"Why the Crusader isn't actually bad... after several tangents on pre-war British Economy, wartime propaganda, and a beginner's guide to Fluid Defense tactics" Never change, LazerPig. Never change.
"What do you mean cover? Why would they take cover? That's not very sporting of them is it" Best and probably the most British military quote I think I've ever heard.
@@Nmille98 "We beat the Zulus and the Ashanti because they just charged at us with spears, even though we had machine guns" "How do we defeat the Germans?" "Fix bayonets and charge, obviously" (Nearby Japanese child with aspirations of being a general scribbles notes)
Imagine if normal people got to write their own legacy like Rommel. "There is a gap in your employment history, what happened?" "Its all the Italian's fault really"
“Giuseppe, that Bolognese dick, set a tray of lasagne in front of my door one morning. It was a bit humiliating getting rolled into the ER covered in bechemel.”
Rommel: "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to personally edit some video footage of myself and my perfect, perfect tank formations." Interviewer: *[Coughs]* "Yeah, okay, because that's not suspicious at all." Patton: *[Crashes into the room through the ceiling]* "Of course it isn't!"
@@Link2edition Just look at Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the Philippines. Marcos Jr.: "Death squads? What death squads? That never happened. You're imagining things."
@@ralofofriverwood4806 I feel like Churchill gets a pass here because his failures are _also_ extremely well-known. His understanding of warfare in WWI, for example, was rather poor and has been documented well. His cult-of-personality during WWII was largely built to keep the British hopeful, which it succeeded fairly well at. During the bombings, they really needed that hope. The President of France at the time, however, I know way less about. Can't make any statements there, be they positive _or_ negative. Unless you're talking about Philippe Pétain, at which point, yeah, fuck that traitor.
The fact that Rommel had to good sense to be dead before the Nuremberg trials probably helped his reputation a fair bit. Desert Fox outplays us yet again xD
I could be wrong but I thought pretty much everything bad he did wasn't worse than most germans, Soviets, or even allies were doing. He wasn't some Saintly patriot serving his homeland right or wrong, but aside from treating commandos a bit rough and allowing jews to be deported he didn't do anything that could get him in trouble in court. This being before the holocaust was thought to be pretty much the same sort of expulsion done by the Russians, Soviets, and Europeans had done themselves it wasn't quite a warcrime and his treatment of commandos was pretty typical: Americans, brits, Soviets, and others often executed them or treated them as unlawful combatants and most of what I've heard said Rommel treated them as POWs if they were soldiers rather than partisans.
Nah, they finally decided enough is enough, and brought out the best tank they have. It's over for Ukraine now, Javelin can't do shit against THE GREAT MATILDA
@@albion6087 he also led Hitler's personal body guard and was friends with him. A good general isn't so bad at logistics that the logistics officer in charge of supplying you commits suicide rather than deal with them.
The only reason Rommel even had a military career after WWI was because of his reputation. 90% of the of the German officers who were able to keep their commission were part of the General Staff, but Rommel was not. He was kept around because he had a reputation of being a master at small unit infantry tactics and earned the equivalent of the Medal of Honor for conducting outstanding tactical maneuvers in a key battle. His reputation as a light infantry expert caused Hitler to choose him to command his personal defense regiment, which then allowed Rommel to lobby for a Panzer Division for the Invasion of France. He did not follow a typical career path, and many key promotions came about because people were willing to make an exception for a man with an outstanding reputation.
I remember learning how T-34 tanks were near indestructible with their massive 45mm of sloped frontal armor, and how death trap Shermans were fragile with a pathetic 64mm of sloped frontal armor.
You should go look up The Chieftain's Hatch (Nicholas Moran) as he covers Shermans in depth, including casualty statistics. Also a bit more SFW as he doesn't swear like Lazerpig. He also has a standard test where he gets into a tank, exclaims "The tank is on fire!" and attempts to exit from the driver's position. In the Sherman - no bother. In the T-34 - casseroled several times over.
@@PsilocybinCocktail The initial shermans had really bad ammo storage though. Infact thats what got them the nickname of "tommy cooker". Its not a good idea to store your ammo behind clearly visible hatches.. thats like having a giant enemy crab with a weakspot to cause massive damage. They fixed that issue real quick though, but i guess the reputation was still very persuasive. The sherman was a very solid workhorse tank that could get the job done.. and in my opinion those are the best tanks
I recall reading in a Pan-Ballantine book many years ago about the "Bates 8-barrel bottle thrower" apparently intended to shoot Molotov cocktails against invaders using black powder as propellant. IIRC, recoil was dealt with by very large rubber bands, and in use the weapon was laid onto one wheel , which acted as a pivot, whilst the other wheel gave some overhead protection to the crew. Genius eccentricity and top marks for invention, but I wouldn't have liked to be the one opening the breech after several rounds had been fired...
In Patton's defense...it wasn't just his British superiors he didn't listen to. He pretty much built his career after WWI on ignoring his American superiors.
@@theangryotaku3361 he was the perfect man for it though. The Germans assumed they would place him in charge of the invasion after North Africa and Sicily. They also expected the invasion in Calais, so having him there with the fake army was one more bit of "evidence" to convince german high command that the Calais threat was real. He was arguably more useful there than at Omaha.
@@theangryotaku3361 funny enough I've heard far far more "patton bad" than "the man the myth the legend" and I've seen more historical "'patton bad' is wrong" Patton was a good commander, the best of the western front? Probably not. But he was still great and his opinion on the Soviets was spot on.
to me, one of the biggest failings (my poorly informed opinion) of allied leadership in western Europe was that Eisenhower and Bradley needed to get Patton to chill the f' out until Antwerp was in full operation, so they weren't supplying Monty and Patton's forces off truck convoys running from Western France 24/7.
@@bobwill more. And this is Eisenhower's own statement, they needed to shoot the heads of ADSEC as the logistics docks they made actually slowed the flow of logistics, and their immense, US senate supported corruption saw over half of the Allies gas "stolen", stolen, and/or outright sold on the black market for profit by the men in charge. So it's possible, but unlikely that Patton was just there going "I want to attack and paper says i have enough gas to attack so attack i shall!"
Lazerpig, please do that video on the British Home Guard. I laughed hard when you said you wished that Germany had actually invaded Britain just so we got to experience the Wallace and Gromit shenanigans that would have ensued.
War would have been a lot shorter too. Most of the German army would have ended up at the bottom of the channel. They never had a hope against the royal navy, that's why they needed total air superiority to suppress the navy, and even then I wouldn't have rated their chances. Plus from first hand accounts I've read, the home guard were pretty nails actually. Half of them were grizzled combat veterans from WW1. Most of what they knew about infantry combat was still relevant.
The thing to remember about the Home Guard is that a lot of them were men who had served in WW1. You were telling men who had experienced the horrors of the trenches that the same people they had fought last time were trying to come over here and do that to their friends and family, their wives and children. They were never going to play nice, they were going to be as vicious as they could possibly be.
@@throwback19841 Thing is, the RAF couldn't have done shit if Hitler decided to just vault the 40km between France and Britain. Especially because the biggest disadvantage for the Luftwaffe in the battle of Britain was that the Bf109s weren't very good at escort speeds (which led to the "Give me a squadron of Spitfires" scene in "Battle of Britain 1969") whereas the Spitfires were at their best at the low speeds the HE111s were flying at. If the Royal Navy had decided to show their faces to prevent a landing they'd have been Stuka'd to death by 500 and 1000kg bombs thrown at them en masse, since the Stukas didn't need escorts to be close by since in the worst case they could just dive away and the Spitfires would've either ignored or dived after them making them sitting ducks for any Messerschmitt in the vicinity. Not to mention that the 40-100km gap at the more narrow points that still would've allowed landings would've left the Royal Navy to scramble headfirst in there to even have a chance at interception. The RAF was outnumbered already and adding 500 Ju-87 to the Luftwaffe forces would've overwhelmed them completely. The only reason Sealion didn't work was because the plan wasn't tried in the first place since Hitler (quite literally) lacked the balls to do so.
@@gehtdichnixan9005 You really need to read about that stuff more deeply, as I'm afraid that most of what you've just posted is bullshit, it's myths more than fact. I freely admit that I used to believe the myths too as a youngster, but over the decades and the reading and assessing of a great many accounts of the time, it's become apparent that even if Sealion had been attempted, it would likely have failed due to - logistics. Yep, not as exciting as the combat stuff, but logistics is how the combat stuff gets to where someone can use it to do, well, combat. If your logistics are crap, your armed forces won't do so well, no matter how good their equipment theoretically is. As for the RAF being outnumbered, take a look at the number of fighters and pilots on each side, and how they were used, and what the logistical backup for them was. Sure, it absolutely was not apparent at the time, but the Luftwaffe's situation with regard to pilots was worse than that of the RAF, same with replacement aircraft. The Stuka was only effective for dive bombing in conditions of air superiority or supremacy, which the Luftwaffe never had in BoB. And thats why you rarely hear of Ju87's being used in land campaigns after BoB in the way that they had been used in the attack on Poland and the invasion of France - because against a foe that could stand up against the Luftwaffe, the Ju87 became a death trap for its crews. If we apply the rose-tinted spectacles to the British side (as you have done to the German), what if Leigh-Mallory and Bader hadn't pratted about with their impractical "Big-Wing" nonsense? 11 Group's airfields would have been better defended, and thus 11 Group would have been able to put more planes into the air. More Luftwaffe planes would have been shot down, and Sealion wouldv'e been called off sooner. In shrt - at the time that the Battle of Britain was happening, seen from the British side, yes things did look rather grim. But given what is now known about both sides actual situation - in reality, there was never more than a vanishingly small chance that the luftwaffe could win BoB and essentilly none that Sealion could have succeeded, because the German logistics just were not up to it.
@@esmenhamaire6398 dont forget how the RAF was able to retain their pilots that bailed out of their planes, allowing a higher chance for survival of RAF pilots who were tasked with interceptions over the isles. Compared to Luftwaffe pilots who had limited fuel, and had a choice of the english channel or enemy soil if they were not able to rtb in case of fuel running out or heavy damage of the 109
Something to keep in mind about the home guard is that a lot of the men that were "too old for the army" were in their 40s or 50s, so maybe a little old for long campaigns with no sleep, but by no means decrepit old men. Additionally them being in their 40s or 50s would put them in their late teens to thirties when the first world war broke out. A lot of the men in the home guard had been to war, they knew what would mess with a soldier and they knew that "the hun" was no fool.
True, I'm sure I can sit in a emplacement and fire a machine gun, I couldn't carry the gun on a 20 mile match though. I doubt I could pick one up. At 51 I'd be a support guy, or work in the kitchens, drive a truck?
UK's life expectancy at birth in 1900, for men, was 44. I.e. On average, that was the age one was expected to reach - dead of natural causes by 1944. There's a bit of a caveat there as median age AT death in 1944 was actually 69 - i.e. 50% of men lived longer than 69. In 1900 median age at death was 52. For comparison, expectancy at birth in 2010 was 79, while median age at death was 82. In other words, an average man in his 40s or 50s in UK, during WW2 was closer to someone closer to 55 or 65 today. Surviving veterans of the Gulf War are now, on average, reaching their 50s. TLDR: 1940s veterans of WW1 were far more spent than someone in their 40s-50s would be today, plus they lived in a world with no antibiotics, modern medical diagnostic or even indoor plumbing in most cases.
@@d3nza482 life expectancy statistics from the pre and early industrial era are shit statistics due to insanely high infant mortality rates anthropological studies show that humans in the late 1600-early 1900s are not significantly less healthy than modern man they are slightly shorter the farther back you to due to dietary options being limited but their Bones are roughly as strong in some cases stronger their musculature is roughly equal and their brains are roughly the same size a man born in Britain in 1910 that survived his infancy was no less capable of soldier than a man born in 1975 the only real devising factors here are food intake ability some parts of the world food is and was very scarce leading to physically inferior humans but Britain in the late 1800s to early 1900s was roughly on par with Britain of the 1930s and men born before the First World War are equal to those born before the Second World War your entire presumption is incorrect from all statistical standpoints and from the sheer reality of the fact that the men making up the home guard were the same men leading the war itself they are plenty capable
@@d3nza482 uuuuh, "average" is a mistake I feel it sucks: is the middle point between earliest deaths and latest. so 44 would be the middle point of dying soon as you birth (child mortality was high until late 1950') and the latest usual, so maybe 88, if we are sensible to reality, maybe 70-75. So a person on it's 50'-60' is not impossible, neither weird, only that too many kids dyied so it mess the "average" life expectancy
The fact that he speaks my language and is good at making these, definitely love everytime I see a new video. He makes succinct points, allows tangents but doesn't rabbit hole, and has actual cited sources. Plus the video titles are funny.
I genuinely had to go back and watch, as i had just been listening. Anyway, had to rewind, to see WHITCH dictator he was using. Was surprised it wasnt any of the 3 from ww2
As a Leafaboo I am disappointed in how easily historians forget that the Ram tank single handedly won the entirety of WW2 and that the Avro Arrow was more advanced than even modern day stealth fighters.
How is the Avro Arrow more advanced than a stealth fighter? I’ve read that it took so long in designing and testing weapons for intercepting Soviet Bombers off NORAD airspace. Failure of the Sparrow II & Velvet Glove missile just led to it using the AIM-4 Falcon then leading to replacing the program with Bomarc missiles and F-101 Voodoos that carry the same missile.
Rommel's redemption started way before West Germany. Mythologizing him during the war gave the British an excuse for why they were defeated so many times in Africa. Making him an "honorable genius" took the sting away from their own losses.
A very British excuse for failure. Q: Why'd you lose? Normal excuse: "Not my fault. Someone screwed up." British excuse: "Not my fault. He's just too good."
Agreed on Company of Heroes British faction. They're hard to play 1v1, but in a team match, they can give an incredible edge to a team. The huge resource buffs. The artillery quantity and range. You have to an idiot to not want that on your team. It's the perfect complement to American riflemen and tank spam.
@@justinhhp87 Rangers are shit and you are too if you liked them. Jk. But the Zook has the shittiest pen of any handhelt AT in the game. Now, plop some RRs in a trench and we can start talking. *RR = recoilless rifle. Ergo, Airborne.
Whether they were/are any "good" or not, the British were a poorly designed and implemented faction heavily based on static gameplay/defences and a few incredibly broken units (kangaroo and staghound). Nothing to do with Anglophobia.
32:30. Most of the time when people ask why armies did dumb stuff it's usually down to doctrine. The British took a while to figure out the 'retreat to draw tanks onto an anti tank gun' tactic and the Americans fell for the same thing when they joined the war.
The issue wasn't really doctrine though it was chain of command and the command hierarchy one because it was up to the general to adapt and change doctrine in the face of issues, not the enlisted troops. The instant that a general was put into place that decided to do this things improved.
@@2993LP Sometimes it's not easy to spot bad doctrine. Especially if the doctrine has worked in the past. It's quite hard to immediately turn things around, especially if equipment, training and tactics needs to be altered.
Isn’t it insane how little doctrine has really changed since ww2 I wonder how many times Ukraine retreated to only ambush Russians with artillery and stugnas
LazerPig: "~like they seemed to think that Russia didn't have any good generals." Field Marshal Zhukov: *[Dramatically throws cloak]* "I've been summoned. Who must die?" LazerPig: "Alright, bad example." Fucking loved that xD
it's almost amazing how few people understand that to discuss a single moment or item of history, you need to lay the groundwork and cover the context to what happened before to truly understand the significance of what is going on or the value of the thing being discussed
Phooey, context only matters for critical thinking, stop that, it’s not acceptable now. Take your opinion pills like a good little kid and don’t forget to wash your hands before bed.
Absolutely. People completely discredit canadas contributions to the wars. In ww1, we basically broke the stalemate in France, overcoming obstacles that both the British and French failed to, and innovated with artillery tactics. In ww2, we had our own f**king D day beach, and relative to population, Canada suffered more in the landings than the other beaches, and the beach we were landing on was better defended.
@@alc3biades262 Who foolishly discredits the Canadian contribution, we here this also said about Poles and others and is utter rubbish i have known about the Poles since i was eight years old. Canadians and Australians always been there but i have to admit to thinking Australia and New Zealand were the same country in my defence that was a very long time ago. In the UK it is almost a religion to pull Generals to bits and it rarely holds water including the Boer War the political class like this as it takes the heat away from them as they have landed us into these wars. Claiming superman status just sounds silly Germans got a lot of that and their veterans found it funny. The Italians cant fight they say, one of the toughest men i have ever met was Italian, talking to my Dad in that sing song accent of theirs he said a billa my dad was called Bill they took us out into the desert middle of bloody no-where we saw your lot coming and packed it in we killed no one and did not get killed for that idiot, i think he meant the Duce, he was over to take part in the bare knuckle boxing bouts,against the law of course but that never bothered the minors in the area i was brought up in, being around nine at the time i was ignored but knew very well what he was talking about, i suppose you are interested or you are not and many are not.
@@alc3biades262 Not just D-Day we carried. The efforts to get onto the Italian mainland succeeded due to the Canadian landing at Salerno. Plus our parachute battalion rushing across Northern germany to make sure the Soviets didn't make it to Denmark.
