There are actually very few Main Battle Tanks with autoloaders, the Soviet T-64/T-72/T-80, the French AMX-13 and Leclerc, the Swedish S-Tank are the main ones that come to mind.
When the M-1 was being designed, an autoloader was debated about for some time. The decision was finally made not to include one for two main reasons; autoloaders are very complex items and they have a high failure rate and second tanks are so complex that they require a large crew in order to stay on top of the basic maintenance. There is even talk resurfacing every so often about running tanks with either a "ground crew" back in the assembly area who do nothing but maintenance or running tanks with a "Black" and a "Gold" crew, one maintains and one fights and they switch roles every other day or so.
When you talk about tanks being knocked out by rear-end shots or IEDs, many people forget about how tanks are designed...The three main functions of a tank is to deliver firepower, mobility and protection. There are very few tanks that manage to balance all three.
The problem with protection is that the tank cannot be equally protected on all faces, there has to be trade offs in order to save space for armament and engines. So most tanks carry their thickest armor covering the front 45 degree arc. The flanks and belly (mines have always been the #2 enemy of armor) have the next thickest armor, then the top (#3 on the list of enemies of armor is air strikes), the rear of the tank always has the thinnest armor.
Almost from day one, it is drummed into tankers to never expose the rear to enemy antitank fire. Because if you get hit there, then you die.
In the case referred to in a previous post, yes a 57mm gun managed to penetrate the rear armor and knock out the transmission of the tank, a mobility kill. Because the column was in a hostile area, the crew of the tank took weapons and sensitive items and abandoned the tank. A demolition charge was used to blow the onboard ammunition and knock out the fire control system. Then the column moved on. Standard operating procedure.
The remains of the tank were recovered the next day and it was shipped to Anniston Army depot for rebuilding and reissue.
No one in the crew were injured or killed and the mission was able to be completed and the "destroyed" tank is currently in service. There is no other tank that can do that!
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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