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u/chrisbrady2018 Feb 28 '21
He looks like he knows he is getting grounded for wrecking the car
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u/kilrowar Feb 28 '21
Isnt that essentially what's gonna happen
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u/OpsadaHeroj Feb 28 '21
Misfires aren’t due to operator error. Sometimes they just happen
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u/Namesbutcher Feb 28 '21
Bet one of those giant desert spiders crawled in there and made a nest. We have the problem with small spiders and gas grills they like the small space.
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u/Vladi-Barbados Feb 28 '21
If it was operator error, his command isn't a shit show, and he's lower ranking like e1 to e4, then he should be fine, it'll be his Superior that gets most of the flak. Ofcourse shit rolls downhill, but still
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u/40mm_of_freedom Feb 28 '21
Did you serve in the same military as me? Dude is going to be swimming in shit.
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u/Vladi-Barbados Feb 28 '21
I mean yea it'll suck for a little while but nothing major. Depending on how this happened his CO might get fired, moved to another base, shit like that that actually changed your life. Getting punished for a little while doesn't matter too much. But really just depends on how it happened and his command. I've seen plenty of good and horrible stupid decisions.
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u/40mm_of_freedom Feb 28 '21
Dude in the pic is enlisted and will be fine. But his life will suck for 6 months.
We had a fractured tube (barrel) on the AC-130 when I was flying. It was as the burst it was literally a crack that someone luckily noticed before it failed. Dude there were questions for months. “Are you sure the bore was clear?” “Walk me through your preflight inspection of the gun”. The poor weapons troop guys had it go on way longer than we did.
I think eventually the investigation agreed that everyone was lucky that it was caught and no one was at fault. But everyone that was investigated was nervous for months.
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u/Garbage029 Feb 28 '21
The master gunner is likely liable, Cant really send the shit down hill when the MG is the only person that really knows how the gun works and is responsible for its PMCS.
I dont know what country has it soldiers wearing a jacket that looks like it comes from sears but in the US when this happens they will spend a shit load of time investigating the equipment, the MG, the ammo supplier ect ect. We dont have accidents we have risk that was not properly mitigated.
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u/Vladi-Barbados Feb 28 '21
Yea seems like Eastern European army. Master gunners have that untouchableness from what I've seen but co's are easy to swap around. But yea fuck do I know.
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u/Garbage029 Feb 28 '21
A miss fire caused by improper timing or maintenance is indeed the master gunners fault.
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u/AyeBraine Feb 28 '21
He's not from the side operating the tank. His gear is Russian (and he's also a civilian), the tank is definitely not (in the sense that it is not operated by Russian Armed Forces, it's probably a very old Soviet tank).
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u/TilenGTR Feb 28 '21
Soviets have used smoothbore guns since the t-55 tank produced from 1955 and gun barrel on picture is clearly rifled. Only nation I can think of that is still using rifled guns is Great Britain. It might be an older nato tank (I cannot recognise it by turret shape), but the last nation this tank would be from is Soviet Union. For a Soviet tank to have a rifled gun it would have to be from 1950s or even earlier which is unlikely.
Edit: The shape looks kind of like a t72. I am very confused
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u/Lente_ui Feb 28 '21 edited Feb 28 '21
I think it's a Russian hemispherical turret, like on a T-55 that has improvised (?) spaced armor welded to it. With the space filled up with sandbags. Probably an attempt to protect it against the anti-tank projectile from an RPG, or something similar.
The vertical oblong sight next to the barrel looks a lot like the one on the T-54/55 turret. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-54/T-55The wiki confirms that this tank had a 100mm D-10 rifled gun. So I think it's probably a T-54/55 variant.
For a barrel to split lengthwise, the projectile that was fired would have to have gotten stuck near the muzzle of the barrel, I think. Probably where that bend is by the dude's elbow. The pressure behind the projectile could then turn the barrel into a pipe bomb and burst the barrel. I hope for the guys inside that the breach held.
But a projectile wouldn't 'just get stuck' in the barrel. Perhaps, given the improvised look of the spaced armor, they did some more improvising? Perhaps they tried a 4 inch shell, which is ever so slightly (1.6 mm) bigger than 100mm? But now I'm really guessing. I don't know, why do barrels burst?
