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The Patton museum is open, but is NOT what you saw back then. All the Armor/Cavalry branch stuff (including the tank/vehicle collection) was moved to Benning. Now it is the General Patton Leadership Museum or something.

http://www.armorcavalrymuseum.org

The armor/cav museum is still trying to get funded and built. As mentioned though, the National Infantry Museum is great. The armor museum will be adjacent to it.

http://i.imgur.com/mNcZZeE.webm
Have to add this to the mix...

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
Not exactly a tank, but impressive none the less.

The Leichter Ladungsträger Goliath (Goliath tracked mine) or "beetle tank" as the Allies called it:

"Wow I really want to be like that when I grow up!"

-every RC tank in existence

 CptJake wrote:
The Patton museum is open, but is NOT what you saw back then. All the Armor/Cavalry branch stuff (including the tank/vehicle collection) was moved to Benning. Now it is the General Patton Leadership Museum or something.

http://www.armorcavalrymuseum.org

The armor/cav museum is still trying to get funded and built. As mentioned though, the National Infantry Museum is great. The armor museum will be adjacent to it.

Well that sucks. My folks are in Louisville, so a drive down to Fort Knox is an easy day trip when we are down there. Georgia is a bit far. Thanks for the head’s up.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I like Object 279, the Russian one with 4 tracks.

Yep, four tracks and a ufo hull. Such a bizarre design people have been making up stuff for years to figure out why something that odd looking could exist.

Has anyone talked about the land dreadnought that was the maus? That thing was insane.

I like this one

back

 Ustrello wrote:
Has anyone talked about the land dreadnought that was the maus? That thing was insane.

Talking of Photoshop. XD


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 sebster wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I like Object 279, the Russian one with 4 tracks.

Yep, four tracks and a ufo hull. Such a bizarre design people have been making up stuff for years to figure out why something that odd looking could exist.

It looks odder still because they never finished the thing. I'd assume that they intended to go back and rework the tracks a bit, for instance they spent a lot of time armouring up the turret and didn't add any there.

Yeah you are right, still a pretty big tank.

^^ More Photoshop? The scale's different between those two images... Seeing as youknow the Maus never was deployed in the field or even had its turret matched with its hull, or hell made it out of a factory at all. I guess Super Heavy frothers can dream (even if on the field the Maus would be useless given the American's love for calling down artillery and it being just one massive slow moving target).

The first one is a fake and the second more likely to be true since its height was around 12 feet and seems to be roughly double the height of a man.

I'm fairly sure the second is genuine, there are lots of photos of a completed Maus in testing.

The Patton museum is still open but it's notvery big and most of the tanks are gone but there is still the Patton stuff

I recently went to the NZ Army Museum in Waiouru, got to look, and crawl on, some tanks. The highlight was definitely the centurion, its very... large.

The museum does make mention of the Bob Semple tank, in a very small plaque practically hidden behind some cool ww2 weapons with one blurry picture. Its completely forgotten by the time you get to the sherman in the next room.

All I remember about the m1 is that they have to stop for fuel every five minutes, is that still the case yanks?

 Formosa wrote:
All I remember about the m1 is that they have to stop for fuel every five minutes, is that still the case yanks?

No MBT is particularly fuel efficient, but I'm pretty sure the M1 has a longer operational range than your Challenger 2

I think the Challenger has a bit longer operational range, but they are close and it can depend on where you get your numbers.

I DO know I never had to refuel every 5 minutes in any Abrams (I've crewed M1 slicks, M1A1 Heavy Commons and M1A2s).



As for the convoy question, yeah, dispersion is generally the way to go, but how much can often be situational dependent. In an urban area with tight roads/lots of turns if you allow civilian traffic to get in the convoy it can be a bad thing (think VBIEDs, folks purposely trying to separate out vehicles, dumb/ignorant civilians just getting in the way not fully understanding the danger they put themselves in). Additionally, it seems in many units not every driver/VC knows the damned route so they tend to bunch up on the lead vehicle so they don't get lost (frickin sad...).

You try to balance ability to mass firepower and mutual support with dispersion so one IED doesn't get more than one vehicle. For movies/TV you have a better dramatic effect showing the whole convoy in the frame, in real life, 100-500 meters (situational dependent) between vehicles is a good thing. There is also certain electronic devices on some of our vehicles that work best with some dispersion.

