As a former M1A1 armor crewman, I suggest that the author do a little more research. I find it ridiculous and offensive that this guy has made money off of a subject on which he’s clearly ignorant.
This book has some nice images, photos and good descriptions. Unfortunately I noticed some very bad mistakes.
In the Sheridan tank section it describes an M-60 tank as a M-551 Sheridan (p. 217). Hard to understand hence it is so easily identifiable. However the biggest error I found was in the M-1A1 tank section. It shows a photograph of the M-1A1 interior with a full detailed description. Well the problem is that is the interior of an M-109 SP howitzer which is completely different from a M-1A1 Abrams (p. 265). How can a well researched book describe M-1 tank components that don’t exist in the photograph? It goes on to describe a “gunners controls”, “auxiliary sight” and “turret basket” all which the image does not have. The M-109 does not have gunner controls or auxiliary sight as described in the image. Those are azimuth and quadrant sight controls. Also the M-109 does not have a turret basket nor is shown in the image. I find myself at a loss why such a well researched book has this mayor error. I really hope that the author did not intend to purposely deceive the readers. If a M-1’s interior image was not available, I think it would be better not to add an image of another vehicle and called something else.
BTW I have been a crew member of both vehicles in the U.S. Army.
M-1A1 tank crewman 1994- 2002 and M-109A4 Self Propelled Howitzer 2002-2005
For starters two Bradley Fighting Vehicle (BFV) on the cover (NOT TANKS), this book is filled with errors and will make you sound like a fool when you try to sound cool about your “Tank” knowledge with people, especially those who have lived in these 70 ton beasts, and now will be pointing and laughing at you.
Lots of cool diagrams, but full of major errors. I won’t repeat what other reviewers have already written. Today I was reading the section on the IS-3. The 3 drawings on pages 102-103 are NOT of an IS-3, but an IS-2. The IS-3 has a distinct “upside-down bowl” shaped turret, and has a “piked” nose.
This book misinforms newer readers, and makes semi-knowledgeable readers mad. I suggest you DON’T buy it.
I am afraid that I am very dissapointed with this book. A lot of the material is from the publishers other books and the drawings are not of a high calibre. Some of the text and photographs are new but don’t really add anything to ones knowledge of tanks. It is also a very big/large and heavy book. Too big to justify its place on my shelves, to heavy to sell on Amazon or, to carry to the charity shop. I don’t really know what to do with it!
these books are intended for people who have no idea about tanks, but they are still bad because they have a lot of errors that can lead to further misinformation.
I’m curious. I don’t know if you can even answer this, so apologies for asking if you can’t,. But in your opinion, does the bug report that was made even have a chance to get the devs to change something about the SEPv2 armor?
Genuinly a question out of curiousity for your opinion.
I think DU is definitely in SEP/SEP V2, but uncertain in M1A2.
Problem is that there is no solid source for what protection values they have.
Steven J. Zaloga mentions in his book:
There is no unclassified data on M1A1 protective levels from US official sources. The data below for the M1A1 is based on Soviet estimates. No data has been released on the amount of additional protection offered by the M1A1 Heavy Armor upgrade, so the data here should be regarded as estimated.
In that case can’t this be passed as a suggestion instead of a historical report? We know the hulls have been changed over time, the report itself gives that information and there are even images of several SEP variants carrying simulated weight on the hull, we just don’t know the amount of armor because for obvious reasons it’s classified.
Even through logic itself we can assume that they wouldn’t have increased the mass of the hull if it did not improve the armor capability.
The current M1A2+ Series performance is absolutely abysmal, there’s no way on earth that the internal statistics of the M1A2 SEP are anything nearly as good or better as those of the T-80BVM. Other nations got over 600mm of protection on the hull, while the M1A2s can be broken through by a Mango.
In terms of balance this decision does not make any sense and in terms of incentives it demotivates the entire US player base to grinding for a sidegrade of the M1A2 SEP (actually a downgrade for those who don’t like using the TUSK package).
If the M1A2 SEPs aren’t fixed now they will never be fixed, it will be the same story with the M1A2 SEP V3, and considering how Gaijin views Russian appliqué armor as the peak of modern protection I doubt the M829A3 or A4 would change anything in the future.
We also know that the current armor values are based off the Swedish export package which was worse than the DU package. It’s kinda crazy to think that sepv1 and sepv2 are using some export package that was worse in protection and created before the two tanks ever existed.
honestly a properly modeled/fixed 2A7V with DM53, Strv 122B+, BVM/90M with 3BM59 and a SEPv2 with 600-650mm vs KE on the LFP and either M829A3 OR spall liner would make a great set of tanks for 12.0 or 12.3.
2A7V and 122B+ would be the all rounders, T-90M would be the best armored MBT with good survivability and the SEPv2 would have the best firepower with still respectable armor that can’t just be lolpenned by a third person shot.
I just took a random value. I personally doubt that is the values for a non-DU hull armor LFP, but of course there is no way for me to know this for sure.
I just took the value for the LFP that it currently has (~400mm vs KE) and applied the ~50% protection increase that DU seems to give in game on the turret cheeks of the M1A1 HC compared to the normal M1A1.
I found a UK document in the National Archives which implies that DU armour was “fielded” in the M1A1 version. Other interesting information:
The original version of DU armour (that was fielded on the M1A1) offered the best KE protection of any available armour system at the time, but the CE protection was considered “inadequate”
German D Type armour offered better CE mass efficiency of any other armour system, but KE efficiency was equal to Chobham armour
The Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) helped the US develop an improved version DU armour which demonstrated comparable CE mass efficiency to that of Germany D Type armour.
The document also included detailed armour diagrams / performance breakdowns for the M1 Abrams, which the US had provided to the UK. Unfortunately they were marked as “special access” and were not included in the version of the document available to view at the archives.
Summaries of the information are available in other documents though. For example the M1A1 turret front is stated to be 460 mm KE / 700 mm CE in this document. This also appears to demonstrate the poor CE efficiency of the original DU armour. The Abrams has better KE protection than the Leopard 2, but worse CE protection.
Fair enough. I thought people were arguing about whether DU was used at all (as it is not listed as part of the turret armour composition in X-ray view).
