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От
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Василий Фофанов
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All
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Дата
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06.06.2001 21:14:30
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Рубрики
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Современность; Танки;
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Очень интересные показания по подготовке иракских танкистов в Буре в стакане
Страшно ломает переводить, надеюсь что народу в целом хватит всяких Промтов.
Автор - Ray Manning
The notebook I had in my possession was from a "run-of-the-mill" tank commander. His notes were highly detailed and had outstanding drawings. One of my unit members was from Iran and did a pretty good job (Hell, as far as I can tell, anyway) of interpreting the contents (before we lost the notebook to the MI guys). The things I noted:
1. He had a fairly reasonable understanding of the OOB of the units facing him....in a general sense--he couldn't identify units by name but he had a good idea of the composition.
2. His indication of his briefings and his briefings to his troops as to the expected "sequence of events" as we initiated an attack was accurate.
3. He illustrated his notes copiously with very detailed drawings, and indicated he used them for training his soldiers. Some of the things indicated in his drawings were the types of items that the typical US Tanker would be hard pressed to identify in his own vehicle.....for example, the precise configuration of "dead spots", (annotated for vision AND weapons) to include ranges.
4. His sketches and notes concerning his battle (and subsequent) positions suggested a strong understanding of prepared defenses and indicated a willingness to maneuver in the defense based upon a number of pre-defined suppositions.
5. His weapons and equipment were IMMACULATE. They were well cleaned and lightly oiled. The oiling was an excellent indicator of how often he cleaned his weapons, and the care he took in maintaining them.
6. There was no "junk" in his turret or hull. It was a well-maintained fighting position and took best advantage of the pitifully inadequate advantages he had in the position he was in.
OTHER OBSERVATIONS:
It seems that on meeting, most first rounds from Iraqi tanks hit short....even subsequent rounds tended to be a bit short. Many people have suggested that this meant they were lousy gunners or had bad boresights.....I disagree. One of the things I noticed in checking out two of their vehicle ID books is that they had NO M1'S. I believe this might have been part of their problem in estimating range.......possibly combined with a bit of disbelief....that people could be engaging them effectively from 4000 meters.
MANY of their tanks had "smiley face laser rangefinders"....almost ALL of the T62's we overran had "add-on" laser rangefinders (British made) mounted on their gun tubes.
CONCLUSION:
Based only upon my own observations (which admittedly is fairly limited based upon the number of vehicles we were able to investigate closely), the majority of their equipment appeared to be in pretty good shape....they put up a spirited resistance....and the few instances where I could identify what they "knew" indicated a good understanding of tanks and tactics. Their problem was not that they were untrained....it was they were not trained to deal with US---to include our vehicles, our tactics, or our mindset concerning warfare.
ADDENDUM:
I never heard of a T72's TURRET requiring realignment during the reloading process. I did hear that it was necessary for the gun to go "out of position" for reloading, but understood that the sights did not leave the target. I was not able to test this assumption and didn't find it in my cursory examination of the technical manuals he had for the tank (all in English---and quite detailed in terms of "how to operate" the vehicle--it's what we used to start the tank---which apparently had run out of fuel). I did notice, however, that the guns did not fire at anywhere NEAR the frequency of the US tanks and that I did see some tanks guns raise substantially between rounds. At the time I did not have the time nor the inclination to determine by type which vehicles these were.
С уважением, Василий Фофанов, http://members.dencity.com/fofanov/Tanks