Fun fact (as I recall): A Challenger crew got credit for the longest range kill in Desert Storm (5100 meters I think). A trooper who would become one of my TCs (and was in the video) pulled a trigger on a 4000+ kill in an M1A1. Great guy. One of the best NCOs I have ever worked with.

I had a very long range hit from a moving M1A2 against a moving target at night during the test at Ft Hood. Range was over 5400 with a damned HEAT round (big arc, not a flat trajectory like a SABOT, but it was what we had loaded). It took so long for the round to hit I initially assumed we missed and was about to re-engage the target when the round came down like a lightning bolt from Zeus. Not a combat kill but it did demonstrate how good the three axis sights and ballistic computer allowed a good gunner to hit way farther than the book says we should have been able to.

Take the figures with a grain of salt because they came from wikipedia - But apparently the operational range of the M1 Abrams is 265 miles; whereas the Challenger 2 is 340 miles on road, 160 miles off road.

I'm very curious to hear how the Abrams would have performed in Southern Lebanon. The IDF talks up the Merkava, and it's a very versatile platform, but I'm not 100% convinced that it's all it's cracked up to be.

The main gun design is pretty cool though...10 round internal rotating semiautomatic magazine full of 120mm goodness. That said, a well trained crew could probably match the ROF pretty well.

On the protection front, reports indicated that the Trophy active protection system succeeded in bouncing a few RPGs and Kornets, so there's that...

Just for some interesting data points, look at Canadian Armor Trophy winners by year and tank type:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Army_Trophy#WINNERS

Doesn't really go towards proving which tank is the best, but it is interesting. Crew quality/training is and always will be the deciding factor in my mind.


We had a few guys from the '87 winning team on the M1A2 test. Some damned fine tankers.


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 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
I'm very curious to hear how the Abrams would have performed in Southern Lebanon. The IDF talks up the Merkava, and it's a very versatile platform, but I'm not 100% convinced that it's all it's cracked up to be.

The main gun design is pretty cool though...10 round internal rotating semiautomatic magazine full of 120mm goodness. That said, a well trained crew could probably match the ROF pretty well.

On the protection front, reports indicated that the Trophy active protection system succeeded in bouncing a few RPGs and Kornets, so there's that...

ROF is interesting. Personally I consider it a relatively worthless stat for a tank. Target acquisition times are what controls engagement times. Being able to fire 10 rounds a minute is worthless if you can only spot and ID 3 targets in that time period. Unless you have gakky crews that miss a lot and need to re-engage the same target multiple times...

On the defense/firing stationary the heated gas and dust kicked up by a main gun firing tends to blind even thermal sights for a few seconds. When moving you can 'push through' the cloud and acquire the next target quicker. Obviously in rainy weather the issue is not as big.

One thing the M1A2 allowed was the TC to cover a separate sector from the gunner, and if he acquired he could slew the tube to his target, and either pop it or give control to the gunner and let him pop it (best solution, because then the TC switches to the gunner's sector while the gunner engages). We found that between M1A1 and M1A2, the A2s could engage the first target a few seconds faster, the second almost 30 seconds faster, the third about a minute faster, and no A1s engaged the fourth (they went down for time).

So, ROF just seems a silly stat for tanks in my opinion. Unless it is REALLY slow and the gunner/TC are ready to engage before the loader (automated or crew) has the next round ready to go.

 CptJake wrote:
Just for some interesting data points, look at Canadian Armor Trophy winners by year and tank type:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Army_Trophy#WINNERS

Doesn't really go towards proving which tank is the best, but it is interesting. Crew quality/training is and always will be the deciding factor in my mind.


We had a few guys from the '87 winning team on the M1A2 test. Some damned fine tankers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
I'm very curious to hear how the Abrams would have performed in Southern Lebanon. The IDF talks up the Merkava, and it's a very versatile platform, but I'm not 100% convinced that it's all it's cracked up to be.

The main gun design is pretty cool though...10 round internal rotating semiautomatic magazine full of 120mm goodness. That said, a well trained crew could probably match the ROF pretty well.

On the protection front, reports indicated that the Trophy active protection system succeeded in bouncing a few RPGs and Kornets, so there's that...

ROF is interesting. Personally I consider it a relatively worthless stat for a tank. Target acquisition times are what controls engagement times. Being able to fire 10 rounds a minute is worthless if you can only spot and ID 3 targets in that time period. Unless you have gakky crews that miss a lot and need to re-engage the same target multiple times...

