Re: Tank Gun Autoloaders & Ready Rounds
 

It depends on what you mean by "easily". AFAIK the russian do contemplate loading directly from the racks, because...well if anything else the autoloader can fail and then it would be bad to have the tank unable to shoot. As far as getting to the ammunition, it is somewhat awkaward on a T-72 but still within reach. I would not recommend it in an high intensity battle, but I would tend to suspect that a T-72 would have either been destroyed or managed to overrun enemy tanks before expending all the autoloader ammunition in such situation. If you are just pounding a position at long range or others circumstances where reaction times aren't so critical it is doable.

Re: Tank Gun Autoloaders & Ready Rounds
 

I suspect it has a lot to do with the layout of the ammo storage in the tank.

Manually loaded tanks are generally laid out with crew ammo access in mind. Whereas autoloader ones are laid out with autoloader access to spare ammo in mind.

The only Russian tank I've looked at up close and personal was a T-55 but two things come to mind.
1) Less crew space then US tanks have, thus harder to manually load
2) I bet the autoloader itself is a major hindrance to manual access to ammo storage

Re: Tank Gun Autoloaders & Ready Rounds
 

Not a big issue ;). The xtra round are just here to reduce the logistical tail and the crew take them when they are into a safe area if no ammo truck is available.
One the other hand in modern era combat, a tank using more than 20 rounds without being destroyed or forced to retreat........