Seminarski o tenkovima

7/28/2019 Seminarski o tenkovima

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/seminarski-o-tenkovima 1/10

Faculty if Engineering in Kragujevac

Seminar paper

“Evolution of Tanks”

Student: Professor:

Andrija Jestrovic, 63/2011 Sandra Stefanovic



Content:

The Birth of the Tank………………………….……3

World War 2………………………………………...4

Cold War……………………………………………6

Modern Tanks………………………………………9

Literature…………………………………………..10

2



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.

3



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.

4



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.

5



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

6



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

7



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.

8



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

9



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.

10

Seminarski o tenkovima

Documents

Transcript of Seminarski o tenkovima