Tank graveyard
 

Absolutely heartbreaking to a military enthusiast.
I wonder how many more places like it are scattered around the world.
How much drooling would the average PC group be doing if they stumbled across it? How much wailing once they realised they'd all seized up and were almost all basically irreparable?
http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2015...arkov-ukraine/

Irrepairable?

Almost certainly not.

As long as the hulls are sound all they need is a new engine, drive train, transmission, probably a new suspension, new road wheels (or can they replace the rubber rims? never been a Tanker, don't know), a new gun and fire control system, new electronics etc.

And the finished result would be fine ...

... but it would be costly.

And you could buy more modern tanks.

The real reason would be mainly because the old Soviet era idea of massed tank attacks where 2-3 cheap Soviet tanks can die for each expensive western one and yet still win ... don't cut it any more.

So, economically, there's no need to refurbish them ... it's not that it's impossible.

AIUI there were similar depots scattered across the USSR (when it was still the USSR) into the 1980s with T-34s and T-44s and late WW2 or immediate postwar armoured vehicles in mothballs, with small maintenance cadres at a TO&E level below even Category III units, all waiting for their day of need ... which, of course, never came.

If something like the Twilight War had been fought, you would have seen them back in service ... eventually ...

Different times.

Phil

In the T2K sense I meant where the PCs only have the resources at their finger tips. In other words, maybe they'd be able to cobble together a handful of tanks out of the hundreds in the facility, but the rest would be essentially impossible with the available resources.

Of course in T2K those particular tanks wouldn't be anywhere near as deteriorated (20 years less than in the pictures) and almost certainly have already been refurbished and put back into service by 1997 at the latest. The facility, and the factory down the road the article mentioned, would also likely attract a nuke.

However, throwing something like that at PCs (perhaps a forgotten underground storage facility full of T-34s) could be fun for the more evil GM.

Hard to say what your PC could find, in areas of recent fighting you find AFV that are awaiting salvage or repair and possible the repair recovery or salvage crew

In other areas you might find AFV hulls strip of all their usefully parts. I could see this being a business done by military and civilians, hulls would be the only thing left behind, and that would depend on the demand of scrap metal and weather someone could recycle it.

There was a Canadian LAV that a combat loss in Afghanistan after all the useable materials and components were removed the LAV was basically destroyed by an airstrike. Locals then came out cut up what they could with torches and sold it for scrap in Pakistan. There was still a lot of metal left behind as they did have anything an industrial scale.

I will look around for some pictures that I might have.

Those tanks would have all been long-before committed to the front. What they'd find is an empty, weedy lot.

A lot of those tanks appear to covered in reactive armor blocks. Wouldn't that mean that there was explosive still in there? How would that hold up over time and exposed to the elements?

I saw that article earlier this week on a T2K page on Facebook. Incredible pictures.

I wondered the same thing.

Undoubtedly, but what if by some miracle they were still there? Or it was full of battle damaged tanks - not impossible since the facility was meant to refurbish tanks.

I would think the blocks are sealed from the elements, but after 20 years or so who knows? VERY slack to have left them installed I'd think, even with the guards the facility is supposed to have, but then it is in the Ukraine and nobody ever accused communist/socialist workers of being particularly efficient at anything...

Visit the German tank graveyard if you are playing a later timeline.

http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2015...ling-facility/

All that hardware being scrapped! I could almost cry!

And when the same question gets brought up about the Littlefield Collection or the Patton Museum the response is that it's an impossibility. So I would rate this junkyard the same, then.

Museums aren't large workshops specifically intended to refurbish and repair AFVs (although they may have a small workshop attached). Therefore the likelihood of vehicles being present has to be greater (although still relatively low).
This of course presumes the facility and the factory down the road weren't targeted by nukes or bombed conventionally until they were wastelands (highly likely).

The other important distinction is that a museum like the Littlefield Collection or the Patton Museum typically has one, two, maybe three examples of a given vehicle and they have a large range of different vehicles, all with their own requirements for parts & maintenance.
A refurbishing/maintenance/repair depot has dozens upon dozens of the same vehicle moving through so the likelihood of having the right repair gear and the correct spare parts for that vehicle is much, much higher.

Littlefield and a handful of volunteers took absolute wrecks and turned them into not only factory-fresh looking but running and fully operational examples of AFVs, and not just WWII vehicles either (and what of it if they were WWII-era: if I have a tank, even if it's very very old and you have no tank at all I win).

His "small machine shop" helped get a hundred various AFVs up and running. So discounting some of the Soviet equipment he might not have in the T2k setting and...what, that still leaves 80-90 pieces.

