On the UP lines I just saw a train load of M-1 tanks go buy. Two per flatcar, they had 3 axle trucks on them. Just one engine, about 20 tanks. Sorry, no camera.
Jerry Barnes said:Don't you just hate it when that happens? Sometimes I have a camera.........and can't get pulled over in time to get a shot. Ralph
Sorry, no camera.
Forces of Valor makes a 1:32 M1A1 Abrams tank. I have a few that I drag out of the box and put on flatcars to make a military train. FOV makes a lot of stuff from various eras in 1:32 if anyone is interested.
Well, I admit to wasting time wandering through these toy sites, but lookee what I found! An example of early reactive armor. I wonder how successful this was? Any tankers out there?
(http://www.wartoyz.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/fv80235-m4a3-sherman-450.jpg)
I upgraded to a Balckberry Storm last year about this time and while I’m less than impressed with the phone in general (touch screen is glitchy, too little internal memory to run itself without any extra applications installed, battery charging and discharging issues, etc.) the camera on it is better than my small point and shoot. thus I ALWAYS have a decent camera with me BUT between the battery running dead and stopping the car long enough to get the shot it generally doesn’t happen.
Chas
Just take the Amtrak Crescent through Anniston Alabama and you will usually see several train loads of M1s in various states. It rolls right past the armory. In early March at least two inbound tracks were filled with M1s on flats, and there was one track of refurbished tanks with a mix of desert and green cammo on the way out. You will usually see several loads of Humvees and other armored vehicles. This was the first trip were a number of MRAPs were also in for repair. Not a good sign.
Sorry - No pictures this trip. Camera kept focusing on dirt on and glare from dirty lounge windows.
Steve: Two layers of sand bags could be effective protection from the older RPG shaped charges, depending upon how the round hit the bags. Some of the newer small antitank rounds will punch through over 12 inches of armor. Several are being designed to defeat reactive armor by setting off several small explosions prior to detonating the main shaped charge.
Ken
Former Tank Jockey
YEah the front plate on those ol Shermans didn’t do much to stop a German 88 round, thats why you’ll see it piled with sandbags, spare tracks sections, extra steel plates, whatever…they didn;t call 'em Ronsosn’s fer nuttin. They beat the Panzers by sheer volume…
Ken,
No doubt that anything made after, say, 1955 would defeat those sandbags, but how about WWII technology? Would sandbags be able to predetonate WWII ordinance, or were those tankers just whistling in the wind?
Steve,
The early German anti-tank rockets (Panzerschreck), similar to the bazooka, could easily be defeated by the sandbags, but late in the war they developed a larger version of the Panzerfaust which, with a good hit, could punch through sandbags and frontal armor. Many believe that the USSR based their RPG-7 design on the Panzerfaust.
There used to be several examples of damaged armor from various antitank rounds on display at the Armor School at Fort Knox, but I understand that the Powers That Be felt that “showing the troops the down side would be demoralizing.” We hauled several good examples out the the range to use for target practice. Small hole on the outside with lots of hot metal splashing around the inside. Really messy. Scary, but the RPG series which can punch through the side of an M1 is, next to the AK47, the second most abundant infantry weapon in the world.
Ken
Steve Featherkile said:Steve - not reactive armour, but supplementary armour, and no, it didn't do much good against either the 88mm in the Tiger 1 or the long-barrelled 75mm as fitted to the Panther.
Ken, No doubt that anything made after, say, 1955 would defeat those sandbags, but how about WWII technology? Would sandbags be able to predetonate WWII ordinance, or were those tankers just whistling in the wind?
Tank-v-tank projectiles were not explosive, but penetrative. I have an 88mm shot here propping open the back door, and I can tell you that this baby, whistling around your ears at almost 3000fps, was a serious attention-getter. My dad, who was barred from military service in the British Armed Forces by virture of his former terrorist activities in Ireland, was a skilled welder, and spent the last three years of WW2 fixing tanks that had been shot up by the opposition with one thing or another. I remember when I was a lot younger that he had a section of Sherman turret ring - measuring over five inches thick at that point, that had simply been penetrated as though it was not there at all by a 75mm AP shot.
In fact, the 88mm shot I have came out of the engine compartment of a Canadian Sherman after having already gone through the entire length of the Sherman in front of it. It was a miracle that anybody survived, but I’m told that at least three tankers actually walked away from the two wrecks.
The sandbags DID help to pre-initiate the shoulder-launched/hand-held anti-tank rockets that the Germans had in vast numbers in Normandy - the Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck. These early shaped-charge warheads, working on the Monroe Principle, were the German equivalent of the Allied 2.5" rocket, Anti-tank - the Bazooka.
Nowadays, the reliance on reactive armour is a facet of Russian tank technology of the late sevenies and early 80’s, after it was first invented by the Israelis [Blazer, it was called]. Modern composite armour usually defeats most passive kinetic projectiles and most active warheads too.
Sadly, the main areas on a tank where this wonder-armours is fitted do not include the lower sides, but are usually confined to the front and upper parts of the tank and to the turrets. As Ken notes, even the might M1 can be penetrated by the latest versions of the RPG, and roadside-mounted anti-armour devices, develped in Russian and somehow finding their way [via Iran] into the hands of the muja’s in Iraq, have been used successfully against US forces.
tac
www.ovgrs.org
I guess they didn’t call the M-4 Sherman the “Tommy Cooker” or the “Ronson” for nothing. Using a gasoline engine for power! The guy who came up with that idea should have been shot!
The aluminum bodied tracked vehicles we ran in 1965-72 were useless against anything above the 7.62mm rifle bullets. Rocket propelled grenades were sufficient to ruin your week.
We countered the RPGs with chain-link fencing propped up in front of our equipment when set-up in our NDP - night defensive perimeter. It may be difficult to see, but the roll is behind me sitting on a jeep seat on top of an M113.
http://www.lscdata.com/users/lastmanout/_forumfiles/MeOnTrack%20(Small).jpg
Jerry, there is a video on You Tube showing a NS train with M1 on it also.
Ron