Ok tankers......

1,961 Views | 8 Replies | Last: 6 yr ago by clarythedrill
74OA
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AG
........how did this come to be? Someone having a souvenir penetrator wouldn't be unthinkable, but one with its depleted uranium nose bent (!!} and the sabot still intact? ODD
clarythedrill
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It is a training sabot that has already been shot, an M865A1. You can find them all over a tank range, and plenty of petals out there to grab also. You can tell it already been fired, as it has a hose clamp holding the petals around the penetrater, when actually there are two plastic bands that hold the petals around it, which melt during the trip down the tube allowing the petals to break away once out of the tube. Go to any Armor or Cavalry unit and you will find them laying around, as we like to take stuff like that from the range after we police call it (believe it or not, a 5 gallon bucket of petals is worth about 200 bucks, so the Army likes to get them back for DRMO).

That thing is completely harmless. It is unusual to find a penetrater that straight, as most have a severe banana bend to them, and all petals and penetraters are interchangeable of the same nomenclature.

Edit: There is about 15 dollars in high grade aluminum laying there.
74OA
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AG
Thanks.
CanyonAg77
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AG
No other explosives? Looking at the pic, I assume it's a kinetic round, not an explosive one
74OA
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AG
The DU dart you see is what does all the damage. Hard to imagine the amount of energy it takes to bend the tip like we see in the photo, or to distort an entire penetrator like Clary mentioned.
clarythedrill
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74OA said:

The DU dart you see is what does all the damage. Hard to imagine the amount of energy it takes to bend the tip like we see in the photo, or to distort an entire penetrator like Clary mentioned.
The parts you see are all high grade aluminum, nothing there is DU, as DU is used for the service (combat) rounds only. It is unusual to see one in that good of shape, since aluminum is sorta soft and it hits the ground/backstop at just about a mile a second, which will twist the rod up and put a heck of a bend in it. Even harder to find is a training HEAT round in good shape, as those heavy things are really messed up when you find them.

As a last tidbit of info, on a service round, the pointed tip is called the windscreen, and is hollow. It is used to make the rod more aerodynamic only. For penetration on a kinetic round, you want a flat or blunt end making contact, as that flat 90 degree angle will dig in to a sloped turret better than a pointed end and will help keep a ricochet to a minimum. For reference, I am a tank Master Gunner.
74OA
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AG
Great info, thanks. So when you mentioned seeing rounds bent like a banana, you were talking about the aluminum training rounds, right?
clarythedrill
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74OA said:

Great info, thanks. So when you mentioned seeing rounds bent like a banana, you were talking about the aluminum training rounds, right?
Yes, the aluminum ones. The training ones are about two feet long, with the fins still attached, which are just screwed on the end. Those usually break off too when the round starts to tumble when contacting the dirt.

Funny story. 1994, while stationed in Germany, my battalion was at Graf for tank gunnery. To play a trick on another tank crew, my crew took a t-shirt and took a dump in it, and put it in the tube of the other crews tank, thinking they would find it the next morning while bore-sighting. Well, they did not find it, and when they shot the round, a sabot, the t-shirt did not allow the petals to separate when the round left the tube. This caused the round to fly a curved target line instead of a straight one and shoot off into the German countryside, unable to be traced for recovery (to make sure nothing was damaged or anyone killed by it), which has to happen when shooting out of the range fans. General Dynamics and some ammo inspectors came out to try to find out the cause of the round not flying correctly.

NOBODY said a fricking word. To this day, it is (was) a mystery.
IDAGG
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AG
clarythedrill said:



That thing is completely harmless. It is unusual to find a penetrater that straight, as most have a severe banana bend to them, and all petals and penetraters are interchangeable of the same nomenclature.

Edit: There is about 15 dollars in high grade aluminum laying there.
A question. If the real McCoy is DU which I assume is dense as heck and the training round is aluminum, which of course is not very dense/heavy, how can the training round mimic the trajectory of the real penetrator? Is there a separate program in the tank's gunnery computer for training rounds?
clarythedrill
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IDAGG said:

clarythedrill said:



That thing is completely harmless. It is unusual to find a penetrater that straight, as most have a severe banana bend to them, and all petals and penetraters are interchangeable of the same nomenclature.

Edit: There is about 15 dollars in high grade aluminum laying there.
A question. If the real McCoy is DU which I assume is dense as heck and the training round is aluminum, which of course is not very dense/heavy, how can the training round mimic the trajectory of the real penetrator? Is there a separate program in the tank's gunnery computer for training rounds?
Yes, there are separate cards in the ballistic computer which compute the ballistic solution based on what exact type of round and nomenclature you are firing. Example:

1. Select Sabot- tells the computer what type of round you are firing- sabot, HEAT, MPAT, or STAFF.
2. Select the Subdes- tells the computer what exact sabot round you are firing (M865, M829, M829A1, etc...)
3. Enter the Computer Correction Factor- tells the computer how to much to change (from the original data on the computer data card) the flight of the round based on Mean Jump versus Jump. 90% of all tanks will shoot off of a "Fleet" CCF, the other 10% require an independent zero. Monday tanks if you will.

I love talking tank gunnery. I miss being at the rank and position to still be on a tank.
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