The Iraqis claim that tanks were destroyed. Has the USA lost in M1A1 tanks? I believe there was a friendly fire incident between two British tanks.
All I’ve heard are two Abrams dasabled due to shots at their rear vents. The crews were not injured, only inconvenienced. Both require repair, and will be returned to fighting shortly.
An Abrams fell into the Euphrates after its driver was killed while crossing a bridge.
I’d have to strongly object to the term destroyed as applied to these two units - something much of the media has latched onto despite evidence to the contrary. As NurseCarmen says, the two tanks in question were disabled (or immobilized) - the Iraqis fired anti-tank missiles that would have bounced off any other part of the tank into the equivalent of the exhaust pipe of the engine. Basically, these tanks will require an engine replacement and they will be back on the line. None of the other combat functions i.e. turret controls, targeting, firing, were affected.
I also found it interesting that, in the article I read about this incident, the headline screams about tanks being taken out and it wasn’t until the last paragraph of the story that they mentioned the fact that in the engagement where the two tanks were disabled, the U.S. troops killed approximately 300 enemy attackers without sustaining a single casualty of their own.
Trying the link one more time:
It’s at Reuters. If linkee no workee you can probably copy and paste into your adress bar.
Thanks, Dual
With tanks, there’s a pretty fine line between disabled and destroyed. The vast majority of Sherman tanks that were hit by German tanks were recovered and reused, which might happen even if the first crew were all killed. Americans had the most comprehensive tank recovery units in the world. Maybe it still does, I don’t know.
And had the Iraqis been in control of the field at the end of the battle, the two American tanks would have certainly been lost.
Here is an analogy, I’m sure it’s not the best, but the best I can think of. The US had five or six battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor. Were they “destroyed”? No. IIRC, every one of them but the Arizona was eventually refloated and repaired and re-entered service to fight again. However, their weapons and power were off the firing line for a long time. And had the Japanese taken Hawaii at the time, they would have been lost forever.
No matter what term you use, hainv comabt vehicles dragged off the field due to combat damage is a very bad thing.
That story seems strange to me. If I remember ex-tank’s description of the driving position, the driver is all the way down inside the hull while it is moving. It’s not like the old M-60 where you could stick your head out of the hatch and drive.
Yeah, here it is:
I wonder how the driver was shot with the hatch closed while the tank was on a bridge? Is ex-tank still on the Board?