I wasn't a tanker, but fuck me do I love the M1.

It's a love hate thing.

The only bird as pretty and amazing as mine is the A10

there is nothing like riding hatch up and watching the pavement ahead of you flex because of the weight.

You can still find footage from the initial invasion into Iraq; Old T-60's and T-72s scoring hits on Abrams, only for the smoke cloud to clear and some 105-120 odd milimeters of Fuck You to come back in as a retort.

They are a machine of awesome power

I can only imagine what magriders will be like :^)

most of the guard was made of T55s, the T72Ms Saddam had where some serious shit if they could get a side shot on you, but they lost because of crap optics.

Actually, I think there was an incident where a couple of Bradleys took out an iraqi tank column; I'd have to do some digging, though.

Oh yeah, a TOW will punch clean though a T55 like it's made of butter.

Sad

Wow.

If I recall, T-55's didn't have a sort of powered turret; Those motherfuckers had to turn a crank to turn that shit.

Dude, TOW missiles don't play around.

Brads aren't meant to go up against tanks, but I guess if you really gotta...

T-55s and Type 59s [Chinese clone] have power traverse, but for fine gun lay they go to manual.

the TOW has a longer range then the 100MM gun on the T55.

the T55 was hopelessly outdated by the year 2000.

Ah. So in other words, the sandniggers never had a chance?

the T72 was a scary machine, if they could get a side shot into our flanks, they could score penetrations, the M1 is only rated frontally to take hits from the 125MM guns.

If memory serves, it was a pair of bradleys that were supposed to be investigating ahead and skirting around through some shithole desert that even the iraqis avoided. Wound up running into like 6 assorted soviet surplus tanks; Something like three TOW kills, and the rest from cramming it's smaller cannon up their tailpipe.

Thankfuly they had no idea how tactics worked and stayed still, the T72 is built for mobile warfare, and they did not use the doctrine that suited it, this is why Iraq had the 4th most tanks in the world yet got yeeted so hard

25mm Bushmaster chain gun can kill a T-55? Interesting.

the side armor of a T55 is only 40MM thick?

I think the 25 can get though that

the DU Sabots would go though both sides.

Ouch.

Talk about crispy critters...

Think there was a separate incident where like 4 Abrams wound up killing an entire highway's worth of shitty soviet surplus tanks.

T72s also have an unprotected auto-loader, if they suffered a pen center mass they tend to explode and blow their turrets off.

Combat Load T72M, suffers ammunition detonation from penetration.

Big Oof.

this is a design fault in Soviet and Federation tanks, they have autoloaders in their hulls, they have no way to have a way to safely release internal pressure from ammo failure, the M1 for example keeps all it's ammo in the bustle, if the ammo detonates, it blows out of panels on the roof to keep the crew safe

the T72 is the basis for the T90, the T90 suffers the same flaw.

I think the soviets would probably claim that was a feature more than a fault; A lot of their equipment was built around being more easily salvaged from your melted ass body when it killed you.

In all fairness, Saddam could not have fathomed coming up against the US and her allies, on paper the T72M is a hell of a lot better if you fight people who don't have tanks themselves.

There's an old adage out there about how they went from being the world's 3rd largest army to the 2nd largest army in Iraq in under 24 hours; That's sort of a hard situation to come back from.

Other funny problems the T72 and T90 have a "Hight limit."

The crew of a T72 suffer because of it's low nature, so the soviets only drafted people who are 1.6 Meters [5 foot 3 inches] or shorter to be tank crew men, if you go too far above this, the hatch on the drivers port will not close.