[Calvin Locke]

I watched one of the shows on the Abrams tank. Not all that much clearance for the loader in position for the shot, that is the recoil.

I'm not sure how exactly the Soviet autoloader worked, but the US Army declined to add one because of the maintenance of an additional 80-100 parts.

From the cycle time of the Iraqi Soviet built tanks, 20-30 seconds, iirc, it didn't give them any advantage in a real combat situation.

[MarkL]

I watched one of the shows on the Abrams tank. Not all that much clearance for the loader in position for the shot, that is the recoil.

One of my co-workers used to be a loader, and yes, there's NO clearance during the recoil of the main gun. There's a safety gate, however my co-worker told me that it's not used because it gets in the way. He said that it was a very ugly way to find ones self in the hospital with numerous broken bones, and an occassional medical discharge.

He also told me of the time there was a mixup in the round loaded in the main gun, and the calibration switch on the gun sight during a live fire exercise... He told me that the round overshot the target by about 5 miles.

Mark