The Tiger and its siblings were a product of old war doctrine and a need for a fast production. The armor on the tiger was more than sufficient at the time to deal with the current land scape of weaponry when it was developed. When the Allied weapons began to catch up the flat armor showed its weakness and sloped armor is a very cheap force multiplier for dealing with such things. A sloped armor piece has more effective thickness than the same piece turned vertically along with the benefit of being able to redirect some glancing shells. Though Sloped armor in certain german armor such as the Hetzer and Jagdpanzer was a product of re-cycling chassis of other tanks and only using the bottom half with no turret.

Its funny that the myth of the russians inventing sloped armor when literally the first tanks ever used in WW1 had sloped armor as well. Not to mention ship designers knew about sloped armor for ages before then

What a great name!

The difference between sloping armor and flat armor is the level of air superiority. If you believe that you will have air superiority during war, that makes your biggest threat anti tank guns - then go for flat armor. If you have enemy anti tank planes in the air, then sloped armor is advice.

5:18 cool, Finnish captured T-34

Excellent presentation, thanks

With interlocking plates there is more surface area to weld. Which makes it a lot stronger.

I will summarize it: Germany's main tank was the Pz III Its successor was the Panther. The problem, however, was that the Panther was badly wired into the Third Reich's warfare system, and on top of that, it was very unreliable. If a commander had 100 Panthers at his disposal, he actually had 60 of them, because 40 did not arrive from the factory, and of those 60 tanks, 40 were broken, or broke down when reaching the front. As a result, of the theoretical 100 Panther, between 20 and 50 tanks actually fought, depending on the period, as later versions eliminated some of the breakdowns and increased tank production. When it was realized that the Panther was too defective to become the new main battle tank, it was decided that temporarily that tank would be the Pz IV. Ironically, however, the Pz III was actually replaced by the StuG III self-propelled gun and in practice became the main "tank" of the Third Reich.

Que nombre tiene el bote?

Why those dissclusures?

A GOOD weld can be just as strong as the surrounding material as any welder can tell you, so in general using interlocking makes no sense and only complicates the production process. That said it's well known that making a GOOD weld was at the end of the war virtually impossible for German manufacturers because the welding sticks were lacking crucial components. It was mentioned "somewhere" in the German sources that they had to use "naked" welding sticks, which means you get bad welds with many inclusions/oxidation etc. So welds became generally awful and interlocking plates was a measure to compensate somewhat for the bad weld quality.

You've got an error in your title. "Why German Sloped Armor was so late" is not a question, its a statement. So it shouldn't have a question mark at the end. To make it a question, it would be "Why was German Armour so late?"

T 34 was much more laid back.

way to long video i skiped through it and dont find the answere

Why is there a bicycle under that t-34-85?

Inclined armor was already used in the Middle Ages. Back then, the armor of knights was specially inclined so that the blows of spears and swords would slide down the armor. Subsequently, this art was applied to the construction of castles, where increasingly sloped walls were built to cope with increasingly accurate artillery weapons. Ships, too, gained sloping armor, although this was originally due to the imposed tax on the deck area, so the sloping sides resulted from the reduction of the deck. It turned out, however, that the inclined side not only allows the ship to pay less tax, but also to deflect cannon shells. The inclined armor continued in the first ironclad ships. First during the Crimean War (at that time such armor was used on floating barges) , and then during the Civil War on monitors Inclined armor can already be found among the first tanks, but there were technological problems to fully incline the tank's armor. The first problem was the visors, as mentioned in the film. The thicker the armor was, the more difficult it was to cut a proper hole. In addition, when cutting the hole, there was a risk of damaging the plate, which was already only suitable for remelting. Another problem was the complexity of the design, this lengthened the production process, production time and production cost. The thicker the armor plate, the more all these costs increased. The very process of fitting and welding the inclined armor plate was complicated. During WWI, inclined armor was not a big problem, as long as it did not exceed 45' of inclination. This was due to the fact that armor plates were riveted to a special framework. An angle less than 45' prevented riveting. It was possible to get around this by creating a more complex shape from more armor plates, but this increased cost, vehicle weight, production time and did not make the armor more resistant to hits at all. Quite the opposite. The revolution came after the war with the use of bent plates, but this worked well with plates no thicker than 15 mm. Bending thicker armor required creating wider bend arcs and special techniques for hardening steel. Even so, bent steel exhibited weakened ballistic capabilities. Even welding was not an immediate solution. Welding in the 1930s was still a fairly new technique and was not perfect. There was the problem of welding sheet metal at unusual angles, large thicknesses, and armor plates that were too heavy. The Americans developed the relevant technology only with later models of the Sherman (although they had already experimented with it with the M3 Lee There was, however, the problem of cracking welds to vibrations and stresses at that time. The Russians did not have to develop welding technology, as they received the appropriate technology from the US, as did the British. The Italians and Japanese received their welding technology quite late from the Germans and did not have time to implement it in series vehicles. The alternative to welding was cast armor. It was cheap and quick to produce, but less hard and, on top of that, without the right technology, emitted numerous fragments inside when hit. That's still not the end of the story, however, as sloped armor complicated access to the gearbox, and placing the gearbox at the rear would create numerous technological problems (the T-34 had huge problems with the gearbox. The last gear had to be put in by hitting the rod with a hammer, while the gearbox itself had a very short lifespan, so there were T-34s carrying a spare gearbox on the engine compartment vault.

