"Something" felled an M1A1 Abrams tank in Iraq - but what?

Army times! ^ | Dark

[Dark]

Army Times is a Gannett Publications and must be posted as a title and link only.

[Dark]

Notice the date of an accident - August, 28!

[Yehuda]

Time to lock down Iraq.

[RandallFlagg]

What about that date (I'm a bit slow tonight -solar flares and all...)?

[donmeaker]

Shaped charge weapons have a focus distance, determined by the shape of the penetrator cone. In the past RPGs used a inverted conical penetrator, (the innermost part of the cone turns inside out and becomes the leading edge of the penetration stream) which gives moderage penetration over a wide range of detonation distances. This was selected by the russian designers because the germans during wwii used "bazooka plates", thin steel plates to prematurely detonate shaped charge rounds at the wrong focus distance, which limited penetration effectiveness. Fender skirts are the modern expression of the bazooka plates.

Western penetrators have a more complex shape, and detonation at the correct distance is nearly guaranteed by the high quality and uniformity of the detonation mechanism. This gives superior performance (about 10 diameters of penetration) compared to russian weapons (about 6 diameters of penetration).

This indicates to me that either a new design RPG may be out there, or.....someone got hold of a western antitank weapon. Can we all say it together? FRANCE.

[archy]

Shaped charge weapons have a focus distance, determined by the shape of the penetrator cone.

And the diameter of the charge, which affects the required depth and thickness of the cone to achieve the Monroe Effect's focused blast. That can be counter productive to the aerodynamic shape required for effective flight, one reason why the WWII German Panzerfausts were short ranged, but very effective when they hit.

Additionally, the charge needs to be base detonated, though the noze fuze needs to be able to function even if it strikes the target at a less-than-ideal 90º angle. Typically, as in the Soviet PG-7 warhead or that of the M72 series US and British 66mm LAW rockets, that's accomplished with a piezoelectric crystal that provides a sufficient electrical charge to fire the charge's detonator when crushed into the target at flight speed. In the case of the RPG, the copper liner of the shaped charge is used as one electrical conductor to carry that electrical impulse for firing If the external body of the rocket is smashed into the charge liner, as when the rocket hits chail link fencing rather than solid plate, a short circuit of the firing circuit results and a dud round is the result. In practice, chainlink fencing will disable around 50% of the PG-7 rockets fired into it. M72 LAW rockets, being smaller, more often slip through, but are more often deflected, preventing a solid hit against the armor and thereby also resulting in a dud strike.

-archy-/-

[archy]

This indicates to me that either a new design RPG may be out there, or.....someone got hold of a western antitank weapon. Can we all say it together? FRANCE.

Not necessarily. The result sounds a lot like the resulting effect from an Israeli Rafeal *Spike-3* ATGM launcher missile hit. They're capable of either *fire and forget* attacks up close, or guided top-attack hits out to 4 KM when under operator guidance till impact; the NunTet-Dandy version is said to achieve hits out to 7.5 KM. And the Israelis know how to build weapons for killing tanks, even an Abrams. The things have been sold to Indonesia, Singapore and Finland, possibly others including Estonia and Serbia, and there's always the possibility that the Jihidists managed to divert one or more directly from Israel via Jordan.

[Sapper26]

It could also be a variant of our own TOW missiles. Back in the Iran-Contra thing, TOW's were part of the shipment. Over the last 17 years, the Iranians may have developed their own version (or old TOW's found their way to the Soviets).

[leadpenny]

What caused the damage on that M-48?

[struwwelpeter]

Damn! You're good.

[archy]

What caused the damage on that M-48?

A ChiCom B-40 warhead shaped charge, their version of the Russian RPG-2 rocket/launcher forerunner of the RPG-7.

[boris]

I'm not an anti-armor specialist.

But a pencil-sized hole with no spalling...?

Sounds like it went thru our best armor and hardly noticed it was there.

Suppose somebody built a rail-gun or coil-gun that worked outside the laboratory and launched a dense penetrator at ultra-high velocities...(?)

