.
It's Easter time and I'm away, so did little more than to schedule a video for today:
NATO tank designs are usually much heavier, far beyond 50 tons and some even far beyond 60 tons. The usual effects of larger weight are greater requirements for engineer bridging (higher military load class, MLC), higher fuel consumption, less choice of bridges (some smaller/older ones would simply collapse) and higher ground pressure (as track area grows slower than vehicle weight).
Some remarks of experts suggest that 40 to 50 tons are necessary to meet the expectations for firepower, protection and mobility with an all-new MBT today.
The Japanese seem to have done so (and the unit price is actually rather cheap by Japanese standards; their procurement system uses legendarily small annual production batches).
A 40+ ton vehicle could also serve as engineer, bridgelayer, recovery, air defence, HAPC, self-propelled howitzer and other AFV versions.
It's Easter time and I'm away, so did little more than to schedule a video for today:
NATO tank designs are usually much heavier, far beyond 50 tons and some even far beyond 60 tons. The usual effects of larger weight are greater requirements for engineer bridging (higher military load class, MLC), higher fuel consumption, less choice of bridges (some smaller/older ones would simply collapse) and higher ground pressure (as track area grows slower than vehicle weight).
Some remarks of experts suggest that 40 to 50 tons are necessary to meet the expectations for firepower, protection and mobility with an all-new MBT today.
The Japanese seem to have done so (and the unit price is actually rather cheap by Japanese standards; their procurement system uses legendarily small annual production batches).
A 40+ ton vehicle could also serve as engineer, bridgelayer, recovery, air defence, HAPC, self-propelled howitzer and other AFV versions.
The Nazi tiger tanks were over 50 tons too. The solution was to build them like submarines thus being able to cross rivers, submerged if necessary.
ReplyDeleteThat's incorrect. The feature for snorkeling was removed very early in the Pzkw VI series.
ReplyDeleteThe open driver's vision slit is the evidence.
They had another feature that helped, though; the overlapping roadwheels reduced the mean maximum (ground) pressure.
That's a more meaningful variable than nominal ground pressure and it explains why the Tigers were stilla dequately mobile at their weight.
Overlapping wheels are quite maintenance-intensive, heavy and fell out of favour post-'45.