Jagdpanzer 38(t),"Hetzer" is nothing but slope

Interlocking might tend to support plates in place during welding, tying up heavy fabrication equipment less. As to flat plate, it seems to me that you don't have to worry so much about shot traps or chaotic deflection. Trying to hit a turret ring would seem to be more challenging.

💪🇫🇮 Don't underestimate our country

I would like to watch about the leIG18 crew ranks etc

the video mised it's title i think. why geran tanks are boxy tured to what ist the use of interlocking armor plates. but why german tanks up to Tiger1 have been boxy, and why this changed with Panther? slopped armor was known as the video stats and one drawback is the stability of the joints. this is addressed in the video greatly. one point is mostly missed but worth mentioning: internal space! slopped armor takes lots of space internaly alter on missing for crew and equipment or ammunition. adn how wide a PzIII would have been with the sloppes of a t34 to give same space - 3 amn turret,... also it was seen that putting your tank at an angle would bee sufficent - mahlzeit-stellung , and this worked also with the improved armor for some times. additionally , All the boxed tanks take their roots back to the late 1930's even tiger1 as a development over certain VK30.xx studies. only Tiger 2 and especially Panther take their roots to a daical rethinking triggered by the events of W2

The UdSSR had T-40,T-50, T-60, T-70 and T-80 series of light tanks, and also the ASU-57 and BMD vehicles. As you can see, the idea of a very light tank with a car motor is not new to the world, and especially to russians. The lack of fuel, ammo and transport capabilites pushes this types of vehicles into ambush and support role.

The German engineers designed the perfect tank in the Panzer 3 and 4. Ergonomically it's the perfect tank! After seeing the effectiveness of the rather crudely constructed T-34 and noting how effective its sloped armor was the German army decided that sloped armor was the future of tank design. It has its limits as the extremely sloped turrets limit the usable space inside the tanks. Which leads us to the pinnacle of tank design, the British Centurion. Every extreme has its limits. Sending you lots of love from Arizona!

Wait-canister shot HAD to hit the ground before it would spread? Wouldn't that make it incredibly hard to hit the correct distance?

Germans did the boxy design? Good thing the Great British people are so much better with all their sloped armor on the Churchill, the Cromwell and the Comet.

how do you even weld huge armorplates like this? would be interesting to see someone explain it

The biggest reason was they didnt need it. As aillied guns were crap. No muzzle veloicity.......

Interlocking armor plates is an interesting but separate topic from sloped armor, because clearly you can do one without doing the other. About the positives and negatives of interlocking armor plates: first off, as you mentioned, thick tank armor is hard to cut (especially with the precision necessary to create interlocking), cutting it into this shape will take more time because the length of material you need to cut is longer than a straight line, the same problem appears with welding. Obviously these are two very expensive, material and time consuming processes, I think that they probably had a reason for them. I think the main benefit to interlocking the plates like this is impact resistance. Welds are generally more brittle than the slabs of armor that they join, when they get hit, they sometimes crack, even more rarely, the entire weld cracks and the structural integrity of the hull is compromised without a full penetration of the armor. I think that this is what they wanted to deal with. If a weld like the one on the Tiger II is impacted, part of the weld might crack, but the crack will only travel down the weld in a straight line, once the crack has to make a 90 degree turn to follow the weld, a lot of the energy will dissipate. This makes the weld tougher even though Germany did not have the best welding technology as you mentioned. This is of course all speculation on my part based on my limited knowledge of armor manufacture, welding, material science and other topics. If I got something wrong please tell me!

