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Old 02-23-2015, 04:48 AM
dragoon500ly dragoon500ly is offline
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Location: East Tennessee, USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jester View Post
I was speaking in gaming terms and desperation and imagination. Look at the vehicle guide, WWII the mods done to armor. Or even Vietnam and the "Gun Trucks."

As I said earlier, I've never even seen a Sheridan. Just going with the concept of using what is available to bring it online in some useful manner. And never was the idea of bringing it back to go toe to toe with modern 1st tier armor.

But, remember some pact nations still have T-55s and T-64/5s as their tier 1 armor. And then, how old is the T-72? Which if I recall correctly, the T-90 is just an updated T-72 since the T-80 didn't work as promised...or am I getting them reversed?

Another issue, how many US armored vehicles have been completely destroyed to the point they are written off and not sent back to be rebuilt? Unless its a catastrophic kill of course. And would this not be the case if the balloon went up? This as I recall was the case in WWII where green crews got in after the holes were patched and the blood washed out.
In the Vietnam War, the Sheridan earned a rep as a death trap for its crews. It was the first combustible case ammo tank to enter service and there problems with propellant escaping from the round and accumulating on the turret floor with dire results when the hull was penetrated by rpg/mines. Another problem was that the combustible case did not fully ignite in the chamber, when the breech was opened, this flaming debris fell back into the turret, sometimes igniting the round the loader was preparing to load. To overcome this problem, a high air pressure air line was installed to.blow this debris down the tube, this was one of the reasons for the lousy rate of fire. The missile came in for its own loading issues, it could only be loaded one way into the gun, resulting in a notch being cut into the breech...think about trying to "key in" a missile during an engagement!

The fun and joy doesn't end there! The missile was a 1st gen IR beam rider that required the gunner to maintain lock on target throughout the missile flight time. Bad enough, but the missile had a host of problems, especiallyduring sunny days, bright reflections as well as a hordes of reliability issues, bad enough when the missile doesn't fire...it's perverse desire to try go for other targets, like that bright sunny thing in the sky, just ruins a crews day.

Another problem was the electronics of the fire control system...temperamental doesn't begin to describe the issues, both Sheridan and the later M60A2 Starship spent more time in the maintenance shop than on the firing line.

Add the fact that the Sheridan would have spent almost 20 years in storage in the desert by the time of the Mexican invasion...
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