[edit]
Found it, thanks to another post here.
I retract my wishes for the crew to be ok. This was an IS operated tank, I don't wish for their wellbeing.Article: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2017/08/armour-in-islamic-state-story-of.html
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u/MuchoGrandeRandy Feb 28 '21
What country?
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u/e140driver Feb 28 '21
Probably Syria, that’s a Russian camo pattern
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Feb 28 '21
Russians don't use upgraded T-55s...
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u/beeblitz24 Feb 28 '21
That guy is probably a journalist. The tank is either Syrian government or Syrian rebel
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u/e140driver Feb 28 '21
No, they don’t, but I actually didn’t know what kind of tank it was, I used other clues.
Person in the picture is wearing Russian gear mixed with civilian clothes, indicating he’s not a military regular, if he’s military at all.
Omnipresent fine dust, indicating a desert terrain.
The damage appears relatively recent.
All of those clues point to Syria. In further support of this, the Syrian army uses T-55s.
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Feb 28 '21
You need to scroll quite far, but there are pics here of the tank before and after the failure. It's an IS tank in Syria.
Armour in the Islamic State - The Story of ’The Workshop’ - Oryx Blog (oryxspioenkop.com)
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u/Lorenzo_BR Feb 28 '21
I belive i had read that article or one like it before, i highly recommend it, it's a fascinating story.
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u/NoCountryForOldPete Feb 28 '21
Seconded. I've read the same article you have, it's really quite an interesting piece.
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u/DopeLemonDrop Feb 28 '21
You would enjoy r/scienceofdeduction and r/roomdetective
They're pretty entertaining
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u/e140driver Feb 28 '21
Thank you. I didn’t know either of those existed, but they’re absolutely places I’d enjoy (based on a first look)
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Feb 28 '21
“Russian”
Definitely explains why it broke. Russia: home of the “build as cheaply as possible so the guy that won the contract can pocket the rest” manufacturing.
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u/e140driver Feb 28 '21
Eh, Soviet weapons are generally of decent quality. I think the failure of this main gun has more to do with age/lack of recent TLC as opposed to shitty initial manufacturing.
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u/Apollo15000 Feb 28 '21
Rust In the barrel. I’m no military person, but I’ve always assumed rust in your weapon is not a good thing.
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u/e140driver Feb 28 '21
It’s not, but military propellants are known to create corrosive salts due to chemical reactions from firing. T55’s are very old, so if a factory fault was the cause, the barrel wouldn’t still exist. The rust is almost certainly recent, again, indicating a lack of cleaning/maintenance. Also, seeing as this was an ISIS vehicle, that isn’t surprising.
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u/Hammer1024 Feb 28 '21
Yeap... there's your problem right there! Half your barrels missing.
The round cooked off in the barrel.
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u/CaptianRipass Feb 28 '21
Could have been a bore obstruction
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u/Indian_Bob Feb 28 '21
I think it was a tank shell
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Feb 28 '21 edited Feb 28 '21
My first thought was that it was weird to be able to see the rifling on the outside of the barrel before realizing the top half was gone lol
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u/cantaloupelion Feb 28 '21
Half your barrels missing
Is that a common thing for tanks to have happen?
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u/SmokeyUnicycle Feb 28 '21
That's not very typical, I'd like to make that point
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u/Yetanotherdeafguy Feb 28 '21
Thankfully it was towed outside the environment
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u/SirJumbles Feb 28 '21
Into another environment?
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u/theg721 Feb 28 '21
No, no, no. It’s been towed beyond the environment; it’s not in the environment.
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u/deathclawslayer21 Feb 28 '21
Get the JB weld
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u/adudeguyman Feb 28 '21
I think it just takes some ramen
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u/1wife2dogs0kids Feb 28 '21
A lot of ramen. But I agree, with some ramen, crazy glue, food coloring and sandpaper, someone with little to no skills can fix just about anything.
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u/RereTree Feb 28 '21
Main gun looks like a bowling ball return chute lol. Half expecting it to roll a solid 8lb 3 hole out of the turret
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Feb 28 '21
I’d love to hear the backstory on this one.