I'm thinking 20 km/s or higher....(?)

--Boris

[archy]

Damn! You're good.

Does that mean I got a job in your freebooter motor-rifle battalion, Podpolkovnik Struwwelpeter? Platoon leader Lejtenant? GRU Tech intell? Ordnance support?

[Flyer]

I hope it was a lucky shot and we are not part of someone’s test program

Friendly fire?

[archy]

Suppose somebody built a rail-gun or coil-gun that worked outside the laboratory and launched a dense penetrator at ultra-high velocities...(?)

I'm thinking 20 km/s or higher....(?)

--Boris?

Or an APFSDS sabot round for their 2A42 30mm gun used on the BMP2 and BMP-3 Mech Infantry vehicles like the 25mm sabot rounds we have for the Bradley's Chain Gun, with performance somewhere between that of the US 25mm and the 30mm GAU-8 tank-killing Gatling Gun of the A10 *Warthog*.

There's a shoulder-fired 23mm Russian antitank rifle, too, a semirecoilless weapon something like an oversized M82A1 Barrett .50 caliber AMR. Maybe a really high performance round like the .50 Raufoos shaped charge has been developed for it, or maybe a light tripod-mounted 30mm version has been worked up....

I don't think we're quite to the point where a usable rail gun could be fielded in a package any smaller than roughly a 40-foot semitrailer truck or container, though it's certainly going to happen in the near future. But whether an electromagnetically accelerated projectile, a hypervelocity kinetic energy round, or an advanced small caliber chemical energy HEAT warhead, it's bad news for the crews in the Abrams...and worse news for those in Strykers.

-archy-/-

[archy]

It could also be a variant of our own TOW missiles. Back in the Iran-Contra thing, TOW's were part of the shipment. Over the last 17 years, the Iranians may have developed their own version (or old TOW's found their way to the Soviets).

Could be, though I think we'd have been at least generally familiar with the effects of one of our own warheads, even if reverse-engineered and upgraded [as we did with the Soviet SA-7 *Strella*] by a foreign source. The Russian Copy of the M72A2 LAW as their RPG-18 Mukha comes to mind....

But the Brits use the TOW in at least limited numbers as well, though they favour the MILAN for dismounted Infantry use. I wonder if they might have misplaced any new goodies from their boffins while they were in the area during Operation Telic.

[leadpenny]

That looks like a Nam pic. Is that you in it? I'm ready for a "War Story."

Remember, you have to start it off with, "This is no s***, there I was!"

BTW, I wore the Armor Brass but drove Hueys. And, I suck at your "Helicopter Pilot's Test."

[leadpenny]

BTW, welcome to FreeRepublic, #124339.

[alfa6]

Thaks for the info archy.

Regrads

alfa6 ;>}

[machman]

[Prodigal Son]

An M1A1 Abrams tank with the 1st Armored Division was hit by enemy fire in Baghdad at 5:20 a.m. on Aug. 28. The paper in the photo covers the hole.

The hole in the M1A1 Abrams tank is marked by a circle in the above photo, showing the damage behind the skirt.

A close-up of the mysterious round’s point of entry.

The round penetrated the turret well to reach the inside of the tank.

The round passed through a nuclear, biological, chemical hose inside the tank behind the gunner’s seat and bent the basket

The projectile then tore a hole in the gunner’s seat.

The round pierced the left kidney area of the gunner’s flak jacket. According to the damage report, “The gunner said it felt like someone hit him in the back with a hammer.”

The round then crossed “under the breech and hit the safety guard,” the report said. The photo shows the entry side of the safety guard.

The round then exited the safety guard.

Next, the projectile slammed into the turret networks box.

The round then pierced the breaker panel on the tank.

The mysterious projectile finally buried itself in the hull of the M1A1 Abrams tank on the opposite side from where it entered. The hole is 1½ to 2 inches deep.

[tet68]

“I hope it was a lucky shot and we are not part of someone’s test program.

In a war zone, you're always part of someones test program.

[Prodigal Son]

There's photos of the impact area and hole in post number 22.