I'm not trying to rehash the seemingly endless debate about whether or not the MVTS is a viable resource, but I think it's utterly hypocritical for anyone to say "Oh look a bunch of non-running Soviet tanks that have been sitting in the elements for over a decade, these are totally usable" and then dismiss the MVTS as useless, or next-to as the sometimes conciliatory posts seem to be. More to the point, I reiterate: those tanks would have already been used, and would have never fallen to that state anyway. At the worst they'd have been a Category-B division, well before the bombs.

Ok lets say this one more time since its been said ad naseum before - Littlefield's museum/collection had a fully equipped shop to repair and refurbish tanks and other armored vehicles including speciality welding fixtures, equipment that you could fit an entire tank body in and rotate it in order to make welding and armor repair more efficient, a stock of spare parts that would make most depots jealous and specially trained technicians and welders and machinists that not only could but did recreate needed spare parts from blueprints he had to bring tanks and other armored vehicles back to fully operational status including, in many cases, live barrels and breech blocks to replace ones that had been de-milled. (and if they couldnt make it he found it and bought it - and in the US its amazing what you can find - for example the Auction Hunter episode where they found a storage bin with a live tank barrel in it)

And most of the Soviet stuff he had on hand he got from places in Africa or Asia that used to operate it - including some that the Israelis had captured. Thus if the Soviets don't fall he still has most of his collection that he had in our world - not the SCUD of course but the older Soviet stuff - yup.

This wasnt a static display of equipment that was painted to look new - this was basically a fully operational tank repair facility that had a museum attached to it

And fyi - a lot of military equipment gets brought back from the dead from similiar graveyards all the time by collectors and sometimes even companies like BAE - when we built M109A5+ vehicles foe Chile we had to get parts from all over - some of which were in very very bad shape but could be reclaimed still with effort. And you would be amazed what vehicles we refurbish look like when we got them back from depots - I saw M109's and M88's that literally you would think were total wrecks that we managed to restore to fully operational status

I agree, the Littlefield Collection for example, is a very good resource. As long as you have sufficient personnel with the right skills and sufficient resources to get the parts & to refurbish them.
It is an amazing resource, but it is not the panacea that it's often presented as.

Absolutely. It's also a LOT more limited than a dedicated industrial scale facility as could be found at Karkov which is designed to handle dozens, even hundreds of AFVs virtually simultaneously.

Museums also generally hold obsolete equipment, and although T-72's aren't exactly cutting edge, they're certainly more current than Shermans, T-34's and Panthers.

Out of the two, I know which one holds more value in a military setting.

Actually any tank holds value in a military setting especially by 2000-2001 - a standard WWII era Sherman tank doesnt have a hope in hell against a T-72 for instance -but against a homemade armored car, against troops that dont have anti-tank weapons (which remember have become pretty rare by 2001, especially in certain areas that didnt have a lot of them to begin with), against a BMP-C or BTR that has a non-operational gun system its more than sufficient

and keep in mind the situation in the US as per the canon -i.e. by 2000 the US military was putting anything that had a turret and an operational gun into its stocks as a tank - thus an old WWII Sherman would qualify as a tank to MilGov and CivGov

look at what just happened in the Ukraine - the rebels took an old Soviet tank from a museum, made it operational and used it in combat successfully against Ukranian troops who didnt have anti-armor weapons on them until the tank broke down and was captured by the Ukranian troops

and most US marauder groups dont have anit-tank weapons beyond a bottle of flaming gasoline - i.e. look at Alleghany Uprising - those kinds of weapons are not in the hands of the marauders - so a single old Sherman tank there would literally be something they couldnt handle unless they get to Molotov cocktail range

By the way - most tank museums dont have Panthers (there are only five in the entire US, with the rest in Europe) or T-34's (unless its in Europe)- but what they do have are tanks like the Pershing, the M47, the M48, the M60, the Walker Bulldog and the M103 - and those tanks could give a T-54/T-55/T-64 a run for their money -

What is Rolled Homogenous Armor?

What is Layer Composite Armor?

Why is the first one obsolete since the mid 1970s?

And that right there is why Karkov holds far more value than any number of museums and private collections.

http://balashnikov.com/showthread.ph...anks-go-to-Die
Can't believe the Israeli's are scrapping AFVs, especially Merkavas (even if they are Mark 1's)!