A friend of mine was a veteran of the U.S. army and ran a tank recovery unit. He said put your hands around you eyes like they were binoculars. Now look around. That is the outside world to a buttoned up tank crew. If the tank commander sits with his head outside the turret he can see much more but that's a great way to get him killed. Infantry support is always critical for tanks. Great channel.
*1.* Running tanks until you're entirely out of gas and water, and thus have zero hope of accomplishing anything, does not make a Tactical Genius of Rommel. *2.* The Italians did very well for being screwed over by the Germans and Mussolini from the start. Also, Italy was the first to put an AA cannon on treads to make an effective tank destroyer, though could never hope to produce enough to matter. *3.* Monty had plenty of problems (coughcoughBridgeTooFar,) but he was given plenty of hard jobs, and did fairly well with them. *4.* You may know that American tankers didn't want the 76mm Sherman when going into Normandy due to the difficulties of logistics, but did you know that they also didn't want the 76mm AFTER as well? The big scary German tanks were so utterly irrelevant that tankers generally wanted the more powerful HE shell they got with the 75mm gun, which could still knock out Stugs, and even Panthers, reasonably well, while also being MUCH better against the AT guns and infantry the tankers almost always had to actually deal with. Or, in other words, there is no best tank, no matter what the It Was Actually Aliens guy says. That is all.
Any promotion of Monty has to square the circle of Operation Market Garden and to a lesser degree Caen. Yes American forces got dragged down by the hedgerows and distracted by the other French ports like Cherbourg but Monty had a devil of time dealing with the von Runstedt's defenses.
Market Garden: "The Germans have jack shit here, dropping in a few airborne divisions hundreds of miles from any support will be a cakewalk!" "Sir, the Germans have moved an entire army of panzers into Arnhem" "Well, I'm going to suicide our airborne troops I guess, because I just can't possibly let Patton get any glory!" Thousands of lives were wasted because Monty and Patton were having a race to see who could get over the Rhine first.
@@KermitTheGamer21 My issue is not so much the drama of him vs Patton. My issue is that the Market-Garden planning disregarded almost everything the British had learned about how the Germans fought from the five previous years and the Great War before that. Namely that the Germans' first reaction to any attack would be to counterattack at the soonest possibility with the most force an officer could get to follow his commands. Add in ghe availiblity of armor and its really impressive how close MG came to suceeding rather than turning into British Crete.
@@sctumminello Monty himself said he overestimated the ease and speed with which the ground forces assigned would be able to advance and secure the corridor. Also Cherbourg was hardly a distraction; it was the closet, largest port the allies could attain, and capturing it was vital for securing a healthy and reliable supply chain, as while the Mulberry Harbors were a marvel they were not expected to sustain allied forces long term, nor were they expected to last long term (and indeed Mulberry A would be badly damaged by a storm a couple weeks after D-Day, resulting in it being abandoned).
@@sctumminello I feel like on the 4th point about the 76mm Sherman, the US could have definitely gone without them and changed their approach to Europe if they had the hindsight we have the pleasure of. Since the 76mm Sherman was practically useless, they probably could have stopped the line at the Jumbo and focus their Anti Tank solution to Tank Destroyers. 75mm Sherman's were undoubtedly able to take on any the German Army could throw at them as long as it isn't a King Tiger, but seeing one in France, Belgium, or the Rhine would be like seeing an Amish buggy. Not impossible but extremely rare. So instead of taking away the M4's best use on th3 western front and making it a better Anti Tank vehicle, they could have relegated the Anti Tank Job to their Tank Destroyers which were undoubtedly the best and most effective Tank Destroyers in the war. The M18 alone was the best Anti Tank weapon out of every other Armored Vehicle in the US Army and very possibly out of every army in the world, possibly even up to this day, and was even a great Infantry support vehicle at the same time. The M10 was the most numerically the most important and I wouldn't be too surprised if the US had more M10s than the Germans had total Armored Vehicles at any point in the war. Finally the M36 is probably the best Armored Vehicle of the entire war but had the same misfortune of the M26 of it entering the war too late to be judged, but the 90mm could undoubtedly be the end of any German vehicle and even saw Service in active combat until 1991 when it was used one last time in Yugoslavia. Thesr 3 US TDs could undoubtedly have carried the dedicated Anti Tank Force of the US while the Sherman could have retained the preferred 75mm which was already able to take out Panthers and Tiger Is. On top of that, this isn't even mentioning the underrepresented British Tanks of the late war such as the Firefly, Cromwell, Comet (my all time favorite), late War Churchills, Cavaliers, abs more.
A Centurion tank was subject to a 9kt atomic test at Emu Plains in 1953 and they got the crew to drive it back to base in Victoria. It also served in the Vietnam War as Australia's "atomic tank"
you should mention it broke down because it ran out of fuel and from what I heard was only 500 metres away the worst that happened was the side skirts getting ripped off and the vehicle being pushed 50 more metres
@@patchouliknowledge4455 I did i sent dauntless' and helldivers for dive bombing avengers for level bombing hellcats for strafing barely got any kills ok but no in all seriousness I did not but who knows for the others
The only thing I have against those missions is you’re fighting panzer 2’s and the game treats them like they have heavy armour. But I understand that the devs have limited resources and we’re being efficient with their time and that doesn’t stop me from loving those missions.
@@calebharris292 i do!!! . that game was HARD AF!!! way harder than the modern CODs . . i COULD NOT beat it as a kid.... when i ws like 15 or 16 i played it again.... and beat it . pretty good game!!! but the death animations pissed me off . they would be dead.... but id shoot another 5 to 10 rounds into them.... because the animations took so long to play . . still... pretty cool when you die to an MP-40 burst from a dude holding down the trigger as he died . back then it pissed me off today it would make me laugh LOL
Ehh... rommel had already proved himself in ww1 and had published 'Attacks', which is still required reading in the american military. His reputation wasn't made out of whole cloth.
Mental people? No, eccentrics. Britain loves its eccentrics. One of those eccentrics developed an aircraft dropped, spinning depth charge that took out the Ruhr dams. The Square-heads never came up with something that off-the-wall brilliant. The Crusader was always one of my favourite tanks, mainly because the wheels look like they come from a giant Mecano set.
The Matilda II was used right to the end of WW2 in front line service - in the Pacific. To the Japanese, a Matilda II was comparable to the German Tiger as for its effects on Japanese tanks. The Japanese didn’t have a tank that could penetrate its armor and very few antitank weapons that could either.
A early Sherman was a Tiger to Japan's tanks. Still give the Matilda props for being very good at the start of WWII, and still being useful at the end. Technology just proceeded too fast during WWII.
My godfather was a tanker in WWII. He was a rather short man, which I suppose suited him to that or a ball turret gunner. He wound up fighting in Italy and was personally cited by Patton. $3 for an improper haircut. When he got back stateside, they were transporting his whole unit to the Pacific to demobilize. He asked why they didn't go to Fort Sill as that was right in the center of 45th ID territory. Because all of our discharge paperwork is on the West coast. Trust me boy I wouldn't do you wrong. He was being sent over there to ship out for the land invasion of Japan. Luckily a couple of small explosions ended things before that plan could really take off. Even after he passed in the 1990s, his wife kept his dress uniform jacket hung onto their coat tree until the day she died.
I like the Patton film even though in parts it derides my country, i have Patton war as i knew it and some others and they show a different man in private at least to the one Scott portrayed, i have always felt he was very lucky in the quality of the men who served under him who mostly were HO Citizen Soldiers and not Regulars.
The Crusader's turret is just so aesthetically pleasing to me. It's such a nice looking tank. From an aesthetics POV, honestly, I genuinely prefer the look of the British tanks to most other WW2 tanks.
I always thought the Crusader unfairly received a bad rap. Thanks for getting this video out! Still looking forward for a video on the dark horse Cromwell.
I mean just looking at it and you can see that it is a good tank design. With its low profile. I guess it could have been less flat on the front of the turret. You know where it was going to be hit most likely. Having a tall an not very wide tank makes it an easy target. It also comes with the need for more armor platting to protect it. I mean there is a reason why modern tanks look the way they doo.
Sorry but history showed that the crusader couldnt get the job done. It was a fast light tank that had problems facing panzer 3s and 4s, themselves tanks that werent exactly hard to destroy. (and yes it could destroy them, the panzers werent immune to them, but if you compare the numbers youll see that the crusader lost outright) And if you have a tool that cant get the job done that is required of it.. that is what we call a bad tool. The crusader was so quickly replaced after the african campaign that none where even used during the battle for europe that followed. Instead we saw lees, shermans, cromwells etc. No amount of "it wasnt THAT bad guys" is going to change that fact. It was an underperforming design that was made for a type of warfare that never actually apeared in ww2. The concept of a fast cavalry tank failed utterly. And if something fails, then its bad.
(quick plug for Potential History's Meme Tank series here, cause I'm paraphrasing from the British Tank video). With the exception of a sole few, all of the mass produced British Tanks have the distinction of being meh to good; they were neither outright awful, nor utterly fantastic. They were largely designed for the tank doctrines which had carried over and evolved from WW1, which lead to them facing a war where the doctrines and tactics had to be rebuilt from the ground up, leaving the tanks without the doctrines they were specialized for, and having to make do.
The LDV (later Home Guard) were quickly armed with proper weapons - Canadian Ross rifles as well as British 0.303" P14 [*] and American 0.300" M1917 pattern. Plus, Bren and WW1 surplus light and medium machine guns and curious but effective mortars like the Blacker bombard (a derivative of the successful PIAT anti-tank). Until later in the war, they also had to absorb some weird shit like the 'Beaverette' light armoured car. Home Guard units trained with the Regular Army, were inspected and regulated by senior army officers (including Ironside, Brooke and Montgomery) and HG officers spent a good deal of their time with the Regulars. Was the HG equivalent to German 'Volksturm' units or more like the Volksgrenadier divisions which formed most of the 1944 Ardennes/Bulge thrust - so nearly successful? British High Command thought more like the LATTER. From photographs, almost of the HG rifles appear to be P14s (the M1917 (US) pattern were said to be issued with a RED BAND round the stock grip to show the 0.300 calibre) or, increasingly commonly as the war progressed, No4, MkIII or III* Lee-Enfields. Curiously, General George Marshall, chief of the US Army, recorded in 1940 that America had sent 'British manufactured rifles' to the UK - some 500,000 of them. Improbable though this may sound, it's likely to be correct. In 1915, Britain had PURCHASED Winchester's P14 production facility in Connecticut and run it as a British factory until sold back to the USA some 18 months later. So, rifles surplus to this production might be located in the USA but could be reasonably described as 'British manufactured'. Another reason that the HG were never significantly supplied with American M1917 rifles was that 0.300" AMMO (actually 0.3008") was NEVER MANUFACTURED IN THE UK and that the US, guarding its own stocks of 0.300" rifle ammo was NEVER able to supply Britain with any meaningful volume of it.
@@alastairbarkley6572 Why not call the "American 0.300" cal. ammo ".30-06" which is still the popular nomenclature to this day. I shot lots of tuned-up Lee-Enfield No. 4s including Mk.III and III* in .303 British, and later, won prizes long range to 1000 yd, (rebarreled -7.62 NATO Yes, indeed!). They were quite accurate, especially with aperture sights. Note in saying USA General Marshall sent "British manufactured rifles" to UK, perhaps he meant British caliber, British designed rifles, like the quantities of No. 4, L.Enfields. manufactured by Savage Arms in USA.
@@loftsatsympaticodotc You complain about the "American 0.300 cal. ammo" and go on to use yards as a unit of measurement, while talking about winning prizes in gun tournaments. (let's call it stealth bragging) Most american comment of the day.
Ten minutes into the video after a rant about historical forums ten years ago - "British tanks start with the 1924 railways act..." and I spit my tea over my keyboard. This channel is fantastic.
One of my favourite moments showcasing the simplistic idea of how "German tanks were always better" was when I was playing through some of the earlier COD campaigns. They would talk about how the British tanks are just so unfathomably unmatched, then a Panzer 1 rolled over the sand dune to knock out a crusader and I burst out laughing.
Surprisingly accurate though. The Panzer 1 only had 8mm machine guns in the turret, but the Germans developed a tungsten cored round for it that made it quite competent at knocking out lightly armoured targets (although it did need to be quite close). It wasn't until 1942, or arguably even 1943 that the average quality of the tanks they faced had risen high enough to render them completely obsolete, which isn't bad for an early 1930s design
@@talltroll7092 That's great, except even the earlier cruiser models were knocking them out no problem. Given choice between the crusader's thicker armour and ability to take out Pz Is at far longer ranges, I'll go with the Crusader and continue to laugh at people who claim the Pz I was causing the British to despair at how it outclassed anything they had. Sounds like a lot of cope about a tank designed as a stop gap before the Pz III and IVs could enter service and I'm pretty sure you're confusing the "tungsten cord" with the rounds fired by the Panzerjaeger 1, which had a 37mm gun, not a machinegun.
@@7000_Skeletons actually no there where some mg rounds that did have tungsten in them Admittedly they where only effective on lightly armoured vehichles at close ranges
The thing is the British tank designers were laboring under so much B.S. that it made it difficult to make a good desgin. But then they took a long look said fuck this through all that shit out and made the Centurion which knocked it out of the park in terms of tank design. So the desginers were honestly good they just had too much baggage.
You know, for a book I heard was intended for eastern generals of the day (the sort of posh morons who are likely to have not even seen an actual battlefield before; think 500s Japan’s version of WWI generals. (Or was that China…?)), there’s still a lot of stuff in there applicable today. Is there anywhere I can get a copy?
Can I just say that the most important lesson that all of these videos has taught me is that the number one priority in terms of tank design is crew survivability; anyone can make another tank, but it takes at least 19 years to grow and raise a person and make sure they’re physically and experientially capable of operating a tank, and every hit that that operator survives is one more lesson to be learned to improve upon
I feel British tanks are SEVERELY underrated when talking about WW2. Maybe because they kind of got overshadowed by America’s production lines… Sherman tank go WEEEEEEE. But still, they deserve more recognition
Damn straight, Hollywood loves to depict British tanks as if they’re just awful (Minus the Churchill and Firefly), and American tanks (if it isn’t a movie set in 1944) as perfect war machines. I wish pop culture paid more attention to history.
@@badmouth1542 Hollywood doesn't depict British tanks much if at all. The only Hollywood movie I know of that does is Patton, and that was released in 1970.
I'm becoming depressingly, better educated. Almost everything I thought I knew about World War 2 is being proven false. I suppose having your world view shattered is nessasary though. Better to be factually correct than having a romantic perception of a false history. I still like the Tiger tank, but I'm better educated to it's flaws now, and have a better appreciation of tanks I thought were sub par. Thank you for being a brilliant history professor Lazerpig. 👏
Honestly mine have been mostly confirmed. While Germany in many ways was ahead of its time on the military side was just that. It hadn't worked out all the kinks to them and suffered as a result. Romney wasn't nearly as squeaky clean as he claimed but not a total monster like many of his contemporaries and even if for his own gain attempted to kill hitler and ultimately died for a just cause (ending the war) Britain was full of energy and spirit but was hopelessly outgunned. As well as being basically useless when it came to mechanized warfare and needed major support to help them kick it into gear and fight properly.
Always found the shape of the Crusader to be incredibly appealing to me with a nicely angled turret and a low profile. Started playing War Thunder late last year for the hell of it and despite starting with the US, I found myself maining UK stuff and finding a lot more success with the Crusader III and her little 57mm than I probably should. Her profile brings me joy and irregardless of the bullshit that is playing War Thunder, being able to get more familiar with this tank in the last year (amongst other tanks from other countries) has been a joy. Sure, light armor that gets holes poked in it by everything in the game but I keep coming back to play with it and appreciate its history. :) (not a defense of War Thunder but I do find some enjoyment from it since tanks and AA are cool as hell and I know the controls well enough for my favorite tanks)
@@himoffthequakeroatbox4320 Makes me wonder what might have been possible if they had bulked up the model with some more armor. 100% not needed for what the thing was designed for but I guess its just me wanting a thicker (maybe even American) Crusader so I stand a bit better of a chance of surviving a hit lol
I find the crusader in war thunder unrealistically slow and it infuriates me. Especially when it makes me unable to carry out British broadside cruiser doctrine
@@himoffthequakeroatbox4320 it was to give the guys more elbow room. Literally. They wanted to give them more elbow room without widening the turret ring
The reason not to adopt a muzzle brake on EVERY TANK (like, say, the Sherman) was because doing so made it difficult to work with infantry, even though it meant you could have a bigger gun on your tank. Evidence that design decisions weren't always about tanks vs tanks on an open field :P
I was lucky to grow up with a dad who loved the more esoteric (yes we're American I know) parts of WWII and he loves British armor. His favorite anecdote is the Matilda II lording over the Italians in North Africa, and in one instance of after attacking an Italian position (i forget the name) everything on the outside of the tank had been scoured off by machine gun fire: brackets, lights, storage boxes etc, as if sandblasted yet the hull integrity remained.
