Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
Even if identical numbers were used for identical periods, there'd still be a few discrepancies. Unless tested under controlled conditions, there's really no way for anyone to know unless they have access to the vehicle specifications and test data.
Both tanks are also built for different battlefield philosophies. As far as I am aware (and this is really dumbing it down), the US are more offensively orientated, their tanks built more for speed while the British are conservative and build for defence. Both tanks are certainly better than almost everything they'll ever face, but head to head? Who can tell?
I still prefer the Challenger though.
|
Here's something I've noticed about the Challenger, and I've never been able to find an answer: Why does the turret deck slope downwards from the right to the left? I'm thinking it's maybe a weight-saving feature -- that maybe the turret didn't need to be as high on the left side, so they just made it slope to the left to save weight, and it would have an incidental effect of providing some additional protection against shots from that side of the turret due to the slope.
As for the Chobham armor, it was originally the same thing on the Challenger, Abrams, and Leopard 2. The US just called it Burlington armor instead of Chobham. Today, however, the armor has evolved, so there are now some differences between the three, and other countries have their own versions of composite armor. (Side note: original Soviet composite armor was an inferior version of Chobham. Their agents stole a sample and the plans for the early version of Chobham from a West German lab in the mid-1970s. They could not duplicate the technology properly at the time, so the first Soviet tanks with composite armor provided much inferior protection than a tank with an equal amount of Chobham.)
Clarification Note: The agents were East German, reportedly.