Soviet tank crew survival.

[Weeble]

Marcello said:

Since it is not a massive penetration event the crew may have some chances of bailing out before the tank becomes a rather unpleasant place to be.

Surely recent events in Basra have shown that even Molotov cocktails can cause a crew to bail out of an AFV, despite dire peril outside.

As Mobhack said several pages ago, a tank is likely to get a second or third hit to ensure a kill. I know I do this in WinSPMBT if I have the shots, ammo etc. An immobilised tank could still shoot at YOU, a 'killed' one can't.

Thus all of this argument becomes redundant as the crew are going to abandon into a hostile battlefield anyway.

That M1A1 crew in Iraq were very lucky, see:

http://www.strategypage.com/gallery/articles/solved.asp

Weeble

[kevineduguay1]

Weeble,

Even with the Pen that tank stll drove away. I am impressed with that RPG though!

Neet site!

[Marcello]

"Even with the Pen that tank stll drove away."

From the accounts of the accidents it seems that tank was evacuated and recovered later (and it was looted in the meantime).It did not drive away from the scene, although maybe it could have done it and it was decided not to do so for safety reasons.
Without special ballistic skirt the side hull, with the exception of the area around the driver which is protected by fuel cells, is not better protected than on the majority of the tanks.A plate of RHA in the 8cm range + side skirts is a pretty common arrangement.From the calculations I have seen and the opinions of some tankers I have read it might not be enough to stop a plain vanilla RPG-7 if it hits head on.Neverthless that sort of calculations require detailed informations on the specific warhead configuration and some additional knowledge I do not possess.

[JaM]

Look at this discussion on Tanknet: http://63.99.108.76/forums/index.php?showtopic=12348