Brake tanks

[Luke Gu]

[Kernow]

Looks like a Leopard 3 to me, great breaking, similar to a Challenger 2.

[Luke Gu]

LeKeLaiEr（Leclerc ） tank，weight：53 tons。

[Big K]

its a French Leclerc tank, isnt it?

[Luke Gu]

its a French Leclerc tank, isnt it?

It seems my translation make mistakes again。

[Big K]

It seems my translation make mistakes again。

:) no problem mate.

[RustyBattleship]

I noticed in the first picture he is running a STOP sign.

I've seen an M-41 do that one time, but not as a test but as for real. We were in a parade and I was driving a Jeep ahead of the tanks. As we made a right turn onto the next street, I saw an elderly couple with a couple of grocery bags getting in their car (parked curbside). As I went by him I heard him start his engine. I looked back and sure enough this old geezer pulled out into the street and turned left front of an M-41 tank making its right turn.

It went nose down also (thank you whomever you are that designed torsion bar suspension).

The old guy stopped also, of course and after catching his breath he moved on to get around the tank with his wife chewing him out royaly.

He must have had either a bad case of glaucoma (tunnel vision) or was completely oblivious to anything else going on around him. Regardless if the stop light was Green, you just can't miss a tank coming your way.

[Big K]

....you just can't miss a tank coming your way.

thats a good story Sir.

but fear factor against enemy infantry is also counted and wanted when designing a tank, was it not?

[RustyBattleship]

thats a good story Sir.

but fear factor against enemy infantry is also counted and wanted when designing a tank, was it not?

That is true, but I think you are missing the point of my post. This elderly man was not our enemy and we had no intention of putting a fear factor in anyone. We were in a Parade for a celebratory day.

What I was trying to point out that it was this old man with probably bad eyesight or stubborness (this is MY corner I'm going to turn at) and did not see a 25 ton tank turning in his lane.

That tank nosed over just like the one in the above photos. Because our tanks also have rubber track pads in each shoe for street travel, it skidded a bit and put up a little bit of smoke. If we weren't at slow Parade speed, that guy would have dearly paid for his inattentiveness.

[RustyBattleship]

I don't recall if I posted these old pictures before or not. I think I did. But this is what can happen when a woman driver decided to go around the road guides because the light was green and she didn't want to stop for some soldier boys in the road. The Bulldog was probably doing 25 to 30 mph at the time as they were in convoy to a fueling station.

The woman driver didn't get a scratch and kept on moving but was caught later by one of the motorcycle deputies escorting the convoy (so I was told a couple of years later). Hope she had real good insurance.

Two years later that same tank was taken up to Camp Roberts for training and pancaked an MP-Jeep.

She was BORN TO CRUSH.

[Big K]

Sir,

maybe that old mad was saying:

eh 25 tonnes? you call it a tank??? dont come to me under 50

is there a special gear for parades?

tanks Sir, , love them and their concept.

[RustyBattleship]

Sir,

maybe that old mad was saying:

eh 25 tonnes? you call it a tank??? dont come to me under 50

is there a special gear for parades?

tanks Sir, , love them and their concept.

No special gear set up for the tanks I have driven. They all used automatic transmissions and you just put it in drive and used foot pressure on the accelerator.

There was a gear setting for Neutral Steer where one track goes forward and one track backwards so it pivots in one place. The idea was so it could pivot around a corner on very narrow dirt roads or even "dig" a depression into sand or gravel to get a little more "hull down" sillouette.

We only used Neutral Steer once on concrete getting lined up for a Memorial Day parade in Torrance. We needed to pull across the intersection and park our tanks single file onto the divider islands in the middle of the street (so other parade units assigned to be behind us could get by). The first tank had plenty of room but we didn't. We had no intercom and my driver caught the concrete curb of the curved end of the safety island with the right track. I'm scrambling over the turret to whack him on the head to stop (M 41s were VERY noisy tanks and all the driver can hear are six opposable cylinders in the Continental Engine whining away under their super charger). We tore out the end of the safety island and sort of bent over a no parking sign.

The worst part is that my entire family was about half a block down watching the whole thing.

[Kernow]

Must be an early version of the Lerlerc, few things missing from it. Oh by the way RB, the Leclerc like Challenger 2 has Hydropnuematic suspension, not Torsion Bar, far more comfortable than Torsion Bar, and less like to snap.

[Kernow]

The stories I could tell about my time on Tanks.

[RustyBattleship]

Must be an early version of the Lerlerc, few things missing from it. Oh by the way RB, the Leclerc like Challenger 2 has Hydropnuematic suspension, not Torsion Bar, far more comfortable than Torsion Bar, and less like to snap.

I know. I know. Losing a front road wheel was almost common place. But rather than calling a tank retriever out, we would merely short track it and drive it back to depot.

Slowly.

Hydropnuematic suspensions didn't come out until some years past my time.