The entire purpose of the British moving to, and keeping the bag charge ammunition, has been to reduce, and even eliminate the possibility of ammunition fires.
The Bag charge its self is not a Pressure vessel, meaning it physically can not explode unless it is in the breach of the gun, sealed in by the projectile, and breach block., it can BURN yes, but is not going to do a turret toss like a T-72 or other vehicle.
If anything a Challenger getting hit in the ammo rack should be more like a Abrams or Leopard being struck in the Turret Bustle and the Blow out panels working.
it should not be a immediate death to the vehicle. Especially since the ammo racks them selves are wet stowage. the Bag charges being surrounded in a Glycerin mixture designed to put out any fires if the ammo rack is breached.
The 1st complete loss of a Challenger 2 was due to the ammunition exploding, bag charges also blew and engaged emergency turret ejection systems on Chieftains in the Iran-Iraq war.
The wet stowage is to slow the burn process enough to give the crew a chance to escape if the worst should happen.
That burn out was due to the internals of the vehicle being hit by a HESH shell, directly to a open hatch, and the tank burned for almost a HOUR before the Ammunition cooked off.
There is a also the Castlemilk incident, a case of a bag charge detonating in the turret of a challenger killing two of its crew during training, but not causing any other bag charges to detonate.
I think I read the file for that, one of the safety pins was misplaced before firing and caused the whole to turret to be vented with hot fumes from a misfire. At least as I recall, it was a year since I read it. But I clearly remember it saying that everything though charred was still intact. Including the charges in question. Most of the damage was from the charge that was primed in the barrel already.
The fact yall REFUSE to do any proper research into WHY the British use that type of propellent is insane.
You claim accuracy in how you model vehicles, yet don’t understand the BASIC concepts of why countries make choices when it comes to things like this.
The British did EXTENSIVE testing in the 1950s and 60s trying to determine if the Bag Charge ammunition was truly worth the changeover from the previously used Brass case ammunition in things like the Centurion and Conqueror , and in EVERY Test, they found the Bag Charge’s, That while resulting in less powerful guns with current technology, were upwards of 80% less likely to explode upon the Tank being penetrated. and that was before they added the Glycol mixture wet storage around the ammo boxes that the production Chieftain’s had.
Challengers have explosive sabot shells, and charges littered everywhere that basically always explode when hit yet charges in russian autoloaders are a complete dice roll whether they will do anything or just eat all your spalling.
I despise playing challengers on the constant spam of city maps.
I’m not sure where you got the idea that bagged charges are “safe”. The UK considered them quite vunerable into CR2 development which is why they stowed them all below the turret in wet stowage, and then when those proved to be not effective, armoured bins.
You may want to re-read that paragraph again, they are not implying “bag charges are vulnerable” they are implying that if they went for a “turrent blowout design” like Leopards/Abrams the probability of them being struck would lead them to catching fire and causing other parts of the tank to be damaged.
The fact your blatantly ignoring the “stow ammunition in the turret which increases the probability that a direct hit will destory the tank” is mind blowing me. Challys design has and will always be “Hulldown” thats why the turret was and still is designed to house only the “1 stage ammo” i.e. inert rounds, this lead to situations in which a CH2 by design is substantially less vulnerable to being struck and KIA. Hence Abrams/Leopards adopted blowout panels in the turret.
Bag charges are still by design (there chemical composition) should not “explode” they should burn, maybe read up on the propellant before hand. they got placed into wet stowage/armoured bins because this lead to higher survivability “in the event of a fire” when a bag is struck.
how WT has it modelled is just wrong period. it should be closer to what the BVM has in terms of “explosion rate” when ammo is struck but I would not mind if they instead added “higher chance for fires” because this is more accurate, but they shouldnt just “explode” when struck, thats not how the propellant functions when struck, its the same reason “fuel tanks catch fire when struck” is a total load of bull and ignorant of chemical/kinetic reactions that take place
…Yes. I am not suggesting they are more vulnerable than other charges. I am challenging the notion in this thread that bagged charges are somehow “safe”.
