I’m speaking from specific experience of research I’ve done (under my real name) used but misquoted on acig because it didn’t fit the agenda of the authors, to back up the claims of the side of the conflict the acig authors have more sympathy with. That’s of course the challenge of ‘two sided’ air (or other) war accounting. Authors/researchers can be put in a position*, or put themselves in it with unconscious (or semi or just conscious, depending) bias, of judging what’s accurate in conflicting accounts from the two sides. In a book like “Tank Battles” (among innumerable others on innumerable military topics reported basically from one side) Katz is pretty much just reporting the Israeli accounts, so that conflict or danger or bias doesn’t present itself as naturally. Of course we realize that what one side perceives isn’t necessarily what happened from the other POV.
But in the case we’re talking about what’s unique is having any fairly complete account of missile helo v tank from the tank perspective, rather than reconciling accounts of two sides. Though again I’m quite interested in that, two sided war history, kind of a hobby of mine. But acig has stuff I know for a fact is fudged. And it also has quite possibly accurate stuff on topics I’m not as familiar with but where the main protagonist there has always had a habit of refusing to specify sources, kind of a journalist’s approach if you will, not a historian’s.
But of course you can believe whatever you like.
*especially if when the research also includes talking to still living participants.
Thanks for helping me clean my phone screen earlier. I usually prefer to use something other than coffee but it worked remarkably well.
Everyone else who still cares about some of the issues brought up above:
Without trying to piece together many quotes from different posts from multiple posters here’s some pieces to fill in gaps that seem to still exist. it’s not really relevant to the hypothetical so if that’s your sole concern…“Nothing to see here, move along.”
The ammo loaded will depend on what threat they were expecting to face. There can also be considerable friction because of the lead time of moving things through the logistics system. My life as a tank battalion S4 (Logistics Officer) would have been much easier and less stressful if I didn’t need to estimate what was going to be shot beforehand. The fact that I was a tanker and not a logistician didn’t help stress levels, either. :smack:
The preferred ammunition for unarmored trucks is 7.62mm NATO fired from the coaxial M240 machinegun out to it’s maximum effective range. 10,800 rounds of 7.62mm is the basic load. The coaxial machinegun has a full ballistic solution using the fire control system. You can kill a lot of unarmored trucks with that. Yes, there’s a spare barrel. HEAT is for longer ranges.
The fuel point for decisive action operations doesn’t look like a gas station. It looks like one or more of these parked in the middle of nowhere.
I’m pretty vague on the pump rate but you’ve all got the nomenclature for the vehicle to search with now. ISTR 25ish GPM for each of the two refueling hoses.
IIRC one of the driving factors in selecting the turbine was the Army requirement to have an air cooled engine. The diesel engines in the late 70s, when it was being designed, couldn’t produce the same power without water cooling. If you really want to dig in Orr Kelley’s “King Of The Killing Zone: The story of the M-1, America’s super tank” is an excellent book about the design and acquisition process.
For anyone really interested in multi-fuel capacity and the US Army’s continuing attempts to simplify logistics using one fuel for everything search “Single Fuel Concept.” It hasn’t entirely been issue free.
I had a number of recent (well recent at the time) Desert Storm vets in my platoon once upon a time. When they switched from diesel to JP4 upon getting into theater it was not as simple as just starting to pump the new stuff in. I recall a fuel filter switch …or more than one, as part of the process. Some really nasty, fuel filter clogging, diesel eating/loving microbes can take up residence at the bottom of the fuel tanks. A complete switch stirred a lot of that crud up.
They also had to disable the onboard smoke generator when switching to JP-4. That generator works by spraying raw fuel into the exhaust. With diesel that works. With JP-4 it’s more of a fire generator.
There are actually four fuel tanks with four different refuel points like the one pictured up thread. The two rear tanks are connected to form one effective tank fueled through either opening. The cover pictured up thread is pretty thick steel. The pin that holds it closed is just making a wild ass guess from memory 3/4-1" in diameter. Again, that’s just the pin to hold the protective cover shut. ISTR one getting stuck and the crew using one of the typical tanker tools for making precision adjustments - the 20 lb sledgehammer.
