Posted on 12/05/2005 11:02:45 AM PST by 68skylark
I don't see us fighting North Korea with thousands of tubes within range of cities in South Korea.... but again, it is nice to have.
Gunner, troops in the open, 75m, Beehive, fire at will...
Oh my GOD!Is that the shell? That thing would turn a human into a sponge!
Canister's been around since before the Civil War. Grapeshot longer than that.
It's an awesome anti-personnel weapon.
If my memory serves, we used a 105mm round in Vietnam called a Beehive round that was effectively used against wire breeches during the Tet Offensive.
Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif.(Sept. 19, 2005) -- As a 68-ton of steel, tracked M1A1 main battle tank rolls down a street, either patrolling or fighting in a highly threatening urban terrain, the crew must use their machine guns to take out insurgents on foot.
It’s either the mounted M2 .50 caliber heavy machine gun or the mounted and coaxial M240G medium machine gun that will pick off individual threats. The tank’s main gun can fire off a high explosive round toward a single small target but is one small target worth a round that can take out a building? A round that disperses like a shotgun blast is being used today on urban terrain. The brutal effects of the round were recently experienced in the Combat Center’s training area.
Third Platoon, Delta Company, 1st Tank Battalion, fired M1028 120 mm Canister Rounds Sept. 19 at Combat Center’s Range 500.
Similar to a shotgun round, Canister Rounds are cartridges made for the M1A1 main battle tanks, which are comprised of approximately 1,100 tungsten balls, three-eights of an inch in diameter, which are dispersed when fired from the main gun. The fuse-less rounds disperse the balls in a cone-like shape, increasing its impact area as the distance toward the target increases.
The anti-personnel round provides effective and lethal reaction against assaulting infantry who could be armed with hand-held anti-tank and automatic weapons.
Delta Company’s Third Platoon got a chance to experience the destruction the Canister Rounds can cause to a target.
“Third Platoon has already executed their gunnery qualification,” said Staff Sgt. Timothy L. Duvall, battalion master gunner.
“They are ready to set out with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Before they go I wanted to give the platoon a chance to test out the rounds. They have never seen the effects of them.”
Third Platoon lined up in their respective tanks at the firing line to blast off one canister round per crew. The targets were wooden silhouettes 100-meters-away, 200-meters-away and 300-meters away, spread out approximately 30 meters apart, laterally.
The rounds demolished the 100-meter target and left the 200- and 300-meter targets riddled with holes from the tungsten shower.
“It was like a powerful shotgun blast,” said Cpl. Windell Brackenridge, gunner, Delta Company, 1st Tank Battalion. “Anything in front of the tanks doesn’t stand a chance with these rounds.”,
They were using canister and grape shot at least as far back as the Civil War.
This weapon, in principle known to Napoleon, has been the topic of several threads over the past year.
"New? This was around in WW2."
This was around in the Revolutionary war when George Washington ordered the men to put their buttons and belt buckles into the cannons.
Heck, this was probably done with a catapult 3,000 years before that.
I was talking specifically about canister as a type of tank shell
You're right. Back in the later 70s when I was at Fort Knox, our M-60 tanks had four standard combat rounds. Sabot, HEAT, HEP, and Beehive. The Beehive could be set to open at various distances and the flechettes would begin their spread pattern.
But since the M-1 uses the 120mm, only two combat rounds were available: HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) and Sabot (depleted uranium penetrator--armor piercing discarding sabot). Only the coax and other machineguns were truly anti-personnel. I'm not surprised that they have again added this type of main gun munition.
This gives new meaning to the term "crowd control"
What was main gun on the M60's? 105mm's??
"Give 'em a whiff of the grape!"
That's easy...the M1 Tank was conceived first and last as a killer of other tanks (unlike earlier US tanks). That is why they gave it the gas turbine engine, the night vision systems, stabilized gun, and eventually that 120-mm Rheinmetal smoothbore.
On a related topic, there never was on official "beehive" round for 155mm or 8-inch howitzers. But at Ft. Sill we were taught that a canvas bag of roofing nails would work well -- I think they recommended 40-60 pounds of nails for a 155. Can you imagine that!?
Why tungsten? Weren't Claymore ball-bearings steel?
I seem to recall the Germans had a good anti-tank gun that
fired a sabot-tungsten round, but that was to pierce metal.
Right it was a 105mm which was still relatively new as some NCO preferred the 90mm because it had a completely mechanical firing pin vs the 105's electric charge in its firing pin.
The article explains this new round is simpler than the beehive and is only for relatively close ranges like the similar round the Sheridan tanks had. But the Sheridan's 152mm stubby big bore used flechettes instead of shot.
Stuarts used them on Guadalcanal
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