Technology of Tanks (Volumes 1-2)

438 Pages·1991·22.45 MB·English

by  Richard M. Ogorkiewicz

Technology
of Tanks
I
Richard M Ogorkiewicz
JANE'S INFORMATION GROUP
SRichard M Ogorkiewicz
Published in the United Kingdom in 1991 by
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Contents
Preface
1 Outline of the Evolution of Tanks to 1945
. I Origins of Tanks I
.2 The First Tanks 3
.3 Use of Tanks during during and after the First World War .. 7
.4 Evolution of Tanks from 1918 to 1939 11
.5 Development of Tanks during the Second World War 18
.6 References 26
.7 Selected Bibliography 28
2 Development of Tanks since 1945
2.1 General Trend 30
2.2 Soviet Tanks 33
2.3 British Tanks 36
2.4 French Tanks 41
2.5 United States Tanks 45
2.6 German Tanks 53
2.7 Swedish, Swiss and Israeli Tanks 56
2.8 Japanese, South Korean and Brazilian Tanks 60
2.9 References 63
2.10 Selected Bibliography 65
3 Tank Guns and Ammunition
3.1 Evolution of Conventional Rifled Guns 66
3.2 Low Pressure Guns 71
3.3 Smooth Bore Guns 73
3.4 AP, APCR and APDS Ammunition 76
3.5 APFSDS Ammunition 79
3.6 Shaped Charge Ammunition 83
3.7 High Explosive Ammunition 86
Contents
3.8 Liquid Propellant Guns 38
3.9 Electromagnetic Guns 91
3.10 Electrothermal Guns 94
3.11 References 96
3.12 Selected Bibliography 97
Ballistics and Mechanics of Tank Guns
4.1 Internal Ballistics 98
4.2 Propellants 104
4.3 External Ballistics 106
4.4 Terminal Ballistics 107
4.5 Penetration by Shaped Charges 113
4.6 Recoil Forces 117
4.7 Automatic Loading Systems 120
4.8 References " 125
4.9 Selected Bibliography 126
Vision and Sighting Systems
5.1 Target Acquisition 127
5.2 Unit Power Devices 127
5.3 High Power Periscopes in Rotatable Cupolas 130
5.4 Panoramic Periscopes 132
5.5 Fixed Commanders' Sights 136
5.6 Gunners' Sights 137
5.7 Gunner's Auxiliary Sights 144
5.8 Electro-Optical and Radar Systems 145
5.9 References 148
Illuminating and Night Vision Systems
6.1 Tank-Mounted Searchlights 149
6.2 Illuminating Shells and Bombs 151
6.3 Active Infrared Systems 153
6.4 Image Intensifies 156
6.5 Low Light Level Television 165
6.6 Thermal Imaging Systems 161
6.7 References 163
Fire Control Systems
7.1 Evolution of Fire Control Systems 165
7.2 Ballistic and Stadiametric Range-Finding 169
7.3 Optical Rangefmders 172
7.4 Laser Rangefmders 174
7.5 Hit Probability 178
7.6 Reaction Time and Automatic Tracking 181
7.7 Threat Warning Systems 184
7.8 Burst, Ripple and'Salvo Fire 186
7.9 References 188
Contents vii
8 Gun Control Systems
8.1 Development of Gun Control Equipment 190
8.2 Electric and Hydraulic Power Drives 193
8.3 Stabilisation of Guns and Turrets 197
8.4 Stabilised Sights and Director-Type Systems 200
8.5 References 204
9 Guided Weapons
9.1 Development of Anti-Tank Guided Missiles 206
9.2 Guided Missiles versus Tank Guns 210
9.3 Installation of Guided Missiles in Armoured Vehicles 215
9.4 Gun-Launched Missiles 219
9.5 Guided Projectiles 221
9.6 References 222
10 Mobility of Tanks
10.1 Strategic Mobility 223
10.2 Operational Mobility 225
10.3 Battlefield Mobility 226
10.4 Power, Speed and Rolling Resistance 227
10.5 Acceleration and Agility 229
10.6 Crossing of Water Obstacles 233
10.7 References 238
11 Tank Engines
11.1 Spark-Ignition Piston Engines 240
11.2 Twin-Engine Power Units 243
11.3 Air versus Liquid-Cooled Engines 244
11.4 Adoption of Diesel Engines 247
11.5 Fuel Consumption and Combustion of Diesel Engines 249
11.6 Supercharging of Diesel Engines 252
11.7 High Specific Output Diesel Engines 255
11.8 Thermally Insulated Diesel Engines 258
11.9 Gas Turbines 258
11.10 Hybrid Power Units 262