[archy]

That looks like a Nam pic. Is that you in it? I'm ready for a "War Story."

It's 'Nam, but that's not me, it's a TC named Wayne Gundersen. The pic's one of the 1/69th Armor's tanks in Spring or early Summer of 1968, shortly after Sp4 Dwight Johnson earned himself a Medal of Honor near there just after Tet '68. I had the reasonably good fortune to work later that year with 1/69th's HHC company tank section around the old SF A-23 team camp at Dak To, later to be hit hard by the NVA at the Dak Pek camp in 1970. Bravo company 1/69th got in a tank-versus-tank fight [PT-76 amphibians] at Ben Het on the Laotian Border, not too far from where that pic was shot, between Dak To and Laos.

Remember, you have to start it off with, "This is no s***, there I was!"

Or with *Once upon a time....*

The guy with the best related story of that sort would have been from a bout a year later, Jan '69, when two C-company 1/69 tanks were ambushed on the morning of January 16, 1969 while returning from bridge guard duty on bridge 27, on Highway 19. Charlie 14 and Charlie 15 were ambushed by the NVA/VC midway between Bridge 25 and Pump Station number 7, and SFC Allan Scavella, was killed when a B40 rocket in the back. The anti-tank rocket had been intended to strike the tank, which would have quite probably killed the entire four man crew and destroyed the vehicle, but it missed and hit Scavella instead. His loader, was wounded but his wounds were not considered life threatening. If SFC Scavella gets to tell his war story anywhere, it's in some corner of Valhella where old Viking and Roman warriors get a look at him and ask *Holy $h#t! What happened to you? and he gets to explain to them what an RPG is....

BTW, I wore the Armor Brass but drove Hueys. And, I suck at your "Helicopter Pilot's Test."

Give the *throttle* little short *bursts* of altitude with the mouse, taptaptap, ant try to split the difference between the *rocks* and ground/roof. Ican generally get around 2500-3000.

You must have done real swell with the Mattel Messerschmit.... No KA-52 for you! I far prefer my airplanes not to have hinges on their wings, but I spent a little time with Bell 205s after Vietnam, though I rode in C and D-models quite a few times. It was the guys who flew $hi!hooks and Skycranes who impressed me, as well as LOH and snake drivers. Crazy people.

I should have a good *Farmer's War Story* link up later today....

-archy-/-

[archy]

Is it not true that these shaped charged weapons drilled tiny holes through the armour - but didn't actually use a projectile to do this? In spite of the fact that the hole was tiny, the shaped charge caused devastation inside the hull when the shaped charge penetrated.

Doesn't this sound a little different - a projectile actually penetrating?

Yep, sounds more like a kinetic energy penetrator of some sort, mayby saboted, maybe a hypervelocity rocket long-rod penetrator.

I'll see if I can dig up some photos of hits from 30mm DU rounds from the A10 warthog's GAU-8. But I'm guessing a sabot round of some sort....

If it's a 23mm round, we've got some serious problems....

[archy]

Spall impacts around the hole made by the projectile. That thing hit the tank's armor hard enough to chip off splinters from the location where it penetrated [think a bb hitting a hard glass window] and drive it into the adjoining armor hard enough to make those surrounding craters. We're probably looking at 5000+ FPS...

M919 25mm APFSDS for Bradley AFV

[Prodigal Son]

I spent a little time in the 1/69 in the first few months of my Army career. They were stationed in Kitzingen, Germany then.

[archy]

I hope it was a lucky shot and we are not part of someone’s test program

Friendly fire?

Or a captured/sold *friendly* coalition weapon. I'm thinking about the Sabot round for the L21 30mm Rarden semi-auto cannon of the British Fox Armoured Car, Scimitar recon track and Warrior APC.

[patton]

Had to be Sabot. No way a HEAT did that.

And if an MI ain't good enough, time to dismount - we will never field anything heavier.

[archy]

I spent a little time in the 1/69 in the first few months of my Army career. They were stationed in Kitzingen, Germany then.

