Driving a tank

[nc43bsa]

While watching a WWII program, I wondered how a tank is driven.

Does a WWII-era tank have pedals like a truck?  Is it steered with a steering wheel, or with levers like a BobCat?

I have never stuck my head inside a tank, so I know nothing about them.

[Old Jock]

Depends on the tank

Most I think used levers, but some models of the Tiger actually had a steering wheel.

I've not read an awful lot on them but from what I've gleaned so far there was a lot of technology involved in getting them to steer with different ratios etc: It was often a matter of life and death on getting the vehicle to maneuver quickly

[johnr]

the ones I've looked in steered with levers like a bull dozer.

[rboe]

Warning: May be a huge time sink.

http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/21/

[mtiberio]

> Driving a tank

is a lot like driving a sidecar

[Sasquatch Jim]

  Early tanks were steered with levers like early bulldozers.  The levers controlled individual clutches for the tracks.
  Later on this was changed to a steering yoke that looked like and aircraft might have.  The 113 personnel carrier still used the lever
 That by that time were called lateral bars but did not control clutches.  By the fifties  nearly all tanks and P. C.s used hydrostatic drive
 systems which made them much simpler to operate.
 When I began driving M-60s in 1962, from straight ahead to full right turn only required that you turn the yoke about a third of a turn to the right.  The more you turned the slower the right track went until at full right the right track stopped while the left kept driving.
  If you needed to turn really sharp you put the shift lever into neutral and put the yoke at full right.  This caused the let track to power forward while the right track powered in reverse.  The tank doing this could turn a full 360 degrees in it's own length.
 Left turns were just the opposite.  It was a lot of fun at speed but required delicacy and skill on the part of the driver.
 I found that on a gravel road at 35 MPH as I approached a sharp 90 degree turn, I could shift into neutral and floor the accelerator
 while giving a quick twitch of the yoke and the 52 ton monster would respond like a sports car turning sideway and sliding.  As I came to line up with the new road with foot still on the floor I pulled the hydro stick transmission lever back into drive with the yoke now straight ahead.  Full power went to both tracks and it would wheelie off in the new direction scaring the shite out of on lookers and sometimes my own crew.  Driving at speed was even more fun that blowing things up with the main gun or shredding them with machine guns.
  Air cooled twelve cylinder diesel producing more than 750 horsepower at a max of 3200 RPM And enough torque to twist the balls of of god himself.  You could run right over other vehicles.  I remember an incident when a dummy in a car tried to move into our convoy.
 The tank ran over the right side crushing the car as the driver bailed out the left.  The accident read in the line, damage to own vehicle -- none.  Damage to other vehicle,  Tank tread marks on roof of car.  No further description was given, or needed.

[Kiwi_Roy]

Jim, you were a hooligan

The next question, how fast can a tank move?

[Tobit]

Jim, great description!  Here's something off Utoob about the M-60.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJFnDITc5Us

M-60 vs. Mazda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDqt2_3jp34

Tobit

[Sasquatch Jim]

 Ours had governors that held them to 31 MPH but like all GIs we could diddle the governors and easily get 35.  I heard stories of 40 and 45 but did not believe them.  These were the original M-60s.  I don't know about the A-1s, A-2s, A-3s or later upgrades.
 I know that some of the earlier smaller tanks were faster.  There was a small scout PC That was rumored to do 60 before the governors were set at 45.  Several of these flipped over at high speed.  The problem is that a full tracked vehicle is very hard to control at high speed.  A good tank driver was very skilled.  Anyone can drive a tank.  Not everyone can drive one skillfully.
 I have no Idea how fast modern tanks are having not driven one since 1965.  I have heard that great advances in suspension have been made as well as undoubtedly power so that question would be better answered by someone from the first of second Gulf wars.

[rocker59]

Jim, you were a hooligan

The next question, how fast can a tank move?

M1A1:
Road 45 mph (72 km/h) (governed);
Off-road: 30 mph (48 km/h)[6]
 
M1A2:
Road 42 mph (67 km/h) (governed);
Off-road: 25 mph (40 km/h)

[charlie b]

Yep, M60's (A1 and A3 variety) could do about 35mph.  All armored vehicles that I know of these days are automatic transmissions.  Usually the control is a Tbar, pedal for throttle and brake pedal.  Although the M1 has a motorcycle style throttle on the tbar.

M1's are governed to 45mph.  But, when testing the M1's before entry into service they did a test run at Ft Hood.  There is a perimeter road about 100 mi long.  The governers were removed from 5 tanks and they were driven at full speed.  They averaged 55mph for that run.

45mph is about as fast as you want to go with one of them.  The steering gets a bit 'twitchy' at speed and there is a lot of stress on the tracks at those speeds.  When you have a track break you end up with no control on that side.  The braking and power is through the sprocket so with no tracks you just have wheels on bearings.  When it happens at speed it can be really fun or really scary depending on what road you are on.

Not all current track vehicles use t-bars for steering.  The old M113 had two large levers that would brake one track or the other.  A throttle pedal for forward speed.  The M113s could not do a neutral steer (one track forward and the other track back). 

