Welcome back to Bovington, we're having a look at their Panzer 3 L.
The turret maintained the same general configuration
for the production run of the Panzer 3,
it was going to have a three-man turret crew and it would have three hatches:
the commander's cupola top and center,
and the gunner’s and loader’s hatches on the turret walls.
They're all two-piece affairs,
which means that they are nice and light to be able to open,
unfortunately the 2-piece means that you have a shorter forward door
affording you slightly less protection if you're bailing out in enemy fire.
You can see that there is an mg34 mounted to the front of the cupola here,
it has to be kept off to one side to allow you to open and close the hatch,
and this is also only suitable for ground targets,
there simply isn't the elevation to shoot up into the sky.
The cupola is a two-piece affair like the other doors,
very easy to open and close.
You will notice that I'm rather exposed.
The reason for this is that I'm standing on the commander's seat position
which is above a five centimeter ammunition bin, that doesn't adjust.
So not seeing anything else upon which to stand,
it would appear that if I want to ride around with my head out,
I'm sitting on the edge of the cupola like this,
or I'm least standing on the seat and a lot of me is exposed,
so not ideal there.
That said, I'm now going to hop into the tank and let's see what we got inside.
Inside the Chieftain’s Hatch
The commander's position is quite reasonable.
He is a little bit constrained to the front
by the recoil guard for the 5 centimeter,
and I presume he has to keep his legs spread far enough
that when the hot shell casings are ejected from the gun
that they fall between his legs and not on to them.
To help him he has two foot rests, very comfortably positioned,
and you could stay here for quite a while.
You have a little bit of lack of room for the shoulders to move, unfortunately,
but that seems to be par for the course.
Visibility, considering its time, is absolutely excellent.
In fact, even by today's standards it’s pretty good,
there are five very large vision blocks surrounding his cupola,
you can't argue the point at all.
To his left there is a connecting rod for the azimuth indicator.
This is a small ring that you can see on the outside,
it has a pointer to the front and thus it will always give the commander
a reference point to where his hull is compared to the turret.
Now, that said, because I can see all of the entire interior the tank,
there is no basket in this tank,
if he's ever confused as to which way his turret is facing
compared to where his hull is,
all he has to do is just glance down and he could see,
“oh look I can see the radio operator to my front right,
the tank is facing straight forward”.
There isn't anything else in here except for the firing port
just below the connector for the intercom system,
he does not control the radio of course, that's forward.
That's it, next up, the gunner.
Gunner’s position is a little bit tight, but it's not bad.
One of the things I've noticed that is really useful
about the position of the commander back and center
is that it frees up so much more room for the gunner,
because ordinarily if you have the two in tandem
you only have the width of this turret ring to fit everybody.
With the commander out of the way
and somewhere else on the turret ring radius, this is fantastic.
That said, it's still a little bit cramped in terms of length,
shorter people back then, okay, you can survive.
The primary sight is the tzf 5e, it’s an articulated sight,
it's actually fairly complicated. It comes with three graduations,
1,200 meters for the machine gun, 1,500 meters for armor-piercing,
and about 3,000 meters for HE, and it comes complete
with the mil triangles to help you estimate range as well.
It's a fixed point of aim,
so you set the range and then place point of aim on target, fire away.
The primary toy, of course, and the purpose for the L modification,
was the KWK 39 an L/60.
Now this would fire primarily the AP round, the Panzergranate 39,
and this would fire at about 850 meters per second
and would punch through 6 cm or so of armor at 500 meters
which wasn't bad, but you could do better.
That would be the Panzergranate 40
and that was an APCR round, higher velocity 1,180 m/s.
Now the advantage of this round was that you could punch
through about 13 centimeters worth of armor at close range, say 100 meters.
The problem is though that being a lighter round,
the velocity drops off rapidly, much less so than the AP round
which was heavier and had more momentum.
Thus by 500 meters you're down to maybe 7 centimeters of armor
and at 600 meters you're actually better off firing the older AP round.
