Belgian Gunnery Training: Worm Boards and Prickers

Before putting rounds downrange, it is far more cost-efficient to do training with various aids which develop skills in tracking and laying. These days, of course, we have computers and other simulators to help us do the job, but before then, or if you just want to save a bit of money, old-school techniques performed quite serviceably.
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[@HappyDuude]

Also, 'gunner, heat, tractor' -- the dream of all stuck on a local road during harvest time 😂

[@mahbriggs]

Just remember who feeds you!

[@herosstratos]

A tractor would be a HESH target ...

[@ROBERTNABORNEY]

In Ukraine, tractors are deadly enemies of tanks. BTW, the Uke version of the IRS has declared that if you capture a Russian tank and tow it home, you do not have to declare it as a capital gain.

[@herosstratos]

2:34 The pricker (Nadelgerät) has been used in Germany too. The pricker is a reused hydraulic ventile.

[@dukenukem8381]

I wonder who won biggest prick of the month awards

[@ottovonbismarck2443]

Did "we" get it from the Belgians ? I know some places in Aachen and Düren, where Belgian tank units shared barracks with BW units.

[@herosstratos]

@@ottovonbismarck2443 Or Belgian units adopted it together with the Leopard.

[@JeffBilkins]

'Nadelgerät' sounds kinda spooky.

[@truckerallikatuk]

You know the solution Chieftain, if in doubt, call it an M1.

[@HappyDuude]

Love that 'the pricker' was done with one take - the urge to break into laughter seemed very high!

[@chimichangapoops6244]

One take that we know of lmao. I certainly couldn't have done this in one take that's for sure.

[@wembleyford]

The 120mm etch-a-sketch is a genius idea!

[@gergokerekes4550]

draw me an o! yes sir! draw me an upside-down U! yes sir! Draw me an o! yes sir! what did we make? A portrait sir! -that is how you knock out all leaves for a month.

[@peterking8586]

On Chieftain we had a turret mock-up with a .22 mounted. Then we had a set of rubber targets that would be dragged around the indoor range, on a sand base. Everything was to scale. The gunner would then aim at the rubber targets and fire. You knew you’d hit when the rubber target flew up.

[@mikkoveijalainen7430]

My granpa was a gunner on a captured Soviet T-34-85. I remember him telling me about similar consepts in the Finnish Army during WW2.

[@Squad23jta]

Great Idea. Trust the Belgians to find a way to save money. I wonder if the best tank crew got a bar of chocolate and a beer.

[@keithskelhorne3993]

more likely frittes et mayo and 2 beers? LOL

[@Squad23jta]

@@keithskelhorne3993 even better 😀

[@denisvermeirre1024]

Doing things on the cheap - the magic of the Belgian military!

[@flitsertheo]

From experience, Belgian soldiers are way more interested in beer than chocolate. And beer is or was cheap in army canteens.

[@osmacar5331]

cheap never means bad, in this case, cheap just means financially efficient. spend where you NEED to spend, cheap out on what you can get away with without losing quality.

[@tacticalmanatee]

This reminds me of the British Swift Model B training rifle that worked on a similar principle during WW2, which was known for the shenanigans that soldiers got up to with a rifle-shaped needle-projecting device, usually combined with another unaware soldier's backside.

[@shorttimer874]

When I went through the 11D school they would put up a row of targets on a brick wall, give us all 1911 pistols and a pencil. With the pencil dropped into the barrel the hammer would hit it hard enough to make a mark on the target and that, along with disassembly and reassembly, was our familiarization class.

[@echoredfour]

Real old school hihihihi been there

[@moosemaimer]

I seem to remember a video about a British training rifle with a very long needle attached to the firing pin, where you would aim at a piece of paper at the muzzle, and when you pulled the trigger it would shoot out and leave a pinhole. I also remember it saying those rifles were used to stab people in the butt.

[@Wolfshead009]

@@moosemaimer Pretty sure Forgotten Weapons did a video on those.

