Bfn42 said:
I apologize for my lack of knowledge in this area, but what consequentlycuased the fraticides? m1 and another m1 or m1 and a chally 2?
edit: Nevermind i remember....it was when the abrams had an EAPU fire...then a thermite grenade, 1 sabot rd, and two mavs right?
there was no fratricide.
the iraqis managed to get an RPG into the rear of the tank - which is acknowledged as the most vulnerable area of attack. they also put a second RPG into the APU which caused a fuel fire that was assisted also by the crews external stowage in the racks.
because the fuel leakage couldn't be stopped by the halon extringuishers the commander of the column was worried about progress being held up and the rest of the column being made vulnerble to further attacks. so he ordered the tank to be destroyed and then abandoned for later recovery. policy up until then was not to leave any tanks in the field due to sensitive equipment issues etc, so he ordered its destruction byt local forces. they tried an assisted thermite destruction which failed, they then had one of their own tanks launch a 120mm round into the turret at the APU mounting point. That also failed, they then ordered an air strike which launched a pair of mavericks . The tank thus appears intact externally, but was completely destroyed internally.
So, there was no fratricide. There have been fratricide events, but not on this platform.
Its interesting to note that after the loss of this tank, that the policy was to make sure that crews did not stow their personal belongings on the external racks (this was during the actual run into bagdhad). all personal belongings were brought up by support units after the battle run.
thats because:
- personal items added to fire - although not contributing to platform failure they obscured the view of close assets
- they didn't want anything to assist in an APU fire.
- although they assisted in buffering RPG attacks, the gain was minimal