Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
With the expansion of the Army during the war I am betting that much of the stored equipment would have been used to help equip the 12 Light Infantry Divisions the Army created out of the training units.
That alone probably took care of most if not all the remaining older M113s' in storage. They would need armor too and that is where it makes sense to bring the Sheridan's out of the bone yard - but probably at the rate of getting one or two good ones for every 10-15 in storage after cannibalizing everything that still works.
And with the continuing tensions the Army might have kept them in service a lot longer and thus spares and ammo might have been a lot more plentiful -
And they made 88,000 Shillelagh missiles - so if the Sheridan stayed operational right up to the war start - which given the tensions is a good bet - then there might be a significant amount of them available
And remember a full ammo load for them is only 19 cannon rounds and ten missiles - so if you get, say 150 operational Sheridans out of what you have stored you very well could get enough ammo for at least one full ammo load per vehicle, possibly two
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Well, say that you.manage to get 150 operational...from a tanker standpoint, the Sheridan was not a great tank. It's hull could protect against up to 12.7mms AP, but was very vulnerable to RPGs and mines. The rate of fire of the main gun was horrible, the standard 105mms M68 can fire roughly 12 to 15 aimed rounds per minute, the 152mms has a max rate of fire of 2 rounds per minute. The breech design prevented a faster loading cycle. Then we have the Shillelagh missile...it's an IR beam rider design that requires the gunner to maintain lock.on the target...it did have a punch equal to the TOW missile and had an effective range of 2000m...it's minimum range was a horrible 800m giving it a very short engagement envelope. These are the major reasons why it was pulled from service. The running joke when I was still in service was that even the
Marines would not take them!