at that point you are a hybrid and not a purely tracked vehicle
The key answer to the double barrel tank, is the fact that if you have the space and weight for 2 small guns, you can fit one bigger one.
But the rate of fire of one big gun would be much lower than that of two smaller guns.
@@minervszombiesthen you put an autoloading one
@@cherno8336 That could work, I guess.
@@minervszombies Theoretical rate of fire would be counter-balanced by the practical effect on target.
@@minervszombiesbut then you have to load two guns so it probably would take longer with two.
In my younger days, I thought of a twin gunned tank for my fictional world. Once I learned more about tank design, I realized that a turret capable of taking the recoil of two guns... could handle a much larger one.
Two smaller guns alternating fire can dispose of ammo much faster though.
Tell me more about your fictional world.
Do you have a 10,000 page PDF? Only that will satisfy me tbh
@@arostwocents No PDF. It orbits a distant star and is similar to Earth, but with different geography and societies.
The twin gunned tank was for a WWIII type engagement, back when I didn't understand much about tank design... or even much familiarity with modern( in the seventies) tanks.
@@brunozeigerts6379hmm a ww3 scenario of what time period? More recently or kinda like the 50s-80s era?
@@rya7886 It changed as time went on. Maybe 1970, then 1980, 1990. Then I decided that they don't have a WWIII for a lot of the same reasons we didn't.(knock on wood)
In the case of the U. S. Heavy Tank M6, I believe the inclusion of a coaxial 37mm was intended as an ammunition conservation measure. The 37mm M6 was a vehicle-mounted variant of the M3 towed anti-tank gun. As such it was designed to fire solid-shot AP rounds and anti-personnel canister (e.g. the Marines in the Guadalcanal campaign). The Ordnance Branch believed the 37mm would be more frequently used than the 3-inch M7 gun, given the AFVs used by the Wehrmacht in France in 1940 and in the ongoing battles in North Africa. The envisioned targets of the M7 were fortified positions and, especially, German anti-tank artillery positions. Out of the 75 rounds of 3-inch ammo carried by the Heavy Tank M6, most would be HE suitable to such targets, plus a reserve of AP ammo in case the rare German heavy tank showed itself. The 37mm M7 gun had a supply of 202 rounds. Being small, these could be stowed in many locations within the tank. Most of these would be solid-shot AP rounds. However, canister rounds were also to be carried as means to deal with enemy infantry on the flanks or otherwise invisible to the bow gunner.
Kinda like the French Char, their hull mounted howitzer was intended as a bunker buster while the turret was for anti tank work
An insight into French military thinking at the time is that the hull mounted gun was actually considered the primary armament while the turret was the secondary
@@gabespiro8902 The Heavy Tank M6 was designed when the "tank destroyer" doctrine was prevalent. The U.S.A. Ground Forces commander, Leslie McNair thought of tanks as primarily infantry support weapons, consequently, tank-on-tank combat was seen as a misuse of armor. Only a few M6 tanks were built. I'm quite certain that high-velocity 3-inch gun made McNair suspicious.
@@gabespiro8902 The Medium Tank M3, better known as the Lee/Grant was designed around the same doctrine that emphasized dedicated "tank destroyers" for the anti-tank role. Just like the M6, the M3 had a 37mm gun for dueling with German AFVs and a much more powerful gun firing HE rounds for dealing with fortified positions and FlaK-88s. However, being much simpler to build en mass and much easier to transport by sea, 30 tons to lift by crane versus 50, McNair could completely justify his position regarding the M6 Heavy.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT_tank
The DBT was seriously discussed in tank design in the late seventies / early eighties. The reason was having a real fast follow up shot when the first one misses. We are talking about seconds after observing the first shot. Double firing would be a no go as the support structures in the tank would have been much, much to heavy. The final solution was laser targeting and computerized auto correction to increase hit propability.
It's basically the same as a double barreled shotgun for shooting skeet/clay pigeons. Most of the time you'll hit with the first round (assuming proficiency) but the optional 2nd makes it unlikely that you'll fail to clear the targets before they go out of sight
Autoloaders solve this problem. Russian T-72 could fire 1 shot each 7,5 seconds. It is short enough delay
One fact that also makes it difficult for double barrel tanks to be effective is the aiming itself. When shooting at targets from longer ranges, there is a high likelyhood that shooting will cause one or both rounds to miss (crosshair/ sight is on target but the guns technically arent). When firing you have to adjust for each gun seperatly because of the distance between the 2 guns. If they are close to eachother the effect is less noticable, but if they are further away the problem becomes larger. Simply putting a sight on one side is difficult, having 2 is cumbersome having to switch and putting one in the middle might be difficult.
I hope i explained it somewhat understandibly but in short: due to gun placement, aiming is made more difficult because you now have to adjust trajectory and distance between the sight and barrel for each gun seperateyl. (English is not my main Language so i do apologize)
This "feature" is present in the game, as when you are switching guns in "sniper mode", a vigenette can be seen briefly, indicating the switching of aiming optics.
It's possible that changing aim of the gun to be relatively simple, since most sights are offset from the gun, a second gearing for horizontal correction (for the other gun) can be added. Though this is still a problem for salvos.
This is parallax effect, basically
Probably wouldn't be super difficult to implement some kind of convergence adjustor. Multi-barrel SPAAs would have to have that kind of system.
The problem isn't as much to aim the two barrels into the same target even at the same time, the problem is more about the complexity of the system to do so. The solution is the same as with airplanes with guns in wings, gun harmonisation.
The wing guns do not shoot straight but they are aimed inward so the projectiles meet after some distance, as in the guns can be moved horizontally to create convergence point into which the aiming circle is also set. With planes thing is rather easy, just loosen a bolt and tilt the gun and calibrate the sight for the new distance. With tanks this is a lot of trouble, not only do you need to make beefier gun mounts that could be turned horizontally to make the gun harmonisation possible and handle the weight and the recoil of the guns but you also need to make a system that can change the angle of the guns to move the convergence point according to the distance set into the tank sight because, unlike planes, tanks cannot engage enemies only at the right distance for their guns. Also tank rounds are rather big and most of them would completely loose their impact if they were to hit with another one half-way to the target.
How is it any different with one gun? The sight is offset anyway and the distance between the gun and sight isn`t enough to make a difference, especially at range where the guns precision would be wider than the offset.
