Why no German Flail Tanks?

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

Play World of Warships here: wo.ws/3sl60uk Thank you World of Warships for sponsoring this video. During registration use the code BRAVO to get for free: 500 doubloons, 1.5 million credits, 7 Days of Premium Account time, and a ship! Applicable to new users only.

[@EricEngle-f1q]

German drone tanks were also used to lay telephone cables for front line communications.

[@patrickwentz8413]

So in Afghanistan our engineers clearing mines got rotated off the vehicles after 3 mines were hit. Anything more than three mines and the engineers started getting a little shell shocked and twitchy in the cabs of the mine clearing vehicles.

[@markmatsushima7356]

Getting concussed repeatedly in a short span leaves some level of CTE like damage. As a byproduct of the NFL mess, the military became fully aware of the potential. Shell shock is real

[@88porpoise]

6:20 Correction there, the Sherman Crab was made by the British with the key figure in its development being South African. The Americans used some provided to the by thr British.

[@CaptainCaveman4485]

Yeah it was one of the Hobart's Funnies types the British Army used for D Day.

[@ExPatTanker]

My understanding is that the US went with the mine roller concept instead of flails - at least this is the story that Dick Hunnicutt tells in his Medium Tank history book. If Bernhard has found something different then I'm all ears?

[@88porpoise]

@@ExPatTanker The US had the T1E3 mine roller, but it was far inferior to the Crab in the vast majority of circumstances. It was too big and heavy to be practical outside very limited circumstances and it was absolutely useless off road (it used ten foot diameter steel disks). It also only cleared the area in front of the tracks, unlike a Crab which cleared the entire path in front of the tanks. The former is good enough when clearing a road for vehicles to move down but problematic for something like establishing a path through minefields for an offensive where various men and equipment will be following those paths in less than ideal circumstances.

[@ExPatTanker]

@@88porpoise Yes, I was agreeing with you - just leaving the door open for somebody to come along and give me new information that I hadn't seen before :)

[@michaelguerin56]

Thank you Bernhard for another well researched and presented video. Cheers from NZ. There are always reported complications in mine clearance work. During our Engineer Corps Training at Linton Military Camp, New Zealand in 1984, the Chief Instructor was then Staff Sergeant Ben Akari. He had recently returned from UN mine clearance work in the Sinai Peninsula. One of the technical challenges was that some of the minefields had been laid in wadis-dry river beds-in the 1950s and decades of ‘flash floods’ had redistributed the mines in random fashion! Another issue, as reported to me by one of our Squadron Quartermaster Sergeants, was that: the Bedouin herders would steal the barbed wire fences that were erected, complete with mine signs, to keep people safe. The thefts meant that other Bedouin subsequently entered the unfenced minefields BUT that did not seem to bother the thieves. I suspect that similar problems have beset mine clearance teams from the introduction of the mass produced land mine.

[@christopherwebber3804]

It's interesting to read that the Matilda Baron, a very similar design to the Scorpion, was only used for training, and the Baron and Scorpion were built in different places due to military secrecy preventing knowledge of their respective constructions. Next, I would like to see a video about the tauchpanzer, schwimmkorper, landwasserschlepper, Brukenlager, Sd Kfz 251/7, Infanerie Sturmsteg auf Panzer IV, and particularly the ladungsleger Pz I & II (still not sure how the explosive charge was supposed to be placed - was it lifted over the front of the tank, or was the tank reversed onto the target, exposing its pitifully thin rear armour?). There were also Panzer II & III flamethrowers. You can read my article about these vehicles in "World at War" #50.

[@88porpoise]

The Matilda Baron presumably suffered from many of the same issues that the Scorpion did (and issues with Matilda II in general). But it (along with the experience from North Africa) did provide for a learning experience that would go into developing the Sherman Crab.

[@alexandercorbett3095]

Hmm this seems pretty visual for a non visual channel… 🤔 nonetheless always good to see my fav Austrian 👍

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@Dilley_G45]

Favorite Austrian? Nikki Lauda and Jochen Rindt's Ghosts entered the chat. Actually Jochen Rindt's FIA license's ghost, he was German, but still

[@SerMatFi]

​@@Dilley_G45Not that many people watch golf, you know?