And there are sometypes  that have a steering wheel instead of a tbar.

Some of the older russian tanks still had manual transmissions and full stick control (push both sticks forward to go forward).  I have not been inside a T79 or later so don't know about those.

Jim is correct, sometimes driving one was more fun that shooting.  But, you had to have crew that were ready for any antics.  Pitching fore and aft from a perch 13ft in the air can be really hard on ribs, teeth and head :)

The nice thing about driving the M1 is the position is semi reclined when the hatch is closed.  Makes it a little easier on the back.

[menzies]

Ours had governors that held them to 31 MPH but like all GIs we could diddle the governors and easily get 35.  I heard stories of 40 and 45 but did not believe them.  These were the original M-60s.  I don't know about the A-1s, A-2s, A-3s or later upgrades.
 I know that some of the earlier smaller tanks were faster.  There was a small scout PC That was rumored to do 60 before the governors were set at 45.  Several of these flipped over at high speed.  The problem is that a full tracked vehicle is very hard to control at high speed.  A good tank driver was very skilled.  Anyone can drive a tank.  Not everyone can drive one skillfully.
 I have no Idea how fast modern tanks are having not driven one since 1965.  I have heard that great advances in suspension have been made as well as undoubtedly power so that question would be better answered by someone from the first of second Gulf wars.

I was a tanker in the 3rd Armored Division in Germany in the mid sixties and find this to be just about my same experience. I hated tank gunnery at Graf but could not wait to get to Hohenfels for field problems, we just drove the stew out of those tanks.

[cruzziguzzi]

Had a Berlin Brigade fella lose his mind back in the day - I dunno, Fasching madness, drunk on anti-freeze... who knows? Anyhow, snuffy gets his load on and climbs into an M-60 and commences to hammer that bad bitch up and down what constitutes an auto-bahn in Berlin. Ultimately, he was hovering up below 60 MPH. At one point he rattled the cages of the Commies by looking to be headed for a checkpoint (Charlie?) but fortunately never made it.

Big fears that he was gonna be a low tech version of a Soviet defector in a Mig, there.

When it was all said and done - the single greatest charge against him was the breach of security in the open demonstration of just how fast those sumbitches were with the governors disconnected - as were all of the Brigade's armor - and the fact that it would maintain those speeds and sustain that future inmate's maneuverings without mechanical or track failure.

For years, his exploits were laid out as a warning to the protection of matters, security - even if not marked as "classified".


Todd.

[dibble]

Been in the back of one of these flat out across Wales some claimed 60mph plus, lots of sharp edges inside the back.

[hooah54]

I went thru Mechaninized Infantry Officer Basic and knew it was not for me when we had to drive a POS M113A2 into Victory Pond.  The sterring levers were called "laterals" on those as previously pointed out.  Cool memories...remember having to roll into the middle of the road and let the tank go over us and using the handset on the rear of the tank to give instructions for fire.  Assignment was changed mid course and never seen the inside of armored beasts again.  Had epic arguments with tankers over who led ...Airborne!

[charlie b]

Airborne Tanker!  Glad there aren't any more of those :)

[oldbike54]

Airborne Tanker!  Glad there aren't any more of those :)

 Yeah , that would leave a big hole in the ground 

  Dusty

[Rotten Ralph]

Plenty of tanked airborne however!

[charlie b]

For a while the 82nd had a battalion of Sheridan tanks.  Aluminum armor, short 152mm main gun that could also fire a guided missile.  It could be dropped by parachute, or, LAPES (more common).

A classmate decided that when dropped, the troops were landing too far from the tanks.  So, being the unit commander he thought it would be better to put the crew in the tank and then drop it.  Keep in mind that even with the big cargo parachutes (I think 3 of them) they also stacked up cardboard blocks under the thing cause it still landed hard.  Needless to say he and his gunner ended up with compressed spines (they are in sitting position).  Driver was relatively uninjured (slightly reclined sitting).  Loader broke a leg (standing position).  End of experiment.  Pretty soon the airborne tank was retired.  Too little armor, too much recoil, spotty electronics.

[dibble]

The forum has 231 pages of members with 50 members per page, my impression is about 1/3 have some military experience.

I reckon we could field a Brigade.

Be easy to decide on what UAV to buy and if we needed any 3 wheel drive tractors we'd be fine, need to decide what oil to use of course....

[oldbike54]

The forum has 231 pages of members with 50 members per page, my impression is about 1/3 have some military experience.

I reckon we could field a Brigade.

Be easy to decide on what UAV to buy and if we needed any 3 wheel drive tractors we'd be fine, need to decide what oil to use of course....