[@SuiLagadema]

It's so elegant in its simplicity!! I'm actually amazed!

[@kemarisite]

3:04 "Church steeple" Yes. 1944-45 told us that Church steeples were very important targets to be able to hit.

[@alangordon3283]

Have a think on why .

[@kemarisite]

@@alangordon3283 I'm aware of "why". It would be interesting to know how many times some forward observer looked over his shoulder at the Church steeple exploding because the FO didn't choose the obvious and inescapable location.

[@BufusTurbo92]

that contraption is the cutest piece of military equipment ever invented

[@anthonykaiser974]

RE: Prickers - Looks like a welder came up with a novel use for welding jigs. Damn smart. BTW, the guy who taught me TIG was an M1A1 MG.

[@SonsOfLorgar]

As a mid ranking officer in charge of training the costal artillery AA crew conscripts, my father went on a tour of the local hobby, toy and hardware stores and bought up one or two plastic scale models of each pact and Nato military aircraft. He then gave them to the conscripts along with glue and paints as well as ID photos taken by our own airforce border patrols as barracks homework for each bunk pair to assemble, paint and study the aircraft they got and then hold a short presentation of it in front of the others in the AA training hall a week later. Once the presentations was done, he had them attatch drinking straws along the spines of the models and the following week, those models were pulled on fishing lines stretched crisscrossing across the celiling of the AA training hall as the 40mm/L60 AA crews progressed through both manual and central automated aiming drills while calling out each plane type as they identified the models in their sights!😁

[@Mishn0]

The British developed something like this for Naval gun training training, I think in the late 1800s. It became necessary when guns started getting actual long effective ranges but before automatic gun stabilization was a thing. The gun trainers had to manually track the target by compensating for the pitch and roll of the ship to give the range finder operator a chance at getting a good reading and to keep the target in the sights. The gun trainer trainee looked through a sight while the instructor bobbed the paper ship target up and down and left and right and the trainee had to "fire" when he was on target and a needle would pierce the paper and show how he did.

[@EliteAmmunition]

You said fire the pricker and kept a straight face😅

[@DIVeltro]

The snake board/worm board has been around for decades. For a good challege we used to run the board with all manual controls.

[@Christopher-ix8ql]

Americans = Billion Dollar Simulator to train accuracy. Belgians = Pencil on a stick.

[@stanislavczebinski994]

I think the first price for overly-complicated, overly-sophisticated and overly-expensive solutions goes still to us Germans😆 But I agree: The US military is also very, very good at that. I think the Belgians (like the Dutch, in particular) are a lot more pragmatic. Like - it doesn't need to be fancy, it doesn't need to be pretty: If it does the job - good enough. I truly admire that.

[@ianbell5611]

Very true but in the US military it's not about cost efficiency, it's about profit margins. Suppliers have to make things complicated to justify the cost...😂

[@Vtarngpb]

The later training aid reminds me of Ian Mccollum's video on the Swift Model B... I'm sure nobody EVER misused it 😉🤣

[@joearnold6881]

There’s something bizarre yet adorable about drawing on pieces of paper with your tank gun

Very interesting stuff. I also very much like all the Leo 1 components they have lying around in the Background :)

[@flitsertheo]

They sold the tanks but probably the buyers didn't want all this junk gathered in the about 40-50 years the Leopard was used. So, it ended up in the museum.

[@unclezebulon]

Very interesting! Those simple devices are ingenious.

[@khourks43khourks33]

I hear that finish gunners in the stug's training were asked to draw their names with a brush or pencil attached to the gun barrel.

[@justforever96]

How does that even work? You can't write in one constant motion without removing the pen, even in cursive. How do you lift the pen full the paper between words, to dot your i's, etc?

[@mahbriggs]

​@@justforever96 Lots and lots of practice

[@jamesharding3459]

@@justforever96 The help of a very careful driver.