11.11 Rotary Engines 264
11.12 References 266
12 Tank Transmissions
12-1 Propulsion Gears 269
12.2 Transmissions with Hydrokinetic Torque Converters 270
12.3 Steering of Tracked Vehicles 274
12.4 Mechanics of Skid Steering 275
12.5 Types of Steering Mechanisms 279
12.6 Evolution of Steering Systems 286
12.7 Hydrostatic and Hydromechanical Transmissions 300
viii Contents
12.8 Electric Transmissions 303
12.9 References 306
12.10 Supplementary Bibliography 308
13 Suspensions and Running Gear
13.1 Human Response to Vibrations 309
13.2 Dynamics of Vehicles 312
13.3 Early Types of Suspensions 316
13.4 Torsion Bar Suspensions 318
13.5 Damping 323
13.6 Hydropneumatic Suspensions 324
13.7 Active Suspensions 329
13.8 Road Wheels 329
13.9 Tracks 333
13.10 References 340
14 Soil-Vehicle Mechanics
14.1 Characteristics of Soils 342
14.2 Nominal Ground Pressure 343
14.3 Mean Maximum Pressure 346
14.4 Characterisations based on Cone Penetrometers 350
14.5 Semi-Empirical Models 352
14.6 References 355
1 5 Armour Protection
15.1 Steel Armour 357
15.2 Configuration of Armour 362
15.3 Aluminium Armour 367
15.4 Non-Metallic. Composite and Spaced Armour 369
15.5 Explosive Reactive Armour 375
15.6 Active Protection Systems 376
15.7 References 377
1 6 Configuration of Tanks
16.1 Evolution of the Conventional Configuration 379
16.2 Internal Volume and Dimensions 382
16.3 Weight Distribution and Cost 386
16.4 Rear versus Front Engine Installations 388
16.5 Oscillating or Trunnion-Mounted Turrets 390
16.6 Low Frontal Area Turrets 393
16.7 Externally Mounted Guns 394
16.8 Tanks with Driver in the Turret 398
16.9 Conventional Turrets with Automatic Loading Systems 400
16.10 Turretless Tanks 402
16.11 References 406
Preface
The object of this book is to provide a comprehensive account of the technology of
tanks, the tracked armoured fighting vehicles which have become such an impor-
tant element of military power.
The account is concerned primarily with the current state of tank technology.
But it also covers preceding developments, to help the understanding of how. or
why. tanks have taken their present form while other forms or concepts have been
abandoned. It also includes an outline of the evolution of tanks from their incep-
tion, to put their current state in its historical perspective and in the process to
throw additional light on their origins, about which there is still some confu-
sion.
Although the book is meant to be comprehensive, it can not deal with every
facet of the technology of tanks, as this is outside the scope of a single work.
However, it seeks to cover all the principal aspects of the subject.
Such a treatment of the technology of tanks does not appear to have been
attempted before but the case for it became increasingly evident to me in the
course of my involvement with tanks, which made me aware of the need for a book
of this kind on the part of engineers, army officers and many others.
My involvement with tanks has covered more than forty years. For a major part
of this period I have acted as a consultant engineer to a number of industrial and
government organisations concerned with the development of armoured vehicles,
which has brought me into contact with many who have a direct interest in the
technology of tanks. I have also met many more with similar interests as a result of
giving lectures on armoured vehicles not only in Britain and the United States but
also in other countries, including Brazil. China. Israel. Japan and Sweden, and.
most recently, as a visiting professor at the Royal Military College of Science.
Some of the interest in tank technology can be satisfied by lectures like those I
have been invited to give and by articles published in various journals, of which I
have written about four hundred. The first of them appeared in 1949 in the Royal
Armoured Corps Journal and has been followed by others not only in that journal
but also in Armor and many others, including the International Defense Review of
which I have become a consulting editor. However, articles as well as lectures can
only deal with particular aspects of tank technology and while they have given me
an opportunity to rehearse the presentation of some of it they can not answer the
need for a book that deals with the whole subject.
x Preface
I was encouraged to embark on the writing of a book that would meet this need
by the reception accorded to my two earlier books which dealt with some aspects
of tank technology in more general terms. They were Armour and Design and
Development of Fighting Vehicles. Both of these were published in the United
States as well as Britain: the first was also published in Italy as / Corazzati and
republished in Britain as Armoured Forces while the second was also published in
a Japanese translation. Both books have been out of print for some time but they
have continued to be used as reference or text-books, which spurred me to produce
another and more up-to-date as well as more comprehensive book.
During the course of my studies and writing I also received encouragement from
many other quarters. In particular, my early studies benefited greatly from the
encouragement and help given to me by my father. Colonel Marian
A Ogorkiewicz. by Colonel Robert J Icks. in his day the leading US historian of
armoured vehicles with whom I corresponded weekly for more than twenty years,
and by Sir Basil Liddell Hart, whom I visited many times, especially when he was
writing his two-volume history of the Royal Tank Regiment.
More recently I have benefited from discussions with several of the leaders in
the field of tank development, who not only enabled me to examine and to operate
the tanks with which they have been involved but who also became friends, now of
many years standing. They include Sven Berge. the originator of the Swedish
S-tank: Major General Israel Tal. who has directed the development of the Israeli
Merkava tank; Iwao Hayashi, who led the team which designed Japan's Type 74
tank; and Jose Luiz Whitaker Ribeiro. the president of the Engesa Company.
Other friends who also helped me in my studies of armoured vehicles include
Dr Philip W Lett, vice president of Chrysler and then of General Dynamics Land
Systems. Leslie F Little, who was Vickers-Armstrongs' chief designer during the
late 1930s and early 1940s. and Dr M G Bekker. who was responsible for much of
the upsurge of interest in soil-vehicle mechanics during the 1960s.
I was also fortunate in being able to meet and correspond with some of the
pioneers of tank development. They included Lieutenant Colonel Philip Johnson,
who designed the British Medium D tank at the end of the First World War, and
Lieutenant General Tomio Hara. who designed the first Japanese tank.
Some of those who helped and encouraged me in my studies have since passed
away but I would like to record my gratitude to them as well as to all the others and
I only wish that I could mention them all by name.
I would also like to record my thanks to all the industrial organisations and
government departments which have supplied information over the years and
which have provided the photographs that are reproduced in the book together
with an individual acknowledgement of their origin.
London 1991 Richard M Ogorkiewic:
Chapter 1
Outline of the Evolution of Tanks
to 1945
1.1 Origins of Tanks
Tanks are, in essence, mobile, protected weapon platforms. More specifically they
are automotive, tracked, armoured carriers of heavy direct-fire weapons. As such,
they stem from developments in two different fields. One is that of automotive
vehicles and in particular of tracked tractors, which formed the basis of the
construction of the first tanks as armoured vehicles capable of cross-country
movement. The other is that of the development of heavy weapons, which had
grown in importance in relation to individual, portable weapons but whose effec-
tiveness was constrained by their limited mobility until it proved possible to
overcome this by mounting them in tanks. In consequence, the automotive mobil-
ity and the armour protection with which tanks were endowed became a means of
increasing the effectiveness of heavy, direct-fire weapons by making them more
mobile and this has come to account for the lasting importance of tanks.
The first practical step in the development of self-propelled vehicles for military
purposes was taken in 1769, when N J Cugnot, a French military engineer, built a
steam-powered wheeled vehicle for towing guns (1.1). A year later R L Edgeworth
took out a patent in Britain for a 'portable railway', which embodied the essence of a
track. More detailed schemes for tracked running gear were put forward in patents
taken during the second half of the 19th century (1.2). At the same time some steam
traction engines were built in the United States with tracks instead of wheels by W P
Miller in 1858, byTSMinnis in 1867 and byRCParvin in 1873(1.3). However, the
development of tracked tractors did not begin in earnest until 1904, when B Holt
replaced the rear wheels of one of the steam traction engines produced in California
by his company by tracks. Because it retained its front wheels, Holt's original tracked
tractor was, in effect, a half-track, as were the tractors built by his company between
1904 and 1912. In the meantime, in 1905. Richard Hornsby and Sons Ltd. built in
Britain the first fully tracked tractor (1.4).
