【弗吉尼亞州/丹維爾市】AAF坦克博物館 - 四號坦克H/J型（2022/6）

Hey YouTube, Zacaroni here. This is the first episode in a series from the AAF Tank Museum in Virginia. Their head mechanic, Dan, took me on a private tour of their collection of 50-plus tanks from around the world, going inside everything from the Panzer IV in this video to the M60A2 Starship, Stridsvagn, T-72, and so on. In this series, you'll see the crew positions, controls, and listen to Dan and I talk about each tank's combat performance and place in military history. Many of you will already be familiar with these tanks. After all, they're some of the most iconic armored vehicles in the world. But I bet by the end of the video, you'll have some new knowledge and appreciation for them, as I did. So, to kick this series off, we're going inside my personal favorite from the museum, Germany's Panzer IV Aufs.H medium tank of the Second World War. Let's go. So we're in the Panzer IV now. Now you're in the driver's position, okay? View slot, that's your vision. Sticks down there by your feet. Pull left stick, go left. Pull right stick, go right. This is a rear engine, front transmission, front drive, which means the drive shaft runs all the way underneath the turret to that front transmission that you basically lean your arms on. To your right is going to be your machine gunner. You're the driver, three guys in the turret, okay? When a tank is full of ammo, you are not crossing positions. From the back, okay? You got a lot of shells in your way. Yeah, no, the ammo rack is really nice here. Oh, man. There's no ammo in the turret. Right. It's all in the hull of the vehicle. So no matter which way the gun was pointing, they had to be able to get to ammo. That's why they put it all the way around the lower of the hull. Flat plate, welded together, simple to make, simple to make. Good gun, good armor, overall a decent tank. We had okay gun, okay armor, okay? But we had numbers. It's a numbers game. Five to one, betting odds, okay? Yeah. Okay. We've got our commander's hatch. Basket in the back for some extra gear. I think we're going to put the seat down. Do you want me to climb through the gunner's? Go through the gunner's seat and fold the seat back up. Okay. Now the gunner's on the left side, right? So this is the loader's? Or did I get it? Loader's this side. This is the loader's hatch, okay? So it's actually pretty easy to get in and out of through the side hatch. Nice with every crewman. Yeah. Doesn't always happen that way. Yeah. No, I'm thinking of like Russian tanks or even some American ones. And then I know it was a pretty big deal with the commander to be centered in the turret with the two crewmen, right? Because before, like with the Panzer I's and Panzer II's and a lot of the French tanks, only got one guy in the turret sometimes. Look on the floor. You're going to see a big round circle. Okay. That means this tank has a turret basket. Not every tank got that, okay? Which that means if you are not sitting in a seat, you ride with the turret. Unlike the T-34, that guy has to either sit or walk. Right. While that gun is being turned, the last thing you want to do is catch a gun in the chest, okay? Yeah. In case every bullet hits you. It's not going to stop, okay? So very good design. We pretty much adopt everybody's using one now. This is awesome. I can see some ammo down in the hole here. But compared to a Stu, it's a lot more spacious. Think about at the game time, okay? Compared to today, this is nothing, okay? Yeah. But to the time frame, this is good armor. Right. Shermans were bouncing off of it. We couldn't get close enough. Because their gun was better than ours. So they could punch a hole through us before we could get close enough to punch a hole through them, okay? Right. Today you got better rounds, better armor. Totally different game. Different world. And the loader, yeah, I can see. Basically it's like your ready rack down here, right? You're also sitting. Yeah. You have to do your job sitting though. And you can't stand. Yeah. That's the one thing. I'm about 6'1", 6'2". And my head's right here. If you go over a bump, I'm going to get a concussion. A little leather helmet. Yeah. That's your protection. Yeah. Literally that's your protection. I forgot. We were talking about this earlier. Is this an H or a J? Because I know on the J, for example, a lot of the crew vision ports were taken out just to simplify production. And then for the H, with the side skirts, they took the vision ports off for the H because they were covered up by the side skirts anyway. If I remember correctly, it's an H model. It was built, went to combat, they left it. Okay. They were on the war effort. They scooped it back up. They brought it back to the factory. It got re-outfitted. Oh. Okay. Right. Okay. For the turret traverse, is this one manual? Correct. This one is manual and this did not have an automatic drive? No. Okay. So let's get into the gunners then. Oh, gunner seats. Zeiss optics, right? Correct. Zeiss optics? Okay. And I can't see anything. Oh, yeah. Now I can see out of the optics. Where is the trigger? Is it on the floor? Correct. Right there, your floor. You can see the button. Okay. I don't want to overdrive it. It's pretty easy to turn it. Correct. Can you adjust how many degrees it goes or is it just all hand? Because I noticed there's a trigger here. Safety trigger. Safety trigger? It's supposed to be a lockout. Okay. Can you just imagine doing this in combat? This is fast. It is pretty fast. For a non-powered turret, this thing turns like butter. And you said the vertical drive is... It's locked. Yeah, you won't be able to turn it on. Yeah, this is amazing. Hey, go back the other way a little bit. This is so cool. That's cool. I'm going to hop into the commander's if that's okay. See if you can fold the seat back up so you can stand on it. Okay. There you go. All right, commander's seat. He was a tiger ace. Okay. Like 120 kills. And he talked about just the number one thing that irritated him was Russian PTRDs. They would purposely shoot out the vision blocks. The round wouldn't go through them. Just shatter into pieces. But they have to constantly replace them. He said they carried more vision blocks than they had grenades in their tanks. Pretty much every tank does the same thing. The vibration alone breaks them. I guess one of the things that's kind of weird is my shoulders are too broad. Yes, you're not consistent to a World War II gentleman. Yeah. All right. Yeah, my shoulders are too broad to come out of here. The view's pretty good. Steel track with a pin with a clip. You might not even have the clip. All right. As the track is rotating, the clip breaks. The pin wants to fall out. You've got a ramp right back here that shoves the pin back in and keeps the tracks on. Okay. Just like a T-34, except the T-34 didn't even get the clips. Track tools, cables to help put your track on. And this is spring-leaf suspension, right? And the T-34 would be the Christie suspension. Yeah. Tensioner system right here. So you use your wrench to put pressure to get your track tension right. Okay. Otherwise, the track falls off, right? Nice. Mufflers, a hand crank to actually start the vehicle. Yeah, that would have been hell. I'm like, nah. Kind of a different system like a Model T. You'd actually turn it over. This is more like a spring system. Oh, okay. A jack in the box. Okay. That's the best way I could explain it, okay? How that works. It's amazing. And long service life. I mean, up to 67 from like 34, 37 it was designed. Yeah. It ended up on the Golden Heights. Yeah. It's nuts. Well, that does it for the Panzer IV. A great tank and a great experience to be inside one. I want to thank Dan and the AAF Tank Museum for the tour. As you can see, he has a wealth of knowledge you can only get from years of hands-on experience with these tanks. I shared a link to the Tank Museum's website in the description below. If you have a chance to visit, I highly recommend you do so. In the next episode, we'll be going inside the Soviet T-72. Of all the tanks in the collection, in my opinion, it is the most relevant as T-72s are currently being used in combat by Ukraine and Russia. The T-72 also makes for a good follow-up to the Panzer IV just to show how much tank design and technology progressed from World War II to the Cold War. So be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on the next episode. I'd love to read your comments below. Anything you've learned, opinions on the Panzer IV, let's start a discussion. There's also a link to my War Thunder Discord server you can use to join the community there. As always, guys, thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.