One other issue (which is probably secondary to turret space for two recoiling breaches) is that closely spaced muzzled tend to cause shell deflection during simultaneous fire. IIRC, the British cruisers famously had to shorten the center barrel on their three rifle turrets to prevent shell deflection during salvo fire. Also, can you imagine the load on the turret ring, brakes, and suspension when two guns fire simultaneously?
Either that or put a few nanoseconds delay between the trigger for each barrel, they may appear to fire simultaneously in real time, but in slow motion one shell would exit the barrel first and be a about a half a meter ahead of the other one all the way downrange.
With regard to British cruisers, while it appears from the outset that the middle barrel is shorter, it isn't actually any shorter than the surrounding barrels as the cannon is just inset into the turret.
@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785This would cause more problems of its own, unfortunately. The shell firing second would be flying through the shock front generated by the first shell. Basically, the second shell will see "dirty air". This can cause huge deviations in the trajectory of the second shell and will probably make it useless for hitting anything accurately.
@@poqqery8950 good point. still, i wonder...how about a coaxial chain gun, 25-40mm, that fires a 3-5 round HE burst, just a half second before the main gun fires? the dirty air may be negligable, and the smaller rounds can set off the ERA, allowing the main round to hit clean. like "brrrt Boom!" or something like that?
The Italians also had a similar issue because they designed their turrets to hold the barrels closer to eachother, which together with poor propeller quality control and the barrels suffering higher wear from firing higher velocity rounds, resulted in the infamous lack of accuracy
“The apocalypse has begun.”
And the army is using the fallout 4 tank ;)
"The end is at hand"
I was there, 25 years ago
"I cast a deadly shadow"
I wonder if enclave vertibirds could transport the US army's old double gun tanks
One other thing that could be a problem with two main caliber guns is that if they are side by side then if fired independently it would torque the turret every time the gun is fired, which could damage the turret ring and rotation mechanism as well as reduce accuracy. This would mean they could only really be fired in tandem at which point a larger gun would probably be better. They could be mounted on top of each other, though that presents it's own problems such as an absurdly tall turret.
There were a number of multi barrel anti aircraft guns but when it comes to anti tank guns adding a second barrel and all the other hardware only serves to make a vehicle larger, heavier, more complex and ultimately less combat capable.
Autocannons aren't as heavy and their ammunition isn't as big so makes sense
As I mentioned on screen they don't really suffer from the same problems as the vehicles we usually associate with the term "double barrel tank". The idea behind them is fairly similar though
@@ConeOfArc Closest thing I can think of to a "multi barrel tank" would be something like the Ontos, and the thing kinda sucked ...
@@user-op8fg3ny3j And autocannons don't require the same degree of precision, either, since you're putting a burst of shells in the vicinity of the target with the intent that at least some of them are going to hit.
the closest example like be the 2 barrels SPAAGs ZSU-57-2 with 2 57mm cannons, or its American equivalent with 2 40mm Bofor guns
I did not perceive that you mentioned this, but I have always had a concern about the torque on the turret. Off center gun(s) will twist the turret on firing and put a great deal of stress on the turret traverse mechanism, which is bad because turret traverse is an important part of precision aiming. Having a turret traverse mechanism that is much more robust to handle the off center torque and yet maintain the delicate precision needed to make an accurate shot would be a very hard technical problem to solve. With two guns, the firing of either would twist the turret and require re-aiming the gun system for the next shot which may be counter productive for the whole purpose of two guns. If the the guns were on top of one another, this would not be a problem. But then, there are other technical problems that would occur.
This is how I perceive one of the problems.
They look soo cool in sci-fi genre because they look intermediating with the examples of the Apocalypes tank, Overlord tank, Mammoth tank and Grizzly tank from Halo.
Heavy tank and mammoth tank from the command and conquer series as well
Double barreled tanks, very impractical but by god do they look so cool. Before WoT even introduced double barrel tanks, I believe it was the Command and Conquer franchise the popularized it. From Mammoth Tanks to Apocalyse Tanks, and the Overlord Tanks.
It actually started with Dune 2. The Harkonnen Devastator.
Yeah man I was playing Command and Conquer and there was like the Chinese tank that when upgraded by a certain general had 2 barrels and a group bonus, and of course the overlord too
Yeah, but he's not being paid to talk about the cool ones
@@Th0ughtf0rce
Which was made by the same studio.
@@Web720 yes. Good old westwood.
Tanks are pretty much as small as possible while squeezing the gun in. Battleships were as big as possible and filled with the largest guns we could get.
Battleships actually went through a similar thing. Pre-dreadnought battleships were covered in main battery turrets at every which angle. Like multi turret tanks just on a much larger scale.
Dreadnoughts (which is the current form of battleships) realized it’s a lot more space efficient to mount a few very large turrets with the biggest guns they could find. Much like modern day tanks.
@@DaddyHenseisure but battleship turrets all fire in pairs of 3, not a single larger cannon.
You forgot about the soviet Mammoth / Appoclips tank for red alert if you are counting virtual double barrel tanks XP
Can’t forget the Overlord from generals
Your right come to think about it there is also the GLA marauder tank when you fully upgrade it with 2 scrap piles@@JordanJames_420
Before watching, what reasons I can think of:
- Turret Space for the guns themselves and the crew to load them
- Neglectable firepower gain compared to one, bigger gun
- More points of failure
- More strain on all components due to higher weight two guns + other accomodations to make them feasable
- Much bigger frontal surface that has to be armored and provides a bigger target for the enemy
Edit: Yay, I was pretty much on point!
The question is less 'why are double-barreled turrets impractical on tanks?', and more, 'why *are* they practical on warships?'. The answer is, they really weren't; rather, they were a work-around on issues of barrel size and loading of extremely large ship cannons. In the late 19th and early 20th century, when armored barbette turrets were introduced, the cannons were already approaching the feasible technical limits at which you could build artillery pieces, and while that technology did rapidly improve as the First World War approached, you still had a situation where a gun larger than 14"/355mm quickly became unwieldy to load and aim even with mechanical assistance.
While much larger artillery pieces were possible, it wasn't really needed, as the existing guns could penetrate any practical ship's armor of the time. While the size of the guns did increase to 16"/381mm and eventually 18"/458mm on the _Yamato_ class, the fact that these sizes were neither necessary nor practical in ship to ship combat meant that the focus came to be on volume of fire, range, and accuracy. As a result, ship designers turned first to multiple turrets, then to multiple multi-barreled turrets.
