A shot trap is a poorly designed part of armor that deflects armor-piercing shells into thinly armored areas of the tank (such as the hull roof) instead of deflecting them away from the tank, causing a potential weak-spot. Myth #5: Certain modern tanks are poorly designed because the turrets have obvious shot trapsįirst a little explanation. What happens when you give good vehicles to untrained and incompetent troops was recently very well demonstrated by the Iraqi army losses against the Islamic State (that in fact even captured some Abrams tanks in working order, although they were later bombed by the Americans) and the Saudi losses in Yemen. Its opponents were obsolete (often 1950-1960s era Soviet tanks or Chinese knock-offs) and the Iraqi army – although quite competent amongst the forces of the region – was not well trained. While the Abrams is indeed a formidable vehicle, its success in Iraq was based on the fact that it was used by the strongest military in the world and as part of a combined arms offensive. This myth was very popular at one point and comes up every now and then. Myth #4: Russian tanks are terrible because hundreds were destroyed in the Middle East Abrams is the ultimate MBT because none were ever destroyed Modern tanks with composite armor turrets generally don't have extremely thick gun mantlets and instead the thickest part is the turret cheeks.Ĭhieftain tank frontal turret and mantlet On some of the older vehicles the mantlet partially overlapped with the frontal turret armor, making relatively small parts of the frontal turret extremely well protected. This myth is based on World War Two tank designs where the mantlet was indeed possibly the thickest part of the frontal turret. Myth #3: The gun mantlet is the best-protected part of the turret It does not – most such vehicles' side and rear armor consists of simple steel plates, although some vehicles with composite armor sides (usually via additional armor kits) do exist. The excellent side protection myth comes partially from the crew safety reputation of tanks such as the Abrams, due to their advanced internal structure, which may not make side armor any thicker, but does make complete destruction of the Abrams a very tough job.Ī certain sub-type of this myth is the belief that when a vehicle has a composite armor front, the rest of its hull and turret consists of the composites as well. During BMP-2 testing, it was discovered that a 30mm autocannon could seriously damage a Soviet MBT – in another instance, autocannon-equipped Bradleys were able to destroy older Iraqi MBTs even from frontal angles. Only the heaviest and best-protected tanks like the Challenger 2 with the TES kit or the Merkava have a reasonable chance of resisting automatic cannon fire from the sides. While Main Battle Tanks have very thick frontal armor, the sides are usually quite thin to keep the weight within reasonable limits. Myth #2: Main Battle Tanks are completely invulnerable to autocannon fire M60A3 Patton armed with a 105mm rifled gun ![]() Accuracy and precision was not achievable, but this was later traced to fin burning problems that resulted from a sharp fin edge and the issue was corrected.Ĭurrent APFSDS rounds fired from rifled guns use slip band technology – the penetrator rods rotate only very slowly inside the barrel, which is why rifled guns firing APFSDS rounds are not more accurate than their smoothbore counterparts. Not all of them were initially perfect - the M829 (120mm) armor piercing, fin stabilized, discarding sabot cartridge had problems in initial production. New types of ammunition had to be developed, such as the armor-piercing fin-stabilized rounds where shell stability was achieved by making the penetrator in the shape of an arrow with fins. Early smoothbores were horribly inaccurate because it is the shell rotation that gives it its stability and therefore accuracy and rotation is only achieved by rifling the barrel. ![]() This common misconception is actually based on some historical truth. Myth #1: Rifled guns are more accurate than smoothbores This article aims to dispel some of them. Unfortunately, many myths were born amongst the correct pieces of information and have since spread as unsourced “general knowledge”. However, the appearance of the internet and tank-related videogames aroused interest in armor among the general public. Before we go over some of the most common tank myths, we wanted to extend a very special thanks to Tovarish for running a thread dedicated to this topic and to Nemo for his valuable advice!įor a very long time ever since the end of World War Two, armored vehicles were the domain of close-knit groups of historians and researchers.
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