if you like top five tanks please subscribe to the tank museums YouTube
channel hi I'm Jesse Alexander host of the Great War Channel and the upcoming
documentary 16 days in Berlin the tank museum has asked me to choose my top
five tanks and I chose them based on their personal meaning to me so let's
get started this is my number 5 tank the British mark 5 now I chose this tank for
a couple of different reasons one of them is that over at the Great War
channel we've been doing a lot of work about the Russian Civil War now this
tank was actually designed to break the trench deadlock in the Western Front in
France in 1918 but the British ended up shipping about a hundred them to Russia
in order to support the whites against the Bolsheviks and I think that's kind
of a pretty cool destiny for a tank like this that was designed for something
completely different now the other reason I chose this tank
is a very personal one this tank entered service in the summer
of 1918 and exactly at that moment in time
my great-grandfather made it to the frontlines in France now he didn't leave
any Diaries or any letters behind before he was wounded and lost an arm in that
conflict and invalided back home to Canada but when I see a mark 5 like this
one it's kind of like I can use my imagination to try to fill those gaps
what was he seeing did he see a mark 5 tank what did he think of it if he did
so to me the mark 5 is indirectly part of my own family history and helps me to
understand what my great-grandfather must have experienced and that's why the
mark 5 is my number 5 tank
this is my number four tank and in fact it's not a tank at all
it's a self-propelled gun this is the SU 76 one of the Red Army's most widely
produced self-propelled guns of the second world war now I chose this as my
number four tank because we've been working very hard on the upcoming
documentary 16 days in Berlin about the Battle of Berlin and self-propelled guns
like this one played a key role smashing block four blocks from Berlin
on the way to capturing the city now for me this represents part of the
difficulty of understanding the Soviet experience in the Second World War
this is an open-top vehicle and the crew would have fought in winter in
conditions that for us in Western countries are difficult to imagine
that's why the SU 76 is my number four tank and this is my number three tank
the shower be one of France now to me this tank represents the tragedy of
Frances Pyrrhic victory in World War one it served in World War two in 1940 but
it was a tank designed for a different war now we often say in the
english-speaking world that the British soldiers of World War one were Lions led
by donkeys well I think that equally applies to the char b1 and it's crews
because in 1940 the crews of Tanks like these fought as well as they could but
it was the tool that was the problem and their leadership was simply not up to
the task and that's why the char b1 is my number three tank this is my number
two tank it's a t26 Soviet unit from the interwar
years but there were 10,000 of these still in service when the Germans
invaded in 1941 now this model in particular was captured by the Finns
and put into service for them but the vast majority of these tanks served in
combat in 1941 and to me this is the meaning of this t26 tank we don't
appreciate the level of suffering that the Red Army soldiers went through in
defending their country in the initial German invasion the fact that 10,000
were in service meant that it's a tank that we should
know a little bit more about and appreciate a lot more and that's why
this is my number two tank this is my number one tank and again technically
it's not a tank this is a universal carrier and it's important to me because
my grandfather drove one for five years in World War two he served in the
Canadian Army in northwest Europe and it's his stories about his war
experiences driving this carrier with a machine-gun team that inspired me to
study history and ended up with me working as the host of the great war
channel on YouTube he was wounded while driving one of these and had two
vehicles shot out from under him and these are the stories that I will take
with me forever even though he's not here anymore today
so that is why this is my very personal top tank so I hope you enjoyed my top
five tanks and if you did please subscribe to the tech museum's youtube
channel and if you can support them on patreon