Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Why no multi-turreted tanks? - Briefing September 2017" video.

M50 Ontos, ZSU-123, Whirbelwind and BMPT Terminator was/is considered as good multi-gun designs. However, a big gun is generally prefered since a big gun got a better punch, and is better at cracking enemy armour while small gun fire would just bounce off when it hit a modern enemy tank. And while a long gun barrel is needed to punch through enemy armour, you also want a fat gun barrel with a large diameter. This is because a large diameter gun shot heavy shells that contains much more explosives than shots from a thin gun barrel. So with a larger explosion you will have it easier to destroy buildings, shot down planes and send shot down on enemy solidiers and kill as many as possible of them with just one shot fired.
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-M50 Ontos was a tank destroyer. -BMPT Terminator is a Russian tank specialized for wrecking enormous amount of firepower upon an enemy in close combat with its many machine guns, but it also got Anti-tank missiles for self-defence against other tanks. Only ZSU-123 and Whirbelwind were SPAAs, and they could follow an armoured column on the road and protect it if an enemy aircraft were trying to attack. But both of those tanks were also knows for their great ability to deliever a wall of lethal firepower on soft targets such as trucks and infantry. So those tanks were quite flexible in their roles on the battlefield. And the we got the SPG Bear with two 152 mm guns. http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/06/14/the-other-bear-spg-medved/
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With remote controlled machine guns, I guess it would be possible to fit such modules outside the tank to improve its firepower without giving the enemy and weakspots in the full. Most armies stopped using a hull machine gun on their tanks after world war II. Instead they got rid of this weakspot and start using a machine gun with a higher rate of fire at the commanders turret as a compensation so infantry and aircraft could be fought off. However, to me it seems like this would have led to the problem of not being able to fight off enemies coming from multiple directions.
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Turrets are costly and complex, and I think we only build MBTs today because we got peacetime resources. So armies goes for quality instead of quantity. But if wartime needs and big resource constrains came into being I think turretless tanks would become popular again. Since turrets are costly, time consuming to build, adds weight, adds a higher siluette, and it offers many extra weakspots to the enemy. But I think multiple turrets can be useful when armour protection isnt important. I guess one could have a frontal turret and a rear turret on a tank with multiple phalanx machine guns to just make a wall of fire against air and soft targets. Or one could put a six pack of Anti-tank missiles on every turret and kill 12 enemy tanks in one broadside. Or can fit stinger missiles. Or rocket artillery grenades on the turrets and in one broadside deliever tonnes of explosives on top of the enemy. Firepower and mobility would be superior. But perhaps too much overkill and overly complex design.
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Firstly, Germany did not have enough ships for sea lion. Secondly I don't think the German air force would be able to destroy the royal air force, and then the royal navy, and then being able to pull off support for a land invasion of Britain in the short span of just a few months. And even if Britain have had a weaker government that signed a peace treaty with the Germans, I still don't think it would dramatically change the situation on the Eastern Front. Sure, Germany could have won in the east even if Hitler was with the western powers. His killratio was exhausting the Russians faster than the Germans until 1944, and Hitlers Southern offensive in 1942 could have been devestating for Russia. But nevertheless, so was the odds against Germany. And 3 German Divisions in North Africa, the Italian army, and some German Garrison troops in the west was still not enough men to secure a victory on the Eastern front. Odds would still be against Germany. And even if 1940 had been a period of peace after the fall of France, that would have made food imports from South America possible for Germany. But Germany would still probably be dependent on oil from Russia. Unless it could import from oil from Persia and Indonesia. But the war on Russia was not just a resource matter. Hitler wanted the land for his people, and he wanted to exterminate the slavs. Nothing would probably have stopped Hitler from attacking Russia, even if it clearly was against the best interest of his own country. Germany would lose a friendship. It would lose a great trade partner. And its armies would suffer horrific losses that would weaken Germany immensly.