[@Dilley_G45]

@@SerMatFi Golf? I never watch Golf and I don't have millionaire friends. I don't know. Why you bring up the non-Sport of Golf

[@DiggingForFacts]

The visualised channel specifically uses a powerpoint-style presentation system, often to show things like graphs and tables that visualise the subject being discussed.

[@captainhurricane5705]

There were few offensives after Kursk, but there were plenty of Corps or Divisional attacks that required enemy minefields to be cleared. Anyway, nice vid!

[@MagiciansApprentice1]

Isn't the main issue that by 1943/4 Germany needed every tank it could get for defence, whereas mine-clearing is an offensive item that German was rarely doing.

[@KuK137]

Nonsense. Germans were beaten with ease both at Kursk and the Bulge, two critical battles, because all that heavy, expensive tanks had zero way of cleaning mines and a bunch of conscripts behind minefield were capable of stopping whole panzer regiments full of new Tiger models, all while laughing at wundertanks blowing up while accomplishing nothing...

[@DiggingForFacts]

Being on the defensive does not preclude an army from thinking about or preparing for offensive actions. Granted, it may not have been a big ticket item for them, but at some point they assumed/hoped/dreamed to go back on the offensive and from a planning perspective it makes sense to have been prepared for that.

[@czwarty7878]

They were still producing offensive equipment, like flamethrower tanks or Sturmtiger - 100% offensive design. One has to remember that there's a certain delay between designing, putting thing into production and implementing it to units. Vehicles that were designed in early 1942 when Germany was still on the offensive were often getting to lines in late 1944, when the situation was almost completely opposite. However it's true German priority was getting tanks in the first place - some lower-tier Panzer divisions didn't get enough Panzer IVs and needed to employ StuGs in place of tanks by late 1944. So "wasting" a Panzer IV for mine-clearing vehicle, a role that could be done by cheaper means was not exactly a good choice.

[@czwarty7878]

@@KuK137 Yes bro I'm sure they were pissing themselves laughing and entire German army just decided to stop because a tank hit a mine, and they totally had no means of doing anything about it. And all the gruesome casualties on both sides from these battles were just dudes and bros dying from laughter from this hilarious prank.

[@wernerviehhauser94]

​@@KuK137read Töppel and Frieser. He'll teach you where Overy exaggerated or even lied in his depiction of the battle of Kursk. It cost the Red Army over 400 T34, which was half of their tanks. German losses were small, there were more pressing reason for cancelling Operation Zitadelle.

[@marcusott2973]

Much awaited, much appreciated looking forward to excellent insights as always from you.

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

Glad to hear it!

[@JGCR59]

The german approach makes sense for immidiate combat situations. Mine fields in combat should always be covered by fire. Using expendable or semi expendable vehicles there makes sense. A Sherman flail is very good at removing mines in situations where the enemy has abandoned covering the minefield or has no anti-tank assets to do so.

[@88porpoise]

But at the same time the flail tanks should be covered by other assets from their side. If your artillery is laying down a smoke screen and suppressing enemy artillery and AT guns along with air support while the Crabs are covered by other Shermans (either normal gun tanks or the reserve Crabs) that will provide some degree of protection. Yes, they will be vulnerable, but almost certainly less so than swishy combat engineers or forces wandering through a well developed minefield that hasn't had paths cleared. In North Africa the reports were that the mine flails kicked up so much sand that they effectively created their own smoke screens (and, less fortunately, it also choked off the air intakes of their engines). To be clear, the Matilda Scorpion and Sherman Crab were very much designed to clear a path through a prepared minefield while under fire. Things like Second El Alamein (the Scorpion was developed in Egypt specifically for this operation) or Normandy, where they were to clear paths through minefields the enemy spent weeks or months building at the front edge of an offensive.

