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Faculty if Engineering in Kragujevac
Seminar paper
“Evolution of Tanks”
Student: Professor:
Andrija Jestrovic, 63/2011 Sandra Stefanovic
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Content:
The Birth of the Tank………………………….……3
World War 2………………………………………...4
Cold War……………………………………………6
Modern Tanks………………………………………9
Literature…………………………………………..10
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The Birth of the Tank
From the start if WW1, artillery and machine guns meant thatmobility of troops was highly limited. That spawned a technological race
that would change the way war was fought in just 20 years.
Designing the first tanks was a newly formed field, and first tanks had
many problems. They were shaped like a cube, and their tracks would break
after just 20 miles. Other flaws like crew space, weaponry, and gas
exhausted by the engines were a big problem. But the shock they made when
fielded, and their ability to cross terrain infantry could not made them a
potent weapon of war. All other problems were solvable, and will be in the
next decades.The idea of tanks, or “landships” in fiction was well known, and were
suggested to be made prior to the WW1, but need for them was not seen, and
thus their day of birth was postponed. During WW1 all sides tried to create
them, but most were very clumsy brick shaped tractors. One of the was the
Renault FT 17 which introduced the key design still used in today’s tank
designs, the rotating turret. This meant that tanks would need only one gun
instead of many mounted on all sides. This reduced the cont, and increased
their practicality greatly. Their chassis also proved to be very effective at
carrying heavy battlefield equipment, such as bridges.
After WW1, most powerful armies realized that tanks were the way of the future, and large amounts of resources were poured in to make tanks a
masterpiece of engineering. Since most of them were colonial powers,
highest attention was placed on light versions, which could easily be shipped
to other corners of the world.
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World War 2
World War 2 was the largest conflict in human history, and in it the
tank shall play the largest role. At the beginning of World War 2, every
major power had tanks, even Germany, even though they were forbidden by
the treaty at the end of WW1.
The light tanks, who dominated the fields at the beginning of the
WW2, were quickly being phased out, because their armor couldn’t hold
against anti-tank weaponry, and were used for scouting later on. This meant
that tanks with more armor needed to be engineered and built. In essencewhat was done was that engineers fitted heavier armor and larger guns on
the tank, and stronger engines that could move the lumbering beasts.
The most famous tank of WW2, T-34, a Russian design with sloped
armor was a brilliant solution to the problem of weight of the tanks. As the
anti-tank guns were becoming increasingly stronger, so was the need for
bigger armor. But bigger armor was becoming so big that tanks were too
cumbersome to be moved at any reasonable speed. The solution was sloped
armor. Considering the projectile flies at a horizontal level, hitting a sloped
steel plate meant that there was more metal to munch trough then if it hit the
plate at 90 degrees. This meant that same level of protection was achievewith less weight, and cost. The T-34 was also very easy to mass produce,
and made in the thousands during WW2, and is considered to be one of the
most important weapons allies had during the war, and is often considered a
war-winning one. The idea was promptly copied by the Germans and
Western Allies, and soon even more tanks were being introduced on the
battlefields.
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One more important design was a gyroscopic stabilizer, which
allowed tanks to fire on the move. Previously the gun barrel would follow
the chassis of the tank, making it impossible to fire the gun on the move, and
expect any descant accuracy. Gyroscopic stabilizer allowed the gun to stay
stable no matter what the terrain was, greatly increasing its effectiveness.
Heavy tanks, such as Tiger, King Tiger, IS-2 and JS-3, were so
heavily armored that almost no gun peasant on the battlefield could pierce
trough their armor. The drawback was that they would have mechanical
failures, because engines used to move their weight weren’t well developed
at the time. This meant that their crews often had to abandon them, anddestroy in the process to stop them from falling in to enemy hands. More of
these tanks were destroyed that way then due to enemy fire.
Western allies did not make or have such heavy tanks, mostly because
they had to transport them over the sea, and that meant that lighter tanks
were preferred. Sherman is probably the most famous one. It was a medium
tank that wasn’t a mach for almost any German tank during the end of the
war, but it would usually outnumber German tanks even 20 to 1.They also
had many design flaws. One of the more famous ones was that they had a
tendency to cache on fire, and were soon nicknamed Tommy Cooker by the
Germans.
Reason of most of these flaws was that during the war time there was
no time to simply refine the machines used in the war, so they often left
factories untested.
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Cold War
At the end of WW2 there were many tank fleets left, and a slow
disbarment process started, but due to Western and Eastern pacts animosity
soon saw an arms race that was present in every field of military including
ground forces, and thus tanks. Soviet Union tank numbers outnumbered
western tanks 5 to 1, whose mobility, armament and amour were at leastcomparable to the western tanks. They had a large number of T-34/85, IS-1,
IS-2 and JS-3, a monster with 122mm gun and 200mm sloped armor.
The production of the next generation of machines was delayed or
minimized until the need arose. Thus the USA made do with M26 General
Pershing, with plans laid for an improved version the 44ton M47 General
Patton and the smaller M24 Chaffee. The British had the comet, plus a
slowly increasing number of the new 42ton centurion fitted with a 17-pdr
gun and 121mm sloped glacis plate.
Further research was focused on improving protection and firepower.
But, in the existing technology, protection could only be increased by asmall amount, by slopping the armor a bit more. It soon lead to British and
Americans having tanks that weighted about 55tons just like the Russians.
