Rule Two: Double tap.
Beech = breech Stupid auto-correct. Hey it only took me a day to notice!
Looks like you were ‘spot on’ with ‘Case 1’, that first grenade didn’t seem to do diddly squat. 
That second grenade? Whoo boy, I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be inside of, or even close to, that turret.
One would think that this is true, but apparently the tank commander (the only crew member with the ability to see 360 degrees?) wasn’t paying close enough attention to the surrounding battlefield.
Didn’t see that one coming! :eek:
Man, that guy had some balls!
Hmm, I was more or less thinking about M1, which, as pointed out, has the ammo behind armoured blast doors, with blow-off panels to direct any cook-off away from the crew. If there were a live round in the crew compartment (would be briefly while loading, with the breech open) it could certainly be set off by a grenade.
I think a T-72 (in the video) has a three man crew with auto-loader. It allows for a smaller turret (smaller target), but does have issues. The russians (Soviets) have tried several variations on the auto-loader idea over the years.
It looks to me as if the breech was closed when the first grenade was dropped in the barrel. My WAG is, after the first grenade went off, the breech was opened to clear out the remains of the first grenade, just about the time that the second one was dropped in. :eek:
One would’ve thought the tank commander would be searching the surrounding area at that point, for whoever put that first grenade in.
I know I would have been doing that. My thoughts would’ve been “He can’t have run very far away. Maybe I can light his ass up with the machine gun.” :mad:
Looks like that tank commander and I don’t think alike, though. 
The video is not entirely clear but I think you have to assume that for the duration of the video, the tank crew or the tank were incapacitated or near so. The tank just sits stock still, the whole time. There is no attempt to use the secondary, there is no attempt to move, there is no attempt to fire the primary, all while a bunch of enemy guys stand around a few dozen yards away, standing up and not even bothering to seek cover. And after the first grenade was dropped down the barrel, the tank crew (if alive) must have known they were under close quarters attack from infantry. Yet they just sat there.
I agree that something wasn’t right.
The tank didn’t react in any way that you would have expected, and as you’ve noted, it didn’t show any reaction. 
Maybe if the first grenade went off in the barrel they didn’t even realise they were under attack? A grenade explosion isn’t that large.
If the tank was disabled they may not have had much situational awareness.
Absolute minimum, probably two. I think the gunner, commander and loader would all be in the same compartment so the gunner could leave his station to load another main gun round if he had to.
Here’s another version of the video without edits:
What it looks like is that the guy tries twice to lob a grenade down the barrel. The first time, either the grenade blast is vented out the barrel or the main gun fires.
Then he runs back, lobs in another one and a few seconds later the tank explodes from the inside.
At the end of the video, another guy with a rocket launcher is seen. A HEAT round from a rocket would also cause the tank to explode like that if it hit the ammo store, but we don’t seem to see any sort of external explosion or rocket hit.
I’m thinking another possibility is that the grenade cases an obstruction in the barrel and firing the main gun afterwards would cause it to explode.
This is exactly why I couldn’t finish reading World War Z. Max Brooks goes into a long explanation about why the Army couldn’t stop the zombies, noting among other things that tank shells are mostly sabot rounds designed to destroy other tanks and would only (over)kill you one zombie. What he neglected to consider is that the Abrams also carries 900 rounds of 12.7mm and 8,800 rounds of 7.62mm for its three machine guns, and far, far more importantly the obvious use of a tank that you mention. You’re in a 70 ton fully sealed tracked armored vehicle with a 1,200hp engine. If you can’t figure out how to kill zombies with your tank from that sentence you deserve to be eaten.
I understood how even a tank could be overrun a lot better after watching the WWZ movie, especially in a built-up environment. Despite all that firepower it is limited and if you didn’t retreat quickly enough you could find yourself in tank covered by zombies and if you can’t see where your going you could easily get immobilised on something. Sure the zombies can’t get in but you can’t get out, and they aren’t going to just give up and go away.