The 2/70th Armor, the outfit mentioned in the article as now being part of the First Armored, was then one of the tank support battalions for the 24th Infantry, stationed in Bavaria in the mid-1960s on. The 2/70th, which had the M60 then [with three M60A1s at HHC] while the tank division battalions had the M60A1, was at Sheridan Kaserne in Augsberg, one of my daily stops as a classified documents courier *delivering the mail* to S2 offices around Augsberg/Munich/Bad Tolz/Pullach.

I pulled a couple of border tours with 2/70's scouts, mortar and ground surveillance sections as their German-speaking liason to the West German Bundesgrenzschutz at Rotz and Weiden, generally a better crew to work with than the 14th Armored Cav's scouts. At the time, the unofficial Overseas Weekly newspaper rated U.S. units in Germany, and the 14th was considered the worst possible unit to be in.

In 1966, the 2/70 went to Graf for the Table 8 gunnery exercises, and took the top dog position as high tank battalion in USAREUR. There was weeping anfd gnashing of teeth among the armiored divisions' battalions after that, and many weekend and after duty hours gunnery classes for the tank division treadheads after that little episode.

Those guys in 70th Armored were good, real good, and they knew it. Looks like they still are, too, and finally found themselves honest work in an armored division.

[eureka!]

Bump, sadly...

[archy]

Had to be Sabot. No way a HEAT did that.

Not necessarily sabot, though most likely a hypervelocity kinetic energy AP penetrator of some sort rather than a HEAT warhead. But it's possible that some sort of self-forging penetrator that achieves its velocity and shape from an in-flight explosion to achieve high velocities is at work. How long you figure it took the lads to get the battalion CBR NCO/officer to go over that thing with a Geiger counter to make sure it wasn't a depleted uranium slug- in which case, we'd have never read this story?

And if an MI ain't good enough, time to dismount - we will never field anything heavier.

But we may see a change from passive armoring systems to reactive measures that intercept oncoming projectiles. I wonder how the Russian Arena protective system for armored vehicles works against projectiles impacting at ± 10,000 feet per second....

-archy-/-

[patton]

You work with CFD's at all?

[Prodigal Son]

Speaking of the 2/70, after 1/69 I was in 2/70's sister unit- 4/70 "Black Lions". The 2/70 was just across post on Harvey Barracks in Erlangen, Germany. Also spent some time in 2/6 Infantry, 1/30 Inf, 2/15 Inf and finished up in 1/26 Blue Spaders. Both of those last two in Schweinfurt.

2/6 had the worst reputation of any unit I had ever been in. I came to work one morning and saw nothing but blue lights. The Polizei and MPs did a joint bust at HHC. Had at least 50 soldiers lined up against the wall outside in cuffs. Had to get two five tons to haul all of 'em to the police station.

[archy]

You work with CFD's at all?

You thinking of something like a Sidewinder heat-seaker homing on the Abrams turbine power pack?

-archy-/-

[SLB]

An RPG-7G has more than enough capability to do this.

[patton]

computational fluid dynamics - hydrocodes

[archy]

Supertanks take a big hit
By DEREK ROSE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, March 27th, 2003

Two of the vaunted M1A1 Abrams battle tanks have been destroyed in battle for the first time ever - by Iraqis in a truck, the Pentagon said yesterday. The tanks apparently were taken out Monday by truck-mounted missiles fired into their rear.

One of the tank drivers was trapped inside the burning vehicle for several minutes while .50-caliber machine gun rounds exploded before he was able to crawl free, according to embedded media reports.

None of the four-member crew was injured.

The same Iraqi gunner apparently destroyed both tanks as well as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, according to the report.

Colossus in '91

Shielded by steel-plated depleted uranium, the 70-ton Abrams tank appeared invulnerable in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Of the 1,848 Abrams tanks deployed, only 18 were disabled, mostly by enemy mines and friendly fire.

In one memorable duel, three Iraqi T-72 tanks charged an Abrams stuck in the mud, scoring three direct hits, but doing no damage. The Abrams dispatched the Iraqi tanks one by one.