 Yeah , but we are gonna need daily naps , kinda hard to mount a fighting force that needs a siesta 

  Dusty

[Sasquatch Jim]

  Yea, Graphenwhore, Tennon Low, Hohen Frick, and a few other playgrounds in Krautland.  Tables 6,7, and eight were live firing courses where a tank drove down a trail for a few miles shooting at targets along the way.  At night a second tank drove to supply searchlight illumination of targets.  The searchlight tank had a different trail that took us from firing position to position to illuminate a target when the firing tank became exposed to it.  This meant the searchlight tank drove further along a different trail and had to go faster to keep the pace.  It was basically full tilt boogie from one position to another then power stop and light up a target for the other tank to shoot at then lights out and full speed to the next.  This was always done in blackout drive, no headlights.  I was so often requested for driver duty that sometimes I was doing it for other outfits to do their shooting.  It was most often done in winter with snow and ice on the ground.  I loved it!  On one of my TAD sessions I was searchlight driver for about a month or so.  The officer in charge of this detail was a young second looie fresh from West point.  When I learned he was to be my TC (tank commander) I decided
 to scare the crap out of him.  We went up on line and as the firing tank began I heard his voice in my headphones say driver move out.
 I floored it and drove like a maniac over the frozen ice and snow until he said , driver stop.  I put both feet on the brake and jambed it hard.  The tank rocked forward and stopped.  He lit up the target for the other tank to shoot at.  I knew the trail well and when he said ," move out ", I again floored it and ran full tilt to the next position.  At the completion of the course, I ran full speed back to the starting line a mile or two away and lined up for the next tank.  After escorting 3 tanks through the exercise we took a coffee break for about ten minutes. Lt. Katz sat down next to me and I expected a lecture about my wild driving.  Not so, He just said, " It's about time I found someone who could drive the way I want it".  I knew we were going to get along just fine.  Yes, I was a hooligan but I was a driver!  On cold icy ground my tank was faster than a jeep because I had more control.

[Tobit]

Airborne Tanker!  Glad there aren't any more of those :)

Now you're talking Republic P-47 Thunderbolt! 



Tobit

[charlie b]

Jim,

Good one.  Yep, we LT's liked good drivers :)  I had one like you.  We got along great.  My next driver was a slug.  I think he got blamed by his previous TC for everything that broke so he had an egg under his foot.

When we still had the old IR sights being on searchlight was a hazardous duty job.  The IR sights just kinda showed a green blob at the end of the beam where the target was.  To shoot you found the beam and then traversed til you saw the blob, then fired.  Of course, at the other end of that beam was another green blob, the searchlight!  Yep, I've seen two shot up by machine gun fire when the safety officer did not pay attention to which way the guns were pointed  :)

I liked it better when we got the thermal sights  :)

[hooah54]

I have never heard of anyone "dropping" inside the equipment.  Most of the time it was delivered by LAPES (low altitude parachute extraction system)  Even the Sheridan was too heavy for a heavy drop.  I know that as a DZSO that no where did we ever allow the personnel drops be near by distance or time to heavy drops. 

[charlie b]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50cpPAVoxJQ

[pyoungbl]

In about 1975 I visited my former Infantry Company CO when he was the then Brigade XO in the 82nd.  Frank was doing an investigation (basically seeing what went wrong and who was to blame) into an air drop of a Sheridan at Ft.Bragg.  On the drop the tank got caught as it hit the end of the ramp and was stuck there.  This heavy load was well aft of the plane's CG and the plane was about to drop out of the sky.  Somehow the crew got the Sheridan out of the bird but it fell like a rock and was a total loss on the ground.  In the end, the aircraft commander was praised for saving the plane and its crew.

[Rough Edge racing]

 67-68 I was at Ft Carson and hauled thanks with the M123 tractor and M15 trailer for the 557th transportation co. I hauled M60's on the truck driving on public roads from Colorado springs to Denver or  south to La Junta I think it was called....On the post I also hauled M88 retrievers when they broke down...
 With 300 HP gas V-8 things moved slowly up hill,real slow and sometimes in compound low gear at about 3 mph......then over the top and shift the two gearboxes  to maybe a top speed on 45 on level ground and put the rig in neutral to roll down hill at 65 mph.....That's 120,000 gross lbs....driven by a 20 year old punk ......Only in the military do you get to do some crazy shit...

[charlie b]

Only in the military do you get to do some crazy shit...

And get paid to do it!

A retired AF pilot and I were sitting one day discussing our wilder times.  Got to talking about how much uncle sam paid for us to have fun.  He figured out that each training mission he did in the FB-111 cost about $250,000.

Of course, that seems really cheap when someone is shooting at you ;)

[Rough Edge racing]

And get paid to do it!

A retired AF pilot and I were sitting one day discussing our wilder times.  Got to talking about how much uncle sam paid for us to have fun.  He figured out that each training mission he did in the FB-111 cost about $250,000.

Of course, that seems really cheap when someone is shooting at you ;)

 I was clearing 66 bucks a month as an E4 back then.I was trained after basic as a driver for up to 2-1/2 ton. At Ft Carson I actively pursued getting licensed on every wheel vehicle  including the transportation motor pool. I really didn't care for the military at all  despite having good duty assignments like driving a bus with newly arrived officers on a tour of the Norad? underground facility in the Cheyenne Mountains. Had to stop the bus several times while security checked out us and the entire bus  using dogs also.. Drove the full size bus right into the mountain past enormous blast doors for about half a mile. Then parked in a huge cavern with about 6 buildings on springs to deal with the shake from a thermonuclear explosion on the surface... Just like James Bond stuff...I had to stay there while the tour continued for those with the proper security clearances..