She was called the "Queen of the Desert" for a reason Also fun fact, during the early days of the encirclement of Dunkirk, a group of Matilda 1s, 2s and 3s with some infantry counter-attacked and pushed back the German forces for quite a while. The only reason they go so far was because the Germans couldn't find a way to kill them, which almost led to a full retreat of that sector. Eventually some 88s got brought in, but it's still a fun story
That did happen, Rommel made his reputation on something he picked up on in France before the fall using anti aircraft guns to knock out tanks and we gifted him the same by using tanks like cavalry in the desert he even taught the Italians this move and they had been issued with 88s also gave us a good hiding,Montgomery a hands on General who would not be badgered like the others before him had been knew that the tank was the Queen of the desert but the anti tank gun was the King.
@@TheScorpionStrike some of the stuff he says is just outright wrong An example of this is that during the T-34 video he said how cast armor is better than rolled. A second example is him saying the Matilda bounced shots from the german 88mm like they fired papermache
@@SpiritOfMontgomery No word of a lie, one of the heads of my school at university had a very interesting lecture for us aerospace engineering students in first year. It was about the sexiness of planes. That's not hyperbole, the words she used was "sexy" and "sexiness". But the two/three hour lecture was about recognising patters in engineering designs, and how if you've seen enough good aircraft, you can tell another is doing something right if it looks good. Take the F35, it looks about as sexy as an F22 or F18. So you can gather it should be at least able to fly in similar conditions. Some context for this, just looking good isn't a certifiable reason for any design being good from a functionality standpoint, but instead recognising the features that make it look appealing as a design and whether those features are typically advantageous can be a good starting point. But I basically payed my University £9000 for them to tell me what your comment just did.
Shit talked Patton, gave Monty the credit he deserves and loaded with sarcasm and sass while talking about the reality of war - which has more to do with supply and logistics than the individual performance of troops. Glad I found this channel.
Some of these are negatives. Monty is given too much credit and not enough criticism, and Patton was an actual competent general through and through and never would have dreamed up something as dumb as Market Garden, especially as he was barreling through France at a blisteringly fast speed.
@@inkbomb675 is that why Patton almost cost Sicily? Or sent the remaining Jumbo Shermans on a suicide mission to rescue a family member? Would Monty use armor and bayonet wielding troops to clear starving veterans from protesting outside Parliament? If you study at a military college, Monty gets ragged on purely for Market Garden when his overall success rate in the war was tremendous. Not to mention, people who only look at paper stats don't seem to realize the Allies were making tremendous progress in France but supply lines were thin and a logistically nightmare, the whole purpose for the German offensive at the Battle of the Bulge was to drive a wedge between the Allies and their stretched thin supply lines. Market Garden was a calculated risk to use speed to offset the logistically hurdles impacting the advance.
@@williamED15 Almost cost? He took it and beat Monty to Palermo. Yes Monty would do that if ordered to, the British have done worse before and after the war. It was Patton that was principled and wouldn't punish random German civilians without due process. Montgomery achieved no success of particular note other commanders could not have done and especially floundered in the most important European theater. He persuaded Eisenhower to issue one of the most absurd orders in military history. That being that all Allied Armies must advance equally abreast, so that no one (meaning Patton) would receive "undue credit." He was a petty cretin of a man but at least he could be effective unlike the traitor Ike whom was obsessed with horrible strategy and a British spy named Kay Summer by that prostituted herself to Ike so he would send more Americans into the line than British soldiers. It's estimated she cost us an extra 100 thousand casualties that the British might have borne instead. From Patton: "At no time did Ike wish us luck and say he was back of us - fool." -Patton's diary July 5, 1943 "Neither Ike nor Bradley has the stuff. One is bound hand and foot by the British and doesn't know it. Poor fool." (Vindicated by British spy seduction) -July 12, 1944 Patton was disgusted by Ike's degeneracy by cheating on his wife while favoring more incompetent commanders that were far from the frontlines. Bradley better than Patton? It was Patton that took 3 days out of his own time to relieve the 101st during the Battle of the Bulge and Monty from the north which Bradley greatly disliked as his rivals got credit for cleaning up his mess. Bradley was a cautious boring general and a coward that wanted to retreat their forward HQ in North Africa among other occasions. Spare me your delusions. Germans were only terrified by one Allied commander and that was America's fightingest general that is no propaganda like the pig says.
@@williamED15 TH-cam comments are an open forum, with no character limit. Cry harder illiterate r tard. Monty was a petty man, Bradley was an incompetent coward, and Ike was a degenerate traitor that preferred the British to his own country rather than commanding both equally at least. Patton > all allied generals
7:58 Germany actually trying Sealion would have been hilarious in it of itself. Heck, if they did, they'd have failed so disastrously that it would have been comedic. Besides, you already have the Volksturm if you want to laugh at old people and kids trying to defend against an actual army.
The British did a wargame of Sealion, after the war. IIRC, the Germans get ashore easily and start pushing inland. But by the end of day 1 or 2, the Royal Navy has sunk ALL their cargo ships. All they have left are river craft and rafts (!). The Germans then run out of fuel and ammunition, and their defeat makes Stalingrad look like a picnic. The German plan for Sealion literally described the Channel crossing as like a river crossing but on a larger scale. A complete lack of understanding of the task they would have faced.
@@RaedwaldBretwalda Even that exercise offered extremely generous advantages to the German team which they wouldn't have had in reality, and they still lost horribly. The most counterfactual advantage was the air supremacy, but they also assumed the channel guns would be completely ineffective, and the RN would only react to the invasion after it started. Basically, the exercise was an optimistic example, to say the least.
Honestly I think pretending to lose the air war, move all the planes up north, pull back the navy, let the Nazis invade. Then send in the planes and the navy, sink everything in the channel and just bomb the ground forces 24 hours a day until they all surrender is the winning play. I can see why they didn't but it would have worked.
Its not just the old people and kids part. What the home guard got up to, is so fucking chaotic a whole comedy series had been made about it. Home guardsmen would "arrest" downed *british* pilots because they thought they could be spies. The volksturm at least tended to have a kind of firearm, the ldv, did this sort of thing with, pitch forks.... The volksturm were actually used, whereas the ldv was to stop these people... Doing it themselves... Now try to imagine what these nutjobs might do, if they didnt at least theoretically, report to some one....
@@nedman211 The Volksturm was a tragedy. They were used because Germany was absolutely desperate and led by psychopaths. The fact that the home guard was not is a testament to how well the British did during the war, despite constantly overestimating the enemy.
This is so far the best channel I have discovered this year by far. 10/10 I hope you manage to make a living off this content (assuming that's what you want) or at the very least good living in some other non YT way yet continue to enjoy making this style of content as a hobby for the foreseeable future.
I feel forced to point out that the Desert Airforce was probably the most important single reason (but not the only reason) for Allied victory in the Africa campagin.
Your masterful use of the Pentagon Wars theme when discussing a particularly... special... subject within a video never ceases to get my lazergoat. Fantastic work, as usual.
This gave me a newfound respect as an American for our military procurement methods, and a sense of gratitude for its competence. I mean, we’re getting absolutely fucking ripped off by LockMart dollar-for-dollar, but we can afford it and the end product kills shit better than anything else so it all works out.
In LockMart's defense, probably half of that's actually going into black projects we're not allowed to know about like NGAD and the SR-72. So actual dollar per Skunk Works bullshit miracle is probably a bit better than it looks in the budget. And for as big a SNAFU as the F-35's development was, it is black fucking magic AND has come out cheaper than it's far less capable 4 and 4.5 gen competitors.
My favourite tank in war thunder. Armor is basically nonexistent, except when the turret randomly bounces shots it had really no business bouncing. But the gun and mobility are exceptional. I love this little bastard.
I always thought it was funny when the same person first says the T34 was great because so many were built but then turn around and claim the Sherman was crap when nearly as many were built.
I like the Sherman: it looks like a kid’s crayon drawing of what a tank should look like, and in a way that accidentally gets all of the most important parts the right: “Why’s it so bulbous?” “So all my friends can get in, too!” “Why’s it so tall?” “So we can see everything!”
Fucking thank you. The Crusader is one of my favorites. And seeing someone stand up for this thing, like I have tried too. But doing it 10X better then I ever could. It makes me happy. The Crusader wasn't a bad tank. And had it went into service in Normandy 90% of its Reliability issues would have been solved just by the change of environment.
But it didnt. We dont judge things like tanks by "what they could have been if everything was done 100% right" we judge them by what they actually where. And factually the crusader was a bad design. Paper thin armor (if you can be penned by a panzer 2 you have some serious issues), bad initial gun, the whole thing was designed for a type of warfare that never materialized (the cavalry tank was a failed concept from the getgo), only a 4 man (with the new gun only 3!!!) crew when ideally you wanted to have 5. And all that before we even take the reliability issues in to consideration. Sure if reality had bend itselfe in the favor of the crusader ít would have been a good tank.. but so would many many many other tank designs that where bad.
@@riptors9777 it's gun when it entered service was satisfactory, no less capable than much of what the Germans fielded. It's armour wasn't terrible, it was average for its time. Reliability whilst initially poor was largely fixed by 1942, and even then was no less reliable than what the Germans fielded when it entered service. The Americans had but the M2 stuart around 1940, a certainly inferior tank to what the Brits had and saw absolutely no combat. The M3 Lee was far from excellent for a late 1941 tank, the first decent tank the yanks had was the M4 Sherman that arrived so incredibly late and saw relatively little service before Husky. The cavalry/cruiser tank doctrine wasn't flawed, hell you could see a very clear connection between it and the doctrines of modern armies like that of the US or UK, evident when you see the M3 Cavalry Fighting Vehicle or the Ajax.
@@arakami8547 "When it was introduced" is not "when it actually faced german armor on the battlefield", where it had problems penning the enemy from the front, hence the gun upgrade. They didnt upgrade the gun to fight tiger tanks, they upgraded it to reliably fight 3s and 4s. So saying that the gun was "adequate" when it was introduced has absolute zero meaning when performance in actual combat was underwhelming. The armor was also not "average", it was bad and easaly penetrated by every other gun fielded by axis OR allies at the time. If your protection is less then that of a panzer 3 your armor might aswell not exist. The cavalry/cruiser tank concept failed strategically as well as tactically and was completly ineffective as a result a) the need for the role never mirrored reality and these tanks where never actually used that way, they where used as any other tank by their generals and b) a lightly armored, lightly armed but fast tank made for an easy target of even hand held anti tank weapons, meaning that even if they used them in their intented role, the losses would have been horrible. The fact that the crusader was decommissioned despite being available in relatively large numbers directly after the african campaign speaks for itselfe. The M3 lee was a stop gap measure to put something on the field amongst other reasons BECAUSE the crusader had such massive issues. And unlike the crusader it managed to fill its intended role as such quite decently. They where a legit threat to 3s and 4s even at distance hitting the front of german armor, and the M3 Lee didnt even need to sacrifice crew capacity to do so.
I'll be honest, my favorite part of lazerpigs videos is that he'll just fly off track and ramble on for forever about this or that. keep it up lazer. i learn more during your ramblings than I ever did in college history.
Even LP pushes the UK land invasion bit a little far. Its absolutely true that, following Dunkirk, the British thought they would be invaded at any moment and the fear (and state of land based defences being crap) was very real. However the reality was that the Luftwaffe really had no chance against the RAF. The RAF actually having similar numbers and quality of equipment, better radar/ HFDF systems, the all important Chain Home + Dowding fighter command system and so on. Thats before we get to the fact that an invasion of Britain would involve - the sea. In 1940, the Royal Navy was still the largest navy in the world by a long LONG way. The Germans trying to put their invasion barges through the channel would have been steamrolled into oblivion, even if the RAF had somehow been neutralised (which it never would have been).
Ever since I played call of duty 2 as a wee lad, it’s been probably my favorite tank. The mk iii variant is undoubtedly the most dashing tank of wwii with its angular turret, sleek hull, side skirts, external fuel tanks, and perfectly tactical looking antenna.
The lee/grant has a good rep among historians but its pretty much ignored by the normies (even in the US, its complete over shadowed by the Sherman) Its negatives are always brought up before its positives. Like its 75mm not having AP ammo or, when your trying to command its crew, someone hands you a ham sandwich in the chaos. So its odd when someone gives it credit for winning North Africa (Again the Sherman gets that honor here in the US) So thanks for appreciating my favorite derpy American tank! Maybe you should make a video about it... just saying.
I believe it was never meant to be the answer, but really to fill the gap until the M4 was properly developed. Used as the British at the time perceived proper tank doctrine (infantry support) the lack of AP in the 75mm gun wasn't an issue for them, as the 2 pounder in the top turret was supposed to have that job, although by that time it was becoming a bit weak. The 75 was there to lob HE at gun emplacements and troops hiding in holes. It was rushed in development and into service, but did a great job despite it's shortcomings (mainly that huge profile and relatively short range 75mm gun.)
@@iffracem Yes the M3 was stopgap for the US Military to Replace the M2 while the M4 was being build. So the Army had something Modern but not Modern Enough they wouldn't switch to the M4.
@@iffracem Bearing in mind that said stopgap was made because U.S tank doctrine at the time prioritized machine guns over cannons. And we're not even talking about the M2 Browning .50 caliber, but the smaller M1919 models firing .30-06. Before the Lee, the M2 (the tank, not the gun) was the mainline American tank, and featured _seven_ of the things, not counting two additional machine guns that could be brought up on swinging mounts to handle anti-aircraft duty (and yes, these too were also .30-06). They were even equipped with "deflection plates", with the idea being to fire into enemy trenches below or behind the tank by bouncing bullets off of these plates. It's 37mm gun was effectively an afterthought, a "just in case" designed to defeat light armor and fortifications. This was effectively a tank designed for WW1 suddenly being confronted with the realities of WW2, and was pretty much outdated from the moment it was drawn up. Between that and a need to rapidly assist the British rebuild their own tank units, the M3 went from design to full production in less than a year and a half, which is a _blistering_ speed for any wholly new military vehicle. With all that in mind, it's actually something of a testament to the strength of the design that it worked as well as it did.
No it did not "win north Africa" but it was a reasonable tank that played it's part in the success of north Africa, it was a stop gap tank for the Sherman just like the comet was a stop gap for the centurion, decent tanks that were able to be rushed into service to give time for the better tank to enter service
Wow, am I in shock? I live near the site of the Battle of the River Medway in 43 AD, the first thing the Romans did was take out the British chariot horses. The British chariots were the rapid reaction force that could break the Roman shield wall. Almost 2000 years ago the same rules of defence in depth applied and you explained it so simply. Without chariot support the Ancient Britons were unable to stop the advance of the Roman heavy infantry and Britain became a Roman province. How come the teachers at school never mentioned this massive battle that took place 10 miles away while we learned about Hadrian's Wall?
Honestly, I thought the Crusader Was already a pretty decent tank. Ya reliability issues were a thing but honestly WHAT didn't have reliability issues back then? It was fast, had decent armor and a decent gun for the period of the war it served in. It did its job.
I recently heard an old adage that half-educated idiot 'historians' cringe from like a vampire in front of a cross when it's brought out before their precious little arguments of, "The best tank of WW2." That adage is: "Sometimes, 'good enough for now' is _fucking perfect."_ The T-34 was a stopgap that was good enough until IS-2s and later T-34 variants could roll out. The Crusader was good enough for the fight it was in, just badly used. The Sherman was good enough to improve on with variants like the Firefly and Jumbo, or to fight the Japanese tin boxes. Victory is not a question of who has the BEST weapons, but who best uses the weapons they have to hand and often, the weapons you have to hand are the ones that are 'good enough for now'.
Decent armor? I wouldnt consider armor that cant even resist a pak 36 anywhere close to be "decent" It had a shit gun that had trouble penning german 3s and 4s from the front and when they upgraded it to a decent gun they had to sacrifice 1 crew member spot to make it fit in the turret, costing even more operational and situational awareness cause now the commander had to fill 3 roles at once! Commander, gunner and loader! Not to mention the idea of a cavalry tank failed miserable when confronted with the realities of WW2. The whole concept of a fast cavalry tank sounds awesome on paper.. but only there. Theres a reason why Stalins race cars where discontinued rather quickly despite their impressive speed. Turns out no matter how fast your tank is, they are still very easy to hit with big guns. Now the matilda.. that was a challange for the germans. The crusader? Pft... please.
@@riptors9777 I'm curious what numbers you base your claim the Pak 36 will beat 40mm of sloped armor on even a Crusader Mk.1 at any better than the 2-pdr will get through the flat 35mm front of the average Pz III. Especially given that both the PaK 36 and the 2-pdr have close to equivalent performance on testing. Or how the later upgraded 50mm hull is any worse than a Pz III J of which Rommel had quite few in number
I always liked the Crusader tank. It's one of those tanks that sort of fall in the gray area of early war production and Sherman spam. I've read two memoirs by Crusader commanders and they seemed to enjoy them. The worst part of the Crusader was the turret ring and turret were too small for the next generation tank gun.
I love the Crusader, Cromwell, and their larger brother the Challenger A30. Some of the most underrated vehicles of the war. The Challenger being much preferred by crews over the Sherman Firefly. And the Cromwell being one of the most reliable AFVs of the war.
