Other than the tank commander being in charge, is there a chain of command on a tank? For example, is a gunner normally senior to a driver, or vice-versa?
How vulnerable are tank tracks to small arms fire? If replacing tracks is such a big deal, I’d expect infantry to shoot the tracks.
During the second Iraq war, I read about an manoeuvre during the Invasion of Iraq where a column of tanks put a lot of smoke in the middle of Baghdad and just rolled through and then exited the city. There was no mention of infantry support. What’s the purpose of a manoeuvre like that? Apparently it went well but but weren’t tanks vulnerable to being hit by RPGs fired from a few stories up?
Typical (but by no means mandatory) progression as a newbie comes up through the ranks is Loader, Driver, Gunner, then TC. But a 'cruit (new recruit fresh out of Basic) may get thrown into a Driver’s slot, if that’s where they need the warm body.
In addition to loading the gun, the Loader also sets up/programs the radio system, and takes care of most routine turret maintenance, and assists the Gunner with more advanced turret/gun system maintenance.
The Driver, aside from driving the tank, typically handles all routine hull maintenance, often with assistance from the Loader, and maybe the Gunner, too, for heavier tasks.
The Gunner is primarily in charge of the main gun and fire control system, and it’s calibration, as well as supervising and occasionally assisting the Loader and Driver
in their routine maintenance tasks.
The Tank Commander is on overall charge, and is tasked with training his crew, and having an operational, combat-ready vehicle.
The tank can run on just three people (doing without the Gunner as the TC can fire the main gun), but it’s not as efficient as having the full four-man crew. What may typically happen is the Loader will be shanghied for Shit Detail, so the Gunner will move over to the loader’s station and play Loader for a while.
Well, to a certain extent, yes. But most infantry-portable lead-chuckers won’t bother a tank’s tracks. They’d need at least small rockets to accomplish that, and they aren’t the most accurate.
And it’s not like we’ll just sit there and let you shoot us. Expect to eat some lead.
Any armored fighting vehicle is vuilnerable to anti-armor rockets fired from above.
The scenario you described may be the [in]famous “Thunder Run.” A ballsy move, but not without its consequences.
Speed/mobility is one of the key protections of a tank. And a city has lots of highways, roads, and streets by which to navigate. So a “Thunder Run” through a modern city like Baghdad has the advantage of being able to pick their routes though more lightly defended sectors (possibly using Cavalry to “feint” in one direction to draw the bulk of the defenders away from the “Thunder Run” route 
)
And, once again, there’s two good machineguns on the turret, one of which can be fired from inside the tank. So any notional rooftop defenders (which are relatively easy to spot due to their silhoutetting themselve against the sky when they show themselves) had better be ready for a fight, and to receive fire.
Ever see what a .50 cal bullet, or better yet, a whole bunch of .50 cal bullets, do to a modern building? It’s not pretty.
“Ma Deuce: Teaching People The Difference Between Concealment And Cover For 75+ Years.”
Bump.
Finished crew gunnery last week. It was a blast. We Q1ed with 764 and 8/10. Very good score for never having worked together as a crew before.
On the last night I had the TC’s engagement and as they were loading the sabot round they slammed my patrol cap over the spike and I shot it out of the main gun.
What an interesting thread. I do have a few questions:
(1) Do you really steer a tank by having two levers, one for the left tread and one for the right tread, and you push them both forward to go forward, one left and one right to turn, etc? (Ie, the way it works in video games.)
(2) Tanks are one of those things that have this feel of testosteroneish badass awesomeness to them… in fact, they’re very near the top of that list. Did they seem that way to you before you actually worked with them? And did that feeling increase or decrease over time?
(3) Do tanks have an ignition key? If some bad guys who knew as much as you did snuck into your camp in the middle of the night and managed to get to where the tanks were parked, could they just hop in, close the hatch, and go on a savage terror rampage?
(4) On a similar (admittedly morbid) note, suppose a fully trained tank team based at some army base near a major US city just lost it one day, got into a fully armed tank (I’m sure tanks aren’t generally kept fully armed, but just go with the hypothetical), drove off the base, drove into the US city, and just started driving around blowing things up, what do you think would happen? Could a single tank bring down a full-sized office building or skyscraper? Could a metro police department ever stop a tank before it ran out of gas? (Granted, I assume/hope there are plenty of safeguards in place to keep anything like this from happening…) (I know there was one incident where a guy got a tank from a national guard armory, but as I recall it was just one of him, not a full crew, and he was just driving it, not shooting stuff.)