By the time ship-borne artillery had reached its zenith in the early 1940s, carrier-based aircraft were making battleships obsolete anyway, and soon after that, guided missiles became sufficiently powerful, long-ranged, and accurate that ship's armor became redundant. Consequently, ship guns actually became smaller, designed more for point defense against air attacks and small watercraft than for ship to ship clashes.
Tank guns have very different limitations than ship-borne weapons, mostly regarding weight and mobility. Unlike ship guns, practical tank guns never completely overmatched practical tank armor, and unlike a large ship, a tank has to be light enough to be able to cross bridges and other obstacles.
A ship's turret could and often was larger than any practical tank ever could be. Trying to apply ship design to tanks simply doesn't work.
It absolutely was bot a workaround. You had 15" guns by the revolutionary war. 17" mortars were commonplace by the 1910s, and 18 or 20" single pieces existed.
The reason they wernt used on warships, is that they wernt necesseary. The only time you wanted anything larger than a 6" was against a battleahip, and even there, a 12" got you there until the late 20s. No serious design was ever drawn up with an armament larger than 16", despjte the Karl Gustav being a thing. No the Yamato is not a serious design.
You will see multiple weaponsystems of the same rype being used, whenever making the existing one larger is unnecesseary, and further mechanizing it to improve its function is unfeasable.
Similarly, you will see multivarelled organ launchers for ATGMs and AShCMs in basically every instance of their mounting on vehjcles, because putting on a larger one is plainly unnecesseary. Same with anti air guns. Tanks will start getting multiple main guns, as soon as one with the firepower of a 6" gun can be miniuturized to the point a pair of them and their loading mechanism fits into the space and weight of what a 5" tank gun currently takes up.
Yup
but comrade, the Obj 703 II is as real as my wallet!
Same with all shown potato tanks. Absolutely cursed abomination, that never existed outside of "Ha ha funny, lets draw another barrel". Same with ST-II, they took a looong look at it and send designer to finally get sober, a punishment worse then death.
The Guns themselves are complex engineering......Having too many guns on one platform is like too many eggs in one basket.
It's better to have 2 single barrelled tanks the one twin barrel from a tactical stance also, If one tank is lost you still have another gun, if a twin is lost that's 2 guns out of the fight.
There really are a whole bunch of reasons why twin barrelled tanks aren't really a thing
@user-wj8kv2rv4u You clearly don't understand the defintion of "efficiency".
@@cattledog901 There is an "Efficiency", you just have to look hard for it :)
Like transportation for example, moving one tank into the battle with twin guns is more efficient that moving 2 tanks into the battle......but the pros of a twin barrelled tank are outweighed by the cons for sure
@@Tommy-he7dx Resource wise it makes no sense. Twin gun tanks will be less efficient tactically because of the negative effects it brings to the individual tank (crew will be less efficient with less space, tank will be heavier and more complicated, less ammo, aiming issues) while also not being efficient on a strategic level. Like you said makes way more sense militarily to have more single barrel tanks than less double barrel tanks. It distributes the lethality across a larger force. Even the fire rate of a double barrel tank would not be more efficient since you would to load both guns, reducing the ROF. A single cannon tank could surpass its ROF easily simply because of crew efficiency.
@@Tommy-he7dx two tanks are better than one tank with twin cannons. One tank is just one, either if it has two or more guns won't change the fact it's just one tank. You lose one then you got no tanks left, that's why the soviets won the eastern front
@@Tommy-he7dx By that logic just bring some high caliber towed howitzers, or something like the CEASAR
Imagine a double-barreled tank with unmanned turret
Soviet ZSU-57-72 An example of an anti-aircraft version that was used, among other things, to destroy light armored vehicles and infantry.
ZSU 57-2 Sparka has probably seen more use in its ground engagements than the originally intended AA role. But its turret lacks a roof, as it is not mechanically ventilated and cooled and its very high rate of elevation would make a solid turret roof difficult to design (the roof would probably bring its own problems with selecting, tracking and aiming at targets). However, it is lightly armored (weighs about 30 metric tonnes) and thus quite vulnerable in frontline combat situations. But it has a high rate of fire and can devastate soft-skinned targets. It is also useful for targeting enemy positions on higher ground, e.g. in mountainous terrain or urban settings. A single-barrel 57 mm autocannon has recently been shown as one of the possible main armaments in a remotely operated turret placed on top of the heavy IFV T-15 Armata design.
Multi barrel designs make sense for AA guns because you need the higher rate of fire to strike such a fast moving target. That's why you'll find double, triple, and quad AA configurations as far back as WWII at least. The ZSU-57-2's successor, the ZSU-23-4 was a quad design for that very reason.
Damn. A Cromwell B. I've not played WoT in years, but that is a nice signing bonus. That thing is good. Or at least was.
Heres cone of arc answering the real important questions.
Kudos.
When I was a kid Command and Conquer came out and my buddy and I would take turns playing on his computer… the reverence we had for the mammoth tank was magical lol just because 2 barrels!
I was happy to see the unique M50 Ontos mentioned but surprised you didn’t also mention the 1950s era Type 60 tank destroyer with two side by side recoilless rifles.
Each gun is lightweight, single shot, and can only be reloaded by getting out of the tank which can be under fire
Something about having more than loader: it doesn't mean both loaders are loading the guns, it could be a relay system, with one loader passing rounds/charges from the hull to the turret, or some other form of team based work.
Why? Because it's grossly inefficient.
High rates of fire are the only reason for multiple barrels, and you're NOT going to get any higher rate of fire out of a tank main gun by doubling the weight and work needed to serve them.
According to another video I saw on the topic, there are more practical issues with the concept.
One is that the gunner would need to offset the aim every time they use the second barrel, if he wants to hit anything. Firing both guns at once would pretty much guarantee one of them misses, on top of the double recoil probably tearing the turret off the vehicle (maybe not immediately, but mechanical strain adds up).
On top of that, MBT cannons have enough firepower that doubling it is not worth the cost. A hit will either disable the target or do little damage depending on impact location and angle, and a second barrel so close to the first won't really change these factors. So you get either two glancing hits, or two killing blows, for the cost of double the ammo and other issues.
Multiplying barrels is a viable option with some weapons however: imprecise artillery that rely on saturating an area with somewhat light payloads; saturation weapons designed to provide cover against and for infantry or act as air deterrent weapons; and light calibre anti-vehicle, fast-firing weapons that use repeated impact on a target to "slowly" get through light armour. These weapons are much smaller and require small ammunition (except the artillery ones, but they're mounted on lightly armoured, slow and sometimes open-topped chassis) so issues posed by the concept are much less apparent.
