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From:
gherbert@gw.retro.com (George William Herbert)
Newsgroups: sci.military.moderated
Subject: Re: The M1 armour and a DU sabot round?
Date: 8 Nov 2001 16:02:29 -0800
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wrote:
>We all know how effective a M1's DU sabot is at going through a tanks
>armour, but could a M1 survive a DU hit, in either the DU armoured
>version or the chobham armoured version?
One of the magazines (Journal of Military Ordnance?) ran an article
a couple or three months ago on all the DU contamination in Desert
Storm, including friendly fire tank on tank hits.
Basically, no Abrams was frontally penetrated by a DU round.
There was one turret ring penetration (no suprise; it's not possible
to armor that well) and a couple of partial penetrations that
put enough energy into the front armor / fuel tank box to cause
fuel to spill inside / onto the driver but didn't penetrate
the fighting compartment proper.
The current Russian rounds are roughly equal to western rounds
from Desert Storm.
Roughly, you'd expect a fair portion of the tanks hit frontally
to sustain disabling damage from shock and impact, but few
penetrations and crew casualties. Side hits and rear hits
are going to be more successful.
By the way, Chobham/burlington is by all open source accounts
still the basic armor design in the HA/HC/A2 Abrams variants,
just with an additional layer of DU in the armor package.
-george william herbert || || Think Locally,
gherbert@retro.com || || Act Globally.