I'm about to fire a tank.

Fire!

- Oh! - Whoa!

Gav: That was intense.

Dan: It blew me away.

It's outpacing that shockwave.

Dan: Oh, there's a shockwave. You can see the shockwave.

Gav: I think that's some of the coolest footage I've ever seen.

What is this?

It's my baby. Fire!

It's an absolute war zone.

( exhaling )

Well, that was, honestly,

some of the most insane high-speed footage I've seen.

I think my brain's just about recovered

from the shockwaves of that.

- It was loud. - It was loud.

The D20 was loud.

Three, two, one, fire!

Did you hear that?

That was one of my most fun days I think, actually.

- Yeah? - Firing a tank is awesome.

When I was a kid I always wanted to know

what it'd be like to be in a tank.

So we're inside the Sherman right now.

It's pretty cramped.

It would have five people usually.

You got the driver and the co-driver.

You have a commander, the gunner's seat,

and you'd also have a loader

whose only job is to load the gun.

This here's the breech, which is where you'd load the ammunition in.

So you have to punch it in with your fist

and quickly remove your fist,

'cause this part will come across and lock in

and then you can fire it.

I can't imagine, especially with five people in here,

what the change in pressure must be like

when this thing's getting hit or shooting.

Actually being inside the tank,

you get much less of an effect when you're firing it.

It doesn't feel as beefy.

Because you're outside, you have all that pressure.

Whereas inside, you don't really,

'cause you got that breech protecting you,

and you got steel all around you.

You know, people overuse the word,

- but it's awesome. - Yeah.

- It's very cool. But how do you drive it? - Yeah.

- There's no wind screen. - That's fair.

Is there a steering wheel? Like, what's going on?

I actually would-- I have no idea.

What even are the controls? Pedals, buttons, levers?

- Yeah. - I just assumed it was a thumbstick

- kind of controller. - Of course you did.

So we took the opportunity

to learn how to drive a tank.

I'm up in the tower.

Okay, I'll try not to crash or do anything too rash.

Yeah, try not to bend the thing.

All right, so to start it up, just click it.

Down, yep.

Very satisfying.

We're gonna be heading toward...

Yeah.

Yeah.

( man laughs )

Perfect.

A little shopping--

No. Okay.

Is it fun to drive?

It's pretty cool.

- You just have these two levers. - Think I could drive it.

- I think you could do it. - Yeah?

I think that even though you can't even drive a car,

I think you could drive a tank.

- Don't have a driver's license. - I think it's easier.

Well, now we all know how to drive a Sherman tank

- in an emergency. - Or a zombie apocalypse.

Or a zombie apocalypse.

Next up, to help us learn more about how a tank works,

we have an ammunition technician.

- Dan. - Hello.

- Thanks for coming on. - My pleasure.

What could you tell us about the tanks that we were in?

Well, the one we just drove, that was a jumbo.

There was only 250 of them ever made.

And you run us through what actually occurs in the tank when it fires?

I can. This is the projectile

that was fired by the tank itself.

It's about 15 and a half pounds.

Can't really relate to that.

- It's over a stone. - Yeah, it's the equivalent

of three whole bags of flour.

What would you rather get hit by?

This or three bags of flour?

Well, I mean, probably this,

but at that sort of speed,

either one would probably do some damage.

That would just be a lot more dusty.

- Yeah. - Poof!

So what happens is,

if I lay it down on the side here,

imagine here we've got the cartridge case.

What happens when you fire the tank

when I was pulling that little string,

a firing pin was impinging onto the primer

and that was igniting the propellant

inside the cartridge case.

That propellant is hitting the base

of the projectile here.

You see this part here? This is called a driving band.

This is copper.

- So this is softer. - This is softer.

So if you look down the barrel of the gun,

you'll see the rifling like twisting grooves.

And because this is slightly wider

than the projectile itself,

the copper engages in the rifling of the barrel.

And that then imparts a spin on the projectile.

So this little strip is the reason it's coming out like this.

- Yeah. And I'll show you what I mean. - Okay.

This is one that we've previously fired.

- Obviously-- - Can you guess which has been fired?

Yeah, we dug this out of the ground

and you can actually see these individual grooves here

are the copper that have gone through the rifling there.

This engages in the teeth of the barrel

and then causes the projectile to spin when it comes out.

Every ten inches it travels,

it's done a complete rotation.

So to clearly illustrate what I'm talking about

we can just see the footage.

This is my favorite shot.

Gav: So almost as it travels the length of itself,

it's coming round on a full rotation.

- Dan: Yeah. - Gav: So if it wasn't spinning,

that would just be tumbling through the air.

And you can definitely see the rotation from the rifling.

Dan: It's like an American football.

When you throw one, you spin it

- and it stabilizes in flight. - Yeah.

So, obviously, 1,700 feet per second

- is faster than the speed of sound. - Yeah.

Which is why we've got these bow waves you can see in the air.

We actually got very lucky with the fact that this is,

you know, it's a gradient from blue to a darker color.

You can see it very clearly

'cause you got two colors coming together.

Which I've never seen before

with, like, naked eye, obviously.

That's very cool.

Holding it, and it's so dense.

It's like, wow, that is seriously damaging.

That one was 15 pounds,

but the one we fired from the 152 mil

D20. Hold this.

- There you go. - Yeah.

That's a lot heavier.

It's about half your weight I think.

This shell actually comes out really fast

even though the way it defeats armor is very different.

This used the power and speed to penetrate the armor.

Whereas this has an explosive charge in it,

which is what damages it.

It used a completely different method

to penetrate the tanks.

And we actually found some of the remnants.

We did.

We dug this out of the earth bank in the back.

- So this is our one. - Yeah.

Just crumpled.

The force that has to do that is mental.

Well, thank you very much, Dan, for teaching me

- a lot about how tanks work. - My pleasure.

Well, hopefully you enjoyed that episode. I did.

Feel free to subscribe to the Slow Mo Guys over here,

and make sure you check out other episodes

of "Planet Slow Mo".

- What? - Nothing.