There were sound reasons to employ sloped armor, but also to not bother. It should be kept in mind that the standard infantry anti-tank gun in 1941 was still the 37-mm Pak 36. While this piece was quite adequate against 85% of Soviet armor, being the T-26 and the BT tank series, mostly, of course they were but "door knockers" against the frontal armor of the T-34 and pretty much any perspective of a KV-1. This problem had been noted in Belgium and France, first notably at the tank battle of Gembloux in May 1940, where not only the infantry anti-tank guns but also the main armaments of the Panzer I (machine guns ONLY!), Panzer II (20 mm, at least it was a rapid-fire weapon), Panzer III (still its standard main weapon was a 37 mm piece), and the Czech-built 38(t), also with a 37 mm main weapon. While these tanks did OK against the French two-man tanks, be they Renault or Hotchkiss, the larger French tanks like the Somua S-35 and especially the Char B1 (even worse with the heavier armored B1 bis) were nearly immune to those weapons. The German solution was to avoid engaging enemy armor with their light tanks, but instead to coordinate with artillery, the Luftwaffe with its Stukas, and, since the French L'Armee d'Air was, by then, fairly much negated, bringing up the Luftwaffe's 88 mm guns to be used as anti-tank pieces, at which, if they had a decent field of fire and could engage the enemy armor outside the range of the opponent's weapons, then the results were devastating for the French, and later at Arras, the British with their Matilda Is and Matilda "Seniors" (later just Matilda when the first vehicle, itself only equipped with a single .303 machine gun, was relegated to training). Likewise against Soviet T-34s and KVs were these practices employed, along with daring "Panzerjagers", whom, once the Soviet "Desanti" infantry were picked off, would hop aboard the rear deck of a Soviet tank and affix a mine underneath the turret overhang, or drop a grenade down the exhaust. German tank-hunting teams also used "Molotov" cocktails as readily as the Soviet infantry. Once their Panzer IIIs got all the 5 cm guns, especially the L60 version with sufficient penetration to take on the T-34s on more or less equal terms, the "PanzerSchrek", or "tank terror", died down as the weaknesses of the new Soviet armor were found. Interestingly enough, once the German Panzer IVs and StuG III got the excellent 75 mm L48 tank gun, the sloped armor proved meaningless, as the APCBC round tends to "precess", or rotate towards a direction more "normal" to the sloped armor, penetrating it like a hot knife through butter anyway. The armor on the T-34s that had the 76mm gun was but 45 mm, which kept the weight down when with a combat load of shells and fuel to just under 30 tons, a fairly light weight for a fairly large vehicle. That and the use of the all-aluminum diesel V-12, 450 horsepower engine, developed from a French aircraft diesel the Soviets had bought in 1934. This shows that not all Soviet engineering was crude, and Soviet designs could "think outside the box" as readily as others. It was indeed quite big, but rather light for its size. Wasn't all that durable, but given the typical life of a T-34 in combat, it didn't have to be.

naZi ruSSia наZі руССя

I'm not sure this makes any sense to me, but as a young man I knew a "tank escort" for the German Army (the guy who walks along side tanks into combat), He served from the beginning of the war to the fall of Paris. Mainly he escorted tiger tanks on the Russian front until losing a kidney and being assigned to guard a tiger during the fall of Paris, where the tank overheated and he got captured still escorting it. So here's the weird part... he told me that the way the Tiger was designed to deflect shells straight upwards. And he claims that's exactly what they did in his actual experience on the Russian Front. He mentioned that Tiger crews preferred to assault or defend from the high ground. and he also added that most Tiger gunners could hit a moving jeep at 1000 meters. While I have to agree that it's unlikely that incoming shells would ever come at a tank straight on I don't quite understand why incoming shells would always ricochet straight upwards. Lastly, at least through quite of a the war, German tankers weren't too concerned with Russian tanks or most other Russian munitions that they were encountering. For the most part they felt that they could outrange the Russians and survive incoming hits. I wish I remembered more of that conversation, but that was nearly 50 years ago.... Perhaps for WW 2 buffs in general, I'll add a couple of fun trivia that he told me: On the offensive towards Moscow the tank guards were usually tasked with capturing meals. For the most part this involved capturing Russian soldiers and confiscating their food. They might capture up to 60 Russians in a morning forage and he said, the Russians didn't necessarily have bullets, but they always had good food. He went on to tell me that things went terribly wrong when the quality of the Russian Food declined and the Russians suddenly became flush with resources and ammo. In his mind the Russians had somehow built a great factory that produced everything they needed and cost Germany the war. He didn't speak Russian or English, but he memorized the name of the factory and he wrote it on the barn wall in pencil.... it read...."Made in USA" which he pronounced as one word in German and I didn't get it until he wrote it. I of course translated the word for him and we both walked away from the conversation having learned something. It's been 50 years and I thought I might share this little story before it's lost to history.

