I HAVE BEEN astounded by all the images of Russian tanks which have had their turrets blown clean off and deposited somewhere. The turrets, with the guns. I don’t know how much those tank gun turrets weigh, but I’m sure I would not want one to fall on my foot.
So I have been very curious about what type of force is necessary to literally throw these around like so many hamburger skillets.
And I found several articles recently which explain what is happening, here, and it has been known for a long time, at least going back to the Gulf War with Russian tanks. It’s called the “jack-in-the-box” phenomenon with Russian tanks. It’s the design of the tank that results in these gun turrets taking wings and flying.
The articles I found identify the problem as resulting from the elimination of a position for a human ammo loader in the tank crew. Ivan decided to reduce the crew size, which reduces the size and profile of the gun turret, making the turret a smaller target. Instead of a crew member loading the rounds into the gun, the rounds are auto-fed into the gun from a carousel which holds the rounds just under, and exposed to, the crew compartment. So, when a Javelin or other anti-tank weapon penetrates the tank, it sets off all this ordnance, and ka-POW! Out pops the Jack-in-the-box. Sounds to me like Russian tank crewmen are, uh, cannon fodder for their own cannon ammo.
This Forbes article, I think, contained the best explanation of all this which I’ve found so far, with plenty of links within that article which expand on all of it.
www.forbes.com/…
The M1 Abrams American main battle tank does not have such design flaws. The crew is four, one being the loader, who pulls out one round at a time from a sealed compartment. The compartment has blowout vents, so that if ammo should detonate in the compartment, the blast goes OUT of the tank, making it much more likely the crew will not be cooked. There are links to videos illustrating how the Abrams loaders load the 120mm gun.
Here’s a CNN article for cross reference www.cnn.com/...
Veterans, please weigh in, here.