@@fenriders7008 Really? I heard the Cromwell was awful. I hear so many conflicting things I objectively don't know what to make of it, subjectively though I like it. Disclaimer my knowledge of tanks is surface level, but I like learning.
I remember hearing a historian say that the weapon that won the Desert campaign was the entrenching tool, and I can definitely see where they were coming from
Hey Lazerpig I love your videos! Will you ever bless us Italians with a full length rambling about our performance in either WW1 or WW2? Either one is fine and I promise I’d watch it non stop till I pass out.
19:46 I'd actually agree with this, but from the opposite perspective. They were regular people like you or me, which means that we could both be turned into monsters. We could both be made to commit warcrimes. It's a lesson of caution, not cleanliness.
I think the reason that statement is seen as innocence is the general public are delusional about that fact that they are capable of these horrors aswell
@@kingchirpa you're still generalizing hundreds of thousands of people into one group. Until you can differentiate individuals, you cannot speak for any of them.
In practice people don't believe something is a war crime if they think it is justified by a goal they think is good. What people consider a war crime depends on whether they think the goal of it was justified. German "terror bombing" (a propaganda name) is condemned and thought of to be a war crime, yet allied bombings, that functionally were very similar (if you could argue that German cities were military targets, then so you could argue that cities bombed by Germans were military targets as well) are rarely condemned, with maybe rare exceptions. USA employed a very effective strategy of what in practice could be described as "terror bombing" in Korea, yet you probably have never heard about it. If Germany destroyed 90+% of buildings in an European country then people would readily describe it as a war crime, that is what USA did in North Korea. I think all of this shows that we should be careful about readily becoming morally indignant upon hearing about a war crime, especially since what is considered war crimes was decided by the great powers, and powers who often don't follow the law to the letter anyway. I have heard people describe the use of thermobaric weapons in Ukrainian conflict as a war crime because they have heard from some bogus source that it breaks some international law.
No, not really. The higher ups were just complete psychos. You could ague differently about officers and regular soldiers but just look at Hitler or his friends who liked to play pretend about being Germanic knights and whatnot and tell me that these people were mentally stable.
Okay, I learned to love the crusader through World of Tanks as a Tier V medium tank. It was small, fast and accurate (and with a gun rammer, had an insane high rate of fire for the 2 pounder.) Small, Lightweight, and low silhouette, it was perfect for my style of play. I'm glad that someone actually gave the Crusader a substantial amount of well deserved credit despite not being the P51 or Spitfire of Tank forces like the Sherman, The T34, and the Tiger. So, thank you.
An additional jab toward Rommel: When he retreated with his forces, said forces took whatever vehicles they could. Part of the reason for the massive surrender of Italian soldiers was because what few transports they did have were taken, and were left to walk back. Not a fun prospect. I often wonder if the average history buff that glances over the NA campaign knows the Semovente exists. Maybe the reason for some thinking the StuG was in Africa was confusion toward it? When Lazer mentions about British tanks doing well enough against the Italians, there are two reasons for this: 1) Early engagements the Italians were armed with the M11/39 and L3s. While the M11/39 (despite being a PoS) could pen British cruiser tanks, 2) Italian armored forces were heavily outnumbered while not always operating as a full force (IE, an attempt to break a line saw the use of only an M11/39 and 2 L3s) I guess I'll also note that there were a few instances of misidentifying to add to the confusion. There are some reports of 'panzers' being spotted outside their operational range or having success they were nowhere near (Iron Hulls, Iron Hearts provides some examples of South Africans saying they had come into contact with German tanks where only the 132nd Ariete was in the area). TBH pretty much all armored forces got screwed in the desert conditions and could be considered unreliable, so I'm not sure where the focus on the Crusader comes from. Might come off as a pastaboo, but I am more of a person that thinks the Italians get the shaft for way too many misconceptions. But I do love pasta
@@gratuitouslurking8610 Italy at least was spared from being behind the Iron Curtain as well maintaining their "honor" as they switched sides (thanks to Germany making that decision for then). Also they did dig their own grave, they invaded Egypt from Libya with the British counterattack forcing then to call for German assistance, just like in Greece so that shaft was of their own making.
@@drakron to be fair, italian major staff knew of the terrible situation of the italian Army/Navy/Airforce after the etiophian war and the massiive support to Franco in the Spanish civil war and realized that they needed time to improve the situation, but in 1939 Von Ribbentropp assured Galeazzo Ciano (aka Mussolini son in law and Italy Foregein minister), that Germany wouldn't have gone to war until 1942, and it would have shared some equipment or sold license fo build equipment but after 2 week they invaded Poland (oh, and most of the italian general learned this on the news paper), and that equipment they promised to share: some Stuka and some Ju88, and a radar equipment for a Destroyer, plus some Pz4G and Pz3M and some STuG (but those only in 1943 and they never seen combat) that's much of it. add at this mess that Germany looked very close to win the war in 1940 and Mussolini ego and politican situation couldn't allow to just sit here and wacth germany defeat both france and the british empire, plus the fear that Germany after that decided that the Austrian Empire former land (south tyrol, trentino, Veneto, Friuli, lombardy, istria, dalmatia) were also part of "Greater Germany" and invade italy was not a great prospective. in the end (most) italian general were, well not someone you would trust very much who valued their shitty career more than the well being of the country, you problably get to the point of the situation.
This. If there is one thing British wartime equipment was. It was good enough. Not great, not terrible. Far, from perfect. But typically able to do the job that was asked of it.
My grandad drove one of these in Africa during the war. He wrote in his diary that it saved his life on many occasions. That’s why I cannot help but love this tank.
Just imagine being a German invading Britain only to be attacked by a small car with covered in boiler parts and full of old men holding crossbows machine guns and flintlocks. Terrifying stuff
The worst part is when you have to surrender to them, because you lost your rifle when the Dutch canal boat that Hitler sent you to fight the entire British navy in sank. Wasn't even hit, there was just a big wave. Now you have to listen to some old guy talk about how his grandkids never call
@@nathaniellindner313 or someone's nana having the same convo with them everytime they ring up. "Nana the dog is okay just like she was when you asked three minutes ago"
The levels in Call of Duty 2 where you play as a Crusader commander are my favorites in that game. Always had a soft spot for the tank, so it's cool to see some in-depth history on it.
British tanks have a bad rep for no real reason. The early ww2 tanks were perfectly good (albeit there was hardly any), the late ww2 tanks were perfectly good and in between when Britain was fighting an air and sea war for its existence whilst bankrupt things were a bit meh. Fortunately the Crusader was there in the "bit meh" period and while it's replacement took too long because of "bit meh" it held the Fort along with those other unsung heros the Grant and Stuart.
@@TheGreatThicc Well it's the "bit meh", as is the TOG, the Valentine, the Churchill 1 and just about every other mid war tank that isn't the Crusader. Though I guess the covenanted is "really meh".
No real reason kept for history showing that the concept of a fast cavalry tank (and to a certain degree infantry tanks) completly failed due to the fact that the scenarios that birthed the concept never materialized in reality. In reality there never was a place for a cavalry tank on the battlefields of ww2 In reality sacrificing armor, reliability and firepower for speed never played out (see the bt-5 and 7) In reality the situation with the crusaders was so bad that they got all replaced after the african campaign and where not used in europe later on (they last saw action in tunesia for crying out loud, 2 years before the wars end) No amount of "but in this situation it was really good" is going to win the argument if said situation simply didnt exist. And that is why early british tanks where hot garbage, they where designed for a war that never happened and where wholly inadequate for the war that actually did.
Thank you, LazerPig. I'll be honest, I was never very interested in the Second World War, including the Africa Campaign so I believed lots of the ideas you've challenged. Most importantly, the one about Britain being useless in Africa until America came along. It was an uncomfortable idea because I'm British and because I've always thought Britain can't have just been an abject failure in Africa, there's always nuance to these things. I largely accepted the idea anyway. Now, I'm interested in learning more about the Africa Campaign. Thanks again for this video!
It was kind of funny to hear that sentiment on the video - as an American, my understanding had always been that the Italians had shown up, been too Italian to do anything and were sent packing, then Rommel showed up and did some Desert Foxing to Britain's annoyance and dismay until Montgomery came and basically decked him, and that the Americans were just there to make sure the Germans were cut off and couldn't try any more funny tricks while Montgomery corkscrewed Rommel's guys into the sand. I'd never even heard of the idea of America beating the Germans single-handedly in Africa, and the very notion seems absolutely comical. But then again what do I know, my favorite German tank is the Stug
it was very much a back and forth battle until monty showed up and then started methodically pushing the germans back, the italians started by invading egypt, didnt get very far before O'connor on what was meant to be a very limited spoiling attack essentially ended up rolling up most of the italian army 35k british attacking 250k italians and causing 150k dead or captured for very light losses, this lead to the british invading libya, the germans showing up to help the italians and initially pushing the british back, befre outrunning supplies getting counterattacked and pushed back to their starting point, then counterattacking the british who had started to run into the same supply line issue, then the british stopped the germans at 1st el alamain counterattacked with 2nd el alamain and thereafter had the upper hand
2023-92. Crusader entered service 1940. And it wasn't stabilised it was balanced and had a rest on the gunners shoulder instead of having geared elevation so he could try to keep it on target. A system not invented for Crusader
"Why the Crusader isn't actually bad... after several tangents on pre-war British Economy, wartime propaganda, and a beginner's guide to Fluid Defense tactics"
Never change, LazerPig. Never change.
I want to know when will we get the video about the 1924 Railways Act. He made that sound like a super interesting subject.
I am here for the tangents, the main point is a bonus
You'll get your historical and military context and you'll like it or so help me I will turn this Cruiser Mk VI, Crusader, back around
@@flatto2 Buuuut daaaaad.....
I'm pretty sure he recorded most of this sobera
"What do you mean cover? Why would they take cover? That's not very sporting of them is it" Best and probably the most British military quote I think I've ever heard.
6:00 for those who were looking to have a laugh again.
Actually sounds like a British Colonel, circa 1914.
What if someone else needs that cover? Did you think about it before you unceremoniously just took it, as if you owned it?
@@Nmille98
"We beat the Zulus and the Ashanti because they just charged at us with spears, even though we had machine guns"
"How do we defeat the Germans?"
"Fix bayonets and charge, obviously"
(Nearby Japanese child with aspirations of being a general scribbles notes)
@@worldcomicsreview354 Lmfao
Imagine if normal people got to write their own legacy like Rommel.
"There is a gap in your employment history, what happened?"
"Its all the Italian's fault really"
“Giuseppe, that Bolognese dick, set a tray of lasagne in front of my door one morning. It was a bit humiliating getting rolled into the ER covered in bechemel.”
Rommel: "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to personally edit some video footage of myself and my perfect, perfect tank formations."
Interviewer: *[Coughs]* "Yeah, okay, because that's not suspicious at all."
Patton: *[Crashes into the room through the ceiling]* "Of course it isn't!"
@@josephschultz3301 I appreciate the reference to the Pancho Villa Expedition
@@Link2edition Just look at Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the Philippines.
Marcos Jr.: "Death squads? What death squads? That never happened. You're imagining things."
@@ralofofriverwood4806 I feel like Churchill gets a pass here because his failures are _also_ extremely well-known. His understanding of warfare in WWI, for example, was rather poor and has been documented well. His cult-of-personality during WWII was largely built to keep the British hopeful, which it succeeded fairly well at. During the bombings, they really needed that hope.
The President of France at the time, however, I know way less about. Can't make any statements there, be they positive _or_ negative. Unless you're talking about Philippe Pétain, at which point, yeah, fuck that traitor.
The fact that Rommel had to good sense to be dead before the Nuremberg trials probably helped his reputation a fair bit. Desert Fox outplays us yet again xD
Ohh! Booyah! Such a great War joke 🤣. That's be absolute good in the right company
It kept him from being tried by Them that’s for sure….
I could be wrong but I thought pretty much everything bad he did wasn't worse than most germans, Soviets, or even allies were doing. He wasn't some Saintly patriot serving his homeland right or wrong, but aside from treating commandos a bit rough and allowing jews to be deported he didn't do anything that could get him in trouble in court. This being before the holocaust was thought to be pretty much the same sort of expulsion done by the Russians, Soviets, and Europeans had done themselves it wasn't quite a warcrime and his treatment of commandos was pretty typical: Americans, brits, Soviets, and others often executed them or treated them as unlawful combatants and most of what I've heard said Rommel treated them as POWs if they were soldiers rather than partisans.
I thought he survived and moved to the German lunar base.
Who said I’m dead? Dafuq? Lol.
32:27 The Russian are really digging into their reserves if they have to field this for Ukrainian
Nah, they finally decided enough is enough, and brought out the best tank they have. It's over for Ukraine now, Javelin can't do shit against THE GREAT MATILDA
Right this moment Maus from Kubinka getting prepared for final assault of Kyiv
lets just hope the redditors who volunteered soak up all the bullets to protect the az ov bat allion. its the army ukr aine deserves 😘
@@guillermoelnino quiet, edgelord
U again? I see him everywhere on yt, How much time Iron spends on comment sections
"Your reputation precedes you, guard it with your life." -Erwin Rommel
If there was ever someone who understood the value of a legacy, rommel was it.
ok did more research and saw another lazerpig vid, turns out Rommel was a complete and utter wanker. I retract my previous statement
@@albion6087 he also led Hitler's personal body guard and was friends with him. A good general isn't so bad at logistics that the logistics officer in charge of supplying you commits suicide rather than deal with them.
The only reason Rommel even had a military career after WWI was because of his reputation. 90% of the of the German officers who were able to keep their commission were part of the General Staff, but Rommel was not. He was kept around because he had a reputation of being a master at small unit infantry tactics and earned the equivalent of the Medal of Honor for conducting outstanding tactical maneuvers in a key battle. His reputation as a light infantry expert caused Hitler to choose him to command his personal defense regiment, which then allowed Rommel to lobby for a Panzer Division for the Invasion of France. He did not follow a typical career path, and many key promotions came about because people were willing to make an exception for a man with an outstanding reputation.
Jesus the Rommel cock stroking persists.. 😂
@@CyBerCat6410 this thread is not really an example of it tho (if you dig into the meaning)
I remember learning how T-34 tanks were near indestructible with their massive 45mm of sloped frontal armor, and how death trap Shermans were fragile with a pathetic 64mm of sloped frontal armor.
You gotta be able to live to complain about it. Which means it's working.
And don’t forget the part where the Sherman is only ever compared to the Tiger🤣
@@andrewp8284 the panzers don't get the love they deserve
You should go look up The Chieftain's Hatch (Nicholas Moran) as he covers Shermans in depth, including casualty statistics. Also a bit more SFW as he doesn't swear like Lazerpig. He also has a standard test where he gets into a tank, exclaims "The tank is on fire!" and attempts to exit from the driver's position. In the Sherman - no bother. In the T-34 - casseroled several times over.
@@PsilocybinCocktail The initial shermans had really bad ammo storage though. Infact thats what got them the nickname of "tommy cooker". Its not a good idea to store your ammo behind clearly visible hatches.. thats like having a giant enemy crab with a weakspot to cause massive damage.
They fixed that issue real quick though, but i guess the reputation was still very persuasive.
The sherman was a very solid workhorse tank that could get the job done.. and in my opinion those are the best tanks
"Wallace and Grommit your way out of the situation" has got to be the best description of British warfighting I have ever heard.
I recall reading in a Pan-Ballantine book many years ago about the "Bates 8-barrel bottle thrower" apparently intended to shoot Molotov cocktails against invaders using black powder as propellant. IIRC, recoil was dealt with by very large rubber bands, and in use the weapon was laid onto one wheel , which acted as a pivot, whilst the other wheel gave some overhead protection to the crew. Genius eccentricity and top marks for invention, but I wouldn't have liked to be the one opening the breech after several rounds had been fired...
Never underestimate the power of men with sheds and spare time.
@@lordomacron3719the AWP of accuracy international can back this up!
Or some would say, the Bri'ish *smekalka*
@@lordomacron3719 And lots of tea. Do not forget the tea. It's important!
In Patton's defense...it wasn't just his British superiors he didn't listen to. He pretty much built his career after WWI on ignoring his American superiors.
poor Patton, got sidelined with the dummy army on D-Day. so many shenanigans that couldnt happen
@@theangryotaku3361 he was the perfect man for it though. The Germans assumed they would place him in charge of the invasion after North Africa and Sicily. They also expected the invasion in Calais, so having him there with the fake army was one more bit of "evidence" to convince german high command that the Calais threat was real. He was arguably more useful there than at Omaha.
@@theangryotaku3361 funny enough I've heard far far more "patton bad" than "the man the myth the legend" and I've seen more historical "'patton bad' is wrong" Patton was a good commander, the best of the western front? Probably not. But he was still great and his opinion on the Soviets was spot on.
to me, one of the biggest failings (my poorly informed opinion) of allied leadership in western Europe was that Eisenhower and Bradley needed to get Patton to chill the f' out until Antwerp was in full operation, so they weren't supplying Monty and Patton's forces off truck convoys running from Western France 24/7.