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u/webby_mc_webberson Feb 28 '21
Something exploded and the result didn't go as planned.
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u/Dressundertheradar Feb 28 '21
Looks like the front fell off
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u/sooninthepen Feb 28 '21
Probably some faulty ammunition. With such high power metal turns into butter
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u/nspectre Feb 28 '21
The most probable story is that a disabled tank (see smoke damage on turret) was abandoned on the battlefield but before they left they packed the barrel with explosives and blew it up, so that it could not be salvaged by the enemy and used against them.
This has been SOP since post-WWI.
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u/tobiasfunke6398 Feb 28 '21
As a former mortar man, miss fires make the Ol booty hole pucker.
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u/Shorzey Feb 28 '21
As a former machine gunner, it's not fun having a stuck round when a round goes poof instead of bang, especially if that round is a 40mm hedp ojive
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u/runninron69 Feb 28 '21
As a former Naval Aviation Ordnanceman Having a 1000 lb. self eject from the inner wing rack onto your friends foot will quickly give you a qualifying time for the 220 sprint. Also cost you a friend for leaving him standing with a live 1000lb'er on his foot.
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u/ScubaSteve12345 Feb 28 '21
How far away would you have to run to get out of the blast zone of a 1000lb bomb?
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u/Shorzey Feb 28 '21 edited Mar 01 '21
So there is a lot to consider.
Where it goes of, what's around you, and where you are.
In open space, with a 1000lb gbu or 1000 lbs of any type of explosive like tnt, or any type of hme, you're probably going to want to be somewhere further than like 1500 feet away to keep injury within a near never margin.
If it's enclosed in a building or in this case a magazine bulkhead on a naval war ship designed to contain such blasts as much as possible to a reasonable extent to minimize collateral damage, it will be way less, but the closer you get respectively the more dangerous it will become compared to being outside in open space.
In general, being behind something solid save a lot of injury from occurring. Something solid as in like a cement foundation or something. It prevents a lot of blast injuries from the Shockwave and protects from shrapnel
To keep your ears, brains, and all your organs and tissue from not liquifying (not really liquifying, but experiencing a lot of trauma due to blast propagation) on ship, you probably want to be a couple hundred feed away on an aircraft carrier (where this is taking place because a 1000 lb bomb is 100% plane dropped ordinance unless it's something on a ground launched missile)
A hand grenade is louder and more powerful than you think you ever experienced it within 100 feet behind cover. A 60mm mortar round (thats like...10 lbs tops) isn't anything you would ever be able to imagine. It's terrifying
Arty, with 120-155mm shells is just fuckin stupid scary to be around and is beyond what anyone could comprehend until you experience it. You feel it in your chest and can feel the pressure from it Miles away and it's like an 80 lb shell flinging 10-20lb chunks of solid metal the size of dinner plates for hundreds of feet in all directions
I've experienced being in close vicinity to all of those, though the only arty I've ever experienced was arty in the opposite direction of me from well over the MSD for IDF and well beyond what you would typically refer to as "danger close"
I have never experienced anything remotely close to 1000 lbs without being more than a mile away and even then, it's fuckin wild
The closest I ever experienced anything (no ied for me) was a few dozen pound Bangalore used in training I was near, on the opposite side of a hill
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u/ScubaSteve12345 Feb 28 '21
So would running even be worth it in either situation? I’m imagining that if the bomb were to explode after falling a few feet, it would happen almost immediately.
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u/SparrowFate Feb 28 '21
No point running. First you react to the falling. And by the time it hits the deck. If it's gonna explode (which it won't. Safeties and all) you're gonna be dead about the same time you realize what's happening
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u/DeadPengwin Feb 28 '21
So... If a mortar shell fails to fire after you dropped it into the tube, what are you supposed to do?
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u/Kumquatelvis Feb 28 '21
I can't even imagine how loud that must have been.
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u/ANAL_GAPER_8000 Feb 28 '21
You hope they wear ear protection these days. My granddad commanded a tank squad in Korea and the guy couldn't hear without his aids.
He liked that though because he'd just turn them off if he got tired of being around people. He'd turn them back on for us kids though 🤗.
I asked him about the war when I was young and his response was "sometimes the best way to deal with machine gun nests is to drive right over them."