[@khourks43khourks33]

@@justforever96 You can always write the letters and make a line between them, and it's not neccesary to put dots. Just write mikka in one motion, don't need to won a caligraphy award, only to be readable.

[@waltervanvooren994]

The Belgian Leopard crew's where one of the best of its time those day's they made great result's on the Tank challanges!!!

[@davidburroughs2244]

Oh, so that's whatb the ZMB board is for ... good to know... I thought it was all about bringing tracked and armored vehicles against zombies

[@TheKing1cobra]

it would seem bodges aren't restricted to the UK, still quite clever though

[@cuoresportivo155]

oh no the tanks are filled with snacks, to sell to infantry while on manoeuvres....

[@genericpersonx333]

In fairness, tankers tend to like mechanical arts to start with, and since tank units have lots of tools lying around, they tend to start playing with them. Same on Navy ships: they tend to have amazing tool rooms and yet probably less than half of their output is for official navy purposes. 🙂

[@joebudde3302]

Ingenious!🫡

[@ptonpc]

That is ingenious.

[@minuteman4199]

In Canada we had a system called the IMR - Indoor Miniature range. We'd lay out a cloth terrain model on the floor about 25 to 50 m in front of the vehicle and there was a laser on the turret that would shine a light onto the model and you could see if you hit or not. It was mostly about learning turret drills I imagine.

[@rapter229]

With the addition of modern computerized FCS, have they introduced a similar function within the tanks own systems to track and train accuracy?

[@Davey-Boyd]

Ingenious!

[@IowanLawman]

When your budget is low, you think of ingenious ways to make whatever you need to make.

[@rotwang2000]

They also had an analog driving simulator, it was a tiny roughly 1/300 scale diorama with a tiny camera slaved to the controls inside a tank driving simulator. The system would allow you to drive around towns and villages. Sadly the whole thing was dismantled but the building and some parts were salvaged by a friend who uses them for his 6mm Cold War wargames.

[@AthAthanasius]

Something like this ? kzbin.info/www/bejne/d5S0mpmGfciAgqc

[@Tomyironmane]

This is just an analog simulator.... a pretty cool job of one, too.

[@frankgulla2335]

How clever these Belgians.

[@SvenTheSveed]

Excellent presentation style.

[@davidlefranc6240]

Nice keep up those video's!

[@tangero3462]

The Pricker is quite interesting, I'm aware of the British using something similar for riflemen with dedicated facsimile rifles to punch paper targets for off-range practice. Naturally hijinks ensued when not in use

[@saberwing7930]

I was just about to say this. Ian of Forgotten Weapons even did a review of those training rifles. Whether it's inspired by, or merely great minds thinking alike, it's an interesting system.

[@lhkraut]

Good ideas don't always have to be expensive.

[@njwithers]

oh c'mon - you missed the critical section on how to properly tension the pencil.

[@Yandarval]

Effective, cheap and accurate. No wonder the US used them sparingly. Where is the lobby and Pork barrel dollars in a wooden board and a metal arm.

[@rockbutcher]

Very cool.

[@ianbell5611]

Very cool

[@recce8619]

I remember reading that the Finns crew training for their Stug-3 included having the gunners writing their names on paper using a pencil attached to the gun barrel. Unfortunately I can't provide an actual source for that.

[@MakeMeThinkAgain]

This was really interesting. Unrelated, I recently saw a photograph of an M5 Stuart on anti-sniper duty in a German urban area during 1945. I was a little surprised since I had only seen Shermans involved in urban fighting at that time and it doesn't seem like an obvious job for the cavalry -- I could be wrong. But the more I thought about it the more sense it made. The M5 was more maneuverable in tight urban spaces and was a less valuable target and not much more vulnerable to panzerfausts. The coax was just as useful as the Sherman's while the 37mm -- whether firing HE or canister -- would be up to the task of taking out snipers or MGs without also bringing down entire buildings. Now I'm wondering why M5s weren't used instead of Shermans for this kind of work.

