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Mr Garabaldi, correctly, pointed out that the TOW from a Bradley got more tank kills in Desert Storm than the main gun from the Abrams.
Despite the main guns, theoretically, out ranging the TOW.
It's a great demonstration of max effective range vs max range.
I'd have to double check, but I think there were also a lot more Brads than Abrams deployed too.
Personally, I like the idea of the Bradleys in overwatch and us only having to use the coax to support the crunchies.
An MBT makes a dandy pill-box.
In fact, most of the combined arms range trips with our platoon embedded with an infantry company led to us hardly firing a main gun round at all.
And that first main gun shot caused our infantry support to "rescue" us from the exploding tank.
It was a night op and they'd never been around us firing before, so when we sent the HEAT round downrange after a "BMP" they thought the muzzle blast was something else....
I was confused to be lifted into the air by my straps and being assured by the grunts that I was "OK" and "help was coming"!
My TC was more combative about being rescued.
It's way funnier now that it was at the time.
Fair enough, but M-1s were getting longer range kills. Stupid-long range, like even beyond the shoolyard range tables. Those DU warshots turned out to be hella hyper-accurate. Iraqi tanks were getting blowed dafuck up in daylight up before they could even see the oncoming Abrams platoons.
ReplyDeleteAnd as noted, at night, the smart ones in Saddam's cannon fodder legions learned to turn everything off, and try to thermally blend with the desert, or else their thermal signatures made them go all explodey in a hurry.
Which, IIRC, was why the only Abrams mobility or mission kills were from Iraqi tanks playing possum stone-cold, hand-cranking turrets, and shooting the M-1s from behind after they'd been overlooked and bypassed.
And then got killed anyways, by the victim tank's wingman.
Armored combat has always been harsh.
Hey Angus;
ReplyDeleteI ran across that stat when I was doing research for my "Red Storm Rising" posts I did a few years ago on my blog. And I was stunned. But you may be correct about there be more Bradleys than Abrams so statistically they got more Tank kills along with the BMP's ....and BTR....And BRDM....well you get it, LOL. I never knew how many Bradleys vs Abrams there were in Country....but the TOW's were effective. I remember when we were pulled back, I saw a lot of Bradleys going back on transporters and I could see their guiding wires hanging from the baskets..I thought that was strange but it is what I saw.
Bradley's got way more kills. Part of it was they figured out that they could rush up beside an Iraqi tank and depress the gun to shoot down into the back deck of the tank. Boom.
ReplyDeleteThere were confirmed stories of Bradley's on scout missions deciding they didn't need to wait for the big boys when they find Iraqi tanks.
Therefore