I gotta say, this kinda misses the point of a flame tank as demonstrated by the crocodile. The purpose of battle, and especially a flame tank, is to compel the enemy to stop resisting. Using a flame tank to attack highly fortified positions is a waste. Really you want to use these in mop up exercises and convince pockets of infantry to surrender without further fighting. But I think German battle thinking is always towards the hard factors of weapon systems, not the soft factors. If it were, they would have known you needed a crocodile like heavy vehicle to make intimidation a possibility.

The only place Sloped armour actually works is up Front!

One of the first uses of sloped armor is in Leonardo da Vinci's proposed wooden tank. There is also a very interesting 1730+ period America sloped sided gun boat which is still at the bottom of Lake George NY. Site of the Battle of Fort William Henry, in the French and Indian war. Because of the lake's water conditions its still in almost like new shape.

This presentation rocks!

Why does the narrator always sound angry in these videos? They should get like an AI woman to narrate it would be so much better & less scary.

A proper weld should be just as strong as the surrounding steel. Thus, interlocking is not needed.

What is this Sherman invasion you're talking about?

Gonna use this knowledge in my advanced squad leader board game.

Germans had issues with steel quality. Their steel tended to be high in carbon which makes it more brittle but also harder to weld. This meant that a strong impact could cause the welds to crack or even burst open and for this reason german engineers started using interlocking armor plates to create more surface area for the welds to hold onto. Interlocking also would help hold the plates together even after the welds failed completely. This has nothing to do with sloped armor.

So next video is about the development from direct vision ports to prisma periscopes?

You have the thickest German accent I've ever heard. Also, great video!

This kinda reminds me of the American Sherman in WW2, fast very maneuverable and could get behind the German tanks and also surprise them. Unfortunately the loss rate was very high, i think the Wiesels could have a place in Ukraine but they could also be desomated with the right kind of weapons and especially minds. I wouldn't want to be in one!

It takes a smart person to assume their right, but to learn more and admit they are unsure. I can always trust this channel to present information in a thought-out and honest way, without letting bias get in the way. And to be fair, the different possibilities presented in this video don't necessarily exclude each other, and more likely, both the structural integrity of welds and the need changes in needs of vision ports contributed to the use of slopped armor.

There are also other reasons then welding seam design. More square then rectangle length/width dimension ratio and less differentiated armor thickness favored "quadratish-practish-gut" boxy design, saving mass/increasing armored inner volume/widening space for larger turrets, more space for crew entry hatches and some other equipment, that otherwise would be needed to put on frontal armor, compromising it's integrity. Vertical sloping to some extent can be replaced with horizontal by simply angling positioning of tank (especially one like Tiger-1, that was more evenly, less differentiated, well armored both from front and sides.

the wiesel is a gun carrier different weapons can be mounted on it and seems like it would be well suited for Ukraine's fast moving attacks shoot and scoot operations it isn't a battle tank it isn't "better" then the leopards it's made for different operations but I really like those little tankettes

The difficulties which you are encountering in explaining why sloped armor was not introduced is because you are trying to explain mentality and expertise of the people at that time. Part of technology is understanding how to apply already known concepts more efficiently. Military technology is designing vehicles for a specific task within specific budget and time limit. Designs were such, because they did not prioritized protection at that time. Most tanks preferred mobility, in part due to low reliability of interwar tanks. Combine that with outdated mentality and low funding for tank development during interwar years and we have what we got. In other words, Germans did not used sloped armor simply, because they could not be bothered to. And that is an important distinction, because wielding armor plates comes with its own unique challenges. Someone need to invest money into researching this problem and coming with a solution. This is why it wasn't done passively. Another part of an issue is that sloped armor plates reduce internal volume. So, as tanks were designed around mobility first, why would you want sloped armor to begin with?

5:30 Why is there a swastika at a T-34?

I own a PAK myself A Nintendo Game Pak.

Tiger 1's with their turret removed are just very fast boxes that have some amour.