In a setting in which landships exist, however, those -and tank destroyers designed to counter them- would likely find more use in having one double-barreled "turret" (TDs would likely have fixed guns). Such "tanks" would provide massive targets that might require more than one high calibre direct impact to disable. The thing is, those never existed despite some attempts covered on this channel (iirc).
Multiple barrel armored vehicles are good when saturation is needed ... a lot of rounds in a very short time.
For example this is what the Wirbelwind did with 4 autocannons and this is what today the Gephard does.
Sturation with HE rounds is achieved by MLRS and not tanks and saturation by AP rounds is not that useful ...
you hit the other tank twice with smaller caliber possibly not penetrating either ... better hit once and pen.
Have to agree with you. The only purposes are where you need a "shotgun effect" (including dispersion and a "beaten volume"/"beaten zone over time") or barrel firing is interleaved to assist walking shots on to a target (typically this is only useful for aa).
In other words for short range SPAAG systems
By the same logic, double barrel battleship turrets are also impractical. The Maus design could already have supported a heavy cruiser turret, and once made twice as big - Maus Ausfuehrung-B - it could have supported the triple barrel turret of the Scharnhorst. With a weight appr. 400-480 tons, Maus Ausf.-B would have been indestructible by enemy tanks, which was the principle behind the Maus concept, so speed and agility would haven been a moot point in light of its overwhelming firepower and armor.
Maus would have been a miserable failure, especially if they decided to put a warship's turret on it, I assure you. Battleships are an entirely different class of vehicle with a different set of limitations and requirements for service, it's not a valid direct comparison.
Its actually kinda surprising. They have a double barrel shot gun, i do not think it would be much harder. Its on mark, both probably using the same recoil system so it would be easy to get that second round very close to the same mark. Granted weight might be a factor, they always wanted to get the largest(heavy) cannon in most of the tanks. Two might be to much weight in the end.
Weight is always a factor on tanks.
It's too much weight for negliblely more firepower. you get 2 shots but then you'll reload at the same rate unless you have 2 loaders which means a bigger and heavier tank.
But most of all, you could just have 1 bigger gun, less weight, complexity, and the only issue is less ammo capacity.
consider that aiming two tank barrels at long distances increases the chance that either one or both shots will miss
Also in terms of tank on tank combat, it's generally better to stick a bigger gun into your bigger tank, instead of two smaller guns.
The recoil and effect of a 12 gauge double barrel is much much much less than the forces generated by firing even two smaller tank guns. Seriously, you could lose a hand or get killed by concussive force just being near the barrel of a tank gun as it's firing. That causes shells to get deflected by those forces if fired simultaneously.
Firing a double barrel shotgun also rocks the gunner, and you're much less likely to hit your target due to the greater recoil. Unless you're a massive mountain man, at any rate.
1:07 “ casually disregards Command & Conquer”
A grave sin indeed, given C&C has the best known twin-barreled Tank design ever 😂
“How many guns do you need?” “YES”
Another example of a double barrel tank is the mammoth tank and its subsequent variants from the command and conquer franchise.
The quest for more dakka is truly an never-ending journey.
About your auto-loader statement,there is a way to actually do that.
If you use just one source of ammo,which probably means only one ammo type(depending on how actual auto-loaders do it when it comes to the different ammo types),and only load the guns when both are emptied,you could just have only the actual manipulators that pick up the shells and stuff them into the breech duplicated whilst the ammo simply moves an extra step for the second manipulator.
So for about the same reload speed during each reload and some extra weight,you can have the same quantity of ammo but two rounds ready to go either at once for that sweet double whammy or a quick one two punch that occurs faster then the time taken to load each round at once.
Since you don't need to worry too much about space for the loader,the only remaining factors would be making the turret wide enough for the two guns in question,along with the associated weights and forces that come with it.
In our current era,though,since it is now possible to have the gunner not actually be in the turret,that would mean you don't need to much space beyond that for the second gun,whilst also meaning you can now have optics that automatically compensate for the even more offset weaponry...BY HAVING THE SIGHT BETWEEN THE GUNS!,no need to worry about fitting the gunner head between the guns too.
Now if further complexity ain't an issue,then perhaps making the guns adjustable so that their point of convergance can be changed so that they always merge at about the point of impact and you'd get a lovely concentration of firepower.
Probably not viable above 75 mm right now,but perhaps if power potent shells can be made without increasing calibre size,then they could be equivalent,like how the 90 mms are in Halo.
I was wondering if WoT was sponsoring this episode, and of course it is 😂.
Jus a heads up ….War thunder out classes WOT easily . Way better game
@@kooperativekrohn456 haven’t played either in a almost decade at this point
@@kooperativekrohn456no not really. They both have severe problems and are generally intendeds for different people.
@@kooperativekrohn456This is what i find bad about war thunder players......they act more like "elites" one thing,realism doesn’t really make the game better....it only makes it different,WOT is placed as an arcade game for people who want to have a simpler experience......war thunder is placed as realistic game for people who want to have a more complex and real experience........it's really a nerd move to compare them.......
@@samsuddin8249 I've been playing WOT for ten years and I'm telling you (very seriously) that WT is better. Because WOT launched fake tanks with too much information that could not be confirmed.
Besides the weight and maintenance problems that would occur in a double barrel tank, the fact that you need to make more room and such makes it easier to hit the tank do to the profile becoming bigger.
And the weight of the guns would ld make the turn speed on the turret a lot slower and also increase maintenance if you didn’t make a whole new kind of tank were everything is specifically made for those tanks, and that increases the cost If the infrastructure to make tanks are already built for normal ones.
But the up side would be that the two guns would be like having two tanks in one and that one tank being worth 1,5 tanks in cost and also decreasing the amount of resources because you don’t have to build two tanks for two guns but instead just one, but if both guns would be damaged then the time to repair or replace them increases drastically mostly in time because the tanks are so specialized but if the nation literally makes there tank infrastructure just for them then the time would be only maybe 0,5 more time to repair the barrels but replacing the tank would probably cost 1,5 times more than the enemies tanks, do to the specifications of the tank.
But if the infrastructure is still for normal tanks then the cost of one double barrel tank would by my guess be between 2 to 3 times more expensive but 5 to 7 times more at the most if the infrastructure for the tanks are being destroyed.
