I watched, for the Nth time, the footage of the guy who stole a tank and rampaged along city streets with police in chase, smashing up everything he could and so on. In the first showing of the footage, years (?) ago, they told of how, after the tank got jammed up on a concrete divider and threw a tread, knowing that they could not get to the guy inside, officers tried to talk him out. Then one officer, being familiar with tanks, got a set of bolt cutters, opened the sealed turret hatch, and shot the guy.
My question is this: Aren’t tanks designed to like resist almost anything an enemy can throw at them, to deflect cannon shells, small missile hits, some even able to go under water, roll over little things like buildings, mash down forests, resist hits from other, minor tanks and be a secure fort on treads?
Then how come a $20 bolt cutter gained access to a military machine costing probably most of a million to build? That does not impress me with the design of tanks. Could Sadaam have equipped his troops with these ‘can openers’ and stopped our tanks in dessert storm?
The bolt cutter only does you any good if you can get on the tank. Simply put, it’s not the sort of attack that the tank is designed to thwart. There are very few situations that would lead to a tank being vulnerable to this sort of attack, and in most of those cases, it would involve the tank being disabled already.
yep, tanks in battle are supported by infantry and if you can get close enough to get on top of one, you can always drop an explosive (or even an incendiary) on it and completely disable it. I presume the highway patrolmen did not want to explode the tank, and was trying to return it relatively intact.
Hey, you should see the newest tank armor technologies. The British invented something called “active armor.” It is a set of plates of laminated metal armor sandwiched with layers of explosives. When a sabot hits the armor and starts shooting its charge of hot metal to cut through the armor, the explosives detonate and blow the charge back out away from the inner metal armor. Cool. I want to drive a tank wrapped in hundreds of pounds of TNT.
In battle, tanks support each other with what I believe is called “scratching fire”. Since tanks are impervious to machine gun fire while human bodies are not, they can spray bullets at other friendly tanks to prevent the enemy infantry from getting too close. Obviously one loony guy in a tank driving down the expressway isn’t going to have quite the same amount of fire support.
Adventurious82, I have not seen the footage you’re describing, but from what you’re saying it sounds like there was only one man in the tank. An M1A2 Abrams main battle tank normally operates with a crew of four.
One man can’t do much except drive the tank. With a crew of four, the tank can drive too fast for attacking infantry to get onto it, and simultaneously fire up to three machine guns at them - two on the turret top and one coaxial. An attacking infantry platoon with bolt-cutters wouldn’t have much chance of getting close enough; the machine gun fire would pin them down.
As others have mentioned, the support of other tanks counts for a lot. In the Persian Gulf war, American and allied forces also had complete air superiority and massive artillery support with ICM, so infantry with bolt cutters would have had no chance to survive a charge through open desert terrain against a tank.
Oh, you would be surprised what infantry can do against tanks. In WWII, the Japanese and Allies used light tanks in the jungle in close infantry battles. The Japanese used antitank mines mounted on the ends of bamboo poles, like a spear. Run up to tank and jab it into the side of a tank, boom. Deadly to target and user, it is a suicide weapon. I think I’d rather try to toss a satchel charge.
This is why tanks can capture territory, but they can’t hold it without infantry support. Tanks can beat the enemy infantry into pieces, but you can’t mop up and hold it without your own infantry. Even a small, broken infantry force can play havoc with mech infantry, if they try to overrun (i.e. battle of the bulge).
Yes. Take away the absolute air superiority, the artillery support, and the ideal tank country that the U.S. had in Iraq, and tanks become a lot more vulnerable. They become especially vulnerable if you take away three of their crewmen.
Another thing the Soviets found to work very well in World War II was to get infantry on top of buttoned-up tanks and play flame throwers down the exhaust vents.
On my Armored Personal Carrier You used a padlock to lock up the vehicle when you leave it in the motor pool. Depending on the tank the padlock can be on the drivers compartment. I assume that the cop cut the bolts on the hinge that hold the hatch on. It’s possible that the padlock was holding the hatch shut and he cut that. There is a lock on the inside of the hatch, but if you cut of the hinge bolts on the hatch it would probably fall off.
I’m always suprided that people are not stealing these things all the time. I know its kind of obvious when your driving a tank downtown, but the security in motor pools is poor at best. It’s the ammo for these beasties that is somewhat hard to get.
As far as infantry sneaking up on a tank. I think its pretty easy. Remember when there buttoned up they have to look through periscopes or gun sights to see out. These have a fairly limited field of view. The driver and TC have the best view. It’s also pretty hard to see anything on the back of the tank. Most of the time when they are driving a tank the Tank Commander and driver will have thier heads out of the hatch. Even with the hatch open it is hard to see around the tank. In the motor pool you need a person in the front and the rear of the tank to make sure you dont smash anything. Remeber that tanks can turn in place, and wiegh about 70 tons.
I think the Russians invented the reactive armor in response to the tow missile.
Chas.E, john_e_wagner: sorry to correct you guys, but reactive armor is an Israeli invention. It’s used on the Magach tank (a revamped M60) but not on the Merkava, which I believe uses some varient of Chobham armor.
And the ammo. It should be noted that the guy who stole said tank didn’t have any ammo. So he couldn’t really do anything to stop police from running up to the tank–except drive into them.
And he couldn’t drive into the cops because he had high-centered the tank on a concrete divider. An immoble tank with no ammo is helpless. Since you would be dead anyway there is no point to making sure that enemy infantry can’t use a bolt-cutter to get you out, since there are so many other ways to blow up a helpless tank. Simplest would be to pour gasoline on it and set it on fire.
Hmm… reminds me of a report from the israeli-egyptian war. According to what I heard, the israelis tested the first fuel-air explosives against egyptian tank forces. The tanks weren’t obliterated, but the overpressure and high temperatures fused every external metal surface of the tanks, and fused the treads. The tanks were completely immobilized, although there were some survivors. But they couldn’t even get the hatches open without using crowbars and cutters, everything was welded shut.
Still, one would think must be an intentional designed weak point for just such a scenario.
I mean, even something as simple as recessing the bolt would fix it.
This is why tanks work in groups.
What is supposed to prevent enemy soldiers from trying something like this is the hail of machinegun bullets from the other tanks nearby.
And it is a poorly designed fortress, mobile or not, that doesn’t have some way for the good guys to get in if a bad guy gets in and tries to lock them out.
Just think, next year will be the 20th anniversary of that incident and this thread was started on the 5th anniversary of the incident. My how time flies when zombies are resurrected.
Yeah, one guy in a M-60 tank. One guy who clearly wasn’t thinking too clearly, and was totally focused on trying to get the tank unstuck when he got shot.
Although the version I saw included the tank ramming the supports for a bridge over the highways (pedestrian walkway?) trying to collapse it across the road so police cars would stop following him before he tried to jump the median, so there may be better coverage on youtube than the vid I just found.
