Destroyed Armor

Added on May 8th, 2010 by TokenWGuy | Report Post
Tags:Military, tanks, WTF

A reply to Tiki’s topic. I went digging through some war photos in my junk folders. These were from the Russian-Georgian conflict in 2008.

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natedog (#1905)

13 years ago

war is a motherfucker

Ch3x0 (#18142)

13 years ago

So, do they ever get removed from the field?

WistfulD (#5057)

Reply to Ch3x0

13 years ago

depends on the conflict, depends on the field.

The reactive armor plates look mostly intact on a bunch of these. Modern warfare usually you don’t get this kind of effect because tanks get destroyed by shaped charge weapons that puncture through the hull and destroy the crew or vital machinery. Did the Russians just use overkill high explosive rounds? I assume that the Georgians used old style explosive anti-shaped charge plates there, so each of these has a coating of explosives on it waiting to take off the limbs of some poor kid years down the road.

Ch3x0 (#18142)

Reply to WistfulD

13 years ago

They don’t salvage them either, I assume?

WistfulD (#5057)

Reply to Ch3x0

13 years ago

The Georgian army was so decimated by the Russians that I doubt they put much thought into recovering tank parts so much as fleeing for their lives.

Deinonychus (#1705)

13 years ago

Wow…in that 4th pic the friggin’ turret is flipped upside-down on top of the hull! O_O

jediadept (#3758)

13 years ago

Is that Darth Vader on the viewers right hand side of #8?

-1

animalmachine (#18528)

13 years ago

Holy crap!

That turret tossed THROUGH the building is a startling image to say the least.

Synthetics (#18379)

Reply to animalmachine

13 years ago

The two basic rounds we use for heavy armor engagements are SABOT rounds (kinetic) and HEAT round (High Explosive Anti Tank).
We call the HEAT rounds turret poppers, because of the explosive power in the warhead usually pops the turrets right off the Russian T series tanks.
A lot of fun to see in real life. =)

*Only thing holding a turret in place, is it’s own weight.*

WistfulD (#5057)

Reply to Synthetics

13 years ago

I know the Brits use HESH rounds. Aren’t those double shaped charge rounds used by a bunch of people too?

For those who don’t know this stuff, Sabot rounds are tiny-point rounds which drop a casing (sabot) to give the stabilized smaller subround more penitrating power. Heat rounds are designed to penitrate into the armor before exploding, and shaped charge rounds for a column of superheated liquid metal to penitrate deap into the tank and fuck up vital machinery (or personel).

mikoyangurevich15 (#4228)

13 years ago

I see reactive armor did`nt all that successful in at least one case there.

Synthetics (#18379)

13 years ago

Reactive armor won’t work with kinetic energy rounds.

Also, there’s a picture of an Abrams floating around from Iraq… ran over a culvert that had a 500lbs. bomb stuffed in it with some other shit.
The turret was blown off 20 or 30 feet I think. (depending on the combat load, it can way up to 23 – 28 tons depending on variant and combat load.

Scary shit man.
I served on an Abrams for 6 years, and did two combat tours in Iraq. We would show the photo to the FNG’s, just so they get it through there thick heads that as bad ass as the Abrams is, we’re not invincible.

WistfulD (#5057)

Reply to Synthetics

13 years ago

When it comes right down to it, modern chemical explosives simply have more destructive power per pound then armor has protective power per pound. An Abrams weighs a lot more than 500lbs, but the advent of sophisticated designs that force the explosive power through the armor have simply superceded technology designed to prevent it from doing so.