Well before this happened, in 1855, J Cowen took out patent No 747 in Britain
for a steam-powered wheeled armoured vehicle armed with guns and in 1899 John
Fowler & Co Ltd of Leeds actually built four steam-powered wheeled armoured
vehicles for use by the British forces in the war in South Africa (1.5). The latter
were only armoured road locomotives designed to tow armour-plated wagons and
guns but nevertheless they were the first self-propelled armoured vehicles to be
built.
2 Outline of the Evolution oj Tanks to 1945
The first vehicles to be armed also appeared in 1899. They consisted of some of
the earliest motor vehicles which were fitted with machine guns with the object of
increasing the mobility of the latter. One of them appeared in England and
consisted of a powered quadricycle fitted by F R Simms with a Maxim machine
gun (1.6). Another appeared soon afterwards in the United States and consisted of
a three-wheeled car mounting a Colt machine gun built for Major R P
Davidson.
What was bound to follow was a vehicle which was both armed and armoured.
Such a vehicle was built, in fact, in 1902 in Britain, by F R Simms, under contract
to the armament firmofVickers, Sons and Maxim, Ltd (1.7). It failed to arouse the
interest of British military authorities but a semi-armoured car exhibited in Paris
in 1902 was tested in the following year by the French military authorities. The
Russian authorities encouraged its builders, the Societe Charron, Girardot et
Voigt, to develop a fully armoured car, which was completed by 1906. By then a
second armoured car with a machine gun turret had also been built in Austria by
the Austro-Daimler Company (1.8).
Little further progress was made with armoured cars until the outbreak of the
First World War in 1914, when they began to be built and used in numbers.
However, a few more attempts had been made by then to make guns more mobile
by mounting them on unarmoured as well as armoured motor vehicles. This
involved not only machine guns but also guns of up to 75mm, which were mounted
on motor vehicles to provide mobile weapons against dirigible balloons and
aircraft (1.9).
The mounting of guns on motor vehicles represented a considerable advance on
earlier methods of moving weapons about, which relied on horse traction. How-
ever, the mobility of motor vehicles was confined almost entirely to roads and the
effectiveness of the gun carriers as well as that of the armoured cars was conse-
quently severely limited. The development of armoured cars was bound to be
followed therefore by attempts to make them, or similar vehicles, capable of
operating off the roads. The basis for this had already emerged in the form of the
tracked running gear of tractors and its adoption for armoured cars or gun carriers
would have provided the heavy weapons mounted in them with the cross-country
mobility which they needed to be effective in most military operations.
However, tracked tractors were still a little known novelty and there was not
much concern yet about the cross-country mobility of heavy weapons, which
might have encouraged the mounting of them on tracked vehicles. In fact, it was
not even generally recognised how important heavy weapons, and in particular
field guns, had become in relation to the individual weapons on which armies
continued to rely to a considerable extent. Their cross-country mobility and how it
could be improved to allow them to be employed to the fullest extent were not,
therefore, matters that exercised contemporary military thought.
Nevertheless, a few individuals had already conceived the idea of mounting
heavy weapons on tracked armoured vehicles. Thus, as early as 1903 Captain
Levavasseur of the French Artillery put forward a detailed proposal for a tracked
armoured vehicle mounting a 75mm gun (1.10). Another proposal to mount a gun
on a tracked chassis was made in 1908 by Major Donohue of the British Army-
Services Corps after he saw the original Homsby tractor (1.11). In 1911 Captain G
Burstyn of the Austro-Hungarian Army proposed a tracked armoured vehicle with
a small calibre gun in a turret (1.12); in 1912 the British War Office received the
design of another tracked armoured vehicle from an Australian engineer, L E de
Mole. The design of yet another tracked armoured vehicle, which was to weigh