Today, we're near Uvalde,

which is right in the bottom of Texas.

The more keenly observant of you

may have noticed we're in tank.

I'd be slightly surprised if you didn't notice the tank,

- to be fair. - Yeah, that's fair.

This is an M4 Sherman, which was built by the U.S. for World War II.

Shall we put it to use, Daniel?

I think we should.

Giddy-up!

( engine starting )

Oh!

Here we are. This is the tank we're gonna fire.

Slightly different to the one we were riding in,

but it's the same model of tank, isn't it?

Yeah, it's an M4 Sherman as well,

but this one's an "Easy-Eight" or E8 Sherman.

It's the only one in existence that fires and drives.

- A rare beast. - It really is.

It's got all the original stuff on it.

All the machine guns on top, all original.

- All the fixings. - All the fixings.

And... we're gonna be firing this.

15 and a half pounds of pure solid steal.

- Not small. - Not small.

It's gonna be coming straight out the end

of the 76 mil canon there,

about 2500 foot per second.

- Gonna need a high-speed camera then. - I think we are.

I feel like we're the right people for this job.

So the tank's over there, and very handily

at the other end of the range, is a lovely sort of orange,

- perforated vehicle. - Who put that there?

That's what we're gonna be aiming the tank at.

It's not actually important that we hit it

because we're mainly interested in tracking the shell through the air.

But, yeah, it's nice to have a target.

Oh, for sure. I mean, the tank has a range of two miles?

- And that's about 275 yards. - So, well within its limits.

- I think so. - Yeah.

Considering it goes at 2,500 feet per second,

I think it'll get there in...

- no time at all. - No time at all, okay. Let's go.

I'm about to fire a tank.

Yeah, not your everyday activity.

I wouldn't have thought so.

- You ready? - Yeah, let's do it.

I'm ready to feel the boom.

- Okay. - Three, two, one, fire.

- Whoa! - ( chuckles ) Oh!

That was a real, like, racket.

My brain was, like, shook.

It was like a violent smack

and then like a nice, like, whomp in the distance.

A smack and a whomp.

- Smack and a whomp. - That was good.

- Satisfying. - All right, let's see what that looked like.

- Dan: Whoa. - Gav: You literally see it.

- Jeez. - You can see a few frames of it there.

Dan: Oh, yeah. It's kind of blurry,

but you can actually see it.

It just looks like a giant bullet.

- Gav: I guess that's pretty much what it is, isn't it? - Dan: Yeah.

A giant bullet from a giant gun.

You ready?

Three, two, one, fire.

Flippin' A.

Bugger!

Whoa!

Oh, man.

So, just before I shot that--

Just before it punched me.

Yeah, just before I shot that, I'd done my hair right.

It was facing this way.

After I shot it, it was facing that way.

- It blew me away. - Where are your goggles?

I was wearing them.

- Were you? - Yeah.

All right, let's check Phantom.

Gav: Look at the way the blast flaps your sleeve around.

That was intense.

- Dan: Wow. - Gav: Can you see the round?

Gav: Oh, yeah.

Dan: You can see it, a tiny little dot

sailing off into the distance.

It's quite low. It's like against the--

Gav: Oh, yeah!

Wow.

- Did it blow the glasses off your face? - It blew the glasses

ten feet diagonally away from me,

rattled my brain, and changed my haircut

all in a split second.

Not what you read about in war books.

No, no, it's not.

One of the things I'm very excited about for this video

is that we plan tracking the tank round through the air.

And I've been using Phantoms for a long time.

I've been pretty good at panning.

- Yeah. - But I don't think I can track by hand

a round that's going, you know, 2,000 feet per second

at 82 feet away.

I'd like to see you try.

So, we brought in some big guns for our big guns.

This is Frank from Specialized Imaging.

Frank, do you want to explain to us what we've got here for the Phantom?

Sure. We have a computer controlled mirror

with a high-speed video camera looking into the mirror.

We don't have to pan the camera.

We only have to pan the mirror.

And thus we can get these very fast scan speeds up to,

in this case, around 2,000 or 3,000 degrees per second.

- So that means you'd have to spin the camera - Degrees per--

- 3,000 degrees per second. - That's how--

- It'd be like... - It'd be completely impossible

with a human muscle, I assume.

- Correct. - Unless you drove a train into it.

Ten full revs in a second.

- Yes. - That's crazy.

When it's fired, how does it know when--

how to turn the camera, how fast to turn the mirror?

Sure. The software that drives the mirror

allows you to put in an estimated velocity.

And we got that from the gunners here.

And then we also use two of our optical trigger systems

looking at the line of flight.

