We’re inside now the Tankfest,
behind me you can see our booth,
the Wargaming world of tanks booth,
it’s really really crowded, let’s check out what the players are doing.
We’re now here inside a big and massive hall
with lots of tanks at Bovington’s Tankfest 2012,
with me is Richard “The Challenger”, our military specialist.
Hello Richard!
How are you doing?
Thanks for joining!
You’re welcome!
Just behind us you can see a
Jagdpanther, can you tell us something about this tank,
when was it used, how was it used?
Yea well the Jagdpanther, obviously one of the most feared tanks,
introduced in summer 1944.
This particular version we’ve got here as you can see has got the 88mm gun,
the interesting thing about the Jagdpanther of course
was the introduction of the sloped armor on there as well, an awesome vehicle.
Richard, can you tell me,
which tank is this one?
This is the Jagdtiger with the 128mm gun.
It is in game, as every one of our players knows.
You can see how vast, how big it is,
if you imagine yourself on the battlefield, next to something like this?
The armor on this particular vehicle is 250mm,
which is quite an awesome amount of armor,
another quite interesting thing about this one of course is
it’s painted with a Zimmerit paste;
the reason of this was it stops magnetic charges being attached to it.
So yea, it’s a really awesome piece of equipment.
Ok we’re now on top and we can look inside the tank,
tell me something about this beautiful and crazy thing.
Well first of all, if you look inside the actual compartment of the vehicle itself,
you can see that this vehicle had a crew of six,
and hmm you can see although it’s big, it’s a tight fit.
Also you look at the back of the breech block,
the green piece there,
you can see the rollers that it returned on,
so If you consider when that gun was fired,
the breech would recoil all the way to the end of the two rollers there.
We’re here now, at the biggest and meanest machine here in Bovington, a hell of a machine.
Which one is this one please?
Well this is the Royal, or the King Tiger.
Obviously the epitome of German tank design at the time.
This particular one there they’ve got at the tank museum in Bovington,
was the second prototype, that was actually found a prototype installation in Germany,
so that’s where they got it from.
And again, in incredible conditions.
An amazing piece of machinery, 150mm of armor, and the gun,
there wasn’t anything at all the gun couldn’t penetrate,
so very feared on the battlefield.
We’ve just passed by a French tank.
The Somua 35, yea it was a great design.
Probably most famous, to be fair,
for the fact that it was one of the first where they actually
molded hull or a solid hull in there,
great little design, very streamlined and obviously as Mo’ said,
when we’ve just been looking at the King Tiger
and compare it against that, there really is no comparison.
Tiny little vehicle, with a crew of 3.
We’ve just passed by this beautiful house, what is this?
Well this is the TOG II, and everybody who’s got
anything to do or any interest in tanks would know the TOG II.
It is the heaviest tank in this tank museum as well,
absolute monstrous piece of “kit”, the weight’s about 18 tons,
which is huge as well, with a crew of six,
armor wise it wasn’t absolutely fantastic but it was quite adequate, 76mm on there,
but with a massive top speed as well
of 8.5 or eight and a half miles per hour,
but a very very significant part of tank design called the TOG
after the old gang which is the group of designers that actually developed it.
But as you can see,
very very classical shape, classical design for a vehicle,
very similar with respect to the old Mark ones they used to get.
Thank you for visiting us at the tankfest in bovington.