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You confuse skill with luck. The Germans were just lucky that they could destroy the largest air force in the world the first day of Barbarossa with a surprse attack on Russian airfields. And without air support the German army would have suffered huge losses in 1941, because the German artillery was 12 times weaker than the Russian artillery in 1941, and 20 times weaker in 1944. Furthermore did the Russians posses tanks in better quality and quantatity than any military in the world in 1941. And no other country even came close to match them. So had Stalin not forbidden retreats and incentivised stupid decisionmaking, then the Germans would not have won the great victories they had in 1941. And the German Army lost 3000 men per day during Barbarossa. So no one could fool me into believing 3 Afrika Korps divisions of 45.000 men would have made any difference on the Eastern Front. 45.000 men would just had been eaten up in only 15 days. Only the battle for Moscow alone killed more German solidiers than the losses it took during all the invasions of western Europe combined (Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, France). The German military was exhausted by october and should have taken a rest instead of pushing onwards. Its logistics was strained. More than half of the tanks were no longer operational because of all wear and tear and fighting, huge manpower losses needed to be replaced, Stuka pilots were being by all the bombing missions and the Luftwaffe didn't have enough bombs or planes to deal with even half of all the targets that were on the list to bomb. So an attack on Moscow in 1941 was simply overly ambitious, and a stupid waste of resources. And even if they had sacrificed all and gotten into the city, its doubtful that they could have taken it. Probably it would just have been lots of bloody streetfighting. And neighter woul the conquest of Moscow have ended the war. The Swedes took Moscow in 1612, and that didn't mean the conquest of Russia, and neighter did Napoleons conquest of the city 200 years later end differently. Probably would the Germans just be too weak to both hold the city and protect their own flanks, so the option was to retreat and leave the city or getting encirled and trapped as they were in Stalingrad. And Germany was once again lucky that they didn't lose the war already in the winter 1941-42 when Stalin launched his massive counteroffensive that pushed the Germans back 300km and nearly crushed the German defensive line in the central Russia. Hitler refused to listen to his Generals, and his policy of forbidding retreats had saved the German Wehrmacht from total destruction. And Stalins massive offensive turned into a costly disaster for the Russians since they were easily cut off and destroyed when they had pushed forward so fast that supplies couldn't keep up.. The winter offensive was a disaster for the Red Army. And without this disaster it would have been impossible for Hitler to start an offensive in Russia in 1942. Furthermore had Germany also lost enormous amounts of planes, heavy artillery and machines during their winter retreat. And manpower losses to cold and fighting was huge despite they won a victory. ---------------- So would I say that Germany would be the likely victor in war against Russia? No. They had a small chance. But odds were not in their favour.
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Had the Russian officerkorps had more freedom to act as they wanted instead of fearing execution for cowardice, then performance in 1941 would have been better. On paper should the Soviets utterly have crushed the German in 1941 even with a mediocre leadership. When I talk about 12 times stronger artillery I refer to the number of artillery pieces (with the book "Ostfront" as my source). And I don't think the Germans had any qualitative edge that would compensate the inferiority in numbers. For example did Russian guns tend to have longer range than their German counterparts. And I would say that the Germans would not be able to hold off 3-6 times as many Russians if they didn't have any air support. The Russians could simply have massed massive artillery formations and blasted the Germans to pieces. And if the Russian "supertanks" KV-1 and T-34 had been assembeled in large numbers at a few places, instead of spread out across the Eastern front, then those tanks could have had a severe impact on the outcome of 1941. Since the Germans did not have any good weapon aside from the Flak 88 that could deal with them. Furthermore could a small number of Russians also hold off large numbers of Germans if they just could dig in and prepare a good defensive position. As Pavlov's House shows. MHV have earlier shown on this Youtube channel that about 80% of the German army was too weak to be fit for an offensive in 1942. And all those 450.000 men of Garrison troops would at best just replace some of the med that died in 1941. And your opinion about if the Russia was surprised attack or not is totally unimportant for the discussion. Since the Russian had taken no countermeasures towards an invasion threat regardless. And the result was the destruction of the Russian airforce on day one. And had the Russians undertaken some countermeasures that would have saved most of their airforce from destruction on the ground the first days of the war, then the Germans would have had a hard time in Russia. The Soviets wouldn't even have to gain air superioriity in 1941 for the Germans to get into big problems. Without Stukas to help the groundtroops that lacked artillery, or having bombers that destroyed tanks while they were transported on the railroads, things would have been very tough for the German army in 1941.
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