I know I still haven’t provided boring detail about sights. I jumped right past that to vague hints of REALLY boring logistics minutiae.
So we’ve listed all these circumstances where the destroyer has to have both hands tied behind its back to give the tank a chance to shoot at it, I think it’s only fair that the tank be obligated to cater to the destroyer’s strengths:
The tank is suspended from a giant balloon, approximately 10-50 miles away from the destroyer and 10,000 feet ASL.
The tank is parked on the deck of a freighter sailing towards the destroyer at its best speed, hoping to close the distance and bring the 120mm Rhinemetal to bear.
In the interest of ultimate fairness, park the tank and the destroyer both in the open water, about a kilometer and a half from each other.
The destroyer being on a tread would definitely be a mobility-kill for the tank, as they can’t take nearly that much weight. Getting hit by a blimp, though, probably wouldn’t do much damage to either, since blimps, while massive, are also very soft.
Ah but the blimp is large and the skin would cover and get all caught up on either, making visibility 0 until someone can get all of it removed, and an entire blimp skin is kind of heavy if you are trying to pull it off something.
So that would be a mission/mobility kill yes?
Course it would be a mortality kill on the blimp
Out of curiosity, is this 1.5 mile range far enough for the ships CIWS to have any effect in a defensive role (i.e. shooting down the tank-fired rounds)? I assume you’d have to have them roughly aimed towards where the tank will be firing from (after first hit, should know origin point of the attack).
Since you can not detonate a sabot penetrator i don’t think you are shooting it down
Also, it travels way way faster than a missile, so i doubt you could even try?
I’m always way too late to these kinds of threads.
Anywho, just my perspective from having crewed M1 and M1A1 for 6 years:
Ready ammo: as has been stated an M1A1/A2 has only so many rounds of ready ammo; everything else is hard to get at/time consuming to swap over; if the Abrams can’t get it done in 18 rounds, the Destroyer likely steams away and out of range. An even moderately trained crew can get off 12 rounds a minute (1 shot every five seconds).
The Abrams ammo is typically used for punching holes in very tough targets (other tanks). A modern warship has little in the way of passive defense (armor) to stop these rounds. See the link to Tranquilus’ post on page 1. As has been noted, modern warships base their primary defense around not getting hit in the first place; once hit, though, they’re very “soft” targets.
Modern warships are in the anti-ship/anti-air/anti-sub business; the only thing they have that would even make an Abrams nervous is maybe a Harpoon and their deck gun. CIWS? 20mm won’t even faze an Abrams; you might get a mobility kill, if the crew is dumb enough to completely unmask the lower hull. If they are that dumb, Darwin their stupid asses.
Modern MBT’s (not just Abrams) are incredibly tough, with compartmentalization and crew survival fire detection/suppression systems, and anti-spalling measures. The Arleigh Burke-class has a nice deck gun, but I’m not sure what kind of AP rounds they carry for it. Not all AP is built the same; the armor the DD’s deck gun & munitions are meant to penetrate may not be the same kind/thickness an MBT’s gun system & munitions are designed to penetrate.
Tactics. Tank crews are fully aware of the fact that their thickest/heaviest armor is frontal, and deliberately maneuver, using terrain for cover & concealment, so as to not present flank or rear aspects towards the primary threat axis; doing so is a good way to have one really bad day. Maneuver warfare is the meat & drink of modern armor, so sitting in one place to let The Enemy pound on you is anathema to them. Modern naval vessels are also typically not dumb enough to put themselves in vulnerable positions; if the first tank round didn’t disable the DD’s engines, I can easily see them kicking up to 30+ knots and getting the hell outta Dodge toute suite.
