it's all fun and games until...

[squirl033]

went over to the Flying Heritage Collection museum today to check out their "Tankfest" event.. mostly stuff i'd seen before, so not that interesting, but this year they had an M1A1 Abrams tank, which i'd not seen up close before. the thing is huge! they were driving it around as part of their demonstration, having a jolly good time spewing gravel and kicking up dust, until the left drive sprocket threw the track... apparently the track tension wasn't properly maintained, the track was just a bit loose, and during a sharp left turn, it slid far enough off the sprocket to pretty much destroy the rear section of skirt armor, and they had to "break the track" - remove link pins and separate the track - in order to reposition it back over the sprocket properly. they'd been working on it for over an hour and a half when i left, and still hadn't got it fixed... amazing how little it takes to disable this 68-ton behemoth! i guess they'll report this to the CO as "unscheduled field maintenance training"!

here you can see the rear section of skirt armor has already been broken and is "flapping in the wind" so to speak...made a horrible racket! the tank itself is amazingly quiet... the turbine engine makes a whine, not a roar, and it was quite easy to hear the skirt plate scraping and rattling against the track...

you can see the sprocket disengaged from the track. they've managed to remove the damaged skirt section.

they had to remove the front section of the skirt armor as well. you can see the track, separated and hanging loose off the sprocket... not sure what it takes to reposition and reconnect it, but i'm sure it isn't easy!

 

[Bill Anderson]

You hope they can repair it faster in actual combat.

 

[BobH]

Nice shots! I thought about going to that event, but had something else going on. I havn't seen the new tank area yet, looks like a nice playground.

As for in battle repairs, yes, they can probably fix them faster. They're also less likely to have the problem since they're run and maintained regularly. When stuff is only used on occasion, problems like this happen more often, as stuff gets rusty, then loosens up etc.