Posted on 03/19/2018 5:26:25 AM PDT by C19fan
Muzzle brake, even.
And I suspect the MG mod was more for anti-personnel purposes. Though I understand the official nomenclature for that MG.
Armor bump....
M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank - 105mm main gun
M-1A1 - 120 mm smoothbore cannon
M-1A2 - All kinds of electronic and fire control upgrades. Its a real whiz-banger from the gunners seat or T/C position.
TTS was great in the M60a3. M65 .50 cal sucked beyond all known suckage.
I seem to remember M-60’s where I was in Viet Nam. Could I have been wrong?
Trying to find a little more info. There was an M-1A1 (HA) “Heavy Armor” tank that has been released that used additional depleted uranium plates in strategic points for extra protection. I cant find whether or not they adopted this practice in the later models or dropped it. All manner of things are being experimented with from DU to carbon nano tubes.
You were right.
(M-65 - M-85 50 cal?)
It only worked on rate of fire position “high”. Which Top would never allow anyone to use. 750 rds/min and it hummed like a sewing machine. Low rate of fire was a constant “clearing and re-engaging........F&(king chains !!”
SO GLAD to see a Ma-Deuce mounted on my 1st day of M-1 training! (and a power coupola!!)
To be fair, the Leopard 2A5s Turkey is using in Syria reportedly have a form of Chobham armor. Unfortunately for them, that armor is being easily shredded by Russian Konkurs missiles.
This is why we have a sudden rush on the part of the US Army to get an active protection system on our Abrams; the previous expectation by the Army and by NATO as a whole was that the Konkurs wasn’t really that much of a threat and that APS wasn’t really necessary. Turns out they were wrong and the Army isn’t willing to wait for the Raytheon vaporware Quick kill II (or whatever they call it this week) after the recent, very public destruction of crewed, operating Leopard 2A5s in videos uploaded to YouTube.
Should also be mentioned that the Chobham armor on the M1A2 and later incorporates depleted uranium into the armor composite which makes it even tougher. However, the Army quite wisely isn’t willing to put it to the test against the latest gen Konkurs (and relatives) if they can avoid it by installing an APS.
The M1A1HA hull with depleted uranium was incorporated into the M1A2 - and is why the latest tank we operate in South Korea is the M1A1 no HA. The M1A1HA and A2 (and follow ons) are both too heavy to cross the types of bridges common in that part of the world.
Abrams is the M1 (and M1A1, M1A2, M1A2 SEP, etc).
The T-54/55 might disagree with you. In most situations short of direct front line combat between first rank world powers, ‘some’ tank is better than no tank.
Also, the M60 can take applique armor, which helps immensely.
You cant miss that weight difference. Uranium is some heavy stuff. Radioactive or depleted.
Seems with current budgets we need to think of going Israeli mode and restore, repair, upgrade or cannibalize a lot of older equipment...... Think Tank’s can sometimes be far superior than actual tanks if used in a timely manner , staffed by subject matter experts versus bean counters and polidiots. Just my opinion, experience.
M65 or M85 ? Coaxial 50 ? We had M85’s for turrent gun if I remember correctly. Think I’ve told ya my “highly skilled” tanker tales before .... but, if I may repeat my M60A3 story.
Was USAF EOD, we trained at Eglin AFB in base recovery after attack (BRAAT) using the M60A3’s with an M9 Engineering dozer blade. 2 weeks of driving an PM with 3 feet of manuals, what seemed like a few hundred “do not start before read tags”, a Lincoln grease gun, 5 gallons of grease, later we were “tanker wannabes”.
During Desert Storm we got in country on the 5th of August, my 8 man EOD team went down to the docks to meet a USN ship with an ARMY crew delivering prepositioned armor to the USAF. (hell of a plan) We were given four M113’s and two M60A3’s to drive back to the base through town, traffic circles, souks etcetera.... Jumped in, ripped off every “do not start before read tags” in 30 seconds, started em up with a driver and spotter in the tanks and driver in the APC’s . We had more armor than we had EOD techs almost. Never got the dreaded enemy air attack on our base except the SCUD’s . M60A3’s stayed up an running well, we took extra effort to PM em perfectly .
Also remember picking up spare parts from the docks later, filters mostly, that had “Made in Israel” on the boxes ..... dock workers wouldn’t touch em . We had to carry rattle can spray paint to mark out the Made in Israel labels before they would hoist the crates off the supply ships. Flew in the needed PM supplies after that.
My tanker war story ....
My tanker war story ...
Two tanks got into shooting match to see who could shoot a tree. First tank hand no sights so they used Machine gun to aid sight in and shot first, then the other tank shot. After about 8 rounds there was a winner of a case of beer the subject of the bet.
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