Tanks that are ‘buttoned up’ tend to have a lot of trouble seeing their immediate area. That is why Tanks generally need infantry support to keep enemy infantry off them. At long and medium ranges to the enemy infantry they tend to do well, but at close range or urban conditions tanks get in trouble real fast without friendly infantry nearby.
When tanks are unbuttoned they see a lot more but snipers can take out the commanders.
Running over large numbers of bodies can be a good way to throw a tread…then you have serious problems.
I can’t believe nobody commented on the video I linked to, which contains SOMEBODY THROWING A GRENADE DOWN THE BARREL OF A TANK!
I’ll repeat: 70 tons of tracked, armored vehicle with a 1,500hp engine (I typo’d it as 1,200hp in the last post). Forget all about the main gun and the machine guns. The tank is a weapon; 70 tons of zombie grinding weapon that can go from 0 to 20mph in 7.2 seconds. The only way you’re going to get covered in zombies is if you let it happen, and it really isn’t that big of a deal if you somehow do. In the book the Army chooses the ground of battle at Yonkers, NY and somehow loses because in Max Brook’s view modern weapons are ineffective at stopping zombies because they have no survival instinct. His choosing to go into such detail in such a patently false idea made it impossible for me to suspend disbelief any longer; all I could do was face-palm. Human wave attacks don’t work in the face of modern firepower, and haven’t for a century. Lack of sufficient bravery isn’t why they fail, and that zombie’s lack the intelligence to seek cover just makes them that much more easily killed (or put down – or whatever it is you do to something that’s already dead). Infantry moving in the open is an ideal artillery target, all the more so when none of them are going to even go to ground to try to avoid being obliterated. Time on Target was developed as an artillery technique to allow shells fired from numerous artillery batteries in different locations to all arrive on a target area at the same time because most casualties in an artillery barrage occur in the first few seconds. After those first few seconds anyone not dead has taken whatever cover they can find, even if it’s just lying prone and praying. Lack of the sense of self preservation to do this isn’t going to be an advantage.
Only if you consider boredom a serious problem. The crew is in absolutely no danger.
And I respond again, a tank may be proof against slow zombies but you could find yourself in trouble against a sea of fast zombies. So you’ve found yourself beached and utterly surrounded and covered by zombies I think boredom is the least of your worries, how long are your supplies going to last for? And we were talking about tanks not a plethora of other weapon systems.
At the end of Saving Private Ryan, I thought that was exactly what Tom Hanks’ character was trying to do: aim his Colt 45 down the barrel of the tank and try to hit the live round within.
The comic Nth Man is hard to describe. It’s like a Viet Nam veteran, Rod Serling, and a fan of Jack Kirby worked together. The result is several orders of magnitude better than it sounds. I can’t over stress this. Nth Man sounds cliched and stupid when I describe it. It was actually extremely good.
Anyhow, in one issue John is being menaced by some Soviet spies in a stolen American tank*. John is familiar with this model of tank and knows just when the breech will open. He is able to dodge their weapons and throw a grenade into the barrel at the right time.
-
“How’d they get a tank, John?”
“They have US uniforms and false credentials. They probably just walked in and requisitioned it.”
I hope you will accept the following reply:
What happens if you drop a grenade down a tank’s gun barrel?
Bad things happen! Very bad things!
Almost certainly nothing good can happen if you drop a grenade down a tank’s gun barrel.
But, thanks for asking.
-
You’re talking about the Army. Trying to ignore absolutely everything else and separate out a single tank is quite silly, and Max Brooks absurdly contended that all of the firepower of a modern army would be impotent against zombies because they have no survival instinct. In fact this would just make them easier to dispose of.
-
Being beached and utterly surrounded and covered in zombies presents absolutely zero danger. They are not getting in, period. Hoping someone has a deck of cards is going to be the most pressing worry.
-
Your supplies are going to last a hell of a lot longer than the time it is going to take to radio that you’ve thrown a track and have another tank in your platoon drive up and hose down the exterior of your immobilized tank with its coax machine gun. The other tank will again be doing this in complete and utter safety from a zombie getting inside.