Thanks for your answers.
1 No. Older models such as the Sherman I believe had something like that. Tried to find a picture but couldn’t. Its a T-bar assembly on the M1.
2 For me it was pretty cool. But its a job and it feels like a job. Usually when shooting its for a qualification and there is pressure to perform so you don’t have time to enjoy it.
3 Pretty much. No ignition key. you can lock them from the outside but I won’t tell you how.
4 Outside of combat tanks, or any Army equipment, is not stored with ammo. The ammo is at the ASP (ammunition supply point) which is guarded and regulated. It would not be easy to get tank rounds and a tank. Tank ammo is generally anti-armor. Although HEAT rounds are explosive its a shaped charge. They are not ideal for taking down buildings. Tank rounds would tend to go through and leave holes rather than blow up buildings. Sabot rounds are just depleted uranium darts going at high speed.
I actually have an interesting story about that… it sounds like an urban legend, but it was related to me by the actual person involved. So I work in the video game industry, and my boss used to be Ed Rotberg. He had previously worked on the arcade tank game Battlezone. So after Battlezone came out, he was approached by some guys from the military (presumably the army, but I don’t want to add details that I don’t really know the truth of) who wanted a slightly modified version of Battlezone with more information presented on the screen (and presumably other differences now long forgotten). Anyhow, while talking to these guys, he got to take a ride in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and saw its control yoke, and liked it so much that he copied/adapted it as the control system for the classic Star Wars video game.
That is actually pretty similar to the gunner’s controls. Third picture down on this link is the gunner’s station.
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?115645-Ft-Hood-quot-Freedom-Fest-quot-7-4-07
What he said ^ .
What do you think of putting the engine in front of the crew compartment, like the Merkava design?
Would a lot of shrapnel or 20-30mm explosive rounds be effective in rendering a tank severely impaired? Would it break the tracks and viewports/sensors, thus rendering the tank blind and immobile?
Eh. If it works for the Israelis, then whatever. Personally, I’m not too keen on putting up front, since that’s where the main armor belt is for the hull, and like a Claymore, it’s there for a reason: “Front Towards Enemy.”
So I’d think the chance of a “mobility kill” (tank rendered immobile due to engine/drivetrain damage) would be increased in that kind of arrangement.
Isn’t the alternative putting the crew compartment in front of the engine instead of the other way around? I got the impression that the Merkva roughly puts the crew compartment where the engine normally is and puts the engine where the crew compartment normally is.
In a tank with a normal configuration, what’s in the front? There’s a lot of armor, the driver, what else?
I forgot about the short-squad of infantry the Merkava carries. :smack: Yeah, I’d guess it’s better to keep the crunchies in back and leave the engine up front.
On an Abrams, there’s also two fuel tanks up front, but in separate compartments, to either side of the driver. The Abrams uses compartmentalization extensively.
If you can steal even an unarmed tank, you can still wreak massive havoc. Have you not seen this video?
Although I believe this was an M-60, you get the idea.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1494884/police_chase_stolen_tank/
I know it’s kinda morbid. But I have to ask in training did they talk to you about surviving a penetrating hit? I saw the pics from GW1 and the destroyed Iraqi tanks and you guys must have had an idea by then, and I am sure knew what to do in case you needed to get out of a damaged tank but did they tell you how bad it could be? I am curious and feel free to pass on this one if it’s too much
No, it was never officially touched on in training. What was emphasized was armor, compartmentalization, fire detection/suppression system; IOW, crew survivablility. What was given even more emphasis was safety: as I mentioned upthread, there’s 101 ways an Abrams will hurt/maim/cripple/kill you before you ever get in range of an enemy.
But we always kind of figured that if a hit got through, we’d probably be dead before we even knew what hit us. In a catastrophic kill, like most of the Iraqi tanks, it was probably like that. But there were horror stories from the “Old Hands” (think of an older uncle who likes to scare the kids with spooky/creepy stoies) about burning alive inside a tank because hatches are jammed after being hit, and other morbid tales of various ways to go.
What do you think of autoloaders in MBT’s.
Yeah I was thinking about the horror stories from WW2 and the Shermans/Ronsons thanks for answering, if I win the Lotto I am buying from Tanks for Sale
It’s a tradeoff. I’d personally rather have the extra pair of hands for when heavy vehicle maintenance is required.