But I’m probably being biased and I’m not a person who researches or stuff like that, and I’m basing my assumptions in the Second World War.
So the worse case scenario for this tank would probably be a King Tiger Tank in Berlin 1945 big, expensive, hard to maintain and an ammunition shortage, but I would se this kind of tank more as a ambush tank like the Stug.
My best scenario for this tank would be that you remove the turret and make a Stug tank with double barrel and adding some stuff that makes it easy to put a tarp or something over it so rain doesn’t affect it as much then put it on a hill near a field camouflage it and wait.
But if you made the tank a bit taller so the cannons are further up then you could probably get a decent depression and the name of pointing the gun upwards and if you had a larger spacing between the guns then you could fire one gun and turn a lot less to point the other gun and shoot and with a good crew you probably have the first gun loaded when the second has fired. This would make the tank a great ambush tank especially for convoys of enemy tanks or with some good HE-shells then they would be great for support convoys and if you made the tank longer for more space you could probably come with MG-crew and ammunition for them or you could just try to cram in them in the tank to reduce cost which has already been done by removing the complicated turret and the roof and by being an ambush tank you could decrease the amount of armor and reduce the cost that way as well and also increases the speed.
If the crew is given the proper training, supplies and equipment they could make a complicated ambush bye digging and camouflaging the ambush place and shot maybe 3 shots back up and drive to another position near them park and shot in the new position.
But this is just what I thought of for a double barrel tank, I’m not super into tanks or such things but I like thinking about them. But I won’t/can’t give specifics about the tank I’m thinking about, I’m not that good.
Thanks for reading if you come all the way here and I’m sorry if I have written with bad grammar and/or spelling English isn’t my first language
All we need is the Apocalypse Tank from Red Alert 3. It's basically an oversized massive artillery.
search ZSU-57-2, that's just a lite version of Apocalypse
Apocalypse tank existed in Red alert 1 and 2.
The Mammoth predates it. That thing is literally in some of the early concepts from '93.
@@Dr.MSC.W.Krueger He was in command and conquer (Nod vs allies) and he was in the allied camp I think.
MOW AS2: "Haha double barrel go BRRRRRRR"
Another thing is that in the place of a two barrelled turret, you can get one single barrelled turret that has a bigger and better gun.
Yes, the obvious point. Think the Panzer III when it was upgraded to the 5 cm gun. At some point you have the longer barrel 5 cm gun, which still struggled to penetrate the armor of T-34s. So is the solution to make a larger tank, like the Tiger, with two such guns? Trying to overcome stronger armor with rate of fire? I guess if you are the US Navy, you do (More guns, always add more guns).
@@iansneddon2956 TBF, the issue with ships is that they're very long, so you hit the limit of how big a gun you can fit for the weight of the ship. Also at the longer ranges ships fight at, you're probably going to miss a lot of shots, so you compensate by firing more shots per salvo.
@@Appletank8 Yes, but I was taking a dig at the USN taking this a bit far. Imagining US naval architects waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with the thought that they might have missed some deck space on which they could have mounted another gun.
@@iansneddon2956 The marines can shoot a Maxim at the planes too
@@Appletank8 Heck, the sailors aren't going to be just standing around, either. They've been known to throw potatoes when they need to.
The Type 61 Tank from 'Mobile Suit Gundam' is a perfect example of a realistic double-barrelled tank. :)
How about the M3 Grant/Lee? A stopgap measure, but actually used in WW2. Sponson-mounted 75mm gun and turret-mounted 37mm gun.
2:46
the man is counting a haul as a turret which make my head hurt.
Simple, the rule of min/max and trade-off. The need for a single gun outweighs the need for two.
I think the real problem aren't really the mechanics themselves. The true issue is manning the guns. Extra loader takes space that could be replaced with other stuff. Single loader will take double the time to load the rounds. You can give the single loader the extra space you took for the extra gun + extra loader and allow the single loader to just load single gun faster. Also the extra gun could be put on a different tank, and now you have two tanks instead of one. The only advantage you get from two barrels is a fast followup on the first shot you fired, giving you more chance to kill your target before it could kill you. An advantage that is pointless if you get surprised by the enemy or get shot at with RPG's
As far as I'm aware, the British & German WW1 breakthrough tanks all had atleast two cannons mounted, including multiple machine guns mounted to the sides, which eventually seemed very effective in the clearing of trenches, sure the tanks had some reliability issues, but the French light tanks with only one cannon and a rotatable top had these too, after all tanks were still just an early invention.
So I guess it really depends on the base of the tank & the combat it's being used in, but they definetly aren't always as ineffective as some people think, especially knowing that the for example. mark V british tank (2 cannons on each side of the tank) made massive changes during the first world war and probaply was the only thing during the war that managed to break through trenches & defensive lines without sacrifing a million troops, also changing the doctrine of war.
These were things that for example the light French tanks I mentioned before with only one cannon could have never done. The double cannons & multiple machine guns were WAY more effective in doing these jobs than any tank with a single turret would have ever done.
So basically the same reason as multi turret tanks and landship tanks never took off
Yes very similar. I actually wish I had included that comparison in the video but I didn't think of it until I was already editing. I'll probably do a video like this specifically for multiturreted tanks as there are a few other reasons those fail as well.
Yes, because the armament of a tank makes up a much larger proportion of its overall weight than on a warship. Thus, adding more turrets or more guns per turret is much harder to do. It just turns out that tanks fall right in the size category where such concepts don't really work. And it's not remotely practical to built a tank that's big enough for double or triple-barrel turrets to be actually feasible. Land vehicles are just smaller than ships.
The whole consept of double barrel tanks takes place way before world war 2 starts the first double barrel tank was the VT 1-1 now having double barrel tanks had a lot of isues. Like if a tank has to many crew mates they would have to work hard, and plus the more turrets it has the more heavier it is. So it would not work
Fun fact, the double barreled tanks in game also make you go faster if you rotate the turret facing the back, and fire both simultaneously lol.
Even if it is doable for artillery use, I still think the logistical issues surpass the usefulness, a self-propelled artillery with two guns would consume double the ammo, would be difficult to set and aim, even though it could have better volume of fire and even effect, is questionable how much would it, even more if used for different targets, which is a different scenario when we talk about mortars and recoilless rifles, that indeed is really useful mostly because of how they are used, closer ranges, firing for effect, fast target requisition, the reason why the latter isn't as used today is because the logistical issues of the recoilless guns, their ammo is different, not really share with other units and the list goes on, those guns were extremely effective after the WW2, when artillery was too heavy to be easily airlifted for the planes of that time, making some really light artillery units that could have limited range, but it was enough for their purpose, but things change, artillery accuracy increase, so as the ergonomic handling of those, as the airlifting stuff, so those guns became redundant and out of standards pretty quickly.
