It’s 14 years old but I don’t see this info so here goes…
The M-60 has two hatches (of interest here anyway), the commander’s cupola to the right of the main gun, which is a big heavy dome type thing, and the loader’s hatch on the left which is a much smaller and flat piece of steel. You can see them here. That rectangular “flap” in the loader’s hatch is for a periscope, which look like this when a periscope is mounted (that’s the driver’s hatch with 3 periscopes). When a periscope is not mounted, you can beat on the periscope cover to make it pop up or break it off, then reach through to unlock the hatch from the inside.
In the police video, you can see that they are opening the one to the left of the main barrel and it’s flat and has the same design as this one, so they went in through the loader’s hatch. You can also see the police officer hitting it several times, probably to pop open the periscope cover. I assume he used bolt cutters because that’s what he had handy. A hammer or crow bar might have been better.
In a real battle (as in, symmetric force-on-force conflict) attempting to attack a tank with bolt cutters would be the stupidest idea of all time. There are much, much easier ways for infantry to assault a tank.
The whole bolt cutter thing has less to do with the tank’s vulnerability and much more to do with the unique circumstances. It is not especially difficult to attack a tank that is already isolated, unarmed and immobilized.
But as WhyWhyWhy correctly points out, imagine being a crewman in a tank after it gets hit. You’ve lost your hearing and vision, hot pieces of liquid metal have penetrated your anatomy, and you’re pretty sure something is on fire. At that point, why would you want to it to be HARDER to escape?
I’m really surprised that no one had the answer in all these year. Talk about infantry support and being rescued, not true. Wagner had it closest when talking about APCs.
Tanks are locked with a padlock when unmanned and parked. Obviously with no one inside there needs to be a way for the crew to get in. On the M1 the commanders hatch and the driver’s hatch are buttoned up from the inside. The loader’s hatch is closed then padlocked. When the tank is manned the hatches can be secured from the inside and there is no way you can get in from the outside without some heavy duty industrial equipment and a lot of time. I’ve only been on an operational M60 once but the principal was exactly the same. During the California M60 incident the thief simply did not lock the hatch. No bolt cutters needed.
I’ve seen a few “World’s Somethingy-est Somethings” shows that talk about this incident. The cop who got the hatch open and ultimately shot & killed the guy said the guy was suicidal. After he opened the hatch the officer pointed his weapon, identified himself, and ordered the guy to surrender. He says that the guy looked up at him, ignored him, and then just continued trying to drive the tank off the barrier. The cop ordered him once more to stop, then shot him. After it first happened one news outlet claimed it was the typical ‘girlfriend dumped him - he was heading for her house’ thing. Don’t know how true that was.
Whenever I watch the video and hear the announcers/helicopter pilot worry about him knocking that concrete bridge pillar down I still laugh. Even before he tries it’s pretty obvious the tank isn’t going to budge that thing (without ordinance anyway!)
Which I believe is incorrect on several points. I know there is no way you can reach in through the periscope to open the hatch on an M1. I will not say definitively you are incorrect for the M60 but I would need to see some proof. I have some very good resources I can check and find out.
As for the other part, the officer did not have to use bolt cutters or any other tool. Shawn Nelson cut or pried open the lock initially. When the officer got on top of the tank the loaders hatch was not locked.
My apologies. I did not think there was that much difference with the hatches. The picture you stated had three periscopes was confusing. Those periscopes can not be removed and used to open the hatch. Just like in the M1. However there is a separate hatch that was used to mount the IR periscope that could be banged open with something heavy like a ballpean hammer. That is not the case on the M1. However I have been told by multiple old tankers that if the hatch was properly strapped down by someone inside you could bang forever and never get it open.
That is how it is. Tanks are designed to be hard to get in. For instance the first combat crew deaths in a M1 were from drowning when the tank went into a canal in Iraq. They are just not designed for escape. Especially the driver. The only way he can get out through the turret is if the gun is over the back deck. And if the gun is in the wrong position he can’t get out the driver’s hatch. That was illustrated many times on the range when the driver fell asleep while waiting. We couldn’t move the gun because it had to be pointed down range while loaded. And we couldn’t get into the drivers compartment. So we had to bang on his hatch with a hammer hoping he would wake up.
I’m not sure, the video Donnerwetter posted shows an officer banging away on the hatch while another officer on the radio says they’re trying to get the hatch open but can’t. I had assumed that officer was beating the hatch with the bolt cutters but I just watched it again and, holy smokes, right in front of the camera a plainclothes officer in a purple shirt gets bolt cutters out of the back of a truck and runs over to the tank, then the video cuts away.
I don’t know for sure they popped the periscope cover, but that’s a viable way in, even just beating it with bolt cutters. It’s possible Nelson cut a padlock on a different hatch and the officers used bolt cutters on a loader’s hatch padlock that Nelson had never touched.
You could be right. In my tanker circles it was always told that the hatch was left open.
That’s a MRAP. Its armored but not armed. When it was armed the most you would find mounted in the turret was a .50 cal machine gun. Some police agencies are getting them for free from the military and are using them as armored command vehicles for hostage situations and such. They would be useless against a tank. Or anything they couldn’t run over. They are going to be surprised about how much free costs when they realize how expensive they are to maintain.
It certainly makes a statement. Of some kind. That’s a M109 self-propelled howitzer. Not very effective in direct fire mode versus a moving tank but if you manage to get a hit I would not want to be in the tank. However I’m sure that was demilitarized and does not have a working gun. And there certainly isn’t any ammo available.
I think (it’s possible on an M1) that the crazy dude who went runamok with the M-60 unlocked the loader’s hatch, closed and dogged it from the inside, climbed down into the driver’s compartment, opened the driver’s hatch, climbed out, and relocked the loader’s hatch with the padlock from the outside, before climbing back down into the driver’s compartment and closing that hatch as well.
If I was going to runamok with an Abrams, it’s what I would do.
The responding officers may have had to not only cut the padlock, but also beat the periscope out as well (as Fubaya describes) to reach in and undog the locking lever on the inside of the loader’s hatch.
With an M1 series (at least the original M1 and A1 versions I’m familiar with; later models may differ), you can’t easily “beat out” the loader’s hatch periscope; it’s protected by a nice chunk of steel. But, if the loader hasn’t done his PM checks properly and if that leads to the loader’s periscope being “loose” in its mounting brackets, then maybe someone could beat it/shake it loose enough to fall out. And if their arm is small enough, they might be able to reach through that really small opening and undog the loader’s hatch.
I woudn’t put real money on that possibility though.
You and I both have experience with M1s. I established with some old timers the M60 was different. In the middle of the driver’s hatch and the loaders hatch there was a smaller hatch to mount the IR periscope. That is different than the vision block periscopes. Even if you could knock out the prisms on the vision blocks you would need some pretty small hands and arms to squeeze in there. The IR periscope hatch could be popped open by hitting it with a hammer or even your hand on some loose ones. It was big enough to be able to reach in and unlock the hatch. That hatch could be secured so you couldn’t open it with a strap on the inside but they were usually ignored.
