So I read just thinking, I wonder what would happen if a M1A2 tank was stranded in a WW1 battlefield and it’s main cannon was out of bullets from a battle in more recent times. Could it destroy or disable oncoming WW1 tanks with only it’s sidearm? Would aircraft be effective against it?
To expand on the last post, the Mk211 Raufoss round will penetrate 11mm at a 45 deg. angle at 1000 m. This round is a High Explosive, Incendiary, Armor piercing round. The link above indicates typical WWI armor was around 8mm thick. Penetration spec. from Global Security. Mark 211 .50-caliber Multipurpose Ammunition
Supposedly up to 20mm at 90 degree.
Another .50 cal round, M903 SLAP (saboted light armor penetrator) can penetrate 3/4" (20mm) armor at 1500m. No angle given. Spec. comes from Federation of American Scientists. M903 Caliber .50 Saboted Light Armor Penetrator (SLAP), M962 Saboted Light Armor Penetrator Tracer (SLAPT)
The Mk211 can be fired from the .50cal sniper rifle or linked and fired from the M2 machine gun. The SLAP / SLAP-T rounds are only fired from the MG. (At least when I retired a couple years ago :))
But is it effective? Just because it might be able to penetrate doesn’t instantly mean that the M1A2 will win. How effective would biplanes be against the M1? Or artillery, or anything else? The WW1 tank’s guns will certainly be able to blow off all the external sensors.
The M1A2 does not have either round in its basic load. The coaxial 7.62mm machine gun would not penetrate WWI tanks with standard ammo. The external .50cal MG doesn’t have the Mk211 or M903 in its basic load. The M1A2 tank would be overwhelmed and destroyed as soon as ammo ran out.
As to vulnerability to aircraft; this link has the WWI aircraft weapons. The larger caliber guns were either ineffective in use or had low velocity/non-armor piercing ammo. The more typical machine gun calibers were not equipped with armor-piercing ammo in aircraft.
WWI airplanes lacked anything that could hurt an M1. Other than a kamikaze attack where the fuel from the crashed aircraft ended up burning on & under the tank, thereby smoking out or cooking out the tank crew. The wood & fabric airplane itself would do nothing when it hit the tank at max speed.
A single tank can never defend itself against aggressive infantry. It’ll get surrounded then burned. Even if the infantry lack anything that can explosively open the tank’s hull.
I thought modern M1s were protected against most chemical attacks, though? Surely they would be protected against burning liquid fuel as well? I mean, otherwise, you could throw a bunch of gasoline at a M1 and have a pretty good chance to kill it…
As for infantry, wouldn’t the 7.62 turret protect it against infantry? Not to mention that the M1 moves a hell of a lot faster than most vehicles in WW1.
Burning liquid heats up metal. And however air is drawn inside, while chemicals may be filtered out, the air itself is heated and mostly(if not all) oxygen free.
Biplane vs. M1 Abrams:
Let’s assume the biplane is a Fokker D.VII, arguably one of the best aircraft of WWI (and specifically required in the Armistice to be surrendered to the Allies). It was armed with two 7.92mm MG 08 Spandau machine guns, firing what is known today as the 8mm Mauserround, which was Germany’s standard rifle and machine gun round during WWI (and is still in production today as a sporting rifle round). Wiki says the German standard-issue 7.92 round had ~2800ft/lbs muzzle energy, compared to the .50BMG at over 13,000ft/lbs muzzle energy (in civilian loadings). In aerial gunnery school in the Marines, we were taught that shooting at Russian-built T-72 tanks with a .50cal helicopter-mounted machine gun was a waste of ammo; the detailed armor specs on an M1 are classified, but I’d be shocked if *any *sporting rifle round could penetrate the topside armor of an M1, even at close range.
Artillery:
Unless a direct hit was scored on the M1, I doubt WWI artillery could kill an M1 without a large barrage. Considering how fast an M1 can travel, especially compared to it’s WWI counterparts, even a barrage kill would be a case of “more good luck than good management”.
Anything else:
A soldier with a satchel charge, or a large landmine, could disable an M1 by blowing a track. Or, the thousands of trenches could cause an M1 to “throw” a track off the sprockets & road wheels. Once a tank is immobilized, it becomes a sitting duck for a concentrated attack from wherever the main gun/coaxial MG isn’t pointing.
I see **running coach **already addressed the fire part. Just dump a few gallons of diesel or gasoline under it and light it off. Add more fuel as necessary until the crew evacuates or dies in place.
Ref the above snip … The M1 carries at most a couple of *minutes *of ammo for its various machine guns. Once that’s gone it gone. Yes, some infantry will get picked off during that time. But soon it’ll be gone and then the crew is sitting in a big iron box. They might be able to run, but they can’t really hide and they definitely can’t fight back.
One shortcoming of most FPS shooters is they teach players that onboard ammo is unlimited. IRL it’s extremely limited.
I’m not sure that many players really think that it’s anywhere near realistic. The thousands of rounds of ammo, lack of weight and storage issues, instant reloading without loss of rounds, and so on just make it a game. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a really realistic FPS out there (my money would be on something with Tom Clancy’s name stuck on it) that actually took all that into account. And, of course, traditionally most vehicle combat simulators, whether it’s aircraft, tanks, or other vehicles do have realistic ammo limits.
Japanese tanks in World War 2 had notoriously thin armor, to the point American troops could penetrate the sides of them with simple rifle fire and even the thickest frontal parts of the armor fell to repeated .50 cal rounds.
Considering the front and sides of the Type 95 Ha-Go (the most common Japanese tank) were 16mm and 12mm respectively, almost the exact same as a British Mark V tank (the best the British ever fielded) and the much more numerous Mark IV tanks had only 12mm armor maximum it doesn’t seem like an M1A2 only using it’s .50 cal and .30 cals with standard rounds would have much trouble against any armor target as long as rounds held out.
Bear in mind that at 45 mph, a modern tank is much faster than anything on a WW1 battlefield, including the horses. It would have no problem getting away from anything chasing it. I think that under the right circumstances, it could also be used as an offensive weapon just by running over enemy troops., so long as it doesn’t slow down long enough allow them to climb on.
Okay, they’ve been shooting at this squat metal ‘thing’ for some time now with no evident effect. It has shot back from the long trunk like gun, killing anyone who got close, but as night falls … what?
Perhaps one small but grotty soldier suggests a cunning plan. Could they sneak up on the iron elephant under cover of darkness with a few Bangalore torpedoes? Would one under the track and one straight up the jacksie do it?
I recall a old MS DOS game Seal Team, it may have been a windows 3.1 version, that put in real ammo limits. It still didn’t account for the weight and I don’t think anything was lost during a reload if they even had that. But after the first encounter during the first mission, we (‘we’ because the player commanded 3 other NPC’s on their team) ran out of ammo, no where near the objective. I quickly found out that this is a far different type of game they the conventional unlimited ammo , or even the unrealistically high ammo of the other games.
However I do recall a news clip about the military using ‘Doom’ (game, perhaps some other FPS) as a training tool which does have a unrealistically high ammo, so even the military seems to value that for training, unless it was modified to have limited ammo.
M993 7.62mm AP can penetrate 18mm RHA at 0 deg 100m. The German steel cored “K bullet” 7.92mm rounds of WWI had some capability v most Allied tanks, before introduction of the larger anti-tank rifle rounds near the end (when the armor on some tanks also improved). The 7.62mm coax of an M1 could penetrate WWI tanks in many cases at shorter ranges with the right ammo, besides the 12.7mm mg.
And if we’re going to assume time travel of the tank, I don’t see a reason to assume they wouldn’t bring along optimum ammo. 
But similar to LSLGuy’s point, there’s no such thing as an invincible tank. M1 types have been destroyed or anyway disabled by setting off big HE charges near or underneath them. No reason WWI defenders couldn’t also do that. And on the constricted battlefields of the WWI Western front physical obstacles could stop a modern tank or at least ‘canalize’ its movements: its high speed wouldn’t necessarily be usable although it wouldn’t be as easily immobilized by shell holes, broken tree etc as WWI tanks were. Also hits from medium artillery (as well as smaller mine type devices) could break a track and immobilize a modern tank on a WWI battlefield.
True, there would be obstacles, but too many people here are assuming that the tank would just sit there, spinning its turret ineffectually and waiting for someone to crack it open. In fact, any decent tank crew in this kind of situation would be doing whatever it could to get *off *the battlefield as quickly as possible, and wouldn’t stay still for a second. It would drive in any direction that looked clear and passable, faster than anything pursuing it, until it found possible breach in the line where it could make a break for a proper road, and freedom. Tanks are a maneuvering force; it’s their nature to take the initiative.
Yeah, I think that, even with no ammo at all, speed kills here. It’s still a 60-ton steel box moving around at 60 MPH. That’s enough to make the tank itself a formidable projectile. And sure, you can light a fire under it, but how long is that fire going to stay under it?
The reason the .50 cal MG was originally designed was to break through WWI armor. So if it had modern armor-piercing ammo, no question it could take out a WWI tank (from a reasonable distance). I’m not sure how well standard M1 .50 cal ammo would do, but I’d bet that from fairly close, with repeated hits, the armor would fail.
The 7.62 MGs I don’t know; I suspect that close up and sustained fire would eventually cause problems, but take much longer than the .50.
Don’t think WWI aircraft could do much against an M1. Maybe a near-direct hit with a bomb could knock off a track or otherwise immobilize it.
One of the early WW1 German tactics against tanks was to fire a machine gun(s) at one point in the tank’s armor. The armor was not well made and it would heat up and deform from multiple bullet impacts. In addition, the metal inside (again, these tanks were not great examples in armor tech here) would flake off and fly around the cabin. Tankers had to wear chain face covers to prevent being hurt by this.
So the early tanks wouldn’t need much destruction. The metal quality got better later in the war, but it was no prize and the heavier machine gun could probably wreck the armor in short order.
The M1A1 tank machine guns may not carry special machine gun ammo, but it probably did not need to.
Heck, the M1A1 could probably just launch its smoke and watch the WW1 tank crash into something.