The issue is you are putting 2x the complexity and problems of having a gun in the first place, while being half as useful. A commander would rather have 2 tanks than 1 double gun tank. It also means that if you lose tank you are losing 2 guns worth of firepower. Also tanks are generally firing at LOONG ranges, where precision is more important. There is a reason we do not have double barreled sniper rifles. What would be better is some kind of double shot system where you could fire 2 rounds back to back with 1 trigger pull. So if you know you will have a hit you can load the second shot.
Given the nature of the armour/gun race, if you've got space and weight margin for two medium-sized guns, then you're almost always better off fitting one much bigger gun instead. It'll have more range and penetration, and you'll probably still be able to carry more single shots for the big gun than you can carry two-round salvoes for the twin guns.
Having a pair of different guns that do different things is more sensible though. I've always rather liked the BMP-3 armament system. Giving the 100mm low-velocity gun a serious APFSDS round would mean carrying full-sized rounds with very sub-calibre penetrators, the big sabots being basically wasted space. Fitting a 30mm with a long barrel braced to the 100mm is probably a better solution: you get the same anti-armour capability, more compact ammunition, and, being a belt-feed autocannon, it doesn't significantly add to the crew's workload.
Funny fact: the Object 703 - II originally was supposed to used the 100mms like the IS-2 II and was actually designed based on that armament in mind and iirc exists in the game files. However the reason it uses 122mms was because it would sell better for wargaming's benefit.
Tanks simply don't have the luxury of ample hull space beneath double or even triple and quadruple gun turrets battleships used to have to store all of the ammo and house most of the loading machinery. In addition, tanks also they lack the buoyancy bonus of water, since they have to move over rough terrain. Limited mass and limited space mean less ammo for double the rate of fire. It is almost impossible to design twin barrel tank guns to independently engage two targets simultaneously.
Maybe, the logic behind a hypothetical twin barrel tank would be to have 2 different types of ammo, 1 for the left- and 1 for the right-hand-side gun, with corresponding left and right magazines (and autoloaders), so as to always have 2 rounds at hand: 1 HE-frag and 1 AP, for instance, or to have 2 guns firing 2 rounds (of the same or different types) in short succession or at the same time, but with a slight offset of line of fire, so as to overwhelm APS on an armored target or hit it in two spots. But the weight, complexity and reliability penalties of such a system would render this concept rather impractical.
Thank you for this video!
About time someone looks at the obvious.
another reason that we don't have irl double barreled tanks that you didn't mention is irl we don't have hit points like we do in video games. IRL if a tank is penetrated it probably dies or is combat ineffective. in video games like WOT if a tank is penetrated it has hit points that says its either fine or destroyed depending on how much damage was done. so hitting a tank twice at the same time has a gameplay advantage because it is doing double the damage to the tank's hit points.
Irl we do have hits points , but the stats are different, tanks have a high defense stat (Front and sides) but not as high health , so when you attack a tank with a attack that doesn't penetrates it , the attack did close to zero damage , however when it penetrates it bypass the defense (since the hit was really strong) and now it can damage the tank health itself, and as you said , kill it or incapacitate it
The Gamilas in Space Battleship Yamato 2199 had a triple barrel tank, but it is an interesting design that would make a good Friday video. Or an April Fools video.
I think the prevalent thoughts on this topic are that in almost every situation imaginable an already well designed tank would benefit more if any weight added to it's design came in the form of
improved/additional/heavier armor with possibly a larger/more powerful main gun and or a larger ammunition storage capacity. An extra gun means extra maintenance, and assuming both guns are used equally then barrel replacement means 2 barrels. Sure, theoretically it may fire twice as many rounds as a single barrel version before needing to be replaced but it means that the tank will be offline for twice as long, and the financial expense is doubled each time. The economic factor may be offset by the fact that it should happen at twice the amount of time but it means that the logistics of transporting 2 barrels at a time which requires more room on transport vehicles...Replacing your car tires is much less painfull if you can spread the replacement of each tire out over say 4 months rather than all in one payment, barrels on a tank would be a similar situation. Replacing one barrel every 10k rounds fired, and having your tank down for one barrel replacement every 4 months of combat vs paying for 2 barrels and having your tank down for 2 barrel replacements for 20k rounds fired every, plus the added wear and tear on engines, transmissions, suspension, drive wheels, tracks, turret components etc... all adds up and with no additional armor protection to make it more survivable means youve got a heavier, slower, more maintenance intensive tank that is just as easily destroyed as it would've been with the same armor and a single gun.
Not to mention that most likely it would be impossible to fire two large caliber guns simultaneously without wrecking something on the tank. Firing sequentially would still necessitate reaquiring the target after firing the first gun.
battleship regularly fire 3 barrels gun at the same time, why are they okay but not tank ? or is this more of issue of the relative size of gun to the main supporting body ?
@@keenheat3335I’m not an expert or anything, but you are probably right. Battleships are huge in size and they are built big enough to withstand recoils of their cannon. Tanks in other hand has much more limited capacity on weapons they can hold.
@@keenheat3335 If you look at battleships a turret on an Iowa class has a weight of around 2450 tonnes. The ship displacement is around 58,000 tonnes fully loaded. It also sits in water that the impulse can be transferred to. The ships are not standing on tracks with a supposition system that can move
The secondary 5 inch =127 mm guns are close to the same caliber as a tank gun today. They were twin mount and the weight was 77,400kg. That is more than a tank today. And they are attached to a large ship.
Tank guns are a lot larger part of the vehicle than ship guns are. There is likely a diffrence in the recoil absorption system. Tank is quite limited in size so you can fit a good and large system in them
I suspect there may be an added issue with firing both guns simultaneously in a double-barreled tank. I think it only makes sense at point-blank range, when accuracy is not an issue, and it actually decreases the chance to hit anything at range.
