[Introduction]
When sense is prevailing, and logic is on the rise...
our nonsensical heroes roll into action!
Donning their disguises, and moving at a snail's pace,
They flail into action. They are, the Meme tanks!
Meme tanks
Meme tanks. All right getting back to my roots.
I've had multiple requests to look at multiple different tanks, but most of them don't have enough information for a whole video.
So I'm gonna do a couple of what I think are the most meme worthy tanks, and I'm not going by any particular
Standard, I've just picked three that make me laugh.
This first one isn't technically a separate tank.
It's actually just a panther in a costume, but the story behind it is pretty funny. In 1944 in the lead-up to Operation
"Watch on the Rhine", that would come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge, Adolf Hitler ordered the creation of a special
German commando unit that was to use Allied uniforms and equipment to impersonate
American soldiers and cause confusion behind the lines via switching around road signs and other various forms of sabotage.
The specifics of this operation known as
Operation "Grief" or "Griffin" in German, with a brainchild of SS commando Otto Skorzeny. For this,
He requested thousands of English speaking German soldiers, along with uniforms and hundreds of captured Allied vehicles.
However, he only received a fraction of the English speaking soldiers
He requested, and only a fraction of those could put on a convincing American accent.
He also only got a handful of vehicles out of the numbers
He requested, including only two M4 Shermans that were in a state of disrepair. To remedy this problem Skorzeny
Opted to disguise around 10 Panther G's as American M10 tank destroyers called the "Ersatz" or "False Panther" (At least
I think that's what that means, from what I can tell it doesn't translate
Well, if anybody speaks German and knows a better translation, let me know.).
This was achieved by welding metal sheeting onto the Panther and removing
its commanders Coppola,
Essentially blinding the commander to mimic the body of an M10 tank destroyer, and it does look sort of convincing. The problem
is that there is no way to cover-up or alter the
suspension, which looks nothing like the M10's
Horizontal bogie suspension, or to cover up the width of the tracks which are much greater than that on an M10.
Also
The M10 did not have a muzzle brake, and the Panther had to retain its obviously German muzzle brake to have the gun still safely
Recoil. So if this tank is approaching an Allied tank,
the first thing the American tankers are going to see is the obvious German muzzle brake before they even see the disguise, which in and
Of itself with all those things stated is not too terribly convincing.
I mean, look at it. An american tanker is going to know that that is not on their side.
The Germans also had to put markings
on the tanks to signal to other German vehicles that they were friendly, most notably a yellow triangle on the rear of the tank, and
The American tankers upon not recognizing this symbol would probably become suspicious. In action
the Ersatz Panther did not perform very well. In less than two days, the attack bogged down before they could capture any of their
Objectives, due to the first SS not linking up with them at their starting point. After this, Skorzeny
made a request that the unit operate as a normal Panzer Brigade essentially abandoning the mission, and five of the Panther M10's were
destroyed before the operation concluded.
Skorzeny's deception unit though was able to cause some confusion behind enemy lines, and a few friendly fire incidents between American soldiers.
So his deceptive operations were not a complete failure,
But this Panther nonsense definitely was, and now it only really lives on as one of those stupid premium tanks of World of Tanks
(Doesn't even do anything, it's just a Panther reskin!)
And in the real world, no M10 Panther survived to this day.
ripperonis ; - ;
Next or the mine flail tanks employed by the British. "Wow, how original!"
This design was actually an idea of a British South African soldier named "Abraham du Toit" in
1941, and they eventually become one of the more popular variants in Hobart's Funnies.
The flails were initially put onto Matilda 2 tanks and used in North Africa to some success. On the Matilda,
The flail was powered by a separate engine housed in a box on the side of the hull that was operated by an additional crew
Member from within the box and to the guys who had to crew that position sitting next to a hot running engine,
inside a metal box in the deserts of Africa,
Hats off to you, because that sounds like arguably the worst job of the war.
This concept did have a few flaws
though
When running, the flail would kick up huge amounts of dust that would blind the crews to where they didn't know where they were going.
But it also blinded German guns in the form of a kind of smoke screen
So that wasn't all bad, but the dust would also be sucked into the engines and caused frequent breakdowns.
Also, the flail chains would sometimes be blown off the rotor and fly in any direction.
Possibly injuring friend and foe alike. Later, in Western Europe
The flails were put on Sherman tanks and wire cutters were added to the flail to help the tank clear barbed wire and were used
most famously by the 79th Armored Brigade with various
Detachments being lent out to other Allied units. The flail saw use mostly with the British Army,
But had some limited use by the Americans.
But now I'm sure you're wondering why I would call this a meme tank because it was objectively
Fairly successful, and it's honestly because I can't look at this thing in action without laughing.
I mean, this is the definition of "Hey
If it works, it works." Just because of how stupid it looks and every time I see it, I always picture this:
But it is still less retarded than this rolly boy
There's a handful of these surviving most notably a Sherman variant in the Bobbington Tank Museum.
Yeah, this is what you came for, the be-all end-all meme machine.
The Maus is what you get when you follow the German-Soviet heavy tank dick-measuring contest to Hitler's
Overcompensating conclusion. This massive nearly 200 ton vehicle was what was supposed to come after the Tiger 2 before
Super-heavy tank production was halted by Speer. The prototypes that were created are a testament to Hitler's
Mentality that large, mobile steel bunkers would change Germany's fortunes in the war.
His opinions were most likely colored by his
Experiences of the first implementation of tanks by the British in World War One that he came into contact with firsthand,
So put into the context of Hitler's experience,
This tank makes a lot of sense,
But in the context of the reality of World War Two,
Which was a very mobile combined arms war, where Germany no longer had air superiority,
It makes absolutely no sense. In reality if deployed, this thing would be a large slow-moving
Target and easy pickings for Allied fighter bombers, or something that ground troops could just maneuver around. I think an apt metaphor
Would be the fat kid on the playground getting into a fight. Sure
He can take a lot of punches, and he can throw a punch pretty hard,
But all the other kids could just run away from him or throw rocks at him from the top of the jungle gym,
And what's he gonna do then, if he can either run nor climb? There is one Maus prototype that survived the war,
It's actually the turret of one prototype and the hull of another that was captured by the Russians and resides near Moscow.
These are just three of my favorite meme tanks among others that I've covered in the past,
But let me know if there are any others that I should cover in the future in the comments.
But I'm looking for real creativity here. The the Bob Semple tank is just way too easy low-hanging fruit.