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U.S. History 1877-Present 9.7: The Technology of War–Tanks 14 Views
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Description:
Opposing governments race to build bigger and better weapons until one side finally creates a giant indestructible war machine capable of causing mass death and steamrolling over enemy lines... Sound like a sci-fi movie? Nope. It's just real life.
Transcript
- 00:00
Thank you We sneak during world war two Technology became
- 00:06
so important that it's impossible Teo skip over It is
- 00:10
a topic It basically shoved politics and culture off the
- 00:13
stage grabbed the mic and stole the show Yet basically
- 00:16
the kanye of world war two let's start with machine
Full Transcript
- 00:20
guns Well the first legitimate ones were actually used in
- 00:23
world war ll they fired much faster and more smoothly
- 00:26
than the gatling guns of the civil war And they
- 00:29
change the way battles were fought Machine guns allowed a
- 00:33
very small number of soldiers to decimate oncoming troops Soldiers
- 00:37
didn't really have to paint All they had to do
- 00:38
was point fire until only ran out of bullets and
- 00:41
then reload Kind of seems like cheating doesn't it Except
- 00:44
instead of getting some extra cash in the sims this
- 00:47
cheat just ended with extra death But machine guns were
- 00:50
a major reason that world war devolved into horrible slow
- 00:54
stalemates with opposing troops crouched down in trenches Neither side
- 00:58
could force past the other So they were stuck in
- 01:01
the mud Literally They were stuck in the mud All
- 01:04
right Well by world war two machine guns had gotten
- 01:07
lighter and smaller until a single soldier could carry the
- 01:10
gun on a small tripod Well german engineers took it
- 01:12
to a new level in nineteen forty two when they
- 01:14
created the mg forty two It was a slim little
- 01:18
machine gun that shot bullets twice a ce fast as
- 01:20
any previous gun at about twelve hundred rounds a minute
- 01:24
we don't even all superman could endure that machine guns
- 01:28
were and are one of the most terrible threats to
- 01:30
troops on the ground And guess what Mr gatling himself
- 01:34
created this gun with the hope that his invention would
- 01:36
be so powerful it would discourage all future wars Now
- 01:41
for the record that idea never ever pans out So
- 01:44
anyone developing a freeze ray for the good of mankind
- 01:48
stop doing that Of course you know by now that
- 01:52
any new weapon is going to provoke a new defense
- 01:54
Well in case you've ever wondered it's no fun getting
- 01:57
shot by a machine gun about so researchers and military
- 02:00
scientists tried to imagine some kind of vehicle that was
- 02:03
in vulnerable to bullets and could just roll over trenches
- 02:06
like they were potholes and thus the world's first can't
- 02:09
rolled into battle people just about lost it tanks act
- 02:13
as a psychological weapon because seeing a giant impenetrable war
- 02:17
machine running towards you you know i'll probably not the
- 02:19
most calming experience in the world That doesn't mean of
- 02:22
course they were moving particularly quickly The first tanks produced
- 02:25
in britain in nineteen seventeen clocked in at a whopping
- 02:28
four miles an hour but wherever they went and whenever
- 02:32
they got there they were pretty scary Plus they have
- 02:34
a range of twenty two miles when firing So even
- 02:37
knowing one was in the area was enough to make
- 02:39
knees wobble Now if the upside of tanks was that
- 02:42
they were impenetrable the downside of tanks for the people
- 02:45
manning them from the inside was that well they were
- 02:48
impenetrable The thick metal walls trapped exhaust in gas and
- 02:52
meant that they couldn't see out making them vulnerable to
- 02:55
intense nausea and quasi sea sickness Is the tank rumbled
- 02:59
around Plus the tank wasn't so great it blocking small
- 03:02
bullets at least not entirely and the soldiers inside them
- 03:06
often got sprayed with razor sharp shrapnel Last but not
- 03:09
least nobody really knew how to incorporate tanks into military
- 03:13
Strategy so first they were beyond useless Soon however people
- 03:17
realize that tanks were at their best and most invulnerable
- 03:20
when they moved in a fleet as a giant wall
- 03:23
of combines defense and offense and that's just what britain
- 03:27
did They use them to slam through the germans trench
- 03:29
defense system Even though they got off to a rough
- 03:32
start tanks got about one hundred percent bigger and better
- 03:35
By world war two They had turrets for guns thicker
- 03:39
armor better maneuverability and radios that allowed them to react
- 03:43
quickly to changing battlefronts On each side of the war
- 03:46
Was producing tanks by the thousands per month by the
- 03:49
end only effectively ended the prevalence of trench warfare which 00:03:53.19 --> [endTime] is good But they started the prevalence of warfare
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