Range of Traverse for the gun plus 20 minus 10,
done by use of a manual control handle here,
there is a bolt holding it in place unfortunately,
and now that I've released the turret lock off-camera,
the turret traverse is very quick actually, it's about 2.2 degrees per turn.
As you see, just one turn, away you go.
There is a two-gear option,
so for fine-tuning there is a gear shift and you go at half speed.
Other features. To my direct front I am very pleased by the vision,
which was a bit risky, because frankly it's a great big huge block of glass,
obviously bulletproof, about, maybe, 12 centimeters wide by 15 high,
through which apparently one could mount an auxiliary sight
or you could leave it off
and you just got a good wonderful field of unity view to your front.
Makes a nice change.
Turret lock is located front and to his left,
and he has an azimuth indicator right off of his left shoulder here.
There was the possibility of opening up this little latch here
which is unfortunately frozen in place and perhaps adding a periscopic sight.
Front you can see the torsion bar system, which was used for gun balance.
As the VorPanzer was added,
there will be additional springs at a torsion bar system
just to keep the gun easy to elevate and depress.
That's pretty much it for the gunner’s seat. As I say, it's a little bit tight.
I mean my shoulder is against the turret ring,
my right shoulder is against the recoil guard,
the platform could do with maybe being an inch or two lower,
but otherwise this is a very well laid out, especially for the time,
gunner’s seat and there's really nothing to complain about at all.
For the loader’s position, well,
he's got no seat, for starters, and there's no turret floor.
That's not too bad, as the floor isn't all that cluttered,
except for the very, very large housing for the prop shaft,
which goes all the way from the back of the tank to the front,
he's got to be careful to step over it as the turret traverses.
The ammunition is stowed in bins around the tank, stowed vertically,
there is 84 rounds carry generally split about 50 AP 34 HE.
Outside of that it is nice that he has his own door,
which is a little bit rare for loaders.
As you can see it is left-handed loading,
grab the ammunition out of the ready rack here,
which is actually pretty reasonably located,
the door simply slides open, grab the round, bring it up,
and then into the breech to his right as he's facing to the rear.
So if you want to get rid of some of your empty shell casings
that are cluttering around the inside now,
and of course you don't open up the doors in combat,
and there's no room to get past the commander,
in the hull floor they've inserted a hatch.
So, lift up the immediate floor, remove the safety,
pull up the main floor of the hatch,
and you just jettison your shell casings down there.
Now of course it wasn't just shell casings
that will go out the bottom of this hatch,
this is also very obviously used for various bodily functions as well.
There's the handle for the radio antenna which can be elevated from the inside,
hooray, and then underneath is one of the ammunition bins.
The ammunition is stowed vertically behind these sliding doors.
The escape hatch is located behind these boxes here.
Now, there are quick-release pins, but even after having removed them,
I can't get seen to get this frame out of the way to access the escape hatch.
Fortunately, the one on the other side is a little bit easier to get to.
With the deletion of the viewports on the left-hand side,
the only thing he has left is the viewports,
which aim a little bit back and to the right in the door walls,
and that doesn't really help very much in combat.
However, there are fewer weak points, I guess, if you do it that way.
So next I'm gonna go forward into the hull, and you'll note
that the only way into the driver's compartment is through the turret.
This is cozy.
So now that I've actually made it in, which is a rather inconvenient process,
because you would like to have your own hatch if at all possible,
and then raised my seat back up, this is very, very good,
especially compared to some of the other 1939-1940 tanks that I've been in.
I mean I had nothing but bad things to say about the French drivers’ positions,
this is luxury in comparison.
Controls are simple enough: you have two steering tillers,
they are on a clutch/brake system, so they pull back the first section,
and that releases the clutch pressure,
continue to pull back and you start applying the brake to turn.
There are three pedals, the clutch pedal is in the traditional position,
the accelerator pedal is in the traditional position,
up top and center from the top, instead of from the bottom, is the brake.
Gear shift is on the right-hand side as you would expect it to be,
and it's a h-pattern first, second, third, fourth,
you depress the button on the top
to go all the way to the right to go into fifth or sixth.
