От Alex Medvedev
К Alex Medvedev
Дата 28.03.2003 21:34:08
Рубрики Танки;

Еще интерсней

Most likely not. Even in the mid-80s when I served, the only T-72s exported were those 4-crew - an extra grunt instead of the autoloading device and with (mostly?) older optical parallax rangefinders rather than the laser ones.
Soviets had many - tens of thousands, of older T54 and T55 and advanced but unreliable T64 tanks in conservation and did not like to sell modern stuff. For backward countries against backward countries old stuff performed exellently, but to allow the modern stuff to be used by "savages" against a western admy - and get blown up despite quality - would just undeservedly discredit the quality of soviet-made military stuff.
Do you remember what Israeli's did with the obsolete disparate crap they had to the Syrians and Egyptians with fairly modern russian hardware?
Russians were mad as hell for such an inept misuse.


А что были такие Т-72?!!

От Alex Medvedev
К Alex Medvedev (28.03.2003 21:34:08)
Дата 28.03.2003 21:39:28

Re: Еще интерсней

Oh, yeah - the tanks - all of them except T64 that tended to overheat - were quite reliable - or woudl have been with decent crews and service. They were certainly kept clean and painted excuisitely, then rubbed with disel till they shined!

The engine could eat a lot of dust wearing the rings in the process - but still run, just consuming more fuel and using oil by the bucket - well, maybe and having trouble at the top gear which was exessive anyway, only useable on the road but being to fast to control the vehicle.

When I served, there was no active defence yet (reactive armor) but we heard of it just introduced in "show off" divisions (Taman' division?).

Supposeley western night sights were better, not requiring an illuminator - or requiring it less, since I used one without illuminator with some success (huge lamp disclosing one's location for miles) and often the daytime sight - I do not know how it is now.

Everytime a tank would go to capital rebuild (engine resource 500 hours), it would come back with all new stuffing, including sights of the latest model.

That was what we - common soviet tanker grunts who have not seen a foreigner in their lifes - believed. Some stuff was blabbed by officers - some with Mid-East experience or hairsay of officers who knew of such officers. Certainly not in the magazines we read.

In reality? I don't know and did not think to check the western sources since. May be a myth.

Autoloaders wer tricky things to entrust the "blacks" - they reqired some maintenence tuning abd gentle handling - preferably no touching - but instead were often used by crew as a ladder upon entering or exiting the tank. The frequent result was a 5-kilo bottom of the charge (the projectile was separate from the charge and the charge made like a shotgun shell, the carton part burning off in the process and steel bottom remaining to be ejected) - that bottom bouncing off the edge of the briefly-opened hatch and hitting someone's head ot falling into the mechanism. It was usually launched 3-5 feet up and about 20-30 feet out of the tank - which made it unhealthy for infantry to follow one - so the force was considerable to worry about, rubber helmets nonwithstanding...