[AT] OT Abrams tanks was Statistics In Tractor Manufacturing

[James Peck]

The same fellow states that in the Kuwait war, they were only firing when fired upon. A pair of Abrams received fire from a group of Soviet made Iraqi tanks. One Abrams smoked 7 of the enemy tanks and the other smoked 4.

At one point they were approached by hundreds of Iraqi soldiers holding their rifles above their heads with white rags attached. The Iraqis had ripped uniforms, no food, no water, and were generally in bad shape.

[Mark Johnson] There are tales that the 'testers' at Aberdeen Proving Ground took the speed governor off an Abrams and ran it full-out to see how fast it would go, and what would fail.

The rumor/urban legend says that the transmission failed at 118 mph. Don't know if it's true, but it makes a hell of a story!

It is well-documented that during the first Iraq war, the tank battalions consistently outran their fuel supply lines - they could run faster than the stream of military semi-trailers of fuel needed to keep them running.

[[szabelski at wildblue.net]  There’s a lot of stories related to army mechanics, and the tank crews themselves, and how they “tested” the tank’s abilities. Caused of a lot of problems when failures were being reported and we couldn’t figure out why things kept going south. They would never really admit to doing anything wrong and we often had to get in really good with them before we would start to get bits and pieces of what was going on.

 I was at Ft Knox on one trip when a mechanic came up to us and started to tell us how great the tank was. After working with him for a few days and becoming “good buddies” he started to tell us what some of the things that they were doing, like drag racing, jousting (using the main gun as a lance), and pulling wheelies.

 We asked him about the wheelies and he stated they would rev the turbine to max, sit on the brakes, and then shift it into gear, making a 72 ton tank stand up on it’s rear. He then offered to show us how it was done. We declined of course. That helped us figure out what was going on with several suspension and track issues.

 The jousting told us why the muzzle reference sensors were falling  off, or so out of alignment that they couldn’t hit the side of a barn  even if they were inside the barn. (The muzzle reference sensors are  very expensive and contain radioactive elements, so when one is lost,  nobody leaves the firing range until it’s found.)

 One time we had to go to Ft Carson to figure how they managed to push in the front end of a tank. After several days of talking to various crews we learned that they would play soccer using large boulders, driving the tanks into the boulders to make them roll across the field. Turns out that one day they picked a boulder that was too big and didn’t want to come out of the ground. Hitting that boulder at full throttle did a job on the front glaciuos and gave the crew a really rude awakening. Luckily nobody was seriously hurt.

 With all that they were doing, it turns out that it’s a good thing that the turbine has a govener that keeps them from maxing out the turbine rpm.