The T-34: The Greatest Tank of WW2?

I love how at 5:25 he mentions “early T-34s” but the picture is a post-war East German T-34-85 😂

A quote from another video I watched on the T-34, "It wasn't a good tank, but it was good enough."

I love the phrasing of "like Marmite and Nickelback, military historians either love it or hate it." It makes me imagine a room full of military historians having heated arguments over Nickelback.

LazerPig won't be happy, lol

The German tanks were certainly more advanced and arguably "better" in many ways. But 1 really great tank is no match for 10 good enough tanks. This is why the T34 and M4 were so successful.

Fun fact, the T34s built at the Stalingard Tractor Factory, whilst they were Soviet designed and built Tanks, they were built on US designed and manufactured infrastructure. The Tractor Factory was a copy of the Milwaukee Tractor Factory and was designed and built by Albert Khan.

I'm 90% sure most of Simons thumbnails for things are AI generated at this point.

Russian crews loved the shermans for reasons. Being in t 34 was horrible for the crew.

Legend and nostalgia make a weapon greater than it ever was. Reality is nuanced but in the end the war was won by those legends.

Both the T-34 and the Sherman tanks were built to win a war, not to win tank duels.

I think people group the T-34-76 and T-34-85 together to much you did a bit to differentiate them but still not really lots of YouTubers talk about the t-34 and mean the 76 the T-34-85 is a much better tank it have a better gun and turret adds a extra man has a lot better ergonomics and a lot less mechanical issues. And to anyone wondering the T-34-85 came in later in the war in 1944 so it wasn’t at Kursk

You all missed the part where much of that cheap & easy construction came at the cost of poor assembly, incomplete weld joints, and missing internal parts like the turret basket, or... seats.

I studied the T-34 tank when I was doing my Manufacturing Engineering degree, and its ease of manufacture was arguably the key to the Soviet's victory. To be able to design a machine that can be quickly, easily and cheaply built is an art, and the T-34's design was genius in its simplicity.

1:05 - Chapter 1 - Early designs 5:00 - Chapter 2 - Mechanical marvel 9:20 - Chapter 3 - Baptism of fire 12:35 - Chapter 4 - A return to form

It also helped if you didn't think of tank tank crews as persons. A tradition proudly preserved in Russia.

It honestly depends on which factory it was built in and which of the variants we are talking about but overall it's a decent enough tank for it's time

You could not find a picture of a T-34 for the thumbnail?

A version of the T-34. The SU-100 SPG has seen a lot of service the past few decades.

This is a good video if you want to start learning about tanks but i feel like theres a lot left out. Like the difference between prototypes which had 45mm guns at first or the 1940 and 1941 versions its basically just a slightly better turret mantlet and 76mm gun but still. Also no mention of the T-34-57, 1942, 1943 or E models and how different factorys didnt always build T-34s to the exact same specs so you have models like the STZ. Also there were a lot of SPGs and AA built on the T-34s chassis.

When a T-34 got knocked out, most of the crew died, and the tank was often a total loss. When a Sherman got knocked out, it usually returned to the fight (on average up to 8 times before getting written off) and most of the crew survived. Given a choice between the two, I'd take the equivalent-era Sherman over whatever model of the T-34. Shermans worked great with infantry in a wide variety of scenarios. While tank-on-tank fights weren't all that common, Shermans did pretty well there too. It's worth noting that late-model T-34's went up against American "Easy 8" Shermans in the Korean war, and the Shermans did better head-to-head.