Oh I am not saying those museums and Littlefield's shop and collection are better than an actual manned depot - but they are a lot better than nothing or a blacksmith and an auto mechanic trying to bring an old M47 back to life to fight marauders or the Mexicans

Rolled Homogenous armor, No spall liner, no fuel compartmentalization, No crew compartmentalization, no fire suppression gear, unprotected fuel lines, engine covers and compartment lack diversions for burning fuel (molotovs), most importantly no ammunition compartmentalization.

Any WW2 armor is going to be separated from infantry support and artillery then killed in detail by modern experienced infantrymen.

I give it 10 minutes if in the defense and under two if someone were to try to use one in an attack.

Tanks are not invulnerable.

Even the MK 1s are a drain on resources when they a fielding the MK3 and the MK4 is in development.

Those M48s, M60s, and T55s don't stand a chance against the current ATGMs and can't fight at night anyway. Israel doesn't have a lot of friends that they can sell to any way. The ones that they would sell to can do better than this stuff at home.

never said they are - but most marauder forces are hardly experienced infantrymen - most dont have any training at all in how to take on tanks - and it also depends if those commanding the tanks are stupid enough to send them into an urban environment where its a lot easier to kill them - its one thing to rain Molotov's down from the rooftops its another to go after a tank sitting in the open without good cover nearby to get close - especially if the tank has sufficient machine gun ammo on board for the coax and any turret mounted machine guns - if its just main gun weaponry then that tank is dead meat

and modern anti-tank weaponry, by 2001, is getting pretty scarce outside of areas that were battlefields - you wont find many marauders with TOW's or RPG's in Iowa for instance - so again that tank resurrected from the local museum may be quite the force multiplier for the local milita

as for MilGov forces using the older tanks - now you have older tanks supported by experienced infantry and artillery - which makes them quite effective indeed

50 years of Tank vs Tank Development in a nutshell
 

Rolled homogeneous armor (RHA) is a type of armor armor vehicles made of a single steel composition (thus 'homogeneous') as compared to cemented or layered armor using different compositions in different parts of the plate, which RHA is 'worked' by rollers applying pressure while the plate is hot.

It was the primary tank armor from the 1930s until the 1980s (and later for non-tank AFVs).

Composite armour is a type of vehicle armour consisting of layers of different material such as metals, plastics, ceramics or air. Most composite armours are lighter than their all-metal equivalent, but instead occupy a larger volume for the same resistance to penetration. It is possible to design composite armour stronger, lighter and less voluminous than traditional armour, but the cost is often prohibitively high, restricting its use to especially vulnerable parts of a vehicle. Its primary purpose is to help defeat high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rounds.

There are several flavors of this, including British-developed Chobham armor used by the British and Americans.

However, because governments are cagey about just how tough their layered armor is, modern shell penetration is sometimes expressed in RHA equivalent, as the resistance of RHA is more consistent.

The US Army (among others) use Depleted Uranium (DU) in their penetrators 9since the late 1980s), as these are dense, allowing more mass in the volume of the penetrator - meaning it hits harder.

HEAT rounds (and AT Missile warheads) began to become the primary tank vs tank round in the 1960s & 70s, since the race for bigger guns to defeat armor was reaching the point where bigger guns wouldn't fit in a tank. (Yes, you could make a tnk beig enough, but then the vehicle weight soared and the energy needed to move it rose....

Then APFSDS (Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot) rounds were developed; these are kinetic kill rounds that fire a penetrator (think very tough spear that is much thinner than the round's diameter) at high speed.

Reactive armor is supposed to try to defend against these by blowing up the penetrator before it hits the tank's armor.

There is lots more detail than this; search the internet for more detail.

Uncle Ted

Which doesnt keep the Soviets from equipping divisions with T-54's and T-55's in the game - they are a pretty common tank - so given your above comment shouldnt they have all been destroyed long before 2001? (when in game canon they are still in deployed divisions in Europe, Korea, China and Iran and still effective)

Thus a tank that has none of the advantages and features of more modern tanks, designed during WWII, is still fighting on the battlefields of the Twilight War as an effective tank.