On the defense/firing stationary the heated gas and dust kicked up by a main gun firing tends to blind even thermal sights for a few seconds. When moving you can 'push through' the cloud and acquire the next target quicker. Obviously in rainy weather the issue is not as big.

One thing the M1A2 allowed was the TC to cover a separate sector from the gunner, and if he acquired he could slew the tube to his target, and either pop it or give control to the gunner and let him pop it (best solution, because then the TC switches to the gunner's sector while the gunner engages). We found that between M1A1 and M1A2, the A2s could engage the first target a few seconds faster, the second almost 30 seconds faster, the third about a minute faster, and no A1s engaged the fourth (they went down for time).

So, ROF just seems a silly stat for tanks in my opinion. Unless it is REALLY slow and the gunner/TC are ready to engage before the loader (automated or crew) has the next round ready to go.

I agree - ROF is not an important stat for a tank. The time it takes to acquire a target and manuver the gun is going be longer than load time in most cases I'm sure.


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 Formosa wrote:
All I remember about the m1 is that they have to stop for fuel every five minutes, is that still the case yanks?

We put a 500 + gallon fuel tank in it. at .6 MPG that gets us something like 280 miles per fill. Its also dang fast. So fast we have to govern it to 42 MPH (68 KPH). 1500 HP will do that.

I wouldn't trust the figures given out for various stats on modern tanks, who does it benefit to be honest and open about those things?

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I wouldn't trust the figures given out for various stats on modern tanks, who does it benefit to be honest and open about those things?

No point is keeping secrete - we hand em out like hotcakes to our allies.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Because an awesome tank never has enough dakka:

that thing was a death trap, i believe it took what 22 men to crew it and it had a tendencie to catch fire and the hatches would end up blocked by the turrets lol

Sorry, but when I think of amazing or just plain weird this tank always got my attention:


But the "best" at this time is the Leopard 2A7.
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/germany-still-loves-its-armored-beasts-994580ac94f2

 CptJake wrote:
Just for some interesting data points, look at Canadian Armor Trophy winners by year and tank type:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Army_Trophy#WINNERS

Doesn't really go towards proving which tank is the best, but it is interesting. Crew quality/training is and always will be the deciding factor in my mind.


We had a few guys from the '87 winning team on the M1A2 test. Some damned fine tankers.

So it isn't only in football that Germany wins everything then?

 CptJake wrote:

So, ROF just seems a silly stat for tanks in my opinion. Unless it is REALLY slow and the gunner/TC are ready to engage before the loader (automated or crew) has the next round ready to go.

Interesting points, thanks for the info.

Have the IDF released anything lately about the Merkava's planned upgrade? Supposedly they want to replace the main gun with a laser or sonic weapon, but that seems like its a going to be a pipe dream for years. They must have a stop gap for the mean time though. That and I don't see coil guns being practical enough to mount on tanks in the short term either, though how are those naval tests going?

Heh, you could mention laser, sonic and gauss weapons in this thread regarding crazy 60s science fiction, now countries are actually attempting to make those things (properly that is, there were tests as far back as the 40s).

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Have the IDF released anything lately about the Merkava's planned upgrade? Supposedly they want to replace the main gun with a laser or sonic weapon, but that seems like its a going to be a pipe dream for years. They must have a stop gap for the mean time though. That and I don't see coil guns being practical enough to mount on tanks in the short term either, though how are those naval tests going?

Heh, you could mention laser, sonic and gauss weapons in this thread regarding crazy 60s science fiction, now countries are actually attempting to make those things (properly that is, there were tests as far back as the 40s).

The next generation of tanks are going to have rail guns.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Have the IDF released anything lately about the Merkava's planned upgrade? Supposedly they want to replace the main gun with a laser or sonic weapon, but that seems like its a going to be a pipe dream for years. They must have a stop gap for the mean time though. That and I don't see coil guns being practical enough to mount on tanks in the short term either, though how are those naval tests going?

Heh, you could mention laser, sonic and gauss weapons in this thread regarding crazy 60s science fiction, now countries are actually attempting to make those things (properly that is, there were tests as far back as the 40s).

The next generation of tanks are going to have rail guns.

That'll have to be a pretty powerful engine to generate that high charge... no?