Here's why: it's a known issue in warship turrets that the blast wave of one gun in the same turret can interfere with the shell trajectory of its neighbour (and vice versa), when guns are placed relatively close together. Different solutions have been enacted by different nations, but I doubt any of these would make sense in a tank: 1. (US solution) - put an automated timer on the guns, making each gun automatically fire a fraction of a second after its neighbour; 2. (UK solution) place the middle gun in a three gun turret somewhat deeper in the turret (this can still be seen on HMS Belfast, for example), so the respective blast waves occur farther away from each other. Either solution, though, would exacerbate the already existing space issues in a tank turret.
It’s worth noting that tanks rarely fight alone, so engaging multiple opponents would be such a rare occurrence that it’s still not worth doubling up.
I know you haven’t done a fake tank Friday in a while, but could you do a vid on the ridiculous super heavy tanks from the movie “The Creator?”
I appreciate that you mention that knowing they are impractical doesn't mean we cant like them in game. Great content as always bud!
VT1-2: am i a joke to you?
It was a test vehicle. And it isn't turreted.
@@lkhdmrtn true, still could've had a mention here though
But it is mentioned right here 5:31 both variants are@@johnnyboy12029
@@johnnyboy120295:31
@@keeratijirananutwinyu8339 oh damn didnt see that thanks
I find it really funny how like 90% of the "Why wasn't X done?" are usually down to weight, space, or cost.
Tank designing has many factors but those 3 are some of the biggest constraints they have to deal with
Two main guns fired at the same spot at once(or at split second intervals) might be a worthwhile way to get through reactive and active defenses. Though you'd need the mechanisms to be able to angle them inward.
Solved more easily by two stage atgm or simply a Kenetic round
ERA is already solved through the use of tandem-charge warheads, which are simpler to make than a double barrel tank gun.
Basically it's because enemy targets don't have hit points like in a video game.
Two guns do not kill a target twice as fast.
Your gun can either kill an enemy or it can't, two of them won't change that.
What you need then is a _better_ gun, not two.
But but but... Mammoth tank is so cool...
The X-66 and Mark 3 Mammoth tanks are the coolest ones there are. GDI had the coolest double barrel tank.
Because to answer this question you would need to ask Drachinifels...😅
The Finnish actually have a self propelled artillery called AMOS.
It's equipped with a semi-automatic twin barreled mortar.
in command and conquer they got some
The best use case I can think of is if you a low to moderate chance of getting a 1st round hit due to limited optics/range finding/etc. You fire once, and hopefully hit the target. If not, you make the slight adjustment and fire again without having to wait for a reload. However, if this were a significant concern, I'd imagine that it'd be far more beneficial to have something like a 3 round revolver style gun instead of a double barrel. It'd be far lighter, give you an extra shot if you needed, and take up less space internally.
its funny how 1 thing barrel effectively doubles everything and makes everything..... 2x complicated...
(also here 1 min after upload)
I am sure prices isn't low enough you probably could build 2 tanks for the price of one double barrel tank.
11:27 Westwood Studios came up with those in Command & Conquer: Red Alert Retaliation (1996) real-time strategy game. Russia and Ukraine are having double barrel heavy tanks and double barrel Mammoth tanks in this game which gave the idea to other game developers in the future. They look cool and they are very powerful.
I've been following your channel for some time, but I don't speak English, and so sometimes I feel like I'm missing part of the explanations because of the quality of TH-cam's automatic subtitles. So, could you dub your videos into Portuguese? It is very difficult to find quality content like yours in Portuguese on this subject.
This is something I am planning to move into with my content soon
@@ConeOfArc :D
does anybody know what is shown in the very start of the video at 0:01? i get its fake i just wanna know the context of it
From what I can tell it’s from Russia or Germany circa 1917 and is a “land battleship” (also called a landship?) which is… basically what it sounds like. There was the idea that battleships work, and tanks are also cool, so make a huge tank. Hope this helps, the whole landship thing looks like an interesting mini research project tbh.
@@Aefweard thank you man, Very appreciate🙏
For a good concept for a twin-gunned tank, I look at two models from the Command and Conquer franchise; the Mammoth, and the Overlord. Both of these lean toward a mounting system akin to the Gepard, with the guns mounted apart from each other and the crew inside the turret between them. They are large, slow, heavily armored machines, and in both cases use split track configurations to overcome the ground pressure effect (and include additional weaponry, such as guided missiles or a roof-mounted anti-air gun system.)
DONT PLAY WORLD OF TANKS its a sham. play warthunder for MUCH BETTER double barrel tanks
I hate me some WoT. It's a mobile game that can be played on a console or PC. But they're paying our man to make some videos so I think we can muscle through it.
+10 gaijin credit
Haha wonder what double barelled tanks there are in WT
Coelian ftw
@@michaelhowell2326 WoT is just watered down warthunder
If the tank chassis was a little bit bigger it could have a huge mortar build into it. Also then the turret could be allowed a little more width and depth and be able to house two support guns on either side of the maingun. The size would call for wider tracks to carry the weight without bugging down and bigger roadwheels to allow for greater torque, so the additional weight of adding a missilerack on top of the turret along with a third support cannon and also a quad-barrel AA machinegun would be ok. If the roadwheels were then made just a little bigger, each could be fitted with snubnosed autocannons with 45 degree overlapping fire-archs as well as rows of blade sticking out in 90 degree angles to protect against infantry trying to swarm the tank. Yeah. And also with the tracks as wide as this, the tank would need to be longer as well or it would look out of proportion and slightly stupid and so would not be taken seriously as an instrument of war, death and destruction. So with that in mind, there's both reason and room for adding crew compartments for a squad to close quaters specialists that would be a better option for dealing with enemy infantry than attached, spinning blades would. These would obviously have flamethrowers in addition to their sidearms. If it weere made big enough, there could be a full platoon with additional vehicles that could be launched for local scouting missions. When not on point defense duty, of cause. Enemy ground personel is the biggest threat to tanks on the battlefield, and defending against them would be the primary assignment.
I don’t know if you’re a huge halo guy, but I’d LOVE to see a cursed by design series from the “failed” lore variants of the scorpion (the sun devil), and the Grizzly (halo’s own twin barreled tank)!