@@bobwill more. And this is Eisenhower's own statement, they needed to shoot the heads of ADSEC as the logistics docks they made actually slowed the flow of logistics, and their immense, US senate supported corruption saw over half of the Allies gas "stolen", stolen, and/or outright sold on the black market for profit by the men in charge. So it's possible, but unlikely that Patton was just there going "I want to attack and paper says i have enough gas to attack so attack i shall!"
Lazerpig, please do that video on the British Home Guard. I laughed hard when you said you wished that Germany had actually invaded Britain just so we got to experience the Wallace and Gromit shenanigans that would have ensued.
War would have been a lot shorter too. Most of the German army would have ended up at the bottom of the channel. They never had a hope against the royal navy, that's why they needed total air superiority to suppress the navy, and even then I wouldn't have rated their chances.
Plus from first hand accounts I've read, the home guard were pretty nails actually. Half of them were grizzled combat veterans from WW1. Most of what they knew about infantry combat was still relevant.
The thing to remember about the Home Guard is that a lot of them were men who had served in WW1.
You were telling men who had experienced the horrors of the trenches that the same people they had fought last time were trying to come over here and do that to their friends and family, their wives and children. They were never going to play nice, they were going to be as vicious as they could possibly be.
@@throwback19841 Thing is, the RAF couldn't have done shit if Hitler decided to just vault the 40km between France and Britain. Especially because the biggest disadvantage for the Luftwaffe in the battle of Britain was that the Bf109s weren't very good at escort speeds (which led to the "Give me a squadron of Spitfires" scene in "Battle of Britain 1969") whereas the Spitfires were at their best at the low speeds the HE111s were flying at. If the Royal Navy had decided to show their faces to prevent a landing they'd have been Stuka'd to death by 500 and 1000kg bombs thrown at them en masse, since the Stukas didn't need escorts to be close by since in the worst case they could just dive away and the Spitfires would've either ignored or dived after them making them sitting ducks for any Messerschmitt in the vicinity. Not to mention that the 40-100km gap at the more narrow points that still would've allowed landings would've left the Royal Navy to scramble headfirst in there to even have a chance at interception. The RAF was outnumbered already and adding 500 Ju-87 to the Luftwaffe forces would've overwhelmed them completely.
The only reason Sealion didn't work was because the plan wasn't tried in the first place since Hitler (quite literally) lacked the balls to do so.
@@gehtdichnixan9005 You really need to read about that stuff more deeply, as I'm afraid that most of what you've just posted is bullshit, it's myths more than fact. I freely admit that I used to believe the myths too as a youngster, but over the decades and the reading and assessing of a great many accounts of the time, it's become apparent that even if Sealion had been attempted, it would likely have failed due to - logistics. Yep, not as exciting as the combat stuff, but logistics is how the combat stuff gets to where someone can use it to do, well, combat. If your logistics are crap, your armed forces won't do so well, no matter how good their equipment theoretically is.
As for the RAF being outnumbered, take a look at the number of fighters and pilots on each side, and how they were used, and what the logistical backup for them was. Sure, it absolutely was not apparent at the time, but the Luftwaffe's situation with regard to pilots was worse than that of the RAF, same with replacement aircraft. The Stuka was only effective for dive bombing in conditions of air superiority or supremacy, which the Luftwaffe never had in BoB. And thats why you rarely hear of Ju87's being used in land campaigns after BoB in the way that they had been used in the attack on Poland and the invasion of France - because against a foe that could stand up against the Luftwaffe, the Ju87 became a death trap for its crews.
If we apply the rose-tinted spectacles to the British side (as you have done to the German), what if Leigh-Mallory and Bader hadn't pratted about with their impractical "Big-Wing" nonsense? 11 Group's airfields would have been better defended, and thus 11 Group would have been able to put more planes into the air. More Luftwaffe planes would have been shot down, and Sealion wouldv'e been called off sooner.
In shrt - at the time that the Battle of Britain was happening, seen from the British side, yes things did look rather grim. But given what is now known about both sides actual situation - in reality, there was never more than a vanishingly small chance that the luftwaffe could win BoB and essentilly none that Sealion could have succeeded, because the German logistics just were not up to it.
@@esmenhamaire6398 dont forget how the RAF was able to retain their pilots that bailed out of their planes, allowing a higher chance for survival of RAF pilots who were tasked with interceptions over the isles. Compared to Luftwaffe pilots who had limited fuel, and had a choice of the english channel or enemy soil if they were not able to rtb in case of fuel running out or heavy damage of the 109
Something to keep in mind about the home guard is that a lot of the men that were "too old for the army" were in their 40s or 50s, so maybe a little old for long campaigns with no sleep, but by no means decrepit old men. Additionally them being in their 40s or 50s would put them in their late teens to thirties when the first world war broke out. A lot of the men in the home guard had been to war, they knew what would mess with a soldier and they knew that "the hun" was no fool.
True, I'm sure I can sit in a emplacement and fire a machine gun, I couldn't carry the gun on a 20 mile match though. I doubt I could pick one up. At 51 I'd be a support guy, or work in the kitchens, drive a truck?
UK's life expectancy at birth in 1900, for men, was 44. I.e. On average, that was the age one was expected to reach - dead of natural causes by 1944.
There's a bit of a caveat there as median age AT death in 1944 was actually 69 - i.e. 50% of men lived longer than 69. In 1900 median age at death was 52.
For comparison, expectancy at birth in 2010 was 79, while median age at death was 82.
In other words, an average man in his 40s or 50s in UK, during WW2 was closer to someone closer to 55 or 65 today.
Surviving veterans of the Gulf War are now, on average, reaching their 50s.
TLDR: 1940s veterans of WW1 were far more spent than someone in their 40s-50s would be today, plus they lived in a world with no antibiotics, modern medical diagnostic or even indoor plumbing in most cases.
@@d3nza482 thank, I didn't realise
@@d3nza482 life expectancy statistics from the pre and early industrial era are shit statistics due to insanely high infant mortality rates anthropological studies show that humans in the late 1600-early 1900s are not significantly less healthy than modern man they are slightly shorter the farther back you to due to dietary options being limited but their Bones are roughly as strong in some cases stronger their musculature is roughly equal and their brains are roughly the same size a man born in Britain in 1910 that survived his infancy was no less capable of soldier than a man born in 1975 the only real devising factors here are food intake ability some parts of the world food is and was very scarce leading to physically inferior humans but Britain in the late 1800s to early 1900s was roughly on par with Britain of the 1930s and men born before the First World War are equal to those born before the Second World War your entire presumption is incorrect from all statistical standpoints and from the sheer reality of the fact that the men making up the home guard were the same men leading the war itself they are plenty capable
@@d3nza482 uuuuh, "average" is a mistake I feel it sucks:
is the middle point between earliest deaths and latest.
so 44 would be the middle point of dying soon as you birth (child mortality was high until late 1950') and the latest usual, so maybe 88, if we are sensible to reality, maybe 70-75. So a person on it's 50'-60' is not impossible, neither weird, only that too many kids dyied so it mess the "average" life expectancy
Never felt the need to comment like this but your content always puts a smile on my face, you're a funny dude, keep up the awesome work!
The unexpected Kim Jong-Un joke had me rolling harder than the Matilda’s treads!
The fact that he speaks my language and is good at making these, definitely love everytime I see a new video. He makes succinct points, allows tangents but doesn't rabbit hole, and has actual cited sources. Plus the video titles are funny.
0:09 He put BEANS and TABASCO SAUCE on a PIZZA! 🤢🤮
this
Completely agree. LP is always a treat to listen to.
"Applaud the great leader applaud! No not that one!" Had me in stitches, never change Lazerpig never change
"What do you mean, Cover?"
@mr oko
Generals. He's talking about generals.
I also don't see how that all connects to propaganda. What are you trying to say with that?
Kim Jong un is sexier then Winston Churchill.
Brilliant and very Bill Bailey xD
I genuinely had to go back and watch, as i had just been listening. Anyway, had to rewind, to see WHITCH dictator he was using. Was surprised it wasnt any of the 3 from ww2
As a Leafaboo I am disappointed in how easily historians forget that the Ram tank single handedly won the entirety of WW2 and that the Avro Arrow was more advanced than even modern day stealth fighters.
As a Kiwiboo the omnipresent misconception that the Bob Semple did not also single handedly win WW2 is what really gets to me.
Commonwealth rise up!
The skink also singlehandedly annihilated the Luftwaffe.
Canada doesn’t exist. There is only America; no more British borders!
How is the Avro Arrow more advanced than a stealth fighter? I’ve read that it took so long in designing and testing weapons for intercepting Soviet Bombers off NORAD airspace. Failure of the Sparrow II & Velvet Glove missile just led to it using the AIM-4 Falcon then leading to replacing the program with Bomarc missiles and F-101 Voodoos that carry the same missile.
6:51 "NO NOT THAT ONE!" has got to be my favorite moment from your videos yet
I laugh incredibly hard at that every. single. time.
Rommel's redemption started way before West Germany. Mythologizing him during the war gave the British an excuse for why they were defeated so many times in Africa. Making him an "honorable genius" took the sting away from their own losses.
I mean no one likes to say that they fucked up you know
A very British excuse for failure.
Q: Why'd you lose?
Normal excuse: "Not my fault. Someone screwed up."
British excuse: "Not my fault. He's just too good."
@@giovannicervantes2053
Especially when it was their own doctrine that was causing them to fuck up.
@@falloutghoul1 victim mentality during wars gets young men dead
That and the fact that he was actually winning. His death and treason redeemed him.
Agreed on Company of Heroes British faction. They're hard to play 1v1, but in a team match, they can give an incredible edge to a team. The huge resource buffs. The artillery quantity and range. You have to an idiot to not want that on your team. It's the perfect complement to American riflemen and tank spam.
Brit’s are the ultimate support class, and I’m saying that as a bit of a teaboo
dunking rangers into the trenches made by sapper was op for a while
@@justinhhp87 Rangers are shit and you are too if you liked them.
Jk. But the Zook has the shittiest pen of any handhelt AT in the game. Now, plop some RRs in a trench and we can start talking.
*RR = recoilless rifle. Ergo, Airborne.
Whether they were/are any "good" or not, the British were a poorly designed and implemented faction heavily based on static gameplay/defences and a few incredibly broken units (kangaroo and staghound). Nothing to do with Anglophobia.
laughs in pio spam. I still can't comprehend why people would say CoH1 was better designed than COH2.
32:30. Most of the time when people ask why armies did dumb stuff it's usually down to doctrine.
The British took a while to figure out the 'retreat to draw tanks onto an anti tank gun' tactic and the Americans fell for the same thing when they joined the war.
You'd think that one would be known since the days of Parthia, or at least Mongolia.
The issue wasn't really doctrine though it was chain of command and the command hierarchy one because it was up to the general to adapt and change doctrine in the face of issues, not the enlisted troops. The instant that a general was put into place that decided to do this things improved.
@@2993LP Sometimes it's not easy to spot bad doctrine. Especially if the doctrine has worked in the past. It's quite hard to immediately turn things around, especially if equipment, training and tactics needs to be altered.
Isn’t it insane how little doctrine has really changed since ww2 I wonder how many times Ukraine retreated to only ambush Russians with artillery and stugnas
Man, that Zhukov entry never gets old.
Thats how you make an entrance
LazerPig: "~like they seemed to think that Russia didn't have any good generals."
Field Marshal Zhukov: *[Dramatically throws cloak]* "I've been summoned. Who must die?"
LazerPig: "Alright, bad example."
Fucking loved that xD
He's fantastic in that movie, especially as he speaks in a Yorkshire accent. "I may be smilin' but I am VERY Fookin' furious"
_"Medic!"_
*_NOT TODAY_*
@@MostlyPennyCat Stalin's Son: I WILL NOT BE SILCENCED!
Berira: I know about the hockey team...
Stalin's Son: *(Silence)*
@@weldonwin *"You're a fuckin' stain on that uniform!"*
-Zhukov, about three seconds after sucker-punching Stalin's son
"What's a war hero got to do to get a drink around here!?"
"Gentlemen, meet your dates for tonight!!"
it's almost amazing how few people understand that to discuss a single moment or item of history, you need to lay the groundwork and cover the context to what happened before to truly understand the significance of what is going on or the value of the thing being discussed
nonono do it in ten minutes or get out. I'm a busy man, I've got tons of other 10 minute videos to watch to shape my opinions off of
Phooey, context only matters for critical thinking, stop that, it’s not acceptable now. Take your opinion pills like a good little kid and don’t forget to wash your hands before bed.
@@c1ph3rpunk Why were the Nazis bad??
@@SoulOfGmod you came here mate, so really you should get out if you don't like it 😂
@@spartanstone837 its sarcasm
"when your british and in that sorta environment you start to develop a mentality" as a canadian I felt this
I thought it might happen to Canada, and mabey even the fr*nch
Absolutely.
People completely discredit canadas contributions to the wars. In ww1, we basically broke the stalemate in France, overcoming obstacles that both the British and French failed to, and innovated with artillery tactics.
In ww2, we had our own f**king D day beach, and relative to population, Canada suffered more in the landings than the other beaches, and the beach we were landing on was better defended.
as a kiwi i feel this
@@alc3biades262 Who foolishly discredits the Canadian contribution, we here this also said about Poles and others and is utter rubbish i have known about the Poles since i was eight years old. Canadians and Australians always been there but i have to admit to thinking Australia and New Zealand were the same country in my defence that was a very long time ago. In the UK it is almost a religion to pull Generals to bits and it rarely holds water including the Boer War the political class like this as it takes the heat away from them as they have landed us into these wars. Claiming superman status just sounds silly Germans got a lot of that and their veterans found it funny. The Italians cant fight they say, one of the toughest men i have ever met was Italian, talking to my Dad in that sing song accent of theirs he said a billa my dad was called Bill they took us out into the desert middle of bloody no-where we saw your lot coming and packed it in we killed no one and did not get killed for that idiot, i think he meant the Duce, he was over to take part in the bare knuckle boxing bouts,against the law of course but that never bothered the minors in the area i was brought up in, being around nine at the time i was ignored but knew very well what he was talking about, i suppose you are interested or you are not and many are not.
@@alc3biades262 Not just D-Day we carried. The efforts to get onto the Italian mainland succeeded due to the Canadian landing at Salerno. Plus our parachute battalion rushing across Northern germany to make sure the Soviets didn't make it to Denmark.
Holy Hell in a handbasket! This channel is awesome!!!
Full disclosure, I'm really fucking high right now.
Keep on keepin' on.
S
S
Man, I just love this channel. It's like being in a history lecture where the professor is a well spoken insane person.
@Константин Родчанин So, it's like being in a history lecture then?
@@kilianortmann9979 Shit, I want to go to your school!
I think the technical phrase you are looking for is: being a drunkard pig
A friend of mine was a veteran of the U.S. army and ran a tank recovery unit. He said put your hands around you eyes like they were binoculars. Now look around. That is the outside world to a buttoned up tank crew. If the tank commander sits with his head outside the turret he can see much more but that's a great way to get him killed. Infantry support is always critical for tanks. Great channel.
*1.* Running tanks until you're entirely out of gas and water, and thus have zero hope of accomplishing anything, does not make a Tactical Genius of Rommel.
*2.* The Italians did very well for being screwed over by the Germans and Mussolini from the start. Also, Italy was the first to put an AA cannon on treads to make an effective tank destroyer, though could never hope to produce enough to matter.
*3.* Monty had plenty of problems (coughcoughBridgeTooFar,) but he was given plenty of hard jobs, and did fairly well with them.
*4.* You may know that American tankers didn't want the 76mm Sherman when going into Normandy due to the difficulties of logistics, but did you know that they also didn't want the 76mm AFTER as well? The big scary German tanks were so utterly irrelevant that tankers generally wanted the more powerful HE shell they got with the 75mm gun, which could still knock out Stugs, and even Panthers, reasonably well, while also being MUCH better against the AT guns and infantry the tankers almost always had to actually deal with. Or, in other words, there is no best tank, no matter what the It Was Actually Aliens guy says.
That is all.
Any promotion of Monty has to square the circle of Operation Market Garden and to a lesser degree Caen. Yes American forces got dragged down by the hedgerows and distracted by the other French ports like Cherbourg but Monty had a devil of time dealing with the von Runstedt's defenses.
Market Garden:
"The Germans have jack shit here, dropping in a few airborne divisions hundreds of miles from any support will be a cakewalk!"
"Sir, the Germans have moved an entire army of panzers into Arnhem"
"Well, I'm going to suicide our airborne troops I guess, because I just can't possibly let Patton get any glory!"
Thousands of lives were wasted because Monty and Patton were having a race to see who could get over the Rhine first.
@@KermitTheGamer21 My issue is not so much the drama of him vs Patton. My issue is that the Market-Garden planning disregarded almost everything the British had learned about how the Germans fought from the five previous years and the Great War before that. Namely that the Germans' first reaction to any attack would be to counterattack at the soonest possibility with the most force an officer could get to follow his commands. Add in ghe availiblity of armor and its really impressive how close MG came to suceeding rather than turning into British Crete.
