10/8/2015 Tanks, but No Tanks - TV Tropeshttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TanksButNoTanks 1/4ETrope Media Edit Page w To Do Related R Discussion Page Source HistoryTanks, but No TanksWatch + Main Laconic + Create NewWriters often play fast and loose when it comesto vehicles. They are usually Just Plane Wrong,and use artistic license when it comes to ships.This applies to armored vehicles as much asanything else, either getting details wrong orusing stand-ins.One of the most common mistakes is to treat allarmored vehicles as tanks. Armored cars, self-propelled guns, armored personnel carriers andseveral other types of armored fightingvehicles can be and frequently aremisidentified as tanks, just as every warshipis a "battleship" to most civilians. n real lifeall of these vehicle types and more are commonly lumped together under the catch-all term"Armored Fighting Vehicles" which is usually contracted to just "armor" or, if you want to be allsnooty about it, AFV (no relation). Despite the common logic of "if it looks like a tank, acts like atank, smells like a tank, it's a tank", many AFVs that look like tanks don't fit the definition, astanks are usually characterized by being more of a product of old warfare, therefore way moreheavily armoured and generally built to take the brunt of enemy fire than their AFV cousins,which usually possess lighter armour and rely more on indirect combat. Of course, this makestanks rather expensive to make and maintain compared to other armoured vehicles, which iswhy we're seeing fewer actual tanks portrayed by the media these days.n most war films, particularly those set in the Second World War, historical tanks and armoredvehicles will be replaced by either modern or more widely available contemporary vehicles thathave either been painted in appropriate (or at least stereotypical) color schemes or givencosmetic makeovers to disguise their foreign or anachronistic features. The amount of effortthat goes into this varies rather wildly.There are many very good reasons for this. Firstly, antique armored vehicles are actually quiteSearch... Login*So which of these vehicles is a tank?Answer 10/8/2015 Tanks, but No Tanks - TV Tropeshttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TanksButNoTanks 2/4scarce. Some vehicles particularly those from the defeated Axis nations were neverexactly common in the first place. Fewer than 500 King Tiger tanks were produced as opposedto 47,000 M4 Shermans, and many contemporary talian or Japanese vehicles were producedin even smaller numbers, surviving examples simply may not even exist (Unless beingscattered in small pieces across remote Pacific islands or buried in the Russian steppe countsas "surviving"). To make it even harder, some of these vehicles are now historical artifactsbelonging to museums and obviously cannot be used recklessly or destroyed.Next, as the Sherman production numbers above suggest, filmmakers naturally took advantageof the huge glut of cheap surplus U.S. Army equipment in the immediate postwar period. f astudio has running vehicles in their prop inventory that are available for filming without muchhassle, then simple convenience means they'll get used, accurate or not. These days, mostarmored fighting vehicles that don't meet their end on the battlefield will probably be scrappedbefore anyone else can get their hands on them. Tanks have never been particularly attractiveon the surplus market since they are huge, heavy, fuel-guzzling lumps of steel that can easilycost more to restore and preserve than recycle.Even contemporary vehicles in operating condition can be prohibitively hard to find andincredibly expensive to hire, transport and maintain for filming. After all, tanks tend to be just soflipping big and in part because military vehicle collectors are often understandably leery ofrenting their rare and often irreplaceable treasures to people who are just itching to crash them,burn them, blow them up or drive them off cliffs.Then there's the matter of Real Life politics, where vehicles you'd ideally want for realismsimply can't be obtained at all since they're currently being used or held by an unfriendly power.t's easily forgotten today that prior to The Great Politics Mess-Up, getting realistic Soviet orEastern Bloc military vehicles for filming many a Cold War thriller was darn near impossible.Whereas today, you can just phone the Russians and ask them nicely.Similar to its sister tropes, this one happens out of practicality more than anything else,especially if you're not Backed by the Pentagon and just don't want reality to get in the way ofTank Goodness. Just find something vaguely tank-like, add a coat of stereotypical (buthistorically inaccurate) panzer gray paint and a few crosses and voila! instant Tiger. Andlet'sbe honest hereaside from a few vehicle enthusiasts and history buffs, most viewers wouldn'teven notice (or care), anyway. f it has tracks and a gun, it's a tank as far as they are concernedand it doesn't violate their Willing Suspension of Disbelief. To those who know what to look for,however, it can quite jarringly break it.For producers who care, there are a number of ways around it. One is to use surplus or 'backuptanks' from modern armies such as Russia or Spain: Most T-34 and Sherman tanks used inWW films were not actually from the war but modernized vehicles from the immediate postwarperiod. Another is to take a more common modern or contemporary vehicle and give it acosmetic makeover to give it the appearance of the correct historic vehicle; sometimes these10/8/2015 Tanks, but No Tanks - TV Tropeshttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TanksButNoTanks 3/4Tank Goodness Motor Vehicle Tropes Tanks for NothingTank Goodness Vehicle ndex The TaxiTank Goodness Just for Pun Tanks for NothingTactical Withdrawal Military and Warfare Tropes Tank GoodnessA Tankard of Moose Urine mageSource/Photography Tanks for Nothing TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. conversions can be quite sophisticated with only a few detail differences such as turret locationand suspension design that only dedicated military vehicle enthusiasts would likely notice(these folk are often called "rivet counters" in the trade and are usually considered to be veryannoying and hard-to-please people). Finally, there are always models of both the real and theComputer Generated variety, which naturally come with their own sorts of problems.Feel free to post aversions here, as they're rather rare and always a pleasure to see.OPEN/CLOSE ALL FOLDERS ANME FLM LTERATURE LVE ACTON TV TABLETOP GAMES VDEO GAMES REAL LFE OTHER ExampIesPrevious * Index * Next *10/8/2015 Tanks, but No Tanks - TV Tropeshttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TanksButNoTanks 4/4Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy