Is it true that tanks don’t have seat belts or harnesses? If so, why the hell not?
The only tanks I’ve been in are US M1s and M60s. I can tell you they do not. Although I have never been told by anyone in charge of designing I can make assumptions. While operating a tank you don’t sit in one position. In particular the tank commander and loader are constantly up and down in the turret.
(Although I submit a tank is kind of already its own treadmill.)
Seat belts are to protect the people in the vehicle from large decelerations in a crash. Most of the things a tank could crash with would not cause large decelerations. Thus, seat belts are less useful.
But do they go “beep, beep” when they back up?
That’s hardly the only reason to have seatbelts. From my experience driving sports cars on race tracks, I know that having a harness holding you firmly in your seat gives you a lot better control of the vehicle, because you’re not being thrown around by inertial forces. In passenger airliners simple lapbelts protect passengers from injury during turbulence, not just in crashes.
Tanks have to travel over rough terrain and drive in and out of steep ravines and gullies. And this earlier post suggests that even ordinary maneuvers in a tank can cause serious injury:
So it appears that there is a lot more to worry about while riding in a tank than just hitting something head on. And wouldn’t crew injuries such as RyJae mentioned tend to reduce the effectiveness of the unit? Even if harnesses weren’t used all the time, it seems to me that having them available would be useful in many situations.
Is it just tradition – tanks have never had seatbelts, so why start now? – or is it some macho thing? It doesn’t make sense to me that they aren’t even available.
While I wouldn’t put it past some overzealous Corps- or Division-level Safety Officer to institute such idiocy, for tactical reasons, “audible reverse warning indicators are disrecommended for maximally effective tacticalness.*”
*keepin’ my MilSpeak honed!
Still, I’d feel bad for that poor pole.
This is an operations and crew training issue, not a design issue. Imagine someone driving a passenger car who, out of either inexperience, stupidity, or plain old spite, slams on the brakes every time they want to decelerate or stop, as opposed to easing off the throttle and applying normal braking pressure.
I had a cute prick of a driver like that at Ft. Hood. There were…corrective measures…taken to instill a proper level of motivation in applying the adequate and necessary pressure when engaging in braking maneuvers, and in otherwise performing his driver’s duties in a manner consistent with maximum tactical mobility and crew safety.
Tanks have very rarely had passenger/crew restraints (I won’t say “never”) as they could be a serious liability in an emergency crew evacuation. In normal tactical maneuver, the crew is trained and skilled enough to handle the minor bumps and thumps even while performing their duties. And as Loach points out, the Tank Commander and Loader typically operate from a standing position anyway, so restraints could negatively impact the required mobility to perform their crew functions.
Modern MBT’s have remarkable suspension systems. Coupled with adequate driver training and some experience, a tank like an Abrams can cross typical open-country terrain with a minimum of fuss, jostling, or drama, and handle rougher stuff with even a small bit of forewarning and having the crew “brace” themselves appropriately.
Do M1 tankers routinely wear helmets inside while in motion under battlefield conditions, or is that the kind of thing that gets dispensed with IRL?
Well for one thing if you weren’t wearing your helmet you couldn’t talk to each other. You don’t wear your regular ground pounder helmet. Tank crews wear CVCs, combat vehicle crewman helmets. They contain headphones and mics to talk on the internal intercom between the crew and also the radios. And not having a helmet on would be really dumb.
There is a difference because even a tiny difference in time while getting to zero can have enormous differecnes in desceleration.
That just means that any two crashes will be different. But there will still be no greater difference between the head-on collision and the collision with the indeformable wall than there will be between any two random head-on collisions.
“The good news is, the Admiral would like to do some skeet shooting today.”
ExTank: Thanks for your well-informed and informative post. That pretty well explains most of what I didn’t understand about the harness situation. I will take a slight exception to one thing you said, though:
Aircraft, racecars, and many other high performance vehicles have long used multi-point harnesses with quick-release buckles. If harnesses were needed in a tank, they could be made such that it would be easy and quick to get out of them.
Googling around on tank crews I saw the military expression “DAT:” Dumb Assed Tanker. I doubt it, but used by tank crew themselves?
Aircraft have ejection seats. Race cars are not usually being shot at and do not have large amounts of ammunition ready to go off.
I wouldn’t want to trust any quick-release harness made by the lowest bidder.
Helmets on when the engine’s running or the vehicle is in motion. The helmets provide some hearing protection, but when I was “in,” it was also recommended to wear our issue ear plugs, as well.
It’s a foam-padded, nylon mesh head covering/cap, with built-in foam-padded earphones and boom mic for the intercom and radio system, with a thin fiberglass shell over the top (more of a bump-cap than a helmet).
Here’s an image that’s a pretty good representative of a typical modern tanker’s helmet. You can’t see the boom mic; it appears to not be present in this photo.
This is another image. You can see the fiberglass shell in the background. The switch on the left ear piece is the intercom and radio switch. The cord is for connecting to the intercom system. Again, the boom mic appears to be left out.
No, but they are nearly as likely to catch fire. Martin Donnelly’s Formula 1 comeback was ended when he couldn’t exit a car quickly enough to meet FIA’s safety regulations (having broken both legs and his pelvis).