A while back I found this picture from a book that described different rounds capable of being used by the L11 on Chieftains and Challenger 1s.
I believe this is from the book “The Chieftain Tank” by Simon Dunstan.
It has a HEAT round that I can’t find very much information about, and I would like to know if there is information about it anywhere.
It doesn’t have a name, being described as just “HEAT shell.” And I also found some people online saying that it was developed to fulfill an Iranian contract, and after being revealed by RARDE it was displayed at BAEE sometime in the seventies and at RMCS in 1979. Unfortunately that is about all I was able to find when I looked into it, with no performance tables and/or records of this round. If there is any more information about this round I would like to see it.
Because HEAT at that BR is unusable?
British and some swedish tanks are the only ones having stock darts, all other nations will suffer with stock HEAT agains composita and/or ERA.
Late reply but they only developed a HEAT round as it was a requirement of the 1975 Tripartite Gun Trials which was really the competition for what gun would be selected as the main gun of the upcoming Abrams MBT. Originally developing a HEAT round was discussed in 1964 but rejected.
The reason XM-1 has a 105mm but space for a 120mm is because the armament was still under consideration and the improved 120mm L11 a main competitor. The others being of course the FRG German 120mm smoothbore that became the Rh120, but also a German 105mm Smoothbore, two kinds of British 110mm Gun and the older L7/M68 105s. In the end the Americans decided to use the M68 for another 10 years, postponing the selection. This is mostly based off FMBT part 4 video from armoured archives but I’ve seen some of the US documents too, they’re publicly available online.
And as for the HEAT round itself, it apparently wasn’t as good as the German competition.