Let alone the M48, the M60, the Leopard I, the AMX-30, etc.. - all of which are part of the game and all of which dont have composite armor, although some were retrofitted with reactive armor blocks to help against HEAT

Those were rhetorical questions you understand. Meant to give the modellers insight into why the veterans keep telling them that WW2 tanks are dead meat and scrap metal in any T2K environment.

and again the T-54 and T-55, M47, M48, M60, Leopard I, AMX-30, etc.. are still seen on Twilight battlefields, are still in forward deployed divisions and are still effective - all of those can kick a Sherman's butt any day of the week -but all of them basically have the same armor type and many of them very similar layouts to the WWII tanks you say would be dead meat in ten minutes - they have better guns and ammo and thicker armor but M1's and Challengers they arent

but they are better than the alternative - which is no tank at all

And if you looked at Littlefield's collection, let alone at most museums, you see that we arent talking about WWII tanks -yes he has tanks from WWII - but the vast majority of what he has with working barrels and in operable condition, as well as other museums, are M47/M48/M60/M103/Centurions - i.e. Korean War and Vietnam War tanks

so while for some reason people keep fixating on WWII tanks the reality is that most of what will come out of museums to be used on the battlefield are the same tanks that we already see in the Twilight War - i.e. the second and third line older tanks that countries like Turkey had to use or that the UK pulled out of storage in 1998 or that National Guard units were equipped with when they get sent over

so if you run into a T-55 in Poland or Iran and its a handful to go up against because you dont have any anti-armor weapons then why isnt an M48 or M60 pulled out of a museum in California a similar handful to either oppose or have on your side

by T2k there are no inexperienced green troops. Those guys are dead. Marauders have military personnel mixed in, the successful ones do, the unsuccessful ones would be dead.

You can take on tanks in any environment. Forest preferably, urban is second best.
Turrets can only engage targets to their relative front. When the turret is facing away from you sprint for the tank. The -10 depression of the gun applies to the coaxial too. In close and a tank has to rely on infantry or another tank to protect it from sappers.

Tankers opening the roof hatches to engage infantry with the TC or loaders machineguns? Let them. Their dead very fast from massed small arms fire and then the hatches are open. Yes, please do that. That TC hatch or loader hatch coming open is exactly what the infantry want. The massed fired on all the periscopes and gunner sights is to blind them and force them to open up.

Let your tank sit out in the open…… That just calls down artillery or mortar fire. Roof hit and it is toast. Smoke mission and it cannot engage targets.

Bundle of C4 and WP grenades on a pole….. Slip that under the tank from up close…. If you don’t blast through the belly armor the WP is going to heat it up quick.

I agree that modern ATGMs would be scarce……. Unguided rockets like the RPG… No.

RPGS most of all, then systems that need a more sophisticated launcher like LAWS or AT4. Recoilless rifles are going to have a huge resurgence…. If you can make mortar and artillery fuzes you can make these.

You can even mount a TVS-5 on an M40A1 recoilless and give it passive night fighting capability to 1000 meters.
No you have some poor bastard stuck with a fuel hungry and labor intensive beast without a trained crew, without compatible ammunition, no compatible radios except single channel and in the clear, no maintenance personnel to speak of , and a non existent supply chain relegated to one shop with hundreds of other thing to do making one off parts only when ordered that takes day or weeks to produce if all all.

Any smart commander would refuse this tank as the waste of resources it is.

All post WW2 and with one giant glaring advantage....... a logistics chain. Parts in abundance and technicians in abundance to keep them running.

Ammunition compatibility.... They use the same MG ammo as the rest of the forces.

Lastly, they have the capability to train crews. There isn't a M4 Sherman or Panzer 4 school about to train some drivers and gunners.

The Leopard I is the only survivable one.... Composite armor and all the protective features.

I give the same odds to the rest as I do a littlefield M4 or Panzer.

All of those still had parts being manufactured well into the 90s. Even ammunition for the M48A5s in 90mm for Turkey and a few small Asian nations. It is the logistics and the trained maintenance that would be keeping these going even when crew after crew is killed and their blood rinsed off the equipment.

And you have a shop with all those parts in abundance ready to support the tanks that they put back in the field - remember its the fact that he has trained techs and equipment and facilities that most dont have - and also the fact that the days of massed armor are over - thus his shop cant support divisions with hundreds of tanks - but the reality is that those divisions dont exist - and adding six to seven tanks, in 2001, is the equivalent of adding a hundred a few years earlier

and marauders are not highly trained forces - maybe in Europe or Korea or Iran - but not in the US - basically you are looking at gangs of thugs and survivalists, most of whom the only military training they ever had was watching old episodes of Combat on TV

the logistics train you need to support a half dozen tanks is alot less than what you need to support hundreds - and thats basically what a force with tanks has nowadays in the US - so again a place like Littefields is exactly what a T2K armored force would need in 2001 to keep going - and his guys can service an M1 tank just as easily as they can an M48

in 1997, 1998, even into 1999 the Army wouldnt want older tanks

now, as per canon, they will take anything with a turret and a main gun for a tank - and thats what an old M47/M48/M41/T55 fits to a T


oh as for mortar and artillery fire called down on the hypothetical Sherman tank sitting in a field in the US - sounds like a great idea- most Mexican forces have a max of 1-2 artillery pieces and limited ammo and mortars wont do squat to a tank, not the typical 60mm and 81mm mortars that are left - and getting a hit with an unguided artillery shell on a tank with your one or two guns is basically impossible - again this is 2001 not 1997

as for RPG's - look at the Texas module - they are describing combat Mexican forces and what they are armed with - and what they dont have is anti-tank weapons - here and there but most units dont have any - so if they dont how do a bunch of marauders who raided a gun store have RPG's?