And as the bullet passed those triggers,

we actually did an instantaneous velocity measurement.

So that means that you've got two cameras.

The first one sees it,

and then it measures the time it takes to get to the next one

- and adjusts the mirror. - Correct.

So today we're gonna put the V2512,

pair it with this tracker, shoot around 28,500 frames a second.

So instead of panning the camera,

the camera stays perfectly still

and the mirror does all the work.

- Ready? Okay. - Yeah.

Three, two, one, fire.

Whoa.

That made a-- that made, like, a significant dust pile at the end.

That was a big dust pile, you're right.

- I think that was the biggest. - Yeah.

Let's go and check out the tracking shot.

For reference, we shot 212,000 pictures there.

Dan: Whoa.

Oh! Did you see the heat waves there?

Gav: Flippin'! It's outpacing that shockwave.

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

- in front of it. - And behind it.

- Dan: Whoa! - Gav: It's trailing a nose--

Oh, it almost went out of frame there.

So the round is actually slightly slower

- than we wanted to track it. - That's because it's--

- It's 'cause it's come out like that, though. - Yeah.

It-- Like when it's actually correct--

'Cause this is not supposed to happen.

- See what it's doing? You can see it yawing... - Yeah.

- ...up and down. - That's really weird.

Like that's-- That's "no correct."

Gav: And obviously it's more in focus in the beginning

than the middle, but then it will come back into focus.

- Oh, I was wondering why. - It's still trailing that wave.

Look at that. There you can see

there's so much detail in the air that's being affected.

Is it the moisture in the air? It must be.

It looks like exhaust from a jet.

Gav: Love that.

So I think now, we should--

I feel like we've got it. We know where it's gonna be.

We should zoom in a little bit.

- Oh, go tight. Naughty. - Go a little bit tighter.

All right, you ready for another one?

I-- I am. I really am.

All right, I got Phantom looking right at your face.

I'll try not to look too dumb then.

- All right. You ready? - Yeah.

Okay. Three, two, one, fire.

Whoa!

It smells so good.

Whoa.

I look slightly scared for a start.

Shut my eyes like--

I don't blame you. Ooh!

( Gav laughs )

Dan: Gonna find out exactly how far the barrel moves back now, as well.

Gav: Oh!

- Gav: Threw out load of gunk. - Dan: Oh, man.

Gav: It significantly jolts back.

Dan: It really does, doesn't it?

- All right, let's go and look at the cool shot. - Okay.

Now it did have to lower the frame rate

- Mm-hmm. - to a measly 12,000 frames a second.

- Well, that's pathetic. - And I widened the shot,

but we do have a lot more depth

to hopefully get much more of it and focus at once.

And it's more zoomed in,

so it's like a double whammy here.

Gav: Deliberately set the focus to be more in the middle of the flight

so we can see that rifling from the side.

Dan: Mm-hmm. Whoa!

That's really-- That is so perfectly tracked.

- That's amazing. - Look at that.

Directly in the middle of the frame.

Oh, my word. Oh, you can see it spinning there.

Gav: Yeah, look at that. That is the rifling there.

Dan: Oh, yeah, you can see it spinning perfectly.

And as the bow wave as well.

You see the bow waves in the air.

Gav: It looks like it's taking its time.

- Yeah. - Even though it's really going absolutely rapid.

Dan: It's going ape! And off into the distance.

Gav: It's cool seeing this because it's pretty much an antique.

Like I said before, it does yaw like that,

and then it straightens itself out.

It's very cool.

That's the spinning rifling in action.

Dan: Oh, wow.

It-- What?

- It went under. - Wait.

- It threaded the needle. - No! Never.

Dan: Do that again.

Oh, went through the tire.

The back tire.

Just ripped a hole in the tire.

It went through it like that hole wasn't there.

Oh, we know the exact place that our round went.

( imitating explosion )

All right, let's go look at the dent that made.

- All right. - This thing's been battered.

So, wait.

Did it go--

All right, okay, this is probably the least impressive hole.

- ( laughs ) - Okay?

I'll be honest with you, it's the least impressive hole ever,

because its rubber-- it's just all gone bloop!

- Yeah. - This is the hole that we made here

with the tank that we just fired.

It just sort of cleaned the tire.

- Yeah. - It also--

You know what it looks like?

- My gran in her house, - Yeah.

she had these little rubber things with like quadrants cut

- and you'd like thumb a tea towel into it. - Oh, yeah, yeah.

- It looks like that. - Yeah.

Well, my ears are ringing.

but we've packed the Phantom away.

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

You say that. My skull's ringing. That's easily

the biggest thing I've ever fired.

- It blew your specs off. - Yeah.

Yeah, that record will probably stand