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Tanks are hard to kill. That's the entire sales pitch. 40 tons of moving steel wrapped in armor thick enough to make rifle bullets feel personally insulted. Powered by engines designed to keep going even when several important components have already given up on life. Unfortunately, if you build something hard to kill, someone will immediately dedicate themselves to figuring out how to kill it anyway. preferably cheaply and quickly and preferably in large numbers. When that happens, tank crews don't sit around and wait for a memo announcing the next official upgrade package. They improvise and weld. They bolt and they stack and they pour. Because sometimes survival is less about elegant engineering and more
about whatever looks like it might stop an explosion if you attach it fast enough. When most people think of tank combat in the Second World War, they imagine Europe. Wide fields and long sight lines with distant muzzle flashes, armored duels happening at what almost passes for civilized distances. They rarely imagine jungles. But in the Pacific theater, American tanks were fighting in terrain where visibility was measured in yards, not miles. And the Japanese infantry often short on heavy anti-tank guns adapted in the most direct way possible. If you can't kill the tank from far away, just walk over to it and kill it from up close. Satchel charges, grenade bundles, magnetic
explosives, soldiers sprinting forward, climbing onto the hull, prying open hatches, and attempting to redecorate the crew compartment with a high explosive. From inside the tank, this was deeply unpleasant. You can't see everything. You can't cover every angle. And when someone's standing on your roof with a bomb, armor thickness suddenly feels relatively unimportant. American crews responded with a solution that required no research, no testing program, and absolutely no subtlety. They turned their tanks into porcupines. Three and a half inch construction spikes, literally just hardware store nails, were welded point up around hatches, periscopes, ventilators, and
anything that looked remotely climbable. The logic here was refreshingly blunt. You want to get on this tank, you're going to bleed first. It worked. Even highly motivated attackers tend to reconsider when every handhold is a steel needle waiting to punch through a palm. The modification had side effects, though. Those spikes didn't care which uniform you were wearing. Crews had to climb in and out carefully, which is not ideal in a profession where quickly is often the preferred speed. There was also the chance that a grenade might get caught instead of sliding off. But there was an upside, too. These spikes created standoff distance, and shaped charges strongly preferred to be pressed
directly against armor. Force them to detonate a few inches away, and their bad day becomes slightly less bad for you. Now, as you're watching this, you're probably wondering what it was actually like to command a Sherman tank in World War II. Well, now you can step into the commander seat yourself. In Sherman Commander, you take control of a full platoon of Sherman tanks across famous World War II battlefields. You're not just driving, you're issuing orders, coordinating your crew, and making split-second decisions that can mean victory or destruction. The game focuses on tactical tank warfare where every move matters. You'll support infantry, outmaneuver heavier enemy armor, and
face dynamic AI that constantly tries to outthink you. Don't just kill the enemy, kill your boredom as well. But be careful, one mistake can have serious consequences. So, planning and smart positioning are everything. And realism really sells the experience. Tanks feel like massive, lumbering war machines that require teamwork to operate. You command your crew, coordinate with other units on the tactical map, and experience the tension of real battlefield decisions. It's a great bit of escapism, stepping away from your boring day and into the role of a World War II commander, making decisions under pressure, and feeling that satisfaction when your strategy actually works. If you enjoy history, strategy, or just the
achievement of winning a tough battle, definitely check it out. Sherman Commander is just released on Steam, so you can try it yourself using the link in the description. And thanks to Iron Wolf Studio and Dalic Entertainment for sponsoring this video. The tank looked ridiculous, but it also became much harder to climb, and it was worth it. Another persistent headache in the Pacific theater was the type 99 magnetic anti-tank mine. Flat, discshaped, packed with TNT, ringed with magnets, and equipped with a short delay fuse. It could be thrown or physically pressed onto a tank using a bamboo pole.