as for massed fired on periscopes - lets see marauders using hunting rifles and shotguns - again good luck getting even close enough to make a hit on a periscope or vision block let alone taking one out while the coax turns you into swiss cheese - and unless the tank is the one from Fury I dont see it just sitting there as it takes a hell of a lot of fire or waits for the artillery to get lucky and hit the roof

thats the difference between a pillbox and a tank -a tank moves

except Littlefield wont be deploying any Panzers as none of them have live barrels (and most of the Shermans he has are heavily modified Super Shermans he got from Israel)

as for the rest that you mentioned as non-survivable - they must be surviveable because the M48 has been fighting in Turkey, the AMX in Germany, Africa and the US (its probably the tank the Mexicans would have), the Leopard I (the original version without the improved armor) in Europe, the M60 in a bunch of US divisions in Korea, Iran, Europe and the US - otherwise they wouldnt be in the various canon books showing them as still on the equipment rosters of those forces

You don’t have an abundance of parts. You have possibly a crew of talented fabricators….. if after all in canon any have survived the TDM, the famines, and the plagues… all per canon. After that you don’t have an abundance of parts……. You have talented fabricators that can make parts or engineer a fix on something broken. Assuming you have blueprints, not manuals blueprints with specific dimensions and materials….. You can look up in a manual that a tank gun uses part #47-B for a replacement firing pin….it is all together something else to know the dimensions in metric or English and the materials with hardening specifications to make one. A serviceable one that will function repeatedly.
So their now recreating the British first use of the tank? Throwing them away in a useless gesture in singles? A tank platoon is 2-3 and a tank company is 10 to 15 depending on national doctrine. Using them any other way is a waste of combat power and resources.
In the U.S. I would expect marauders to be formed from a core of veterans and deserters. Those motor cycle gangs you are scoffing have a great many disgruntled viet nam veterans that know which end the bullets come out of. Don’t underestimate mauraders and partisans as stupid or ineffective….. Read some German WW2 eastern front history or Japanese Burma campaign history for perspective.
I have read the books….. They made up a lot of excuses to forc e the setting to work. What we see in canon is National Guard and Reserves being called up and taking those relics because in canon the huge war stocks of M1s and M2/M3 siting at 29 palms, Seneca, and Sierra have been depleted armin allies. A huge stretch but that is the way the authors painted themselves into a corner.
A turret hit on a M60 or a Centurion with a impact fuzed 81mm ………I’ll take that bet….. pound for pound, kilo for kilo, mortars pack more explosives than cannon shells….. The blast is going to stun the crew, strip the MGs and and antennas off, crack or shatter the TC and loaders periscopes.. the chance is remote… but, even jamming the turret traverse gears is possible. Then the spalling as pieces of the armor roof flake off and ricochet around the interior among the crew and main gun ammunition. 105mm HE from a Mexican M101 or M102…. Pretty much the same.. a near miss is survivable….. and direct impact not so much.

I’ll take that bet.
They have IEDs…… and they don’t attack when the tank has the advantage… They wait for night when the tank is at a disadvantage. They deploy mines and deception to lure the tankers into kill zones, then kill or force the protecting infantry off with mortars, machineguns, and artillery. Then Mexican infantry with White phosporuous, pole charges, satchel charges under smoke and protective machine gun fire kills the tank.

Infantry units world wide practice anti tank tactics without AT rockets or ATGMs as core infantry skills.
You are giving me civilian hunting rifles! Ok I’ll take that bet too! Those are going to be topped with x4, x6, x8, and even x10 magnified scopes…….. I am going to detail 4-6 guys widely dispersed and give them a dedicated sector with the gunners primary site and the drivers periscope as primary targets.

Read the “Siege of Grozny” and how the Chechens stopped Russian armor attacks cold.
No, a tank CAN move if not disabled……. Which isn’t impossible for infantry supported by artillery. Most importantly all of these have unstabilized sights and have to stop to move..... the M60A3 being an exception with the Leopard I