[@KuK137]

No, it doesn't make sense. It was shit, expensive, overcomplicated, and crap at every task you wanted out of it. Mine flail did one thing, but it did it well while nonexistent (due to impossibility of cramming all that junk into one vehicle) German was trash at everything because stuff existing only in wishful thinking does nothing. Even assuming someone would build such a vehicle 1 enemy shot disables all specialist capability unit has due to tiny production runs of wundervehicles while cheap flails can be deployed by the dozen...

[@88porpoise]

@@KuK137 I would add that this was not a trivial task. Developing a practical and effective mine clearance vehicle was a challenge with only the British really succeeding. The best the Americans came up with was a roller with huge issues (mainly due to the weight of ten 10-foot diameter steel wheels) and basically only useful on roads. The PT-34 was better than the T1E3, but still deeply flawed and less capable than a flail. Both of these also only cleared the areas in front of the tracks, leaving mines down the middle of the path. The Japanese were developing a flail, but I don't believe it got any real use before the war ended. And the British absolutely took the kitchen sink approach to it. They had rollers, ploughs, flails, and line launchers as prototypes (and often multiple teams developing their own versions of each) and/or in limited service before settling on the Sherman Crab and post-war moving to the Churchill Road.

[@edward9674]

Another fascinating video! Love your work!

[@whya2ndaccount]

Pretty sure the British built the "crab" as an upgrade to the "scorpion" - another element of 79th Armoured Division.

[@thearisen7301]

Converted Panzer IIIs might of worked but we'll never know

[@RasEli03]

It feels so weird to see mtv stand where I stood in the panzermuseum munster

[@alangordon3283]

They had penal battalions for that .

[@TheArklyte]

As well as PoWs and civilians... or am I mixing them up with soviets now?🤔

[@Reverenz88-14]

​@@TheArklyte Class enemies find their use! Splendid. Whichever class they're the enemies of - the "free proletariat" or the "free workers"... hmmm wait a minute

[@hayleyxyz]

​​@@TheArklyte Brits used German POWs for mine clearing in Norway I believe, post war And ofc USSR used POW labour to rebuild, and I'm sure that included clearing mines

[@busTedOaS]

​@@hayleyxyz "Under the sand" is a great movie about underage german POWs forced to clear danish beaches.

[@Dilley_G45]

​@@TheArklyteMostly Soviets. And the scene from the Rambo 4 movie

[@sapperjaeger]

Exceptionally well done!

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

Glad you liked it!

[@mchrome3366]

Thanks for your work.

Thank you for answering this question I recently asked myself. For me it was intersting that the first organisational charts for the Heavy tank battalions had some of the Borgward as an integral part of the unit. I asked Wolfgang Schneider about this and he said only two units goit them (from memory) and apparently it wasnt a sucess, because later that practice wasnt continued. But it does make sense at first glance to include them because Tiger Units were after all meant for breakthrough operations at the focal point of an offensive. So mine clearing and blowing up defences would have been part of that.

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

Yeah, I think I cut the part about the Heavy Tank Battalions. I would although not draw the conclusion that it was discontinued due to no success, although in this case it likely was, but e.g., it could have that they realized they need them for every Regiment, Division, etc. (and then they realized, there won't be much attacking against minefields anymore) After all, they produced a lot of Goliaths, which of course could also be due to an error etc.

[@czwarty7878]

@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized yeah I think they just revised the organization but in practice wherever sPzAbt was used they probably assigned engineers with Borgwards anyway. Organic-assigned units are important for close support in "need it for yesterday" situations but with minefield clearing for entire tank unit it's a big and time consuming undertaking that must be properly planned and carried out by multiple units anyway

[@CGM_68]

There are photos of the 130 ton Krupp Räumer S (Both front and rear sections) captured by the US in 1945. The photo clearly shows the marking OTIT 9 on the vehicle. Ordanance Technical Intelligence Team, so it was being transported for evaluation at that time. Strange it never made it as far as the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Given that the booms on a Liberty Ship having a maximum lift capacity of 50 tons, that may explain the decision to evaluate the miner sweeper in France. The "somewhere" in France was Ordnance Technical Intelligence Team Dépôt O-644 near Paris

[@theromanorder]

Not sure why i haven't thought of this, good question lol

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

Play World of Warships here: wo.ws/3sl60uk Thank you World of Warships for sponsoring this video. During registration use the code BRAVO to get for free: 500 doubloons, 1.5 million credits, 7 Days of Premium Account time, and a ship! Applicable to new users only.