Once it stuck, you had seconds to run. It couldn't punch through the thick frontal armor of an M4 Sherman, but it didn't need to. Blow apart suspension components, crack the track links, jam running gear, and you've successfully converted a formidable tank into a sitting duck. The first counter measure involved paint. Marines fix sand into wet paint to roughen the surface so magnets wouldn't grip properly. That worked sometimes, which in combat is another way of saying it wasn't good enough. So, tank crews moved on to wood. Planks were bolted and welded along hull sides and over vulnerable running gear.
Magnetic mines hit the wood and just fell off. No grip, no detonation. Problem downgraded. As a bonus, the wood created spacing and shaped charges rely on very precise geometry to form a penetrating jet. When you disrupt that geometry even slightly, the performance dropped sharply. The tank now looked like a mobile shed. But it worked. Eventually though, wood alone wasn't enough. Japanese troops began forcing explosives into gaps. Anti-tank guns still existed, so crews reached for the universal soldier solution. Add more stuff. Concrete was poured over sponssons, glacis plates, and transmission housings. Gaps were filled and surfaces were thickened. Tanks gained lumpy gray growths that made them
look less like armored vehicles and more like a construction project that had gotten out of hand. Against lighter weapons, it helped. Against physics, not so much. Concrete is heavy, extremely heavy. Engines complained. Transmissions and suspensions complained, but nobody listened. Because when the alternative is being blown up, mechanical sympathy tends to fall way down on the priority list. The Soviets experimented with concrete as well, but on a much grander scale. Massive blocks were attached to T-34s. Hollow steel boxes filled with sand and resin were tested. Protection was improved. The mobility evaporated.
Some configurations added over 13 tons. Individual blocks weighed more than a small car, and field repairs became nearly impossible. The idea quietly disappeared. It turns out the best way to ruin a medium tank is to make it weigh as much as a heavy tank. Not all improvised armor was solid. German engineers introduced wire mesh side skirts known as Tomasen. They looked flimsy, cheap, and vaguely like someone had robbed a scrapyard. And they were designed to counter Soviet anti-tank rifles by destabilizing incoming rounds and making them tumble before they struck the real armor. Lightweight, replaceable, and effective, they did exactly what they were supposed to do.
Later, similar mesh systems were used to disrupt shape charges. The Soviets built their own versions. Both sides called them bed frame armor, because if you use your imagination, that's exactly what they resembled. Sometimes battlefield innovation is just giving junk a very important job. Do you know what also works as tank armor? Adding even more tank armor. A vehicle may have been knocked out, but that didn't mean it wasn't out of the fight, or at least be put to some good use. Metal plates from damaged or destroyed vehicles could be welded onto a still active vehicle's vulnerable areas, adding yet another layer of steel between the crew and a high velocity anti-tank round on a
collision course. Of course, this adds extra weight to a tank, but the lowered speed was seen as a worthwhile payoff. This idea was so surprisingly effective that the military made it official and the M4 A3E2 jumbo assault tank rolled off the assembly line with thicker armor plates straight from the start. Only a few hundred were made, but it shows just how much effect soldiers making stuff up on the fly can change official policy. Improvised armor never stopped. Spare track links hung on turrets. Extra steel plates welded wherever they fit. Sandbags stacked wherever gravity allowed. Logs strapped on originally for traction. Accidentally helpful against
fragments. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, American vehicles rolled out with so-called hillbilly armor made from scrap steel and whatever else could stop bullets and shrapnel. Today, cage and slat armor surrounds modern vehicles to defeat rockets, missiles, and the everpresent loitering drones. Mocked online as cope cages, they continue a tradition that is at least a hundred years old. Add space, add mass, add problems for the other guy. Improvised armor is not magic. Sometimes it saves lives, sometimes it barely helps, and sometimes it breaks your suspension and makes your crew hate you. But it always means one thing. Someone saw a problem and refused to accept it. They grabbed a
welder and they turned their tanks into porcupines. They bolted lumber to armored vehicles and they poured concrete onto engines already begging for mercy. Because in war, perfection is optional. Survival is not.
