Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Tiger Tank vs. Current Issue

Very true, the upgunned Sherman varieties could indeed take out the Tiger. They just had to survive long enough to get within effective range.

Chuck

They rebuilt a Tiger on that show "Tank Overhaul." It had been sitting in a river in Poland for decades.

One thin they found was that the drive gear was underbuilt and not strong enough for a long, service-free career.

It was the king of the battlefield if it could fight on its own terms, and it wreaked havoc on M 3s and T 34s, but on the other hand, Shermans and T 34s wiped out Tigers if they could fight them on THEIR terms.

The Tiger was relatively slow and there weren't many of them. I talked to a WW II Tiger driver, or he said he was, named Fritz the Glassblower (his vocation.) He was on the Eastern Front in the war. He loved his tiger, said in deep snows, the Tigers would have to have other tanks lay down a path for them. This seemed true when he told it.

Of WW II tanks, the British Centurion was probably equal to the Tiger, but didn't see much acton as it got there too late. In the Korean war, it did shine, though.

As an aside, Ferdinand Porsche had his own plans for the German 88 gun, and built a couple of prototypes, which were inferior to the other standard types. Porsche was Hitler's buddy, so he kind of allowed him to take valuable war materiel and use if for his own pet project, and it didn't work out. Didn't have machine guns, for one thing. Finally, they did make a turretless mobile gun called the Ferdinand, same engine, same chassis, no turret so the gun was stable, kinda had to move the tank to range the gun. Top was open, like our TDs.

A Tiger against an Abrams? German scrap would be the result.

All y'all ought to thank me for giving you the opportunity to discuss this. heheh

Very interesting.

It has been a good thread, I learned a lot about tanks.
As an aside, my little brother got to 'drive' an M1 a few years back-he said he was amazed by how hard that thing accelerated from a dead stop-he said it literally pushed him back in his seat.
And this from, what, a 60 ton vehicle?
Pretty cool.

That Panzer rescued from Poland was a Panther.

That turbine engine really does deliver an amazing amount of power. IIRC it has a speed limiter on it as with out it can exceed 50mph on a good surface, but that puts a major strain on other compentents.

Having said that, when the Abrams is next upgraded, theres a better than even chance it will be fitted with a conventional disiel engine; the current turbine engine hasn't been in production for a number of years now and the availability of major spares is going to be a problem not to far down the line..

The M1 should have the same engine as the Leopard II. It is a 1,500 hp diesel engine that pretty much equals the turbine in the M1.

Going to diesels eh?
Maybe not a bad move...

Pulling the turbine will pull the teeth of the M1.

The best defense a tank has is speed and never being where everybody thinks it's suppose to be. If they pull the turbine look for M1's being knocked out all over the place.

Turbine powered M-1s, really are a quiet beast. You wouldnt think that a 72-ton tracked beast of war could sneak up on you, but they can get very close before you hear them. You can hear diesel powered armored vehicles from a long ways away.

What makes you say that? Modern desiels can easily put out the HP required to keep the performace the same, or better.

A few years back when this upgrade was being looked at thefirst time, a desiel engine with more HP, but phyiscaly smaller and lighter and less fuel thirsty was developed and all that stopped it being deployed was spending cuts. The only down side was the engine would be a dedicated desiel rather than the current one which is multifuel altough that feature is not used as far as I know.

The real "weakness" of the Abrams is its massive heat signature and that would be signficantly reduced by going to a conventional desiel. Coupled with proposed enhancements to its main gun, the Abrams really would be streets ahead of the Challenger and Leopard 2 then...

Regards,

Peter

That is actually a very good point...the Abrams was nicknamed the "Whispering Death" during GW1 for that very reason. But ATM's can still target heat signatures not noise, and thats is main let down..

A new diesel engine would be able to use the same fuel as the current turbine engine. Jet fuel burns just fine in a diesel engine, a lot cleaner actually.

The current turbine engine, is a variant of the engine that was in the Huey, which if I remember correctly, could run on leaded Avgas for up to 50 hours. I havent flown a Huey in about 8 years, so that number may be wrong, but it could run on just about fuel you run thru it.

Those dang heat seekers can ruin your day!

A big "Tanks" errr, "Thanks" for a very interesting thread.

No doubt about the heat signature but we should have been working on second generation turbines not going backwards to diesels.

Every tanker I've talked to and the research I've seen or read the secret to the M1 is the turbine and it's ability for lightening speed, stopping on a dime, going in reverse just as fast as going forward, etc.

I look at it this way, our top fighters are turbine driven. Would we pull all the turbines and put in super duper gasoline reciprocating engines? I think not! We have newer and improved turbines for our fighters.

By now we should be upgrading the M1 with 2nd and maybe even 3rd generation turbines and transmissions not going back to diesels. No matter how good the diesel, it's not a turbine.

Maybe the reason new research is not going on for the tank is because while MBT's look cool there is no real need in today's battle field environment of the terrorist.

If there is a real need for MBT's, than the turbine is the way to go to move something that big at the speed it needs to move.

As I keep saying speed and never being where everybody thinks the tank should is the best defense the tank has. Far better than the best armour available.

D-D,

The Leopard 2 is rated a higher top speed both on road and cross country. The Abrams is governed to 42mph while the Leopard 2 is 45mph. The both do about 30Mph across country, as does Challenger2. Its not the engine or gear box that limits them, its the suspention and to a certain degree, the tracks..Modern tracked vehicles still throw tracks in certain circumstances...

Watch the video posted earlier of Leopard 2.

Current desiel engines in the Challenger 2 and the Leopard2 provide very similar practical performace to the Abrams, but without the reliability issues, and without that heat signature...You are never going to get a cool running turbine by its very nature..On aircraft you have the ability to use air flow to cool it to a degree, but for a tank, thats not viable...

Regards,

Peter

And a modern heat seeker guides on a diesel just as well as a turbine. Heck, the heat seeker on an AIM-9 Sidewinder is tested with a flashlight before launch. Reducing the heat signature of the M1A isn't going to make a bit of difference.



Never fight the other guys fight be it in the air, on the sea or on the ground. That lesson has been taught many a time!

Tim,
What is that saying of the fighter pilots-"Speed is life?"

Also, I don't think we should ever neglect MBT and Artillery.
Just because the 'tangos' don't have them the ChiComs and Norks do by the thousands.
The Soviets used to have entire artillery divisions, if memory serves.
Not a bad idea, that.

Well it is interesting to note that every new armored vehicle I've seen to date being built to handle the new type of warfare is a wheeled vehicle. Even the Stryker which is the foundation for a whole host of vehicles including medium and heavy artillery uses the Stryker as the base vehicle.

I wonder if the day of the heavy tracked vehicle is over.

As to the turbine, we'll never know what it can really do on land until we do the R & D. I never thought I'd see a helicopter fly upside down but I have. I never thought I'd see a helicopter fly straight up but I have.

We'll never know what we can do until we try it. If we are doing very little on new tank development especially MBT's I wonder if there is really any need for them.

As for Leopard 2, when I see it eat a number of M1's for lunch than I'll accept it as the best battle tank. Until than I'll stick with the M1.