Totschka's - Tank Turret Emplacements

[therantingsavant]

Thanks for the comments all!


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[Gelrir]

Very interesting stuff, good work. There are (in real life) hundreds ... thousands? ... of World War 2 and Cold War tank turrets scattered around the Balkans in bunkers, or with the hull buried in the soil.

The electrical power requirements seem a bit high, though. A 60,000 watt night vision system ... the "active" part must be very active indeed.

I don't know how much electrical power is needed to run a turret traverse system, but this document would put it in the "under 10 kilowatts" category:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...uoQQvZA84Da0MZ

Second World War Soviet tanks mostly used electrical power for coarse traverse, manual cranking for fine traverse.

http://www.allworldwars.com/T-34%20T...%20Manual.html

Apparently the auxiliary motor used on Panzer IV tanks drove a 2000 watt generator. Sherman tanks had a 1500 watt auxiliary generator, which weighed 63 kg and used 1.9 liters of gasoline (mixed with oil -- they were two-cycle engines) per hour. The Abrams eventually had various APU between 6 and 10 kilowatt output (apparently they originally were without one, and depended on battery power).

http://marvinland.com/wp-content/upl...ams-M1-APU.pdf


Again, I'm not sure exactly how well the auxiliary generator supports acceptably speedy turret traverse, along with radios, etc. but I imagine it's "in the ballpark". I know that some of the WW2 German tanks needed the main engine to "speed up" to traverse their turrets more rapidly ...

The big xenon searchlights that could be mounted on M48 tanks were 2200 to 2500 watts (sources vary a bit). I don't know about the power draws of Soviet IR equipment, but I doubt it exceeds a few kilowatts.

--
Michael B.