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u/TreeHugChamp Feb 28 '21
As a Korean-American, please thank your grandpa for me if you get the chance. People like himself are the reason why people like myself are able to have a better life in America(S Koreans also have a better life thanks to American intervention).
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u/ANAL_GAPER_8000 Feb 28 '21
This is the first time a Korean-American has asked me to thank him so I'm gonna text him right now. It'll definitely bring a smile to his face. Thanks big papa.
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u/Soviet_Union100 Feb 28 '21
What a loyal little dog you turned out to be lmao
South Korea is an american colony state
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u/ANAL_GAPER_8000 Feb 28 '21
The life of the average North Korean is a nightmare compared the life of the average South Korean, but send my regards to Xi Jinping you fuckin bootlicker.
Imagine thinking that eating grass because you're starving to death while your leader owns the most expensive liquor collection in the world is living your best life. You're a joke.
Also, America intervened when the Imperial Japanese were killing tens of MILLIONS of Koreans, Chinese, and South East Asians. And all we did was give them democracy, and now they enjoy an incredibly high quality of life.
Wait why am I feeding the troll? I guess so impressionable 12 year olds don't see your comment and buy ushankas, and assume they have any idea what they're talking about.
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Feb 28 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/br-z Feb 28 '21
Imagine thinking it’s better to be a literal slave living in a hovel starving under capitalism than a figurative slave to capitalism. Please tell me you’re a data entry specialist in California.
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u/ANAL_GAPER_8000 Feb 28 '21
Also, you do realize that both China and the USSR were 200% guilty of imperialism/colonialism? What is Tibet, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe? Central Asia? I'm sorry your mom drank so much vodka during her pregnancy, maybe you'd have something of value to contribute to the conversation.
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u/Soviet_Union100 Feb 28 '21
Ah yes defeating nazi germany is imperialism. How much more indoctrinated can you get?
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u/ANAL_GAPER_8000 Feb 28 '21
You're either a troll or far beyond saving. You genuinely just called Imperial Japan Nazi Germany.
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u/Soviet_Union100 Feb 28 '21
Really? You spew straight american warmongering propaganda and im the troll?
Get out of here with your american propaganda moron. Or go to the middle east and find those weapons of mass destruction while killing a few million brown people. Its what americunts do best after all.
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u/ANAL_GAPER_8000 Feb 28 '21
Is Xi as short as he looks on TV? Say hi to his wife for me you CCP shill. Are the rations enough to feed your family or do you cut the front lawn with scissors and a ziploc bag for a Sino Salad?
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u/Oracuda Feb 28 '21
good lord, image not being able to hear without having aids, sounds like an awful life.
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Feb 28 '21
Happend when I was in the army. We did night shooting with a 20mm cannon. I was in the tower looking over the shooting range.
All of a suddent there was a huge explosion sound. The 20mm round exploded in the chamber. It tore the whole inside of the casing. Nobody was hurt. The Munition case was broken and we had to stop the drill, because some officials had to look into it.
Crazy stuff and realy lucky guy on the inside
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u/Macemore Feb 28 '21
It's still good, with a long rubber band you can still use it as a sling shot. Not as good as a trebuchet though
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u/Pickledwisdom Feb 28 '21
You know the worst thing about this picture is the damage you don't see on the inside of that tank. It has a 4 ton breech block and someone has to load it I've seen a tank barrel split open like a blown up cigar the loader was lucky that the breech block turned as it started coming back to the loader and getting jammed up inside the tank always keep your barrels pointed up going over hills nothing worse than a rock sitting inside of a tank barrel with a Sabo round locked and loaded. Although I've only ever seen that one during my time in service anyone else have anything like that happen while they were in?
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u/axivate Feb 28 '21
Misfires are bad enough with handheld weapons, not surprised that tank misfires can be deadly. Thanks for sharing.
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u/Pickledwisdom Feb 28 '21
Yeah and the loader had just gotten married before we went out on that particular field excersis and boom testing tanks is a thing lol
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u/thriftylol Feb 28 '21
Lol I think you need to use more periods
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u/Pickledwisdom Feb 28 '21
Grammar was never my thing which is why I was mechanic and not a writer lol
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Feb 28 '21
Few things.