[@eighthelement]

Germans constructed improvised flails for at least 1 Panzer II tank in Africa. Several photos surfaced of this tank. This design was initiated because minefields at Tobruk were a problem, and they crippled German attacks against the fortress on 14 April and 1 May 1941. In one photo, an obvious problem with the flails can be seen. Tank is moving forward and there is large cloud of dust behind (perfectly normal in Africa), but there is also a smaller cloud between the flails and the tank. This second cloud appears to be large enough to completely blind the driver. We will never know if this design was successful because German assault against Tobruk (planned on 20 November 1941) had to be cancelled, because of the British offensive on 18 November 1941.

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

Source? Can’t find anything .

[@eighthelement]

freeimage a host b i b pz-ii-flails-africa a JCU0z9S replace a with dot and b with slash (really hard to post comment with a link, many failed attempts) ​@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized

[@rutabagasteu]

Interesting. Thanks !

[@markaxworthy2508]

It seems inherently unlikely that the Germans took over two years to find out about a piece of equipment that must have been used in plain sight of them.(05:53)

[@LafayetteCCurtis]

The flail tanks in North Africa might never have operated within sight of the Germans at all if they were primarily employed to clear paths through already-secured minefields well behind the front lines.

[@markaxworthy2508]

@@LafayetteCCurtis Surely, the whole point of using tanks was that, being armoured, they could operate at the front.

[@LafayetteCCurtis]

@@markaxworthy2508 Not necessarily for these specialised vehicles. The video itself pointed out that the Sherman Crab saw much more use clearing minefields in the Allied rear areas, where the armour was still quite useful in protecting the crew from fragments (whether from artillery fire or from fhe mines they triggered). The Matildas probably operated the same way, still within tbe threat range of enemy artillery but beyond direct Axis fire or observation. Also remember that most of the Afrika Korps was captured when they were finally defeated in Tunisia. It's not impossible that even if frontline Axis troops saw Allied mine-clearing tanks, they may have been killed or captured before they could write any reports on them, and if any such reports werr ever written then it's perfectly plausible that they never made their way through the bureaucracy in time to be taken back home by Rommel or the relatively small number of officers and veteran soldiers withdrawn before the unit's encirclement and surrender.

[@markaxworthy2508]

@@LafayetteCCurtis Certainly, "not necessarily". However, engineers don't need specialist armoured mine clearing vehicles in rear areas, where they have fewer time constraints. However, they have clear advantages in the combat zone, for which they were designed. Their continued use in rear areas when the front was quiet would have been more productive than leaving them parked up indefinitely. It still seems inherently unlikely that the Germans took over two years to find out about a piece of equipment that must have been used in plain sight of them on multiple occasions. Perhaps they just never captured one to inspect its mechanism..

[@LafayetteCCurtis]

@@markaxworthy2508 There’s nothing “inherently unlikely” about it. Military intelligence processes are inherently complex, often unreliable, and always clouded by the fog of war. Even if the Germans _did_ spot British mine tanks in Africa in 1942 (and there’s still no certain evidence that they did), there are too many steps where the report could have failed to make its way to a decision-maker back home in Germany, and then the decision-maker could just decide that the observer at the front was just imagining a thing that didn’t really exist. So it’s perfectly reasonable for the Germans to lose or dismiss or ignore the information they needed to understand the relevance of Allied flail tanks for over two years.

[@Adiscretefirm]

If you wanted clever engineering in WW2 you needed the Brits

[@Pilvenuga]

umm, british engineering was always subpar in WW2, this is why they needed the czechs, the poles, the french and the americans the british spite, however...