Peter Keating, a spokesman for Abrams manufacturer General Dynamics Land Systems, said that while it's the first time enemy fire has destroyed an Abrams, a more important streak remains unbroken.

"They've never lost a crewman," he said. "The tanks were shot in the back end - that's the least protected place. But it's all fire-walled off from the crew. It did its job."

But later yesterday, even that record seemed in danger, with an embedded journalist reporting that a loader on a tank was killed Monday. The Pentagon did not confirm that yesterday.

It was unclear what weapon was used to destroy the two tanks. It may have been a wire-guided missile, or perhaps a laser-guided Kornet, sold by a Russian firm in violation of sanctions. The Army captured several of the missiles for analysis.

"We could lose a lot of tanks," said military analyst Jim Dunnigan, editor of Strategypage.com. "It could probably kill a guy in a Bradley."

No U.S. casualties

While the destruction of the tanks by a makeshift war wagon surprised the experts, they said it will not change the course of the war. Dunnigan noted that the battle in the sandstorm was still won without U.S. casualties.

In fact, the reports from the embedded journalist described a running battle over several hours in which the tank column repeatedly was attacked but suffered little damage while delivering lethal fire on the Iraqis.

One Army captain compared the Iraqi tactics with those used in Somalia. "They basically take a civilian vehicle and put a machine gun on the roof," Capt. Kurt Gordon told The Times of London. "We call 'em 'technicals.'"

While the uranium plating is formidable, analysts said it cannot be all over the tank because of its weight and bulk. The Abrams is so heavy that one collapsed a bridge in the town of Al Faysaliyph on Monday, sending the tank down an 8-foot gulch.

It was later retrieved.

With Larry Cohler-Esses

###

[patton]

Well, I can't see the "circle" in the pic - but if it penetrated the skirt, flew over the track, and then hit the hull - no, it doesn't.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Friendly fire?

That's what I was thinking. The description of the damage seems to indicate a highly advanced weapon that is extremely unlikely to have been fired by an Iraqi.

[archy]

An RPG-7G has more than enough capability to do this.

See the following. So does a 25mm from a Bradley....

But a PG-7 HEAT round wouldn't likely leave a *yellow metal projectile* stuck in the tank's armor. Unless somebody has a new material for making the cone liner in a HEAT warhead...?

-archy-/-

[archy]

Friendly fire?

That's what I was thinking. The description of the damage seems to indicate a highly advanced weapon that is extremely unlikely to have been fired by an Iraqi.

I've been thinking a 30mm APFSDS round from the L21 30mm semi-auto cannon of a British Scimitar or Warrior AFV. Though I'm not certain as to whether they were still in-country on 28 August.

-archy-/-

[archy]

computational fluid dynamics - hydrocodes

I know it's one field they got into heavily when considering the heat output of the Abrams turbine and air cleaner system [source of multiple vehicle fires that have killed a couple of dozen crewmen over the years] particularly in relation to hiding from thermal viewers and other camouflage considerations. One contractor [to the tune of 3/4 million$$$] was ThermoAnalytics, details *here*.

And I note that reference in the story to the vehicle's fixed fire extinguishers going off....

-archy-/-

[SLB]

'Nuff said on this incident. Let's change the subject to something that leads to less of a chance of soldiers being killed or injured. Someday you can drop in and visit and we can discuss in detail, but not in this forum.

[patton]

good idea.

[Valin]

Flag

[Physicist]

Self-ping.

[redhead]

"In the sort of excited language seldom included in official Army documents, he said, “The unit is very anxious to have this ‘SOMETHING’ identified. It seems clear that a penetrator of a yellow molten metal is what caused the damage, but what weapon fires such a round and precisely what sort of round is it? The bad guys are using something unknown and the guys facing it want very much to know what it is and how they can defend themselves.” "

A meteorite?

[redhead]

"A meteorite?"

Never mind. I see what it probably was. I'm just amazed that something with the diameter of a pencil can cause that kind of damage. How big are the sabot rounds?