Anonymous said in comments to an earlier post.
The vehicle commander and driver for the matter do not need to ride open hatch with their heads exposed. Button up and use vision blocks and weapon sights to view and navigate.
That sounds great in theory, but seldom works in practice. While it is true that the driver of an M1 series is often buttoned up, the vehicle commander wants his head out of the tank for more complete vision. Vision blocks limit your awareness considerably, up to about 60%. A tank commander loses over half of his situational awareness when he closes the hatch.
I freely admit that I never took a tank into combat, but I trained in them extensively for 25 years as an Armor and Cavalry officer. I never wanted to be "buttoned-up" and did so only when required by the training scenario. And, in training and maneuver, I wanted my loader's had outside and on a swivel as an additional set of eyes.
The commander needs to have his head out to see what is going on.
A single rifleman would have to be suicidal to take on a tank in a fair fight. However, we never want to be in a fair fight. Sneak and peek, find a tank or APC in a waiting area. Fire one good shot, and boogie out of the area. The bad guys will return fire on the area, so you need to be gone pretty quick.
If you get in a fair fight, you are doing it wrong.
2 comments:
Being buttoned up would have to be scary due to the limited range of vision... Period!
Exactly. And if they are buttoned up, you can sneak close and use any or all of several attacks, from putting a crowbar in the tracks for a mobility kill to a Molotov cocktail on the engine intake for complete destruction.
And don't forget that a good shooter can hit vision blocks and crack into unusability.
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