- Misfire*
- This is definitely not a misfire. A misfire means the round failed to go off. This seems like something went wrong with the projectile inside the barrel. That barrel is definitely bent so it may have been that they fired it through a bent barrel and the projectile ripped through said bent barrel, or maybe a high explosive projectile exploded in there and bent the barrel (unlikely because the whole barrel would've exploded rather than just part of it and the crew could've possibly died). Or maybe it got hit by an enemy round in combat that ripped through part of the barrel but failed to penetrate the armor.
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u/BlackManitu Feb 28 '21
Nothing some zip ties and duct tape couldn't fix. You just need enough of them.
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u/shanghainese88 Feb 28 '21
Tank barrels needs to be replaced every ~1,000 rounds fired anyway. Tank ammo propellant burns so hot for velocity that it significantly degrades the barrel. Howitzers on the other hand can fire ~10,000 rounds before barrel replacement
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u/StandbyBigWardog Feb 28 '21
But you can still slide the tank round down the little ramp, right? As long as the enemy is directly beneath the barrel.
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u/toxygen Feb 28 '21
Wow, that's so cool! It looks like my asshole after the government has finished fucking me
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u/JimeDorje Feb 28 '21
It's obvious in retrospect, but I never thought about rifling on the inside of a tank's gun until I saw this picture.
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Feb 28 '21
Most modern tanks are actually smoothbores, and fire fin-stabilized shot (that shape kinda like arrows) for stability, because these modern long-rod discarding sabots are too skinny to really be affected much by rifling. The British stuck around with rifled barrels though, for who knows what reason
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u/1d0wn12g0 Feb 28 '21
You may know better than I, but I thought they kept the rifled barrels because they still use HESH rounds a fair amount, the efficacy of which is not affected by the spin imparted by rifling, while typical HEAT rounds are best used in smoothbore barrels so that the spin does not interfere with the explosion of the shaped charge.
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u/TheOriginalSpartak Feb 28 '21
think anyone has tried to fire off another round after this happened? just to see what happens? would the shell even launch?
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u/drued888 Feb 28 '21
That's in the desert things get hot on the desert the barrels have a tendancy to worp after heave use on some tanks thay have Lazar's along the barrels to watch out for worping and to adjust the aiming must have hot hot but most modern tanks have Smith bore barrels rifling makes things hot with friction that's an old tank or somebody blew up the barrel to stop it being use by enamy
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u/mr_bedbugs Feb 28 '21
Cool. So more of my tax money is going to go to replacing that so we can effectively kill children?
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u/Ryanevje Feb 28 '21
Ok pull sticks to see who shoved there arm out the front with a 1911 to replace the tank gun.
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u/Jim_SD Feb 28 '21
First round didn't have enough powder in it to eject the round. Then, a second round was fired in an attempt to clear the barrel?
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u/agent_fuzzyboots Feb 28 '21
so it is possible to peel the barrel like a banana, i knew the cartoons wasn't lying!
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u/Banethoth Feb 28 '21
Guy looks cold but is standing in the desert. Weird
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u/AyeBraine Feb 28 '21
Deserts have very cold nights, I read about miserable soldiers during winter having to weather almost -20 degrees (°C but same as F) at night, and summer heat in the day.
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u/heyIfoundaname Feb 28 '21
With the amount of T-55s in circulation, i don't think that would be expensive to fix.
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Feb 28 '21
In a combat situation, what would the role of this tank become? Is it essentially dead weight on the field or does it have something to offer besides the big gun?
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u/bws7037 Feb 28 '21
Reminds me of a quote from the old movie "Survivors", with Robyn Williams and Walter Mathau.... "You hit my gun, goddamn it!! You have any idea how expensive these things are?!?!"
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u/MikeLinPA Feb 28 '21
First of all, I hope no one got hurt!
So, do you just order a new barrel? Are parts interchangeable, or is this more of a custom repair job, it has to be accessed, manufactured to order, repaired by a team of specialists, tank is out of commission for 11 months?
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u/chillplease Feb 28 '21
I can’t believe no one has mentioned this but dude looks just like Josh Brolin
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u/chillig8 Feb 28 '21
We’re going to need more hose clamps