Bad moon rising

[dwalk]

No One is going to stop a swat team in a bradley fighting vehicle with an AR.  That being said, we as shooting and hunting enthusiasts do not need to be quarreling and back stabbing each other in order to get the lesser of two evils.  The war is with the gun grabbers- period.  Not amongst us.

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any tank or armored vehicle can be stopped with sand pits, gravel pits mud or grease or molotov cocktails. The troops around the tank are protecting the tank, the tank isn't protecting the troops. The tank is a mobile cannon designed to knock out major targets and other tanks. ear

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  As an old tanker, I must interject here;
 A) One of the primary rules of tank warfare is to maintain mobility .  During Desert Storm one of the great mistake the Iraqi Republican Guard tankers made (besides having inferior tanks), was to remain in a static position.
B)  We always drove around such obstacles, and to my knowledge Nobody has yet produced portable sand pits, gravel pits or mud pits...Besides,  it would a severe example of same to hamper a tank. 
C) Troops & tanks...it's a symbiotic relationship, each protects/supports the other.  Don't believe the movies showing troops swarming on tanks..     Tanks also protect tanks...in such a situation, tankers wirl "sweep each other off" with a light machine gun.
D) Tanks don't engage only "hard" targets, such as other tanks".  Rule of engagement when emerging upon the field..engage any target of opportunity...starting with whatever is the more threatening to your tank..   There is a regular list..goes something like this; Tanks, other armored, artillery, troops with sholder held weapons, trucks, troop formations etc.
E) Can't quite figure wher the grease comes in...perhaps a portable grease field half a foot deep?
F) Molotov cocktails are a WW2 item..no longer effective.  First somebody has to be within a few feet of the tank..risky!   then there are fire extinguishers and Chobham armor..and other tanks & infantry sweeping the tanks off.
G)  Check even the use of armor in the crowded cities of Iraq...no instances I know of where Molotov cocktails were employed..and the terrorists are very adept at employing primitive weapons.
H) If tanks were so easily disabled, why would we be paying $6, 200,000 for each new Abrams M1 2a which rolls out?
 
   All that being said, guerilla warfare can be very effective, as is being proven every day in the sandbox and the rockpile..  Tanks are too costly, so they can't be everywhere.
 
  BTW:  Ear;  I hope I didn't sound rude..but there is a certain defensive wall which comes up, when I hear of tanks being minimized..  
 

your avatar should alert people to the fact you have "been there, done that"


i was with the 2AD, "Hell on Wheels"...folks have to see to believe what armor is capable of. and... it's advanced dramatically since our M-60MBT were the mainstay of armor...


lets ask the guys here the old tankers question: "If the top of the track is traveling 30 mph, how fast is the bottom track moving?" 

[briarpatch]

00000

[briarpatch]

I have a military issued license around here somewhere for an M551 sheridan tank. If we were still using those I would say you could take them out with a firecracker. What a pos. If you drove one 5 mile without it breaking down you had a good one. The best use I every saw for one was to make holes in the ground. We dropped one from a 141 and the only thing that opened was the pilot chute. Nothing retrievable. 
Todays tank aint nothing like them. 

[blind ear]

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  As an old tanker, I must interject here;
 [/quote]

The old tanker that I knew survived the Kasarine Pass and the Battle of the Bulge, after he got out of the tanks. He said it was safer to haul fuel to the tanks in a canvas top  truck than be in one. A young man told me about the same thing about the M1 tank not too many years after it went into service. No disrespect but it is a machine. ear

[twoshooter]

If it ever gets so far as to have open hostilities, the world as we know it will already be over, regardless of what happens.

[blind ear]

If it ever gets so far as to have open hostilities, the world as we know it will already be over, regardless of what happens.

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When those with jobs are outnumbered by those that get government checks without jobs it is over without open hostilities. It is up to patriots to see that the balance is in check. What happens is up to us. ear

[BBF]

OK I'll bite
On the speed of the track question unless this is a trick question(Hmmm) I would presume it has the same rotational speed as the bottom. The direction is opposite to the top. So I would not use mph but feet/sec  or rpm as a unit of measure.

[blind ear]

OK I'll bite
On the speed of the track question unless this is a trick question(Hmmm) I would presume it has the same rotational speed as the bottom. The direction is opposite to the top. So I would not use mph but feet/sec  or rpm as a unit of measure.

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No different than a wheel/tire. The spot on the tire in contact with the ground is not moving relative to the contact point. The track is orbiting the dive gears at the same rate as the forward speed of the machine. The contact patch of a tire may be only inches long while the contact patch of a track is feet long. Both contact patches are advancing at the rate of speed of the machine. One end of the contact patch is going down while the other end is going up. ear

[ironglow]

OK I'll bite
On the speed of the track question unless this is a trick question(Hmmm) I would presume it has the same rotational speed as the bottom. The direction is opposite to the top. So I would not use mph but feet/sec  or rpm as a unit of measure.