@@sctumminello Monty himself said he overestimated the ease and speed with which the ground forces assigned would be able to advance and secure the corridor.
Also Cherbourg was hardly a distraction; it was the closet, largest port the allies could attain, and capturing it was vital for securing a healthy and reliable supply chain, as while the Mulberry Harbors were a marvel they were not expected to sustain allied forces long term, nor were they expected to last long term (and indeed Mulberry A would be badly damaged by a storm a couple weeks after D-Day, resulting in it being abandoned).
@@sctumminello I feel like on the 4th point about the 76mm Sherman, the US could have definitely gone without them and changed their approach to Europe if they had the hindsight we have the pleasure of. Since the 76mm Sherman was practically useless, they probably could have stopped the line at the Jumbo and focus their Anti Tank solution to Tank Destroyers. 75mm Sherman's were undoubtedly able to take on any the German Army could throw at them as long as it isn't a King Tiger, but seeing one in France, Belgium, or the Rhine would be like seeing an Amish buggy. Not impossible but extremely rare. So instead of taking away the M4's best use on th3 western front and making it a better Anti Tank vehicle, they could have relegated the Anti Tank Job to their Tank Destroyers which were undoubtedly the best and most effective Tank Destroyers in the war. The M18 alone was the best Anti Tank weapon out of every other Armored Vehicle in the US Army and very possibly out of every army in the world, possibly even up to this day, and was even a great Infantry support vehicle at the same time. The M10 was the most numerically the most important and I wouldn't be too surprised if the US had more M10s than the Germans had total Armored Vehicles at any point in the war. Finally the M36 is probably the best Armored Vehicle of the entire war but had the same misfortune of the M26 of it entering the war too late to be judged, but the 90mm could undoubtedly be the end of any German vehicle and even saw Service in active combat until 1991 when it was used one last time in Yugoslavia. Thesr 3 US TDs could undoubtedly have carried the dedicated Anti Tank Force of the US while the Sherman could have retained the preferred 75mm which was already able to take out Panthers and Tiger Is. On top of that, this isn't even mentioning the underrepresented British Tanks of the late war such as the Firefly, Cromwell, Comet (my all time favorite), late War Churchills, Cavaliers, abs more.
The intro part about British tank design really helped me understand 40k tank design and their inspiration lol. Thanks for the video!
A Centurion tank was subject to a 9kt atomic test at Emu Plains in 1953 and they got the crew to drive it back to base in Victoria. It also served in the Vietnam War as Australia's "atomic tank"
That's.... disturbing
you should mention it broke down because it ran out of fuel and from what I heard was only 500 metres away the worst that happened was the side skirts getting ripped off and the vehicle being pushed 50 more metres
There's an emu plain in Australia? Did you guys fight there during the emu war?
@@patchouliknowledge4455 I did i sent dauntless' and helldivers for dive bombing avengers for level bombing hellcats for strafing barely got any kills ok but no in all seriousness I did not but who knows for the others
Emu Field SA? Emu Plains be next to Penrith NSW. Although the way Penrith Panthers are dominating the NRL, they may be nuclear powered!
The Crusader tank section in CoD 2 still remains one of the most memorable of any WW2 game with a tank sequence.
The only thing I have against those missions is you’re fighting panzer 2’s and the game treats them like they have heavy armour. But I understand that the devs have limited resources and we’re being efficient with their time and that doesn’t stop me from loving those missions.
Cod : United offensive was better
.
And UO didn't remove the tanks from multi-player
.
And also had heavy tanks
Jeeps
Deployable MGs
Etc
Classic mission, loved their individual tank names too: "her majesty" "pandemonium"
And no one remembers cod: finest hour 😔
@@calebharris292 i do!!!
.
that game was HARD AF!!!
way harder than the modern CODs
.
.
i COULD NOT beat it as a kid....
when i ws like 15 or 16 i played it again.... and beat it
.
pretty good game!!!
but the death animations pissed me off
.
they would be dead.... but id shoot another 5 to 10 rounds into them.... because the animations took so long to play
.
.
still... pretty cool when you die to an MP-40 burst from a dude holding down the trigger as he died
.
back then it pissed me off
today it would make me laugh LOL
I'd never heard of Rommels self built legacy, now I need a video on it.
Potential history has one. Its called "germany, the cold war and a pervasive narrative".
@@snugglecity3500
That covers all of Germany's Generals after the war though, instead of just one.
Ehh... rommel had already proved himself in ww1 and had published 'Attacks', which is still required reading in the american military. His reputation wasn't made out of whole cloth.
@@youraveragescotsman7119 to be fair, the other did far more to rebuild their reputación than rommel
@@elmascapo6588 true, Franz halder Was much more influencial. But the average wehraboo probably hasnt heard of him hahaha
I love how LP refuses to pay for his stock footage so they still have the watermark on them.
"Fuck your watermarks"
Mental people? No, eccentrics. Britain loves its eccentrics. One of those eccentrics developed an aircraft dropped, spinning depth charge that took out the Ruhr dams. The Square-heads never came up with something that off-the-wall brilliant. The Crusader was always one of my favourite tanks, mainly because the wheels look like they come from a giant Mecano set.
The only difference between a madman and an eccentric is their bank account
Evidently you've never heard of the Jerry Can.
Britain also designed air dropped tanks… whose major success was in scaring off German armored cars on D-Day…
@@revanofkorriban1505 - You mean the one they copied from the Italians?
@@JayM409 Jerry cans were designed in Germany.
"Walice and Gromet your wave out of the situation." This is the best description of British Strategy of WW2
bloody worked tho. I swear a british bloke with a shed and some free time is one of the most dangerous forces on the planet
@@kahlzun Yeah, I agree, my dad has come up with some crazy stuff in the garage.
Make it two guys anything they want and some booze
@@johnfkennedyinanopentopcar8976 im pretty sure they would win the war on their own.
@@kahlzun that or the shed explodes
The Matilda II was used right to the end of WW2 in front line service - in the Pacific. To the Japanese, a Matilda II was comparable to the German Tiger as for its effects on Japanese tanks.
The Japanese didn’t have a tank that could penetrate its armor and very few antitank weapons that could either.
I am still haunted by their unholy creation... the Lunge Mine.
Matilda could waltz right in and nobody could do shit
And despite how much was made of how slow British infantry tanks were, Matilda II could still move faster than the average man could run.
A early Sherman was a Tiger to Japan's tanks. Still give the Matilda props for being very good at the start of WWII, and still being useful at the end. Technology just proceeded too fast during WWII.
Let's face facts. The Japanese didn't have any tanks that could face a Stuart on equal terms.
My godfather was a tanker in WWII. He was a rather short man, which I suppose suited him to that or a ball turret gunner. He wound up fighting in Italy and was personally cited by Patton. $3 for an improper haircut.
When he got back stateside, they were transporting his whole unit to the Pacific to demobilize. He asked why they didn't go to Fort Sill as that was right in the center of 45th ID territory. Because all of our discharge paperwork is on the West coast. Trust me boy I wouldn't do you wrong.
He was being sent over there to ship out for the land invasion of Japan. Luckily a couple of small explosions ended things before that plan could really take off.
Even after he passed in the 1990s, his wife kept his dress uniform jacket hung onto their coat tree until the day she died.
I like the Patton film even though in parts it derides my country, i have Patton war as i knew it and some others and they show a different man in private at least to the one Scott portrayed, i have always felt he was very lucky in the quality of the men who served under him who mostly were HO Citizen Soldiers and not Regulars.
The Crusader's turret is just so aesthetically pleasing to me. It's such a nice looking tank. From an aesthetics POV, honestly, I genuinely prefer the look of the British tanks to most other WW2 tanks.
My favourite tank is the A34 Comet, and its appearance is a big factor in that. British tanks are just so aesthetically pleasing.
Defense of British tanks in general would be a pretty chad move.
I always thought the Crusader unfairly received a bad rap. Thanks for getting this video out! Still looking forward for a video on the dark horse Cromwell.
I mean just looking at it and you can see that it is a good tank design.
With its low profile.
I guess it could have been less flat on the front of the turret.
You know where it was going to be hit most likely.
Having a tall an not very wide tank makes it an easy target.
It also comes with the need for more armor platting to protect it.
I mean there is a reason why modern tanks look the way they doo.
@@MegaBanne well the mark 2 did have a rounded gun mantlet
Cromwell is my favourite tank of the war
@@ussenterprisecv6805 true
Sorry but history showed that the crusader couldnt get the job done. It was a fast light tank that had problems facing panzer 3s and 4s, themselves tanks that werent exactly hard to destroy. (and yes it could destroy them, the panzers werent immune to them, but if you compare the numbers youll see that the crusader lost outright)
And if you have a tool that cant get the job done that is required of it.. that is what we call a bad tool.
The crusader was so quickly replaced after the african campaign that none where even used during the battle for europe that followed. Instead we saw lees, shermans, cromwells etc.
No amount of "it wasnt THAT bad guys" is going to change that fact. It was an underperforming design that was made for a type of warfare that never actually apeared in ww2. The concept of a fast cavalry tank failed utterly.
And if something fails, then its bad.
(quick plug for Potential History's Meme Tank series here, cause I'm paraphrasing from the British Tank video). With the exception of a sole few, all of the mass produced British Tanks have the distinction of being meh to good; they were neither outright awful, nor utterly fantastic. They were largely designed for the tank doctrines which had carried over and evolved from WW1, which lead to them facing a war where the doctrines and tactics had to be rebuilt from the ground up, leaving the tanks without the doctrines they were specialized for, and having to make do.
I thought of his video as soon as I saw the thumbnail.
SIR, THE ENGINE'S NO GOOD!
potential history is a favroutie next to this channel
@@UberMenschNowFilms PUT IT IN SIDEWAYS!
@@UberMenschNowFilms get 5 car engines and put them together
I like how during the 41 minute intro I forgot the main topic of the video, but still stayed interested.
Oh yes here comes the Tea-aboo side or Lazerpig. I am so absolutly onboard for this!🇬🇧
There are few things that I click quicker. It's always a good day with a Lazerpig video
@@mastathrash5609 ditto
_rule brittania intensifies_
@@thecatinthefedora1201 *random idiot appears, making incoherent screeching noises as they drive past in a Centurion prototype*
@@airplanemaniacgaming7877 you good?
"Why would they take cover!? That's not very sporting of them is it?" My favorite quote of this video. I laugh every time.
Ah yes, the home guard.
"The man in front gets a crossbow, when he gets shot, the man behind picks up the crossbow, and shoots!"
Take a truck
Put a fucking concrete bunker on it
Germans too scared to invade Britain
Profit
The LDV (later Home Guard) were quickly armed with proper weapons - Canadian Ross rifles as well as British 0.303" P14 [*] and American 0.300" M1917 pattern. Plus, Bren and WW1 surplus light and medium machine guns and curious but effective mortars like the Blacker bombard (a derivative of the successful PIAT anti-tank). Until later in the war, they also had to absorb some weird shit like the 'Beaverette' light armoured car. Home Guard units trained with the Regular Army, were inspected and regulated by senior army officers (including Ironside, Brooke and Montgomery) and HG officers spent a good deal of their time with the Regulars. Was the HG equivalent to German 'Volksturm' units or more like the Volksgrenadier divisions which formed most of the 1944 Ardennes/Bulge thrust - so nearly successful? British High Command thought more like the LATTER.
From photographs, almost of the HG rifles appear to be P14s (the M1917 (US) pattern were said to be issued with a RED BAND round the stock grip to show the 0.300 calibre) or, increasingly commonly as the war progressed, No4, MkIII or III* Lee-Enfields. Curiously, General George Marshall, chief of the US Army, recorded in 1940 that America had sent 'British manufactured rifles' to the UK - some 500,000 of them. Improbable though this may sound, it's likely to be correct. In 1915, Britain had PURCHASED Winchester's P14 production facility in Connecticut and run it as a British factory until sold back to the USA some 18 months later. So, rifles surplus to this production might be located in the USA but could be reasonably described as 'British manufactured'. Another reason that the HG were never significantly supplied with American M1917 rifles was that 0.300" AMMO (actually 0.3008") was NEVER MANUFACTURED IN THE UK and that the US, guarding its own stocks of 0.300" rifle ammo was NEVER able to supply Britain with any meaningful volume of it.
@@alastairbarkley6572 Why not call the "American 0.300" cal. ammo ".30-06" which is still the popular nomenclature to this day.
I shot lots of tuned-up Lee-Enfield No. 4s including Mk.III and III* in .303 British, and later, won prizes long range to 1000 yd, (rebarreled -7.62 NATO Yes, indeed!).
They were quite accurate, especially with aperture sights.
Note in saying USA General Marshall sent "British manufactured rifles" to UK, perhaps he meant British caliber, British designed rifles,
like the quantities of No. 4, L.Enfields. manufactured by Savage Arms in USA.
@@loftsatsympaticodotc You complain about the "American 0.300 cal. ammo" and go on to use yards as a unit of measurement, while talking about winning prizes in gun tournaments. (let's call it stealth bragging)
Most american comment of the day.
Ten minutes into the video after a rant about historical forums ten years ago - "British tanks start with the 1924 railways act..." and I spit my tea over my keyboard. This channel is fantastic.
One of my favourite moments showcasing the simplistic idea of how "German tanks were always better" was when I was playing through some of the earlier COD campaigns. They would talk about how the British tanks are just so unfathomably unmatched, then a Panzer 1 rolled over the sand dune to knock out a crusader and I burst out laughing.
The tank missions in COD2?
Surprisingly accurate though. The Panzer 1 only had 8mm machine guns in the turret, but the Germans developed a tungsten cored round for it that made it quite competent at knocking out lightly armoured targets (although it did need to be quite close). It wasn't until 1942, or arguably even 1943 that the average quality of the tanks they faced had risen high enough to render them completely obsolete, which isn't bad for an early 1930s design
@@talltroll7092 That's great, except even the earlier cruiser models were knocking them out no problem. Given choice between the crusader's thicker armour and ability to take out Pz Is at far longer ranges, I'll go with the Crusader and continue to laugh at people who claim the Pz I was causing the British to despair at how it outclassed anything they had.
Sounds like a lot of cope about a tank designed as a stop gap before the Pz III and IVs could enter service and I'm pretty sure you're confusing the "tungsten cord" with the rounds fired by the Panzerjaeger 1, which had a 37mm gun, not a machinegun.
@@HelghastStalker See this is what I get for giving Wehraboos the benefit of the doubt. Thank you for bringing us back to reality.
@@7000_Skeletons actually no there where some mg rounds that did have tungsten in them
Admittedly they where only effective on lightly armoured vehichles at close ranges
The thing is the British tank designers were laboring under so much B.S. that it made it difficult to make a good desgin. But then they took a long look said fuck this through all that shit out and made the Centurion which knocked it out of the park in terms of tank design.
So the desginers were honestly good they just had too much baggage.
Honestly when one is expecting an enemy invasion one has to go with, " any weapons right now are better than really good weapons six months from now".
Just like me
"In war, numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power." Sun Tzu
Well… that seems relevant… ahem, Ukraine
@@jackthorton10 exactly and this was written circa. 500 BC
The strat is proper use of combined arms warfare as well as numbers XD
kids that play war rp games on roblox: wow, this is useless.
You know, for a book I heard was intended for eastern generals of the day (the sort of posh morons who are likely to have not even seen an actual battlefield before; think 500s Japan’s version of WWI generals. (Or was that China…?)), there’s still a lot of stuff in there applicable today.
Is there anywhere I can get a copy?
Can I just say that the most important lesson that all of these videos has taught me is that the number one priority in terms of tank design is crew survivability; anyone can make another tank, but it takes at least 19 years to grow and raise a person and make sure they’re physically and experientially capable of operating a tank, and every hit that that operator survives is one more lesson to be learned to improve upon
Some very unfortunate individuals are learning that lesson the hard way the last two years...
I feel British tanks are SEVERELY underrated when talking about WW2. Maybe because they kind of got overshadowed by America’s production lines… Sherman tank go WEEEEEEE. But still, they deserve more recognition
Fr tho I don't see that much documentary about the later british armors outside of the later variants of the churchills.
Damn straight, Hollywood loves to depict British tanks as if they’re just awful (Minus the Churchill and Firefly), and American tanks (if it isn’t a movie set in 1944) as perfect war machines. I wish pop culture paid more attention to history.
@@badmouth1542 Hollywood doesn't depict British tanks much if at all. The only Hollywood movie I know of that does is Patton, and that was released in 1970.
@@badmouth1542 American business prioritize American army. Shock Pikachu face. how dare they. The British were up a creek without American supplies
Praise be to Comet
I'm becoming depressingly, better educated. Almost everything I thought I knew about World War 2 is being proven false.
I suppose having your world view shattered is nessasary though. Better to be factually correct than having a romantic perception of a false history.
I still like the Tiger tank, but I'm better educated to it's flaws now, and have a better appreciation of tanks I thought were sub par.
Thank you for being a brilliant history professor Lazerpig. 👏
Rainbow kraut
@@sinny2251 ???