Improvements to ammunition had been subjects seriously tackled
during the war. The use of low velocity projectiles with Chemical Energy
(CE) warheads was one line of approach, but naturally this made range
finding even more critical. Most work was done in high velocity shot
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because its flight path almost coincided at the shorter ranges with line of
sight through a gunner’s telescope, thus minimizing the range finding
difficulty while solid shit was less easily defeated by spaced armor then CE
warheads. By the time the war ended the shot itself had been improved in
material, density and shape which reduced the chances of it breaking up
against armor, while its velocity had been increased from 2600fps to
something in the region of 4000fps. The British Amour Piercing Discarding
Shot (APDS) round, which enabled a relatively greater charge to be applied
to the base of a small and lighter shot, thus giving it higher speed, was very
successful and remains in service. Simply, the shot was cased in a jacket (or
sabot) of some light material, which fell off after the projectile had left the
barrel.
Main armament, as would be expected, did not often decrease below
75mm caliber because, to obtain sufficient kinetic energy to penetrate
existing armor thickness, larger calibers with higher velocity CE roundswere needed while lower velocity CE rounds were also in need of larger
diameters in order to burst through thick armor.
The Russians and Warsaw Pact powers adopted guns either of 100mm,
115mm or 122mm, and the Americans and British (and thus the NATO
powers) settled initially for 76mm, 90mm and 120mm. The British, in the
meantime had designed a very good new 83.4mm gun (20-pdr) and then
developed it into the gun which, in 1980s, was to be found on nearly every
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NATO tank and those on other nations too. This 105mm gun can fire almost
any kind of ammunition invented – shot, CE, smoke or canister (spread).
The fitting of larger guns did not go unchallenged by soldiers and vehicle
designers, several of whom would have been only too pleased to make the
fighting machines smaller in the interest of mobility, ease of concealment
and with reduced costs. There were many attempts to produce smaller
weapons with the same penetrative and destructive powers as the existing
ones, but, almost inevitably, they ended with the high velocity gun still
standing top of the choice. However they were nudged by a newcomer 0 the
rocket propelled anti-tank guided missile (ATGW).
The ATGW was a product of German inventiveness that had not got
beyond the experimental stage in 1945. Their X7 was a rocket steered by
signals along a wire, paid out behind, under the guidance of an operator who
steered the missile to its target.
Although tanks lay at the core of most armies, a host of
reconnaissance, artillery, engineer and infantry fighting vehicles were to be
found in close attendance, gradually the most modern armies were creating
all-armored armies – the principal initial reason for this being the need to
give maximum mobility and protection against atomic effects as the threat of
use of nuclear weapons on battlefield became reality. Ironically, none among
the Russian, the American, the French nor the British were often called upon
to use their most powerful fighting vehicles in the kind of large scale war for
which they were designed. When they did use them, it was usually in minor
confrontations, or in small numbers. Generally any massive encounters
involving fighting vehicles were between smaller nations, equipped with the
products from the manufacturing nations.
The adaptation of laser to range finding in the 1960s offered the
chance of much simpler and accurate method of measuring distance to the
target, and was soon being incorporated in the sighting systems of most
main battle tanks; but, even these can have their drawbacks, sometimes
being confused by smoke and dust, and almost invariably introducing an
additional complexity for commanders and gunners to cope with.
Tanks did not possess sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons and thearmed helicopter had a big role to play in these land battles, but the chance
of the helicopter becoming a dominant weapon remained remote at the time.
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Infra red night fighting instruments had been developed during the
Second World War, but it was not until 1960s that their presence, in large
numbers, became noticeable in soviet tanks. Until then most tanks haddepended on white light searchlights and flares. Gradually, the infra red was
overtaken by low light intensification instruments – nightvision.
Modern Tanks
The 1980s witnessed the universal adoption of guns with a caliber of
120mm or more as the most effective weapons for overcoming the latestarmor. Thus the whirligig of the gun/armor race spun fighting vehicles in the
direction of weightier armament – a trend which militated against men or
vehicles whose necessarily lighter anti-tank weapons were automatically
outclassed, forcing them to adopt clumsier means of protection for
themselves as the dominant anti-tank weapon system. This situation lasted
well into the 1990s.
The design of target acquisition and fire control systems lies at the
root of accurate shooting. Advances in the type and nature of these have
been considerable and on a broad front since the 1950s. The invention of
laser and its adaptations to range finding, in the 1960s, when allied toimproved optical devices, sensors and ballistic computers, made possible
fire control systems which enabled the commander and gunner to obtain the
feed in all the essential target ammunition and ballistic data. All of this can
be achieved prior to engaging the target with a high chance of a first round
hit, and without ranging by fire and observation. Most improved tanks of the
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developed nations now have fire-control equipment of this type fitted, to the
exclusion of old fashioned range-finders and ranging guns.
Also involved in the adoption of each new item of improved
equipment is the matter of reliability. In no field has this been more
susceptible to criticism and complaint then that of automotive and cross-
country capability and performance. The demand for new power plants that
have more then twice the output of those of 1945 has stretched engineering
ingenuity to the extreme. The desire to move at high speeds across country
has brought about the development of hydro-pneumatic suspension.
Literature:
-“Tanks and Other Fighting Vehicles”, by Ray Hutchins, Bounty Books,2005.
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