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Ukrainians Hotwire WWII Tank


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"Truth is the first victim of war" (or something like that)

And the second victim is the local WW2 museum it seems.

stg44somalia.jpg

Somalia -1990s. Looks like there is not a single post-1945 weapon present. Also note the horrible trigger discipline of the girl/boy in the front!

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Saferight,

That sawtooth shadow is the result of the lighting in that pic. The light's arriving from well below, so it's "seeing" the web between the holes, which is the source of the strange sawtooth effect. Were the shot taken horizontally, you'd be seeing something far more normal looking.

Regards,

John Kettler

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akd,

Using an IS-3 in combat as what? Against whom? Is it fully functional (shooting main gun shells), or is it an exceedingly well protected MG nest on treads?

If the main gun works, then what is the tank firing? I thought the HE shell from the 122mm M38 howitzer might be used, but the 122mm D25T fires the OF-471 HE Frag, while the M38 uses the OF-460 and 462 series. No joy there. The M1931/37 122mm gun (A 19) does fire the OF-471 series, but I have no idea whether the ammo is to be had. Judging from the pertinent Wiki, I'd say either Egypt or Syria, and I doubt Assad's feeling generous right now. If you've got more info on this, I'd love to see it.

Regards,

John Kettler

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I doubt the usefulness of that IS-3 as well. If they get its main gun back to work and if they can get some ammunition, they are probably going to use the tank as ultra-high calibre long range sniper rifle in suprise/hit & run attacks, much like the Syrian rebels use their captured tanks. The thing is, due to the governments air superiority and the vast amount of ground based threads for an IS-3 on a modern battlefield, they cant use it in the classical MBT role. The tank is probably going to spend most of its time beeing camouflaged and hiding from the Ukrainian Air Force and/or beeing repaired, much like the tanks of the Syrian opposition who find themeselves in a very similar tactical situation like the Ukrainian seperatists. Oh, and we are not even talking about the difficulty getting spare parts for that thing!

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The thing is, due to the governments air superiority and the vast amount of ground based threads for an IS-3 on a modern battlefield, they cant use it in the classical MBT role.

A single tank cannot take this role. It must be in a entire fully armored and mobile unit for that. If not, it fall into the "infantry support" task.

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SKS is basically a scaled down PTRS, ironic to see them used side by side almost 70 years later...

Yeah. ) Interesting, that Strelkov, Donbass militia commander, requested PTRD rifles, as they are more reliable than PTRS. As they still use PTRS, there are few PTRDs, if any.

That IS-3 was in action first time yesterday.

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Ow yeah? Is there any info about it's first action on the net? What happened?

They mounted 12,7mm NSV and attacked loyalists, who tried to set a blockpost. Loaylists lost 3 WIA and 3 KIA. Militia claim no losses. Main gun wasn't used.

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How well would that IS-3 stand up against the common rounds for the RPG-7 and the variety of disposable RPGs?

You can compare the armor penetration capabilities of the various RPG-7 rounds listet on Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-7#Specifications ) against the values in this image:

QYbBBqP.png

And if you are good at math you can even calculate how the angle of the armor would affect penetration :).

EDIT:

And here are the armor penetration values for the RPG-29:

750 mm (30 in): RHA (600 mm (24 in) after reactive armor effects)

1,500 mm (59 in): Reinforced concrete or brick

3,700 mm (150 in): Log and earth fortification

Taken from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-29

Looks like an RPG-29 would reliably penetrate against an IS-3 at any angle.

The RPG-22 (400mm vs. RHA), RPG-18 (375mm vs. RHA) and RPG-30 (650mm vs. RHA) would probably also stand a pretty good chance against an IS-3 at most angles, as well as all but the most basic RPG-7 rounds would (PG-7V & VM: 260mm vs. RHA, PG-7VL and PG-7VR both >500mm vs. RHA)

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-22

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-18

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-30

Conclusion:

The IS-3 would seriously profit from beeing upgraded with ERA blocks. Probably some applique armor to prematurely trigger incoming HEAT warheads would help as well, but in the standard configuration, it wont stay alive long on a modern battlefield.

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A .303 in California? But that's an assault rifle. Aren't they (and about everything else) illegal in Brown's Nanny State? (Insert sarcasm here)

Hahha...I live in California and the gun laws are crazy, but most were surprised when Brown vetoed a lot of the gun legislation the Socialist legislature recently tied to pass-that included some assault rifle related bills. Browns father who was also governor was a huge gun enthusiast and Brown himself owns a number of guns. He refuses to say what he owns, but rumors are he has an AR15.

When he was mayor of Oakland he lived in a commune and West Oakland which is not a good area. Being an avid jogger he would run into unsavory people. I'm pretty sure he was packing.

I myself own a Yugo SKS as well as a Saiga. Both fine weapons. I replaced the dust cover on my Saiga with a TWS dogleg cover that has a mounting system. Also added the TWS peep sight.

A lot of gun people in the state, but the problem is the liberal urban areas have the population and they can ram stuff down the rest of the state. That's why you see a movement to break away, but that will probably go nowhere.

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