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Radio War Nerd EP #364 — Tanks-giving In Ukraine, feat. John Griffiths (Patreon)

Published:
2023-01-31 21:47:52
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: John Griffiths, Totally Tanked podcast 

Recorded: January 30, 2023

Tanks are all the rage in the Ukraine war, a very mid-20th-c. weapon for a very 20th-c. war. We talk to Totally Tanked's John Griffiths about the workhorses of this war — the T-64 and T-72 — along with the alleged "game-changers" pledged to Ukraine, the Leopard, Challenger and Abrams.

Check out John's podcast Totally Tanked.

Attn London RWNers! Don't forget the RWN London Meetup, February 7th 2023, at the Old White Bear.

Music Interlude by Brendon Anderegg's Mountains. Buy Mountains here.

Total time: 1:23:08

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

Ander Pierce

This afternoons data cleaning just got a lot more pleasurable

Doug Cartel

IS-2 is massively underrated for sure

Doug Cartel

If I have to hear one more news outlet say "game changer" about some overcomplicated western system I'm gonna hurl That's not directed at RWN, german news is the worst offender imo

Ross Kiro-Ward

Great episode. This long awaited hardware discussion about the Ukraine war (hopefully the first of many) did not disappoint. Bonus points for interviewing a fellow Aussie! I would love to know if the new T-90 ‘breakthrough’ entering the conflict is an updated model without the French sighting systems mentioned in this episode? Interesting stuff.

Tam Mansilver

Love hearing Gary’s stories from abroad at the top of the ep

Sam Zeng

Im glad that John mentioned that all armoured vehicles are in a constant state of breaking down.

blazed uncle

I’d love an episode on the Punic wars. I’m currently listening to Adrian Goldsworthy’s The Fall of Carthage, which has a good overview. Also enjoyed John’s attempts to find writing in Carthage. I only recently found out the Punic language is very closely related to Biblical Hebrew, so a cursory understanding of one and the variations in scripts can help in reading the other. Great stuff as always.

(American spirit menthol

I am so confused about underwater welding. I thought it was welding that took place underwater due to the inconvenience of bringing whatever was being welded to the surface, e.g. underwater structures, or the bottom of boats for some reason. All I knew about underwater welding is that it is taught in prison to reduce recidivism because the work pays well and is too dangerous for anybody without the occupational difficulties of ex-criminals to consider. Is the same underwater welding? Excellent episode I listened to the t-34 episode of the podcast. People who like me got to RWN via Jacobin (remember when Connor Kilpatrick reviewed Corey Robin's "the Reactionary Mind" in the eXile?) probably have a lot more affection for the t-34 than Mark Ames did in his youth

Totally Tanked

Hi James, my understanding is that the pieces to be welded are placed in water and then the arc is applied

etienne

4 hours of daily maintenance right? that surprised me a bit

etienne

hey just for fun, is there a collab or a guest spot in the cards with Chris and Matt from Hell on Earth?

Michael M

Hey what was the name of the book that John recommended? Solombo?

Breakaway

What were the two main reasons that tank guns don’t make good substitutes for artillery? John G started to explain and then got sidetracked. Thanks!

etienne

artillery is indirect fire (shoot above 45 degree angle and let the projectile "fall down" on target") versus tank guns which do direct fire (shoot at the lowest possible elevation to compensate for projectile fall). That means that in practice tanks usually can't shoot high enough, when they do the bullet is too fast, and the fire control system may or may not be even designed to support indirect fire because why would you do that. BUT! as he was saying, since fire control systems and scouting just got much better it's actually more and more worth it to lob tank shells on low indirect trajectories* occasionally, and the insanely long tank kill he described, that's what happened *edit: I got some confusing between direct and indirect fire - the first means you see what you're shooting at, the latter means you don't, but usually in practice that means that if you're seeing the target you're shooting "directly" at it (lower parabola), while if you don't see the target (it's over a hill) you're using the higher parabola to shoot over the hill. In the case of that tank kill I understand that the hill was very low, so they still went with a low parabola with low elevation, but still cleared a low hill, and hit. Also to add to how "not legit" this kill looks like, I understand that the target was stranded and they shot repeatedly at it until it got completely disabled. Which I'll give you that, it doesn't *look* like a regular tank battle kill, but as far as we know it's still totally legit and valid

