Yes, but they’re not called anti tank rifles any more. They’re called anti-materiel rifles.
Or not listed in Wiki’s article, the Mag-Fed (Anzio) 20mm I just love the picture comparing it to a “mere” .50BMG rifle!
The fuel is Jet A, a.k.a. JP-8. Not all that flammable. The tankers have a coating that is self-sealing. You can stand there with Ak-47s and blaze away. No leaks other than a drop or two from each bullet.
I rather liked the derisive German nickname for the Pak36 37mm anti-tank gun - “Heeresanklopfgeraet”, roughly translated to “Army device for knocking politely”. Really boils down everything that’s not to like about an underpowered gun - it does nothing but announce your presence.
Have I ever mentioned the sheer amount of love I have for the German language’s ability to make truly impressive compound words?
I watched “The Beast” last night based on this thread and now I have a question. Since it’s based on the film, I guess it’s a “spoiler” but not much of one. I’ll spoiler the details. It also fits into the “how long could a tank last?” theme.
The Russian tank is out and about and attacks the village and then gets lost. It spends a day driving down the valley, stops for the night and then much of another day continuing its trip before reaching the dead end. At this point, it’s running completely on fumes. The helicopter comes and the commander tells his men to take its extra fuel and it shows them with four gas cans of 10 gallons (?) each. On this, it drives for the rest of the day, spends the night and then goes throughout the next day, making its way back to the pass where they’re supposed to rendezvous with another 'copter for more fuel.
Is this reasonable fuel usage? 40gal (again, if the answer is that this is way off, let me know) doesn’t seem like enough to drive an SUV around all day, much less a c.1980 Russian tank.
It’s been a while since I’ve watched that movie, but if what you’re saying is correct than I’d say no, that (small) amount of fuel would be insufficient, unless they took all the fuel from the 2nd helicopter (the one where everyone died from drinking the poisoned water at the water hole), in which case they may have had just enough to make it back to the opening of the valley.
I love The Beast!! One of my favourite movies.
The off road range of a T-55 on internal fuel is gonna be around 250km. Its fuel tank has a capacity of around 960 litres. 40 US gallons is around 150 litres? So, it would add around 40km of range?
But anyway, that scene could have been them taking the last lot of fuel from the helicopter, not the total amount.
I actually underestimated the days.
[spoiler]They went from the village and got lost on Day One. Day Two, they continue down the canyon and tie the guy to a rock. The guy gets rescued and spends the night in a cave with the Afghanis. Presumably, the tank spent that day driving. Day Three is when they reach the dead end and take the spare cans of fuel from the helicopter. On that fuel, they turned around and headed all the way back to where they got lost back on Day One.
There’s some missing bits there – we don’t know the real distance traveled (only days), we see them loading the four gas cans but could claim there was more we didn’t see and we don’t know if they siphoned the remaining fuel from the helicopter (that was the original copter so it wouldn’t have had extra fuel as they already took it).[/spoiler]
But it doesn’t seem like it would have been nearly enough. No big deal, it was still a good movie but I thought I’d ask.