To go into reverse, there's a little latch you have to push down,
then that will allow you to move the gear stick to the left
and then forward into reverse.
Big handle up here is for extra clutch strength,
so if you're in particularly heavy going,
shove the handle all the way forward, it applies more bite to the clutch.
Nice idea.
Now to see out, he's got a rather large unity block here, it is direct vision,
and he'd better hope that the glass stops any incoming fire.
Now obviously it's not going to stop high-velocity large caliber rounds,
at least large caliber for the time, so what you would do
is you could lower the visor at the front,
and then slide over this periscopic sight,
it's been kind of locked in place, unfortunately.
This here covers two little ports that line up with the periscope here,
so as you're driving then with just the two little periscopic holes,
it's a lot safer,
and of course at the left-hand side he does have another visor there.
Right-hand side consists of your standard typical dashboard,
you've got the rev counter, you've got pressure,
you've got old-fashioned fuses on the right, no particular fascinations there.
Just to the right you have the transmission housing itself,
running from the prop shaft to the rear all the way through.
You can see also that the steering mechanism has been shrouded,
they put a protective screen here, but otherwise
it is pretty open to the steering transmission differential system.
I do like the additional cushion at the top there
to stop you from bashing your head.
If it wasn't for the fact that you don't have a hatch of your own,
this would almost be a perfect driver's position,
and for those people that say that you can never have
a comfortable driver's position for a person my height,
especially in early war, this is a case in point.
This is the way the driver’s position should be.
So combine that with the room in the turret
because the commander's been moved out of the way,
ergonomically this is a very good tank.
One thing that has confused us a little bit is this little yokie here,
which will adjust and can be selected
by use of a toggle switch on the right here.
My guess is that this is a timer, given it goes from 1 to 12,
and you would use it for navigation, especially in the desert for example,
where there are no navigational features,
you go a certain direction for a certain amount of time,
you know where you are.
Now, frankly I don't know why you wouldn't just use
the odometer on the right-hand side, which we normally use,
but it's the only thing I can think of off the top of my head.
I'm sure somebody with access to the manual will make a comment on the bottom,
but so far neither myself nor the staff who actually drives this vehicle,
(he's the guy who’s been assigned to keep an eye on us today)
knows what this is for.
On the opposite side from the driver, I'm not going to get into it,
is the radio operator, and you can see he's got very good access
to the radios which are angled slightly inward.
To his front on a spring balance is the bow mg34.
Ammunition in the tray to his front, no pedals, he's got lots of room.
Again, the only real problem with that position is the lack of an escape hatch.
So were I to do the “oh my god the tank is on fire” test,
I'm afraid to say that from the hull positions… not so much.
Still I guess you have to have some flaws with the tank,
and otherwise from the tour here I've been very impressed.
All in all about 1,470 Panzer III Ls were manufactured,
and that includes the late model J's, which had the long 5-centimeter;
they were simply redesignated as “L”s,
although they never changed the builder's plate.
The last two modifications to the vehicle were the M,
which was an L with fording ability,
and the N, which would see the 5-cm gun replaced by the 7.5 short cannon
as found on the panzer IVs, which were now receiving the longer gun.
As tanks became bigger,
eventually the room to upgrade the three reached its limit,
and from then on production would focus pretty much on the Panzer IV
as the general-purpose tank.
In the end, somewhere around 6,000 Panzer IIIs were built,
including about 350 command tanks.
Overall, you would argue that the Panzer 3 was quite reasonably
the best tank in the world at the beginning of World War II,
because it was reasonably capable, quite reliable,
but most importantly, had a very good balance of crew ergonomics
and the ability of the crew to get the vehicle to its maximum potential.
Add to that a reasonable gun, good upgrade capability for the time,
good upgrade capability in terms of the armor, and you can see
why the Panzer 3 has been perhaps under-regarded as a tank in history
being overshadowed by more technologically capable later tanks.
I hope you enjoyed the tour of the Panzer 3L here in Bovington.
I'm Nicholas Moran, The Chieftain,
hope you enjoyed it, see you on the next one.