[@stumpythedwarf8712]

You're having a secret competition with Ian from Forgotten Weapons on who can find the coolest stuff to make videos on, aren't you? Very cool Nicky me lad.

[@singeager]

Sounds like a tank gunnery version on the ww2 swift training rifle

[@UkrainerWinklernovsky]

this dude looks like Dr. Louis Flellis from Faces of Death IV

[@yoloman3607]

I wonder if they ever adapted the training sims for WW2 bomber gunners for ground targets on the move.

[@bigboi6452]

First thing i saw was "gunner aids" i like WHAT???

[@echoredfour]

Make sense Sir since you’re talking about the. Leo 1. As i remember it the worm boards were more common back in my dinosaur days up to m60a3. When I became a jedi tanker cdat those training aids fell off focusing more on ucoft running 24/7 if crews are available.

[@martinrose2833]

You are going to do a video on the Swingfire Striker next to the ' pricker ' hu Nicholas ?

[@sandgroper1970]

I am sure the instructors at the Training Center, were all like, how do we provide effective training, to the crews but without breaking the budget, cause Brussels (Government) won't be adding any extra to our annual military budget for the Army to purchase some fancy Training aids.

[@gowdsake7103]

Genius

[@dookiepost]

He reminds me of Norman Finkelstein

[@CTXSLPR]

The "pricker" seems like a descendant of the naval "dotter" which used an offset pencil to mark shots fired on targets. I can't remember if it's a USN or RN invention.

[@mahbriggs]

I believe it was British, but the US came up with something similar or simply copied it!

[@ROBERTNABORNEY]

@@mahbriggs Percy Scott (RN) and William Sims (USN) - look 'em up - were good friends. Scott invented the Dotter

[@mahbriggs]

@@ROBERTNABORNEY I know that! They corresponded regularly.

[@rafaeloda]

Prickin hilarious

[@verstappen9937]

Why does the chieftain not talk about his favourite tank the chieftain? Can we get an inside the hatch? Or a long detailed review? It’s arguably the biggest leap in technology from a tank since the tiger 1

[@TheChieftainsHatch]

I'll get there one day..

[@Real_Claudy_Focan]

We aint rich but we got ideas ! :D

[@b2tall239]

Good job keeping a reasonably straight face when saying "the pricker", Chieftain. Looks like you almost lost it....

[@manuelledu1267]

And then, on the end, there is a scare jump

[@EliteAmmunition]

So you never had a coaxial mounted 22 LR clamped to the 105 barrel and shooting at mini toy targets

[@mikemcginley6309]

That's how we did it at Knox in 79.

[@EliteAmmunition]

@@mikemcginley6309 Still doing it that way in 1983

[@Train115]

I wonder if there's any Dutch stuff you could talk about.

[@qunt2742]

I wonder how much trouble you would get in if you were to ever so accidentally trace a phallic shape on the worm board.

[@ulissedazante5748]

Soldiers being soldiers, I guess you have a point.

[@Grayfox988]

Basically a pantograph.

[@merlinwizard1000]

30th, 6 April 2024

[@Joelsfilmer]

The Brits actually came up with their own version of the pricker, but for infantry rifles. Although in practice it was more of a hepatitis distribution device than a training aid. It was called the Swift Model B, and Ian has of course done a video on it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/kKeme6J9rs6kmNk

[@terryjohnson1064]

It's a pantograph.

[@iainburgess8577]

*Effective gunnery training for cheap.

[@simongee8928]

So simple and inexpensive; too straightforward and obvious for the Americans to adopt - ! 😅

[@DrLoverLover]

So, how many rude words were made on the worm board?

[@Wastelandman7000]

So....in other words gunnery training was a bunch of pricks? LOL

[@truracer20]

The Belgians theoretically HAVE to be much more accurate and faster on target than Americans, in a head to head comparison. 1 tank loss for the Belgians must be the equivalent of 1 or 2 companies lost for the Americans.