Honestly mine have been mostly confirmed. While Germany in many ways was ahead of its time on the military side was just that. It hadn't worked out all the kinks to them and suffered as a result. Romney wasn't nearly as squeaky clean as he claimed but not a total monster like many of his contemporaries and even if for his own gain attempted to kill hitler and ultimately died for a just cause (ending the war) Britain was full of energy and spirit but was hopelessly outgunned. As well as being basically useless when it came to mechanized warfare and needed major support to help them kick it into gear and fight properly.
@@casematecardinal Mitt Rommel
@@whatdothlife4660 lmao I just say the typo
Always found the shape of the Crusader to be incredibly appealing to me with a nicely angled turret and a low profile. Started playing War Thunder late last year for the hell of it and despite starting with the US, I found myself maining UK stuff and finding a lot more success with the Crusader III and her little 57mm than I probably should. Her profile brings me joy and irregardless of the bullshit that is playing War Thunder, being able to get more familiar with this tank in the last year (amongst other tanks from other countries) has been a joy. Sure, light armor that gets holes poked in it by everything in the game but I keep coming back to play with it and appreciate its history. :) (not a defense of War Thunder but I do find some enjoyment from it since tanks and AA are cool as hell and I know the controls well enough for my favorite tanks)
I like how the turret is sloped on the sides it's not expected to get shot at from.
@@himoffthequakeroatbox4320 Makes me wonder what might have been possible if they had bulked up the model with some more armor. 100% not needed for what the thing was designed for but I guess its just me wanting a thicker (maybe even American) Crusader so I stand a bit better of a chance of surviving a hit lol
I find the crusader in war thunder unrealistically slow and it infuriates me. Especially when it makes me unable to carry out British broadside cruiser doctrine
@@himoffthequakeroatbox4320 it was to give the guys more elbow room. Literally. They wanted to give them more elbow room without widening the turret ring
I wholeheartedly agree. It has to be my favourite early war tank for that reason, it’s so damn perfect looking
The reason not to adopt a muzzle brake on EVERY TANK (like, say, the Sherman) was because doing so made it difficult to work with infantry, even though it meant you could have a bigger gun on your tank.
Evidence that design decisions weren't always about tanks vs tanks on an open field :P
I was lucky to grow up with a dad who loved the more esoteric (yes we're American I know) parts of WWII and he loves British armor. His favorite anecdote is the Matilda II lording over the Italians in North Africa, and in one instance of after attacking an Italian position (i forget the name) everything on the outside of the tank had been scoured off by machine gun fire: brackets, lights, storage boxes etc, as if sandblasted yet the hull integrity remained.
She was called the "Queen of the Desert" for a reason
Also fun fact, during the early days of the encirclement of Dunkirk, a group of Matilda 1s, 2s and 3s with some infantry counter-attacked and pushed back the German forces for quite a while. The only reason they go so far was because the Germans couldn't find a way to kill them, which almost led to a full retreat of that sector. Eventually some 88s got brought in, but it's still a fun story
That did happen, Rommel made his reputation on something he picked up on in France before the fall using anti aircraft guns to knock out tanks and we gifted him the same by using tanks like cavalry in the desert he even taught the Italians this move and they had been issued with 88s also gave us a good hiding,Montgomery a hands on General who would not be badgered like the others before him had been knew that the tank was the Queen of the desert but the anti tank gun was the King.
Wow, I literally rewatched the T-34 video just yesterday and wished that the Crusader defense video idea would come true. Thank you!
Quick, wish for a new video
tbh the T-34 video is rather sucky in my opinion.
@@jammygamer8961 Thank you for sharing, now take your opinion and put it here 👉🏿🗑
@@jammygamer8961 I'm curious as to what makes the T-34 video sucky in comparison to LazerPig's other output?
@@TheScorpionStrike some of the stuff he says is just outright wrong
An example of this is that during the T-34 video he said how cast armor is better than rolled.
A second example is him saying the Matilda bounced shots from the german 88mm like they fired papermache
I love the way the Crusader looks. Thus: it is a good tank.
As long as you arent inside one, its as valid of a reason as any.
If it looks right, it is right
Based
@@SpiritOfMontgomery No word of a lie, one of the heads of my school at university had a very interesting lecture for us aerospace engineering students in first year. It was about the sexiness of planes. That's not hyperbole, the words she used was "sexy" and "sexiness". But the two/three hour lecture was about recognising patters in engineering designs, and how if you've seen enough good aircraft, you can tell another is doing something right if it looks good. Take the F35, it looks about as sexy as an F22 or F18. So you can gather it should be at least able to fly in similar conditions.
Some context for this, just looking good isn't a certifiable reason for any design being good from a functionality standpoint, but instead recognising the features that make it look appealing as a design and whether those features are typically advantageous can be a good starting point. But I basically payed my University £9000 for them to tell me what your comment just did.
@@markriley4100 F18 isn't as hot
We all know Brazil carried the North Africa campaign
as a brazilian , excuse me ?
Hoi4 moment
Shit talked Patton, gave Monty the credit he deserves and loaded with sarcasm and sass while talking about the reality of war - which has more to do with supply and logistics than the individual performance of troops. Glad I found this channel.
Some of these are negatives. Monty is given too much credit and not enough criticism, and Patton was an actual competent general through and through and never would have dreamed up something as dumb as Market Garden, especially as he was barreling through France at a blisteringly fast speed.
@@inkbomb675 is that why Patton almost cost Sicily? Or sent the remaining Jumbo Shermans on a suicide mission to rescue a family member? Would Monty use armor and bayonet wielding troops to clear starving veterans from protesting outside Parliament?
If you study at a military college, Monty gets ragged on purely for Market Garden when his overall success rate in the war was tremendous. Not to mention, people who only look at paper stats don't seem to realize the Allies were making tremendous progress in France but supply lines were thin and a logistically nightmare, the whole purpose for the German offensive at the Battle of the Bulge was to drive a wedge between the Allies and their stretched thin supply lines. Market Garden was a calculated risk to use speed to offset the logistically hurdles impacting the advance.
@@williamED15 Almost cost? He took it and beat Monty to Palermo. Yes Monty would do that if ordered to, the British have done worse before and after the war. It was Patton that was principled and wouldn't punish random German civilians without due process.
Montgomery achieved no success of particular note other commanders could not have done and especially floundered in the most important European theater. He persuaded Eisenhower to issue one of the most absurd orders in military history. That being that all Allied Armies must advance equally abreast, so that no one (meaning Patton) would receive "undue credit." He was a petty cretin of a man but at least he could be effective unlike the traitor Ike whom was obsessed with horrible strategy and a British spy named Kay Summer by that prostituted herself to Ike so he would send more Americans into the line than British soldiers. It's estimated she cost us an extra 100 thousand casualties that the British might have borne instead.
From Patton:
"At no time did Ike wish us luck and say he was back of us - fool."
-Patton's diary July 5, 1943
"Neither Ike nor Bradley has the stuff. One is bound hand and foot by the British and doesn't know it. Poor fool." (Vindicated by British spy seduction)
-July 12, 1944
Patton was disgusted by Ike's degeneracy by cheating on his wife while favoring more incompetent commanders that were far from the frontlines. Bradley better than Patton? It was Patton that took 3 days out of his own time to relieve the 101st during the Battle of the Bulge and Monty from the north which Bradley greatly disliked as his rivals got credit for cleaning up his mess. Bradley was a cautious boring general and a coward that wanted to retreat their forward HQ in North Africa among other occasions. Spare me your delusions. Germans were only terrified by one Allied commander and that was America's fightingest general that is no propaganda like the pig says.
@@inkbomb675 TL;DR this is youtube, not a forum. Make your point in 120 characters or post a 40 minute video I'm not reading all that
@@williamED15 TH-cam comments are an open forum, with no character limit. Cry harder illiterate r tard. Monty was a petty man, Bradley was an incompetent coward, and Ike was a degenerate traitor that preferred the British to his own country rather than commanding both equally at least. Patton > all allied generals
7:58 Germany actually trying Sealion would have been hilarious in it of itself. Heck, if they did, they'd have failed so disastrously that it would have been comedic. Besides, you already have the Volksturm if you want to laugh at old people and kids trying to defend against an actual army.
The British did a wargame of Sealion, after the war. IIRC, the Germans get ashore easily and start pushing inland. But by the end of day 1 or 2, the Royal Navy has sunk ALL their cargo ships. All they have left are river craft and rafts (!). The Germans then run out of fuel and ammunition, and their defeat makes Stalingrad look like a picnic.
The German plan for Sealion literally described the Channel crossing as like a river crossing but on a larger scale. A complete lack of understanding of the task they would have faced.
@@RaedwaldBretwalda Even that exercise offered extremely generous advantages to the German team which they wouldn't have had in reality, and they still lost horribly. The most counterfactual advantage was the air supremacy, but they also assumed the channel guns would be completely ineffective, and the RN would only react to the invasion after it started. Basically, the exercise was an optimistic example, to say the least.
Honestly I think pretending to lose the air war, move all the planes up north, pull back the navy, let the Nazis invade. Then send in the planes and the navy, sink everything in the channel and just bomb the ground forces 24 hours a day until they all surrender is the winning play.
I can see why they didn't but it would have worked.
Its not just the old people and kids part. What the home guard got up to, is so fucking chaotic a whole comedy series had been made about it. Home guardsmen would "arrest" downed *british* pilots because they thought they could be spies. The volksturm at least tended to have a kind of firearm, the ldv, did this sort of thing with, pitch forks.... The volksturm were actually used, whereas the ldv was to stop these people... Doing it themselves... Now try to imagine what these nutjobs might do, if they didnt at least theoretically, report to some one....
@@nedman211 The Volksturm was a tragedy. They were used because Germany was absolutely desperate and led by psychopaths. The fact that the home guard was not is a testament to how well the British did during the war, despite constantly overestimating the enemy.
This is so far the best channel I have discovered this year by far. 10/10 I hope you manage to make a living off this content (assuming that's what you want) or at the very least good living in some other non YT way yet continue to enjoy making this style of content as a hobby for the foreseeable future.
I just want more chicken song tbh.
I feel forced to point out that the Desert Airforce was probably the most important single reason (but not the only reason) for Allied victory in the Africa campagin.
Your masterful use of the Pentagon Wars theme when discussing a particularly... special... subject within a video never ceases to get my lazergoat.
Fantastic work, as usual.
As me and my mates say about the crusader is:
"It had its problems, but it did its job well."
Just sucks that its job was so terrible.
7:00 NO! NOT THAT ONE!
That right there its AMAZIN top of the line youtube content. You deserve a prize.
This gave me a newfound respect as an American for our military procurement methods, and a sense of gratitude for its competence. I mean, we’re getting absolutely fucking ripped off by LockMart dollar-for-dollar, but we can afford it and the end product kills shit better than anything else so it all works out.
In LockMart's defense, probably half of that's actually going into black projects we're not allowed to know about like NGAD and the SR-72. So actual dollar per Skunk Works bullshit miracle is probably a bit better than it looks in the budget.
And for as big a SNAFU as the F-35's development was, it is black fucking magic AND has come out cheaper than it's far less capable 4 and 4.5 gen competitors.
When you said "I've designed Train" I almost cried. Thank you I love your videos you're hilarious yet informative
10:43 btw
Funniest part of the video.
I've always heard of the Matilda being the Queen of the Desert and that Crusader crews liked their tank quirky that they might be.
Actually, Priscilla was Queen of the Desert.
My favourite tank in war thunder.
Armor is basically nonexistent, except when the turret randomly bounces shots it had really no business bouncing.
But the gun and mobility are exceptional. I love this little bastard.
No armor best armor. What is your shell going to do, explode behind me?
Both the 3 and 1/2 are fantastic.
I always thought it was funny when the same person first says the T34 was great because so many were built but then turn around and claim the Sherman was crap when nearly as many were built.
I like the Sherman: it looks like a kid’s crayon drawing of what a tank should look like, and in a way that accidentally gets all of the most important parts the right:
“Why’s it so bulbous?”
“So all my friends can get in, too!”
“Why’s it so tall?”
“So we can see everything!”
@@spindash64 There's something to be said for applying the 12 year old logic test to things.
I lived in the RSA, and I can tell you, there was still enough praise for the Crusader Tank from the old tankers to last several life times. 0.o
RSA?
@@DJLite4011 South Africa
@@DJLite4011 Republic of South Africa.
Fucking thank you. The Crusader is one of my favorites. And seeing someone stand up for this thing, like I have tried too. But doing it 10X better then I ever could. It makes me happy. The Crusader wasn't a bad tank. And had it went into service in Normandy 90% of its Reliability issues would have been solved just by the change of environment.
And lets not forget that most of reliability issues were even fixed by end of desert campaign.
But it didnt. We dont judge things like tanks by "what they could have been if everything was done 100% right" we judge them by what they actually where.
And factually the crusader was a bad design. Paper thin armor (if you can be penned by a panzer 2 you have some serious issues), bad initial gun, the whole thing was designed for a type of warfare that never materialized (the cavalry tank was a failed concept from the getgo), only a 4 man (with the new gun only 3!!!) crew when ideally you wanted to have 5. And all that before we even take the reliability issues in to consideration.
Sure if reality had bend itselfe in the favor of the crusader ít would have been a good tank.. but so would many many many other tank designs that where bad.
@@riptors9777 it's gun when it entered service was satisfactory, no less capable than much of what the Germans fielded. It's armour wasn't terrible, it was average for its time. Reliability whilst initially poor was largely fixed by 1942, and even then was no less reliable than what the Germans fielded when it entered service. The Americans had but the M2 stuart around 1940, a certainly inferior tank to what the Brits had and saw absolutely no combat. The M3 Lee was far from excellent for a late 1941 tank, the first decent tank the yanks had was the M4 Sherman that arrived so incredibly late and saw relatively little service before Husky.
The cavalry/cruiser tank doctrine wasn't flawed, hell you could see a very clear connection between it and the doctrines of modern armies like that of the US or UK, evident when you see the M3 Cavalry Fighting Vehicle or the Ajax.
@@arakami8547 "When it was introduced" is not "when it actually faced german armor on the battlefield", where it had problems penning the enemy from the front, hence the gun upgrade. They didnt upgrade the gun to fight tiger tanks, they upgraded it to reliably fight 3s and 4s. So saying that the gun was "adequate" when it was introduced has absolute zero meaning when performance in actual combat was underwhelming.
The armor was also not "average", it was bad and easaly penetrated by every other gun fielded by axis OR allies at the time. If your protection is less then that of a panzer 3 your armor might aswell not exist.
The cavalry/cruiser tank concept failed strategically as well as tactically and was completly ineffective as a result a) the need for the role never mirrored reality and these tanks where never actually used that way, they where used as any other tank by their generals and b) a lightly armored, lightly armed but fast tank made for an easy target of even hand held anti tank weapons, meaning that even if they used them in their intented role, the losses would have been horrible.
The fact that the crusader was decommissioned despite being available in relatively large numbers directly after the african campaign speaks for itselfe.
The M3 lee was a stop gap measure to put something on the field amongst other reasons BECAUSE the crusader had such massive issues. And unlike the crusader it managed to fill its intended role as such quite decently. They where a legit threat to 3s and 4s even at distance hitting the front of german armor, and the M3 Lee didnt even need to sacrifice crew capacity to do so.
@@riptors9777 did you actually watch the video?
I'll be honest, my favorite part of lazerpigs videos is that he'll just fly off track and ramble on for forever about this or that. keep it up lazer. i learn more during your ramblings than I ever did in college history.
The sad part about the tank videos is that a lot of people tend to forget about everything else thats in the war besides the tank
Even LP pushes the UK land invasion bit a little far. Its absolutely true that, following Dunkirk, the British thought they would be invaded at any moment and the fear (and state of land based defences being crap) was very real. However the reality was that the Luftwaffe really had no chance against the RAF. The RAF actually having similar numbers and quality of equipment, better radar/ HFDF systems, the all important Chain Home + Dowding fighter command system and so on. Thats before we get to the fact that an invasion of Britain would involve - the sea. In 1940, the Royal Navy was still the largest navy in the world by a long LONG way. The Germans trying to put their invasion barges through the channel would have been steamrolled into oblivion, even if the RAF had somehow been neutralised (which it never would have been).
Ever since I played call of duty 2 as a wee lad, it’s been probably my favorite tank. The mk iii variant is undoubtedly the most dashing tank of wwii with its angular turret, sleek hull, side skirts, external fuel tanks, and perfectly tactical looking antenna.
The lee/grant has a good rep among historians but its pretty much ignored by the normies (even in the US, its complete over shadowed by the Sherman) Its negatives are always brought up before its positives. Like its 75mm not having AP ammo or, when your trying to command its crew, someone hands you a ham sandwich in the chaos. So its odd when someone gives it credit for winning North Africa (Again the Sherman gets that honor here in the US) So thanks for appreciating my favorite derpy American tank! Maybe you should make a video about it... just saying.
I believe it was never meant to be the answer, but really to fill the gap until the M4 was properly developed. Used as the British at the time perceived proper tank doctrine (infantry support) the lack of AP in the 75mm gun wasn't an issue for them, as the 2 pounder in the top turret was supposed to have that job, although by that time it was becoming a bit weak. The 75 was there to lob HE at gun emplacements and troops hiding in holes.
