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Quoted: I often wondered if they packed a little extra explosives into that tank. It's been done on tests with video rolling before. As long as it doesn't interfere with the goals of the test, it's not a big deal. The 3rd ID killed a T72 with a Javelin on film outside Baghdad that went up the same way. T72s blow up. Other tanks wouldn't do that. Even a T55 or T62 wouldn't blow up quite like that but T72's, and all other tanks that use the same 125mm gun with the autoloader magazine under the turret floor blow up that way. Mines and top attack ATGW (Javelin, TOW2, Hellfire) are most likely to cause such catistrophic kills because they fire directly through the very thin roof or floor armor and right into the magazine carousel, which has no internal armor worthy of name. The Russians actually withdrew their T72/80/90 series tanks from Chechnya and replaced them with T55M2's (which have night vision, reactive armor, and the ability to launch AT-11 missiles from their gun) from reserve stocks because the mines and IEDs that the Chechyans were using for anti tank weapons were blowing up so many. [img]http://afvinteriors.hobbyvista.com/t72/t72-109.jpg[/img] This is the ammo stowage in the cramped interior of a T-72 series. Any tank using the same autoloader would be the same, except T-64. Iraqi T72's mostly did not have reactive armor on their roofs, and the roof armor on older models are thin enough that the main charge of Javelin doesn't even hit metal when it fires but blasts directly into the fighting compartment. Virtually all the ammunition you would see in that diagram therefore would be ignited almost simultainiously. Those grey areas in the right front hull and curving around the rear of the autoloader by the way are the fuel tanks! The fuel tanks actually are exposed on the inside of the fighting compartment, and even have wells stamped into them to make room for rounds of ammunition. |