etienne

like if you take a point within gun range, a projectile is always going to follow a parabolic curve to it: one that is lower and shorter, and one that is taller and longer. Artillery will as a general rule pick the tall curve, tanks will pick the direct low curve, because usually the situation requires it, and the hardware is designed to work that way. But sometimes either will do the opposite, if the hardware supports it and the situation requires it. But then you have to ask yourself: why am I using a tank to do a howitzer's job? Is it because someone didn't read the manual correctly, or is it because I have a tank and I don't have a howitzer right this second?

etienne

the other thing is that tanks are *way* way way way way more expensive than howitzers so using a tank as a howitzer is a giant waste of resources. unless you're forced into it!

Steve Mathews

I think barrel wear is much worse on tank cannons/rounds than similarly effective artillery.

FB

The music interlude…anybody know which album its from?

a clash of purple

It's so hard to believe that they're practical weapons at all.

a clash of purple

I'll never understand why everyone doesn't just use the T-34 and the AK-47. They get the job done, they're cheap, and there's tons of spare parts because so many have been manufactured. Some military innovations are worth adopting, but I really don't think that you can improve much on something like an infantry rifle or a main battle tank at this point. Not enough to justify the cost, anyway.

radiowarnerd

Music Interlude by Brendon Anderegg's Mountains (link in show description)

FB

I could not find that particular track there

etienne

he does a lot of original doodles for the show, could be unreleased

T

Low margin manufacturing doesn’t pay for mansions in northern Virginia

etienne

Libya tried sending T-whatever tanks against Chad and got owned by guys in pickup trucks

Matthew Wood

yes to a discussion on Carthage and Salammbo, such a brilliant book

Jimothy Realname

I finally have the opportunity to correct a RWN guest on something, and I would be remiss if I didn't take it. This is my particular area of expertise, you understand. The welding process that was used for the T-34 is known as submerged arc welding. "Submerged" doesn't refer to water, however. Rather, granular weld flux is deposited from a hopper ahead of the advancing weld electrode. The electric arc is therefore *submerged* in flux (unlike other welding processes, in which the arc is not occluded.) This eliminates most of the light and smoke from the welding process - you can look at it without eye protection. Submerged arc welding inherently lends itself to automation (its basically always done by a machine, rather than someone manually holding the electrode), and it can weld much faster than most other methods. All of this makes it perfect for mass production. In contrast, German tanks were all welded purely by hand (if i'm not mistaken). So a long weld along the side of a Tiger tank would be done manually by a guy holding an electrode and welding at maybe 10 inches per minute, whereas a long weld on a T-34 would be done by someone operating a machine specifically set up to do that weld, and it would be done 5-10 times faster.

Steven Wilsher

You're welcome! It's an amazing book, that Gustave did do a ton of research on, but I've always thought that the best poets *are* the ones who do the legwork.

Steven Wilsher

What a wonderful episode, and it turns out I DO want to know more about tanks.

