[dragoon500ly]

Perhaps the real life standards would help to clarify. The standard for a US tank crew is to get one main gun round off every 5 seconds. This is the average time. During many Table VIII gunneries, I have witnessed loaders reload in generally half that time. The key, of course, is to have an experienced loader and the ergonomics of the tank.

On the M-60A1, the loader stands on the left side of the gun, ammo rack positioned to his right. A simple swing of his hips allows him to remove a round and then either flip the round 180 degrees or swing the round and insert it into the breech, automatically closing the breech while the loader slaps the safety into the fire position. Reloading is smooth, fast and a high rate of fire can be maintained.

The M-1 has the loader sitting on the left side of the gun, his right knee on a power switch that operates the blast door. He withdraws the round, swings 180 degrees or swivels and loads the round. The safety on the main gun is a physical arm that must be extended from the rear of the breech. By the book requires the loader to reach out and flip the safety on and then reload. IRL, the loader uses the nose of the round to flip the safety lever out of the way and then slaps it into the firing position as he opens the door and starts the reload.

The M-60A1 can fire much faster than the M-1, due to a simple little trick. The loader clicks the safety into the firing position and then makes several turns with a roll of wire, tieing the switch into the fire position. With the older APDS round, the loader can then do a little something called "vacuum loading".

The bore evacutor on the 105mm cannon pulls smoke out of the tube by using the force of the round's passage to fill the canister with air and then using the force of the passage to pull smoke out of the tube. Vacuum loading takes advantage of this by using that same force of out bound air to assist the loader in feeding the next shell into the chamber. An experienced loader can double his normal rate of fire. Please note that in spite of claims to the contray, this only works with the shorter APDS/TPDS round. I have never witnessed anybody able to vacuum load with the APDSFSDU round in either its 105mm or 120mm versions.

The best loader that I have ever witnessed was able to vacuum load 28 TPDS rounds within 60 seconds. To be sure, he had several advantages, he was 5'5" (at the time the minimum height), and was a power lifter with an upper body that had to be seen to be belived! Once would have been sheer dumb luck. But during that gunnery, he did this four times in one day. Afterward, it was joked that his tank had the only 105mm machinegun in Europe!