From: Ryan Gill (rmgill@mindspring.com)
Date: Mon Aug 02 2004 - 08:15:58 PDT
At 9:02 AM -0500 8/2/04, Witold Grzymala-Busse wrote:
>
>2. Another reason that I assume that they came back from Iraq was that many
>if not most had battle damage. One of the tanks was burned up on one side,
>I think its suspension collapsed and it was missing its tracks. Another
>tank had its ammo blow-out panels blasted off! - or so it appeared from
>where I looked. Directly under the bridge were I was standing, I saw a tank
>hit by some sort of an RPG in the skirt. I do not know if the round punched
>through.
Problably not. It takes a lot of luck to do so.
>3. I think these tanks were going to an overhaul facility since most were
>damaged, the vast majority had suspension problems i.e the tanks sagged
>forward, about 20-30% were missing one or more road wheels, some had blast
>damage, others were missing side skirts. Most had very rough paint jobs..
They've been getting heavy use in a harsh environment. The sand alone
can't be good for the bearings that support the torsion bars or the
roadwheel bearings. The British have been running through Roadwheels
at a high pace on their tanks and if I recall correctly the Aluminum
roadwheels for the Bradleys and other FAASV type hulls have been
failing at a high rate as well due to the harshe environment.
>4. After a careful analysis of the situation, I do not think the M1 is as
>invulnerable as some says. Sure its a good tank, but after taking a good
>look at these tanks, the M1 can and is damaged in battle.
It never was. It was just well nigh so from the frontal arc. Note,
those blow out panels would have protected the crew. There's a big
conversation on this issue on the Tank.net forums (bunch of tankers
there too). The general agreement seems to be that no M1 Abrams crew
died under armor from enemy fire, the tanks taking the brunt of the
shots and allowing the crew to escape. Several were badly damaged in
the war phases of Gulf War I where it was later determined to have
been Blue on Blue engagements by the presence of DU in the shot entry
holes and most of those were non frontal aspect shots (this is via
someone that spent some time talking with one of the men performing
the detailed examination of all the tanks seriously damaged in combat
(ie through armor penetrations).
>
>P.S. So where does the M1 get overhauled?
Same place they're built. Lima as I understand it.
-- -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- - Data Center Operations Group - - http://web.turner.com/data_center/ - ---------------------------------------------------------------- - Ryan Montieth Gill One CNN Center SE0813 E - - Internet Technologies -- Data Center Operations Manager - - Hours 11am - 7pm Mon - Fri (8Sdc, 10Sdc IT@3Ndc) - - Cellular: 404-545-6205 e-mail: Ryan.Gill@cnn.com - - Office: 404-588-6191 - ---------------------------------------------------------------- - Emergency Power-off != Door release! - ----------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat May 07 2005 - 20:34:18 PDT