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   I was called upon recently for a youth project (painting a tank for a local VFW) and posed that same question..
   The military calls the entire class "track laying vehicles"..they lay the track down and then run over it.  Therefore, while the tank is moving and the rest of the track is moving...the track in contact is just as stationary as the road or land it's on.
 
  Dwalk;
   Greetings to a fellow tanker; I was with the 4th Armored div, 508th Tank Bn....  M48s

[ironglow]

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  As an old tanker, I must interject here;
 

The old tanker that I knew survived the Kasarine Pass and the Battle of the Bulge, after he got out of the tanks. He said it was safer to haul fuel to the tanks in a canvas top  truck than be in one. A young man told me about the same thing about the M1 tank not too many years after it went into service. No disrespect but it is a machine. ear
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  The WW2 era Sherman M4 carried the same nickname by both American & German troops.  They both called the Shermans "Ronsons".. from the old Ronson cigarette lighter slogan. "Lights up first time, every time".  They ran on gasoline where most Russian & German tanks were diesels.  They had serious design flaws, one being their high silhouette. Probably the only two advantages they had over  the German tanks was dependability and their electric turret rotation overide...hand crank too slow in some cases.  All round, probably the Russian T-34 was best.
   All that has changed now..M1 Abrams perhaps best, followed by the British Challenger, German Leopard.. with the Israeli coming in very high..too new to be sure, but perhaps right beside the Abrams...  That of course is only (IMHO)..
   

[3030guy]

How would a Molotov cocktail stop a tank? Please excuse my ignorance.

[BBF]

How would a Molotov cocktail stop a tank? Please excuse my ignorance.

It is a primitive  firebomb. A glass bottle filled with gasoline or Diesel mix with a lit rag sticking out of the neck is thrown onto the tank preferably the engine compartment. You got to get close, that is the fly in the ointment.
 
If it is a solitary tank and the terrain allows it, a "Freedom Fighter" may be able to mount the tank and use the cocktail on air vents or any other opening.
 
One of the most vulnerable parts would be the tracks, jamming or breaking one makes a tank a sitting duck.

[powderman]

OK I'll bite
On the speed of the track question unless this is a trick question(Hmmm) I would presume it has the same rotational speed as the bottom. The direction is opposite to the top. So I would not use mph but feet/sec  or rpm as a unit of measure.

 
BBF. I was curious, but I was NOT going to ask, glad you did, now we know.  POWDERMAN. 

[Ranger99]

the way i understood it, in the '80's
in the war in afghanistan, the muj
would whack a soviet tank with
m. cocktails on the engine portion
of the tank and would set off the
on-board fire extinguishing system,
the vapors of which were toxic, and
the tankers would un-a$$ the tank
(or stay inside and suffocate) the
muj would pick them off with old
rusty enfield 303's or ancient martini's
or whatever they had, thus acquiring
a usable tank and all the firearms
and goods on board.
these other folks here could tell you more
about u.s. armor than i can. all the folks
i've known were airborne or pilots.


(that's what i understand anyway. . .)

[briarpatch]

Mj's were fighting a cold hard army from another country, enemy pure and simple. Not sons and daughters.
On the new soviet t90 there are two tanks of fuel exposed, around a guess of about 60 gals. Now it is certain that it may in combat ignite, so they must know it want cause a problem if it catches on fire. If you can throw a cocktail bigger than that, much bigger, you may have a chance.

[ironglow]

The external tanks on the Russian tanks are diesel, not quite so volatile as gasoline.  In fact under certain circumstances it can be difficult to ignite, although if the tanks were to make them especially vulnerable I very much doubt they would design them that way...further than that I cannot comment on Russian design beliefs.
  I am an OLD tanker so my info is somewhat dated, even though I try to keep abreast of tank design.  The idea of some lone trooper placing a rock to stop a tank is "movie stuff", not going to happen.  An immobilized tank is not dead, only immobilized, but still fighting...time and circumstance may change things.  A blown end connector would immobilize a tank, but they are hard to hit.
   Stands to reason, the DOD wouldn't be paying $ 6, 200,000 for each tank if they were easy to neutralize.  The demise of the tank on the battlefield has been predicted since WW2...but weaponry has been a continuous .."offensive punch..followed by defensive counter..the cycle repeating itself with regularity.
 
  Molotov cocktail..  a bottle nearly filled with gasoline and a wick of gas soaked cloth hanging from the neck down the side...light it..throw it.  Works best with "jellied" gasoline, which can be accomplished by adding natural soap (not detergent) to gasoline..gives a napalm effect.  These worked in decades past..if the trooper could get close enough...but not so good with newer extinguishing/defensive systems.  Likely there are now vid-cams located where even the smallest corner of the tank is exposed and weapons where every spot can reach.  Besides, tanks are always accompanied by infantry and other tanks.