[@Adiscretefirm]

@@Pilvenuga except for radar, computers, airplane engines, etc

[@Pilvenuga]

@@Adiscretefirm only thing brits built well were the rolls-royce Merlin engines and even they got it wrong on the first try

[@MrJC1]

​@@Pilvenugayea thats literally all we did. Sure thing. 🤣🤣🤣

[@justanordinaryaccount9910]

​@@Pilvenuga Boland Stronk

[@whirving]

Pieper was held up for 8 or more hours at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge because he hit mines in his and other tanks. That was an extremely costly time loss for their schedule.

[@Area51UFOGynaecology]

mein freund, what your audience is interested in is german tank encounters vs soviet stuff that used the 122 and 152, anything you can find

[@alexkorman1163]

If you’re fighting on the defensive, what do you need mine clearers for?

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

Germans attacked even while being on the defensive.

[@RODI____]

The question is did the allies use minefields. Minelaying was a slow process then.

[@TheJohn_Highway]

@@RODI____ Yes, a lot

[@tomhenry897]

Never thought of it

[@UncleJoeLITE]

More broadly, with Germany operationally on the defensive everywhere, the need for flail tanks was much less. The "Borgward B IV" looks like a...I'm not sure tbh, given the known limits of Goliath. But it's interesting. Also, Shermans were plentiful - no Allied made Hetzers etc, no need. _

[@MonkeyJedi99]

Ah, good old copyright. Stifling education world-wide.

[@edutaimentcartoys]

history 👍

[@MrWhy6]

It seems a clearing mines would be easier to clear in sand than in dirt or mines in mud. Idk really how mines are affected by terrain.

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

Mines aren’t affected by mines that much. Mine clearance, on the other hand, is significantly affected by terrain.

[@bigsarge2085]

👍👍

[@georgecristiancripcia4819]

Honestly,what i got from this video is the fact that germans could not invent and build a good flail system for anti mines work. The sherman crab drawbacks are common with all tanks.The rest is only empty air

[@kevincalhoun9653]

First idea is that since they where "purging"so many non combatants as a matter if self cleansing, it is hard to believe they cared about the ability of a german soldier to survive a minefield

[@kyosokutai]

The two are not mutually exclusive concepts.

[@joeyj6808]

I was playing Panzerblitz/Leader the other day, and this very question crossed my mind. But being Axis, my guess was that they just had Romanians or Italians walk ahead of the tanks. (that joke was in poor taste, I am aware)

[@OneofInfinity.]

u forgot the Hungarians.

[@joeyj6808]

I did. Apologies!@@OneofInfinity.

[@CarlAlex2]

Minenräumpanzer III ?

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

No flail.

[@goforitpainting]

WOW

[@lerondgattenor]

German Crab? :D

[@johnculver2519]

might as well be German, as it is being incorrectly credited to the Americans who were rather uninterested in them, along with the rest of Hobarts funnies.

[@88porpoise]

Pretty sure he said "Sherman crab" but his accent made it sound like "German Crab"

[@Akm72]

I'm sure it was 'German Grab'! 😄

[@jaskaasi]

well now they do

[@Danilo-zn6wj]

Pomaze Bog

[@donjorge8329]

Weil es dafür schlicht keine Formulare gab, das liegt doch auf der Hand!

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

😂

[@obsidianjane4413]

tldr; Guderian couldn't be bothered so left it to the sappers and infantry to deal with it.

[@tomhenry897]

Didn’t he drive panzer 1 and 2s through minefields to clear them as the most worthless tanks he had

[@theoldfart6404]

It seems that while all the powers took different approaches to de-mining, none of them reliably cleared a pattern of anti-tank mines. The Germans were on the right track with the idea of a projected net of explosive charges. Still, this was a major issue during my service and it remains a challenge to this day, particularly when conducting such operations against active opposition. Mines are a nightmare.

[@alepaz1099]

yes the right hand doesn't know what the left one is doing 🤷‍♂

[@JGCR59]

Change your sponsorship to War Thunder pls :P

[@Pikilloification]

I wouldn't recommend playing either, but our boy needs to put food on the table

[@airbornecigar537]

Eckhertz's 1950s D-Day from a German perspective interviews also record Goliaths as part of the Atlantic Wall defences.

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

That "book" is a scam.