Air Support. Do modern DD’s and their helos even carry anti-tank missiles? Marine Gators, sure, no doubt about it, and nasty attack helos to mount them on. It seems to me the helo’s best use would be “spotting,” acting as a kind of FO for the DD’s gun crews. But, as has been already mentioned, U.S. Tank Crews do train to use their main gun in a limited anti-air capability against helos. Not to mention the Abram’s 50-cal, which will turn a SeaHawk into a dead pigeon in 5 seconds flat.
Slow Tank. dude Robert seems to base his notions of a modern MBT’s capabilities off of some WWII film about Shermans and such. Most modern MBT’s like the Abrams generation are extremely mobile and maneuverable (not compared to a missile, or a bullet, natch). Terrain dependent, an Abrams can hit 45+ mph. That may not seem like much compared to the average daily commute or open-highway speeds; on a battlefield, it’s awesome.
Fire Control. The Abrams ballistic computer will generate a firing solution out to 4,000 meters, or 2.5 miles; the LRF will give accurate range out to 8,000 meters, and this is all for tank-sized targets. An experienced gunner can (has) still hit targets out in the 5,000-7,000-meter range by manually applying the appropriate elevation, and that’s against other MBT sized targets. Against something the size of a modern DD? I’d be willing to wager that any Abrams gunner worth his name could put rounds on that target out to 8,000 meters. Ballistics tables aren’t that hard to memorize (or copy from a manual and tape up on the door to the ballistics computer right next to the gunner’s head), and the gradated reticle makes applying the appropriate offsets easy enough against a target that sized.
Plus, the Gunner’s Auxiliary Sight is a really good purely optical sight, embedded in the gun mantle. So harassing fire from the DD might damage primary optics/fire control on the Abrams; it’s not likely to even scratch to GAS.
IMO, if the Abrams kicks off the engagement, against a DD that’s even at “Battle Stations” already, then the DD crew had best be either quick on the helm and full-speed-ahead, or very familiar with the Naval Hymm, 'cause it’s going to take an Act of God to save them if they stick around and try to fight it out.
If the DD is aware of the possibility of a shore-based threat, but, for some reason, must come in close to shore, then I’d realistically expect them to pull out all stops to locate/identify/avoid/neutralize shore-based threats before they get in range of such threats, up to and including calling a local Gator and Flat-Top for some help.
All of the tank’s rounds would certainly penetrate the destroyer; I’m just skeptical about how much damage they’d do. Someone upthread mentioned the possibility of overpenetration: That a round would just go clear through the destroyer, leaving a pair of round-sized holes in the hull. Even if those holes are both below the waterline, a destroyer isn’t going to sink quickly from a pair of such holes, or even from 36 of them.
I expect that the tank’s firing priorities would be first against the helicopter (because if you don’t get that before it takes off, you might never get it), then against the deck munitions (to prevent the destroyer from fighting back), then against the engine room (to prevent the destroyer from getting out of the tank’s range (but still within its own)), and finally just making a bunch of waterline holes in the hull to finish the job. Steps 1, 2, and 4 in that process probably aren’t too hard, but I also wonder about step 3: The engine room is a big enough target, and the engines are probably massive enough to prevent overpenetration, but does the typical tanker know where it is?
It really dends on where they strike - There’s definately a fire hazard (though not as high as from a HV railgun round), and there are a LOT of systems that go thought the vessel - If, for instance, you penetrate a chillwater line, you could wind up knocking a LOT of electronics in various unconnected spaces offline. Are you going to sink from a busted chillwater line? Not even remotely. But you COULD lose a lot of combat (and nav, and comms) capacity.
What heppens if one of those holes happens to strike a cableway? Maybe not very much. Maybe multiple systems disabled. Put one thought a ready ammo stowage bin? Fireworks!
Or maybe it’s just a mess to clean up, and you’re going to have a bunch of sailors shaking their fists in your general direction as the vessel carries on undiminished.
If you start punching waterline holes, starting under the stack, and work aft, you’re going to hit something vital, eventually.
ISTR 25ish GPM for each of the two refueling hoses.