Totally Tanked

I’ve learnt something new. Thanks!

a clash of purple

re: T: I live in the suburbs of northern Virginia, and it's pretty crazy. There's still a lot of regular people living in regular houses, but there's also a lot of neighborhoods with big ol' McMansions. And horse farms, but I don't know whether that's a Southern thing (not that northern Virginia is really part of the South anymore in terms of culture) or a military-industrial complex profiteer thing. Lots of immigrants too, especially from Korea. I've never lived in California, but from the way Dolan and Ames describe places like Silicon Valley it sounds familiar. There's quite a few of the richest people in the world, but they live a stone's throw away from normal human beings (including plenty of abject poverty, people begging on the side of the road, etc.). re: etienne: That's true, but it has nothing to do with the quality of the T-34 as a tank. It's not like the Chadians were engaging armored columns with their technicals in a head-on fight or anything. So if Gaddafi had used any other kind of tank, would the outcome have been any different? I doubt it. The war in Chad was a civil war, and Gaddafi initially had the support of some Chadian factions. The way he conducted the war was to use his Chadian allies for infantry while the Libyans supplied armor, artillery, and air support. Things turned against him when Chad mostly united against the Libyan occupation, so all of a sudden his forces had no infantry. The hardware of either side isn't really what decided that conflict.

David Andrews

I always learn something useful from this podcast. Nice job.

Sam Zeng

With regards to rivets vs weld. You gotta remember the makers of tanks were often locomotive manufactures. When they start designing it they used the knowledge and skills they had which was riveted construction. With a welded haul you can get rid of the super structure and thus saving tons and tons of weight. The German and soviets were the first to standardize welded construction for their tanks.

Sam Zeng

Well most of maintenance is just making sure everything works but stuff do just break down all the time. Lots of parts that are highly stressed working in adverse environments. Which is why you need trucks or trains to pull tanks to the front. You don't really want to drive a tank for 100kms to the battle chances are you will lose a lot of them even before fighting.

Sam Zeng

Well weapons do become obsolete but the US and the West have a really bad habit of designing equipment by committee. Too many people wanting too many things from a platform and then the platform is bad at doing any specific thing or has serious intrinsic flaws. The F-35 is probably the best example. Trying to make 1 airframe do 3 very different things delayed the program for a decade.

etienne

Cunningham's Law! thanks guys, interesting

etienne

yeah I don't know how to put it but I wish the guys would do an honest episode about the F35, about what it should be doing according to doctrine, what they think the doctrine should be, how far the doctrine is from reality, how the plane fullfills and doesn't fullfill its job according to doctrine, how it actually performs as of 10 years of debugging, etc, etc. I think dismissing the whole thing as procurement grift is facile, I'd like them to make an objective case for it

Totally Tanked

Also there’s an excellent correction in the comments here. I’ll have to bring it up in the next totally tanked episode.

Totally Tanked

The other reason is limited elevation. Of the gun in a turret, made even worse by Soviet designs with huge guns and very low turrets where the breech block can’t traverse very far.

Solfish

Also, you want a smoothbore for firing sabot in order to not have atrocious barrel life, but smoothbore HE is less accurate than rifle HE. Last guy to try and make smoothbore artillery got whacked by the Mossad.

a clash of purple

The pricetag on the F-35 really overshadows any kind of discussion you could have about its merits as an airplane. It's like the big aircraft carriers; it has practical applications, but it could never actually do enough to be worth the cost. It can't be understood as anything except pure corruption.

Jimothy Realname

No problem! I paid good money to learn that submerged arc welding was pioneered on the T-34, and posting this information for free is how i'm striking back at the college-industrial complex

Totally Tanked

You do run the risk of the well worn bad tank fallacy. Basically once you’ve trained a tank crew for long enough to be effective it’s cheaper to put them in a better tank than one which will be easily destroyed, and in which the crew will die when the tank is destroyed.

Xander Udo

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse podcastam

Tyler Berglund

Wonderful episode, I’ve never had any interest in the machines or mechanics of war, just the geopolitics, but this convo has made a convert of me.

Peter Z

"Nerdling", a perfect follow-up to the "Zerg Rush".

PostmasterFenian

lol, i love the sigh we will do one for the military gear obsessed hogs. As a military tech obsessed war nerd hog thankyou. Great guest!

ClockworkOuroborous

Funny, I'm a fish nerd to hitting the aquarium store and the tank info page would be a win/win for me