Does anyone else find it weird that the first stage ammo rack is in the hull?
It just doesn’t make any sense. The T34’s and T44’s have rear turret first stage ammo, so why don’t the T54’s and up? Why would the loader put ammo from behind the gun back into the hull? How would the loader even access the hull stowage if the gun was anything but in a forward position?
This is also the case for other nations that have T54/55 tanks or derivatives like the Tirans and ZTZ’s.
I’ve tried looking for any information on ammo stowage on the T54/55 tanks but cant really find anything about it, other than a video by SABOT Videos showing the fighting compartment.
Nah, I don’t think it is wrong. It’s there bc it’s honestly probably easier for the loader to reload rounds and it has extra protection there, with fuel tanks and frontal armor compared to rear turret armor on other tanks.
However I would like to be able to select were each piece of ammo goes instead of how it is now
The first stage ammo rack in reality would be the one at the rear of the turret, since it is the ammunition that is closest to the magazine and that rotates in the turret with it, then the other ammo racks would be used up depending on the position the turret was in while firing, since if the T-55 has the turret rotated completely to the right, the magazine has no way of reloading the weapon quickly.
The moment the turret turns the loader has to crawl underneath to reach the ammo, at best it will take him a bit longer to load, at worst he might accidentally get crushed to death. Even in a perfect scenario he would be lifting the rounds UP to the breach as opposed to bringing the rounds DOWN off the wall, now that’s what I call back breaking work.
Protection-wise it is safer in the hull, but when everything is shooting HEAT, APDS and early APFSDS, the first person to shoot will usually always win the engagement.
I do like the idea of manually setting where ammo is placed, being able to fix tanks that are normally death traps. I think I saw a post about it somewhere.
So far I’ve found three bug reports from two years ago that has either been ignored, been closed for lack of sources or is closed because it’s intended because apparently it’s a common thing for USSR and China to only use the front rack.