One very significant limitation is the regular need for rail transport, which has limited tank width from time tanks were first developed. A side by side needs a wider turret. In a vertical stack layout the turret becomes significantly taller. Manual loading becomes nearly impossible & slow, even tank stability is compromised.
regarding wot: if you look at the end of the gun (in the turret) you should ask yourself: how can two big canons (above 75mm) be so close? there, at the start of the canon, must be enough place for two loading mechanisms side by side. next problem: how can the second gun be loaded, while the first is firing? try to hold a grenade safe, while one barrel fires with recoil... and you have to wait, until it's fired, otherwise you're really near to the recoil, with a big safety issue: holding a grenade, that is sharp or perhaps with all the stress during a battle, you have your hands in the way of the recoil of the other canon, cause the commander is looking through the binocular and giving command to fire for the other gun, not able to see, that you're in the way loading your side...
the canons would have to be separated much more, like you can see with vt tank. and then you need a much bigger turret (width), if you want a rotating one.
everything else would just be possible, when firing is only enabled, when both barrels are loaded simultaneously.
and firing both guns together would never be possible: the recoil is real stress for crew and tank with all the motion the tank has to withstand.
the double recoil and you need complete other parameters for all components of the tank!
a big gun and a smaller one may be possible, but 2 big guns, the way the mechanics is idealized in wot: nope.
otherwise the germans would have mounted their 88mm on their panzer I + II + III + IV - but they engineered the tiger tanks (p + h) which were this big, because all has to fit together. otherwise it would have been a "one-shot-wunderwaffe" ;)
I think maybe one of the biggest problem is how diminishing the returns are. If you add a second gun, you either need to add another loader or do you practically just have an extra shot for your first fire in an engagement? Both aren't exactly the best option besides that, how close to each other can you even fire? The first shot will likely move your tank slightly, so you will have to reaim and maybe even wait for the smoke to go away. Or you shot both at once, which also doesn't really do much
I have an idea for defeating modern composite armor: Like tandem charges against ERA, a tank should have an over-under barrel configuration, one firing DU capped APFSHE (in theory wouldn't penetrate the armor itself, but it would explode in a specific point of the composite armor creating a cavity) and the other firing regular APFSDS with a trigger delay to compensate for the slower speed of the APFSHE round, and in theory it should hit the same weakened spot on the tank.
There are one potential, and one definite issue that I didn't catch you covering.
The potential issue is blast interference when simultaneous firing due to the extremely closely placed guns. This was definitely an issue with closely spaced naval guns, causing excessive dispersion of the salvo, leading to designs like the staggered depth triple turret on the Royal Navy's Town-class light cruisers or the delay coil retrofit for various US Navy battleships (like the Pennsylvania-class). However it is possible that the much shorter range of tank engagements would mitigate much of the dispersion issue.
The definite issue is that (all else being equal) for a given tonnage of gun you can carry two smaller guns or one bigger gun and the bigger gun's shells should be better at armor penetration (and probably high-explosive capacity) that a pair of smaller shells -- so if you're willing to add all the mass of a 2nd gun you'd almost certainly be better off with upsizing the single gun
Before I watch any bit of this I’m going to make a guess. It’s for a multitude of reasons but the ones I can think of are the impracticality of them, double the guns means double the reload times. It would also mean double the ammunition carried and many more loaders which all adds extra weight and takes more space. Speaking of space, a guns breach takes up a lot of space giving crews less space to work with.
Also a reason why you see them in games is because tanks have an hp bar in those, they don't just instantly explode and thus there would actually be an advantage in having 2 quick shots available. As we know irl they are made expressly to one shot, either the round goes in or doesn't. Plus in the real world there is usually only one loader and he can't do it at 2x speed so in actuality the fire rate would be the same. Also unless you could individually aim them the shots would converge at some range, If not they would just fly straight which would also be bad since at longer ranges one would always miss.
Yo Cone, not sure if you have a video on this already, but could you do a video on why half tracks aren't seen or used anymore?
Another thing about making the turret bigger to house 2 guns is if your already doing that why not just house 1 bigger gun. Then you have complexities of more maintenance with 2 guns producing 2 different types of guns they'll have to be loaded from different sides unless you make the turret wider and space them so
The M50 Ontos had six guns on a very small turret. It had a turret and was used as a light tank with some firepower to support infantry instead of hunting tanks in Vietnam. When all six guns fired together, the firepower was simply devastating and the Marines loved it.
0:55 in WoT
Meanwhile War thunder with 3 and even 6 barrel tanks that exised before WoT 2 barrel tanks: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Fuck me.
*Hugs his Mammoth tank*
Don’t worry, I still love you.
Interestingly I find my problem lies in symantics. Thinking about the M3 grant, or Various Spaags and Armored combat support vehicles (thinking the russian Predator) I understand another barrel can be needed due to a wish for higher ROF or added time for barrelcooling... I think I remember the Sussians had aCannon array for planes and helicopters where the recoil of the first barrel reloaded the second and the other way around to reach very high ROF for short periods with 2 barrels instead of a Rotary cannon. This brings us to the rotary cannon and variants. There have been M113s with a Vulcan for close range air defence (Don't recal the numbers (M163?)) which are multibarrel vehicles as well.
I could in theory imagine a tank chassis witha AK-130 dual 130mm shipcannon mounted, however, since this is automated ship artillery, and not an AT gun it would likely be impractical. A ship can house a magazine for 300+ rnds for this gun, A tank could not carry a magazine for 300 130 mm shells, and where a ship could counter the recoil of the 2 barrels spewing out 90 RPM combined, most tanks would likely shove to a side... A normal MBT would carry 45-90 rnds, which would be depleted in 60 seconds if you have a triggerhappy gunner, leaving the unit defenceless.
This video reminded me of something, I know a while back you did some research to find where the panzer of the lake was also the tonk. I’m not sure, but it might be an interesting video idea to see if you can find the tank memorial from the video where the guy says “I’m in a tank and you’re not.”
I don’t know just an idea. Great video though. Really informative. Love it!
You briefly showed the AMOS and I think that might be pointing toward one way we could see practical double-barrelled tanks in the future, maybe even in the very near future - imagine an MBT-sized double gun-mortar carrier that could indirectly fire a rapid burst of guided shells from outside the current range of most tank guns and ATGMs, so that a dozen or so armored targets designated by drones could be struck in their top armor simultaneously, and our vehicle could be well on its way to its next firing position before the impact. Such a vehicle would rely on its mobility and staying out of direct fire combat to avoid taking hits and so it wouldn't need heavy armor and the weight of a second gun would be less of a concern while the added fire rate from the second gun would directly impact its survivability and effectiveness. I think the lessons of armored warfare in Ukraine are pointing toward this sort of concept as one of the directions tanks may be evolving in the future.
Most of the mortar rounds fired in Ukraine are unguided. It's just that drone correction is incredibly effective. Same for heavy artillery.