It was rushed in development and into service, but did a great job despite it's shortcomings (mainly that huge profile and relatively short range 75mm gun.)
@@iffracem Yes the M3 was stopgap for the US Military to Replace the M2 while the M4 was being build. So the Army had something Modern but not Modern Enough they wouldn't switch to the M4.
@@iffracem Bearing in mind that said stopgap was made because U.S tank doctrine at the time prioritized machine guns over cannons. And we're not even talking about the M2 Browning .50 caliber, but the smaller M1919 models firing .30-06. Before the Lee, the M2 (the tank, not the gun) was the mainline American tank, and featured _seven_ of the things, not counting two additional machine guns that could be brought up on swinging mounts to handle anti-aircraft duty (and yes, these too were also .30-06). They were even equipped with "deflection plates", with the idea being to fire into enemy trenches below or behind the tank by bouncing bullets off of these plates. It's 37mm gun was effectively an afterthought, a "just in case" designed to defeat light armor and fortifications.
This was effectively a tank designed for WW1 suddenly being confronted with the realities of WW2, and was pretty much outdated from the moment it was drawn up. Between that and a need to rapidly assist the British rebuild their own tank units, the M3 went from design to full production in less than a year and a half, which is a _blistering_ speed for any wholly new military vehicle.
With all that in mind, it's actually something of a testament to the strength of the design that it worked as well as it did.
I remember seeing the M3 in a book I had on various military vehicles as a child and loving it. Essentially because G U N S
No it did not "win north Africa" but it was a reasonable tank that played it's part in the success of north Africa, it was a stop gap tank for the Sherman just like the comet was a stop gap for the centurion, decent tanks that were able to be rushed into service to give time for the better tank to enter service
The Crusader would also eventually lead to the Cromwell, a tank with the heart of a Spitfire.
Wow, am I in shock?
I live near the site of the Battle of the River Medway in 43 AD, the first thing the Romans did was take out the British chariot horses. The British chariots were the rapid reaction force that could break the Roman shield wall. Almost 2000 years ago the same rules of defence in depth applied and you explained it so simply.
Without chariot support the Ancient Britons were unable to stop the advance of the Roman heavy infantry and Britain became a Roman province.
How come the teachers at school never mentioned this massive battle that took place 10 miles away while we learned about Hadrian's Wall?
You almost had me there. No way a Scottish historian can't pronounce covenanter.
I have always been led to believe my mother was the last scot to be baptised in the covenanter church?
You're sounding a lot better mentally. Hope everything is going well.
...he sounds the same?
@@accessthemainframe4475 Look at his videos on Ukraine. You cant tell me he sounds the same.
@@aurabanda6144 Mentally...? In the second Ukraine video at the start, he said he was ill. Physically might be the better term? Or maybe vocally?
A 40 minute video takes a lot of time to edit, he probably recorded the audio pre-sickness.
@@Kaebuki I meam he sounded depressed to me but idk.
Honestly, I thought the Crusader Was already a pretty decent tank. Ya reliability issues were a thing but honestly WHAT didn't have reliability issues back then? It was fast, had decent armor and a decent gun for the period of the war it served in. It did its job.
valentine
I recently heard an old adage that half-educated idiot 'historians' cringe from like a vampire in front of a cross when it's brought out before their precious little arguments of, "The best tank of WW2." That adage is: "Sometimes, 'good enough for now' is _fucking perfect."_ The T-34 was a stopgap that was good enough until IS-2s and later T-34 variants could roll out. The Crusader was good enough for the fight it was in, just badly used. The Sherman was good enough to improve on with variants like the Firefly and Jumbo, or to fight the Japanese tin boxes. Victory is not a question of who has the BEST weapons, but who best uses the weapons they have to hand and often, the weapons you have to hand are the ones that are 'good enough for now'.
Decent armor? I wouldnt consider armor that cant even resist a pak 36 anywhere close to be "decent"
It had a shit gun that had trouble penning german 3s and 4s from the front and when they upgraded it to a decent gun they had to sacrifice 1 crew member spot to make it fit in the turret, costing even more operational and situational awareness cause now the commander had to fill 3 roles at once! Commander, gunner and loader!
Not to mention the idea of a cavalry tank failed miserable when confronted with the realities of WW2. The whole concept of a fast cavalry tank sounds awesome on paper.. but only there. Theres a reason why Stalins race cars where discontinued rather quickly despite their impressive speed. Turns out no matter how fast your tank is, they are still very easy to hit with big guns.
Now the matilda.. that was a challange for the germans. The crusader? Pft... please.
@@riptors9777 I'm curious what numbers you base your claim the Pak 36 will beat 40mm of sloped armor on even a Crusader Mk.1 at any better than the 2-pdr will get through the flat 35mm front of the average Pz III.
Especially given that both the PaK 36 and the 2-pdr have close to equivalent performance on testing.
Or how the later upgraded 50mm hull is any worse than a Pz III J of which Rommel had quite few in number
Shermans
I thought I'd accidentally skipped to a Mark Felton video. You made me get up and check.
Damn you Lazerpiggggggggg!
The Crusader _looks_ modern as hell, with that nicely angled turret and sleek body. I've always liked that little bastard.
The more he talked about it, the more I realized, this is an MBT in WW2.
Crusader is cool, but you know what is also cool? F-111 Ardvark
*oink*
A flying pig with a laser (designator) in its head? What else could you ask for.
I always liked the Crusader tank. It's one of those tanks that sort of fall in the gray area of early war production and Sherman spam. I've read two memoirs by Crusader commanders and they seemed to enjoy them. The worst part of the Crusader was the turret ring and turret were too small for the next generation tank gun.
I love the Crusader, Cromwell, and their larger brother the Challenger A30. Some of the most underrated vehicles of the war. The Challenger being much preferred by crews over the Sherman Firefly. And the Cromwell being one of the most reliable AFVs of the war.
plus best girl rosehip drives a crusader tank
@@fenriders7008
Really? I heard the Cromwell was awful. I hear so many conflicting things I objectively don't know what to make of it, subjectively though I like it. Disclaimer my knowledge of tanks is surface level, but I like learning.
I remember hearing a historian say that the weapon that won the Desert campaign was the entrenching tool, and I can definitely see where they were coming from
Hey Lazerpig I love your videos!
Will you ever bless us Italians with a full length rambling about our performance in either WW1 or WW2? Either one is fine and I promise I’d watch it non stop till I pass out.
Italian performance in both world wars can be described with one word : Bruh
@@joundii3100 pretty much imagine being pushed back by the austro hungarians
@@karl-emilberthelsen7641 Yeah. Imagine being pushed back by a country that failed to take Serbia for a year even with the help of Bulgaria.
Oh man, the MFP bit on Patton practically made me fall out of my chair. 10/10, one like is not enough. Fine work!
When I saw that I almost died lmaooooo
19:46
I'd actually agree with this, but from the opposite perspective. They were regular people like you or me, which means that we could both be turned into monsters. We could both be made to commit warcrimes. It's a lesson of caution, not cleanliness.
I think the reason that statement is seen as innocence is the general public are delusional about that fact that they are capable of these horrors aswell
B-but I saw a picture of some Germans smiling once. This means that they never did anything bad in their life.
@@kingchirpa you're still generalizing hundreds of thousands of people into one group.
Until you can differentiate individuals, you cannot speak for any of them.
In practice people don't believe something is a war crime if they think it is justified by a goal they think is good. What people consider a war crime depends on whether they think the goal of it was justified. German "terror bombing" (a propaganda name) is condemned and thought of to be a war crime, yet allied bombings, that functionally were very similar (if you could argue that German cities were military targets, then so you could argue that cities bombed by Germans were military targets as well) are rarely condemned, with maybe rare exceptions. USA employed a very effective strategy of what in practice could be described as "terror bombing" in Korea, yet you probably have never heard about it. If Germany destroyed 90+% of buildings in an European country then people would readily describe it as a war crime, that is what USA did in North Korea. I think all of this shows that we should be careful about readily becoming morally indignant upon hearing about a war crime, especially since what is considered war crimes was decided by the great powers, and powers who often don't follow the law to the letter anyway. I have heard people describe the use of thermobaric weapons in Ukrainian conflict as a war crime because they have heard from some bogus source that it breaks some international law.
No, not really. The higher ups were just complete psychos. You could ague differently about officers and regular soldiers but just look at Hitler or his friends who liked to play pretend about being Germanic knights and whatnot and tell me that these people were mentally stable.
"NOOO NOT THAT ONE" - sent me straight to outer space with tears in my eyes
Okay, I learned to love the crusader through World of Tanks as a Tier V medium tank. It was small, fast and accurate (and with a gun rammer, had an insane high rate of fire for the 2 pounder.) Small, Lightweight, and low silhouette, it was perfect for my style of play. I'm glad that someone actually gave the Crusader a substantial amount of well deserved credit despite not being the P51 or Spitfire of Tank forces like the Sherman, The T34, and the Tiger. So, thank you.
An additional jab toward Rommel: When he retreated with his forces, said forces took whatever vehicles they could. Part of the reason for the massive surrender of Italian soldiers was because what few transports they did have were taken, and were left to walk back. Not a fun prospect.
I often wonder if the average history buff that glances over the NA campaign knows the Semovente exists. Maybe the reason for some thinking the StuG was in Africa was confusion toward it?
When Lazer mentions about British tanks doing well enough against the Italians, there are two reasons for this: 1) Early engagements the Italians were armed with the M11/39 and L3s. While the M11/39 (despite being a PoS) could pen British cruiser tanks, 2) Italian armored forces were heavily outnumbered while not always operating as a full force (IE, an attempt to break a line saw the use of only an M11/39 and 2 L3s)
I guess I'll also note that there were a few instances of misidentifying to add to the confusion. There are some reports of 'panzers' being spotted outside their operational range or having success they were nowhere near (Iron Hulls, Iron Hearts provides some examples of South Africans saying they had come into contact with German tanks where only the 132nd Ariete was in the area).
TBH pretty much all armored forces got screwed in the desert conditions and could be considered unreliable, so I'm not sure where the focus on the Crusader comes from.
Might come off as a pastaboo, but I am more of a person that thinks the Italians get the shaft for way too many misconceptions.
But I do love pasta
I've read that the typical Italian soldier's response to Rommel's name was spit and harsh profanity.
To be fair, from my understanding of WWII there was no axis power that didn't get the shaft worse than the Italians, including from Italy itself.
@@gratuitouslurking8610 Hungary or Romania maybe.
@@gratuitouslurking8610 Italy at least was spared from being behind the Iron Curtain as well maintaining their "honor" as they switched sides (thanks to Germany making that decision for then).
Also they did dig their own grave, they invaded Egypt from Libya with the British counterattack forcing then to call for German assistance, just like in Greece so that shaft was of their own making.
@@drakron to be fair, italian major staff knew of the terrible situation of the italian Army/Navy/Airforce after the etiophian war and the massiive support to Franco in the Spanish civil war and realized that they needed time to improve the situation, but in 1939 Von Ribbentropp assured Galeazzo Ciano (aka Mussolini son in law and Italy Foregein minister), that Germany wouldn't have gone to war until 1942, and it would have shared some equipment or sold license fo build equipment but after 2 week they invaded Poland (oh, and most of the italian general learned this on the news paper), and that equipment they promised to share: some Stuka and some Ju88, and a radar equipment for a Destroyer, plus some Pz4G and Pz3M and some STuG (but those only in 1943 and they never seen combat) that's much of it.
add at this mess that Germany looked very close to win the war in 1940 and Mussolini ego and politican situation couldn't allow to just sit here and wacth germany defeat both france and the british empire, plus the fear that Germany after that decided that the Austrian Empire former land (south tyrol, trentino, Veneto, Friuli, lombardy, istria, dalmatia) were also part of "Greater Germany" and invade italy was not a great prospective.
in the end (most) italian general were, well not someone you would trust very much who valued their shitty career more than the well being of the country, you problably get to the point of the situation.
The crusader has been a very middle of the road tank in my mind like it’s not exceptional nor bad and it has its place and importance in history
This. If there is one thing British wartime equipment was. It was good enough. Not great, not terrible. Far, from perfect. But typically able to do the job that was asked of it.
My grandad drove one of these in Africa during the war. He wrote in his diary that it saved his life on many occasions. That’s why I cannot help but love this tank.
Just imagine being a German invading Britain only to be attacked by a small car with covered in boiler parts and full of old men holding crossbows machine guns and flintlocks.
Terrifying stuff
Typical night in a British Town during happy hour
How would that fare against the Bob Sempre?
The worst part is when you have to surrender to them, because you lost your rifle when the Dutch canal boat that Hitler sent you to fight the entire British navy in sank.
Wasn't even hit, there was just a big wave. Now you have to listen to some old guy talk about how his grandkids never call
@@nathaniellindner313 or someone's nana having the same convo with them everytime they ring up.
"Nana the dog is okay just like she was when you asked three minutes ago"
You're gonna see that and go "what do they have that's making them so confident?"
The levels in Call of Duty 2 where you play as a Crusader commander are my favorites in that game. Always had a soft spot for the tank, so it's cool to see some in-depth history on it.
21:03 shots fired at Mark Felton 🤣
A nonsensical rant that goes off topic constantly. I love it !!!! seriously forgot what the video was about but still was entertained
British tanks have a bad rep for no real reason. The early ww2 tanks were perfectly good (albeit there was hardly any), the late ww2 tanks were perfectly good and in between when Britain was fighting an air and sea war for its existence whilst bankrupt things were a bit meh.
Fortunately the Crusader was there in the "bit meh" period and while it's replacement took too long because of "bit meh" it held the Fort along with those other unsung heros the Grant and Stuart.
Well, the reason is they are British. What other reason do you need?
*The Covenanter would like to know your location*
@@TheGreatThicc Well it's the "bit meh", as is the TOG, the Valentine, the Churchill 1 and just about every other mid war tank that isn't the Crusader. Though I guess the covenanted is "really meh".
@@DoddyIshamel the valentine is better than “meh”
No real reason kept for history showing that the concept of a fast cavalry tank (and to a certain degree infantry tanks) completly failed due to the fact that the scenarios that birthed the concept never materialized in reality.
In reality there never was a place for a cavalry tank on the battlefields of ww2
In reality sacrificing armor, reliability and firepower for speed never played out (see the bt-5 and 7)
In reality the situation with the crusaders was so bad that they got all replaced after the african campaign and where not used in europe later on (they last saw action in tunesia for crying out loud, 2 years before the wars end)
No amount of "but in this situation it was really good" is going to win the argument if said situation simply didnt exist.
And that is why early british tanks where hot garbage, they where designed for a war that never happened and where wholly inadequate for the war that actually did.
Thank you, LazerPig. I'll be honest, I was never very interested in the Second World War, including the Africa Campaign so I believed lots of the ideas you've challenged. Most importantly, the one about Britain being useless in Africa until America came along. It was an uncomfortable idea because I'm British and because I've always thought Britain can't have just been an abject failure in Africa, there's always nuance to these things. I largely accepted the idea anyway.
Now, I'm interested in learning more about the Africa Campaign. Thanks again for this video!
It was kind of funny to hear that sentiment on the video - as an American, my understanding had always been that the Italians had shown up, been too Italian to do anything and were sent packing, then Rommel showed up and did some Desert Foxing to Britain's annoyance and dismay until Montgomery came and basically decked him, and that the Americans were just there to make sure the Germans were cut off and couldn't try any more funny tricks while Montgomery corkscrewed Rommel's guys into the sand. I'd never even heard of the idea of America beating the Germans single-handedly in Africa, and the very notion seems absolutely comical. But then again what do I know, my favorite German tank is the Stug
it was very much a back and forth battle until monty showed up and then started methodically pushing the germans back, the italians started by invading egypt, didnt get very far before O'connor on what was meant to be a very limited spoiling attack essentially ended up rolling up most of the italian army 35k british attacking 250k italians and causing 150k dead or captured for very light losses, this lead to the british invading libya, the germans showing up to help the italians and initially pushing the british back, befre outrunning supplies getting counterattacked and pushed back to their starting point, then counterattacking the british who had started to run into the same supply line issue, then the british stopped the germans at 1st el alamain counterattacked with 2nd el alamain and thereafter had the upper hand
You have great series on African campaign made by TiK on youtube.
If you think the British where useless in North Africa, look up operation Compass.
@@nathaniellindner313 That's essentially it.
My dear old dad - 92 and still alive right now - had a hand in designing the stabilized gun of the Crusader.
Say thanks to your dad for us! And hold him close while you’ve still got him
Yeah riiiight...
2023-92. Crusader entered service 1940. And it wasn't stabilised it was balanced and had a rest on the gunners shoulder instead of having geared elevation so he could try to keep it on target. A system not invented for Crusader
@rossBurglar Ok, I got the tank wrong, but he definitely worked on a stabilized gun for a British tank. It started with C I'm sure...
@@utuber1752 That narrows it down...
I heard bagpipes and assemble. Am I needed here