Ah, yes.  

An excellent point, indeed.   We should find some special *short*  style detonator schematics and post them as the most current and desirable design.

Ah, good old motor pool de-construction/destruction......

Quite a few times, I'd be up front in the driver's compartment, trying to figure out what they'd done to hose their intercom system, and
one of your guys would be back in the turret working on something else.

"TINK, tink, tink, tink, CLUNK!" (the sound of a tool being dropped, and bouncing it's way down into the nether-regions of the turret guts)

That was my cue to haul ass, as it was about to get very noisy and the air be-fouled with imaginitive strings of foul language.....
(that, and I'd have been tempted to snicker, and would have gotten beaten with a heavy wrench! )

Only time I've ever witnessed something like this...

Mechanic:  "... *pause* *grits teeth* *clenches fist* ... gggGODDD DAMN FUCKING SON OF A BITCH WHORE SHITLICKING PETER PUFFING CUNT-HEADED (rest is censored for the children)"

Whatever you do, DO NOT LAUGH.

EGGZactaly! Its not how its made. Its the nougat filling between pannels that make it most effective..

LOL.. You should of seen the debreaf when we had a breached skirt in the field.. This was back in 88, When you still had to have a Secret clearence to work on the damn things..

LOL!!! so true.. I have winged tools across the motor pool in fits of rage.. Why put 100+ fucking pins in a connector that twists. You bend them ever fucking time!

Wife wont let any of the kids near me while im working on the car..

Nougat filling?

[scribbles notes furiously]

Answer to question #1....yeah, for MY 6FT frame the M1 IS a "little" cramped BUT, the caveat is that I started out on the M-60 series which was like an RV with a main gun!

Answer to question #2....kinda-sorta but then (Another Caveat lol), compared to the old '60A1's I started on (Where we used to shove our gas particulate hoses into our uniforms to get some air moving around in there) not "Too" bad.  I'll additionally qualify that with the fact that I never crewed M-1's in really hot environments much (We went through NETT training on the M-1 just before I ETS'd the regular Army back in '84 and most of my time in them was spent FREEZING in the Oregon desert).

'60's on the other hand could EASILY become "Ovens" ().  I remember one FTX in FT Hood where, in the middle of a 110 degreeday we got a sudden shower (Like 3 min's of rain) and the fog that the heat of the tanks interior generated made it almost impossible to see your hand in front of your face let alone the GPS or M105D (!)

BTW, I didn't read the who;e thread and don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet but that bulge (The bore-evacuator) is NOT the "end-all" to gas pouring back into the turret.  I've never crewed a tank that didn't have one (Bore-evacuator) but, even WiTH them, you're STILL suckin' down alot of nasty, amonia-smelling crap.

Ahhh love the M1a1, used to play turret fixer on them. Only reason i say play is i wasnt q'd on them. I was pushed into it when i got out of AIT as a 63B and went to a armor unit with 2 trucks sooo i played tank mechanic.   On that note the scariest thing i ever say was see someone Purge the optics, and look at the wrong nitrogen gauge Lets just say they go bang!!!! and not cheap LOL

I remember that - very first field problem after arriving in Germany, early `87. XO's track slides into a ditch
(the roads were pure skating rink ice), peels two of the leading skirts wide open on a boulder.

I thought that the MAJ was going to have a stroke before we could cover up the damn thing with a tarp.

Then later on, the S-2 debrief.... "What did
you see?", "Why were you standing there?", blah, blah, blah..... LOL

I fired one once that had some kind of problem with the bore evacuator and would fill the turret with smoke every time you dropped the breech.  Let's just say I really came to appreciate the function that little bulge provided.  

The times I spent in them in hot environments, it actually stayed pretty cool inside until about noon, because it takes a long time for all that steel to heat up, but once it does, it can be stifling hot inside well to midnight.

Yup! But i was the guy with the tape and the tarp trying to keep the CDAT's from looking.. God talk about rubberneckers.. Hey let me see.. let me see.. Worse than an 8 year old.. This was Graff in 88..



But I do have to throw a shout out to all the DAT's and CDAT's that I worked with/for.. And a big thanks, for the cases of beer after they ran a perfect gunnery.. I always made sure they were tip top and they always paid me off.. You were some of the best damn people to party with..



And yes, I do have the "new" spare LRF. Yes i will put it in before you go down range.. Yes I will swap out when you come off.. next tanker.. Yes I have the "new" Spare.. LOL you get the Idea.. I took care of Delta co..




/bow

/thanks





 

Yep, sounds abt right. Our 'skirt ripping' incident was at Hohenfels.

Who were you with over in Germany?

HHC 1/68 8th ID.. Wildflecken! top of the rock!
late 87-90



 

It's going to happen. Infantry and tanks were meant for each other. Tanks without infantry are dead. Infantry without tanks? Well, they can hide in buildings and duck into foxholes..no tank can do that.

Why not.

This is what a "NIW" AAV would look like.

Still in the wrapper...

Sure they can, you just need a TC who can get really creative with using his terrain.

Actually, that's how I always end up flattening friendly infantry.

Spot and engage a target, spot another couple within firing range (on me), ram it into reverse and duck behind something or slide back down into a low spot in the terrain while delivering a follow-up shot and calling out the remainder to somebody else. And then notice I just pancaked one or two of my support guys who were using me for cover because there was a sniper on some roof.

Heh heh heh, uh... whoops. Fortunately in a sim somebody can just pull your guys back out of the ether and stick them back on the field.

I wonder who's bright idea it was to put that phone/commo right on the back of the tank, so if you're a ground-pounder who wants to communicate with the tank through that method, you gotta stand right behind him.  How many guys do you think are going to have the last words of "don't back u..." (crunch)

Well, realistically you're probably a hell of a lot less likely to get shot full of holes hanging out behind a tank rather than in front or on the sides.

Just make sure the tank knows you're there, especially with modern tanks where they can GTFO backwards pretty quickly if the need arises.

Oh man, how I would love to have one of those...

The Ultimate camper...

Years ago I saw some highly detailed papers that showed what Chobham armor looked like and how it worked. It was too professional looking and looked too specific and logical for it to have been fake, so I've not reason to doubt what I saw was real. From what I remember about the the layers, they'd absorb, slow down and spread out impacts. So like HEAT rounds would get disrupted and spread out and Sabots would get absorbed and shattered.





You know, what I'm just gonna say it... The armor on the diagrams looked like a like whacked out layers of plates and rods, many of which were at weird angles. I think I remember seeing a rubber layer too.






 

Its the nougat filling between pannels that make it most effective..




and thats not it!!






 

Chobham = particle board made of ceramic and metal.

That's sort of a good way to describe what I saw... nearly ten years ago.



 

it gets the inside about 20 degrees cooler, which is about how much hotter it is inside the turret than the outside temp anyway.

no self respecting tanker will go out the wire in 120+ degrees without a cooler on board.  we would be drinking boiling hot water if we didnt.

There are nomoving parts in a bore evac. Either the casing was fractured (In which case it would probably have exploded), or someone forgot to clean it before use.

NTM

Yeah, I hotbedded another platoon's tank during a gunner and grease plugged the hole inside the evacuator and it smoked us out.