[@airbornecigar537]

@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Ah, that saves me some digging I was going to do on Eckhertz. Sorry...

[@DD-qw4fz]

Why , because flail mine clearers like the Crab are highly overrated and not practical in active combat zone, which is why modern US army uses engineer tanks with plows...yes plows and launched explosive chords which detonate mines.. Flails are practically extinct and used only on some demining vehicles, but not in active warzones and only versus anti personnel minefields

[@88porpoise]

And yet the documentary evidence says they were practical and effective in active combat. They had their problems, but so did combat engineers doing it manually. Yes, mine ploughs have superceded flails but considering the attempts at them prior to and during WWII were not successful they likely weren't viable in WWII. My guess would be the more powerful engines and drive trains make the mine ploughs more viable now than in the 1940s. But in WWII, modern mine clearance vehicles weren't an option, the choices were people on foot or the flails.

[@DD-qw4fz]

@@88porpoise the absence of wide spred use on either during or after ww2 speaks louder than any claim from a report. After ww2 we see plows and mine rollers, not flails.

[@88porpoise]

@@DD-qw4fz The Sherman Crabs were in continuous use throughout WWII after they were first deployed on D-Day. Again, they had their flaws, but they had capabilities that literally nothing else in the world could compete with and the records say they were effective.

[@watcherzero5256]

@@DD-qw4fz What are you talking about? Mine rollers, mine flails and Mine Plows are all still in production today. The British Aardvark JSFU mine flail for example is in use by 16 countries armed forces including the US Army which used it in both Afghanistan and Iraq as well as a host of NGO's For example the US 769th Engineers used it to regularly patrol the area around Bagram airbase to keep it clear of mines planted during the night. There is also the Danish/Finnish Sisu RA-140 DS.

[@tomhenry897]

Plows and rollers are cheaper

[@FrancisFjordCupola]

I'd say the main reason why Germany did not need them was that they only advanced into enemy territory in the first half of the war. When their tanks were not all that good. When their tanks were worthwhile to defend, they were already on the defense. If pulling back would mean pulling back into a minefield... something would be very wrong.

[@KuK137]

Nonsense. Germans were beaten with ease both at Kursk and the Bulge, two critical battles, because all that heavy, expensive tanks had zero way of cleaning mines and a bunch of conscripts behind minefield were capable of stopping whole panzer regiments full of new Tiger models, all while laughing at wundertanks blowing up while accomplishing nothing...

[@Talashaoriginal]

@@KuK137 Kursk was a rather hard won victory for the sowiets.

[@kristianhartlevjohansen3541]

@@KuK137 Mines … in the Ardennes?? 🤔

[@ihatecabbage7270]

Wait, DID he just said Azur Lane?

[@BayaRae]

I'm not surprised the side which was on the defensive for most of the war didn't invest in mine clearing.

[@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized]

> I'm not surprised the side which was on the defensive for most of the war didn't invest in mine clearing. 1939: Fall Offensive 1940: Spring & Summer Offensive 1941: Summer Offensive 1942: Summer Offensive 1943: Summer Offensive 1944: Defense 1945: Defense I would word that differently in your case.

[@BayaRae]

Oh? According to what you're saying, they were on the offensive for less than 20% for the entire war. 🧐😂 @@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized

[@looinrims]

@@BayaRaeimagine saying the Germans were only attacking for one year of the five and a half year long war This isn’t even a debate you’re just talking nonsense

[@looinrims]

@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualizeddon’t forget they were still attacking in 44 (ie trying to cut off Cobra’s breakthrough) and even 45 (Hungary)

[@terraflow__bryanburdo4547]

The only battle after 1942 where mines were a major factor was Kursk, mainly because of Hitlers dithering and delays.

[@krisfrederick5001]

Das ist Panzer fail

[@stevenwendellnelson5228]

''CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE, LORD GOD, Please help us against whoredom and evil and have mercy on our souls. Thank you for everything CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE, LORD GOD. Amen.'' 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 Please pray these words now, pray them as you read them if you cannot look and remember them 🙏 please consider beginnning daily prayer, it is a good habit that will help you if you actually do it and continue to do it