PT 76

[mjkerner]

Huh, well, they're showing now. Don't know why they weren't...

[FlatEric999]

Sorry MJ, I don't understand why they're not visible to you    Based on the feedback from Vacilllator and Baneman, maybe you have to be in the UK to see them.. ?

[If anyone more technical than me can advise what the problem is I'd be grateful.  My photos are hosted on Dropbox - I've copied a link to each photo and pasted it into 'Insert image from URL' option under the 'Other Media' drop-down list; I've then replaced the -0 at the end of the Dropbox link with a -1 so the links embed the image rather than taking you to Dropbox.  All advice gratefully received!]

[FlatEric999]

Whoops, posts crossed in the ether - glad they've appeared

[mjkerner]

Me too.  Nice close-ups!

[MikeyD]

The contemporary of PT-76 would be the U.S. M41. A vehicle I know  little about, besides it showing up for a couple scenes in 'Full Metal Jacket'. Max speed a very fast 45 mph (72 kph), weight 25-ish tons. it was like as super-sized Chaffee. A very different sort of beast compared to PT-76

[MikeyD]

[double post]

Edited March 8, 2021 by MikeyD

[MikeyD]

[triple post]

Edited March 8, 2021 by MikeyD

[kch001]

As far as I know, then one of the main reasons why the Danish army maintained the M41 in service throughout the Cold War (albeit heavily modified) on Bornholm island (in the middle of the Baltic) was that it was expected not to meet much armour that was heavier than the PT76 or ASU57/85.  As the PT76 was designed around being able to float and sail quite well, then the a more conventional tank of similar weight was deemed to more than enough. 

[kch001]

If you speak German, then this is a really good video about the PT76

 

[Sequoia]

NM-116 Norwegian Chaffee conversion with 90mm gun still in use in 1979

 

 

 

[nik mond]

There was that one engagement in Vietnam where 2 PT76 faced off against US M48's. (Ben Het). One M48 took a direct hit to the turret killing two crewman. So I guess the 76 gets credit for taking out an M48. But they too were short lived and all PT76 in that battle were destroyed.

[MikeyD]

That was the battle of Ben Het. I vaguely recall reading the Pentagon became alarmed by reports of just how poorly M72 LAW performed in that battle.

[MikeyD]

An update on our friend the PT-76 since the last post. The game continues to be massaged. They've abandoned the rather absurd huge roof hatch  for 'open up' command in favor of the more reasonable (but more rarely photographed) small commander's hatch.

 

 

[John Kettler]

As I've several times noted in the last two decades, regardless of appearances, the PT-76, armed with the same gun as the T-34/76, was a potent tank killer, thanks to a HEAT round designed specifically to defeat the highly advanced steel-glass-steel armor planned for the T95 MBT, which was never produced because the US went the M48 route. The Israelis captured some of these rounds in the Yom Kippur War, but didn't provide any to the US until 1984. The only way the Egyptians could've gotten them was for these  first to be declared obsolete and replaced with something even nastier. That was when live fire tests found that it would frontally pierce the mighty XM-1 which had highly classified siliceous cored armor, the same thing the T95 had. Great was the consternation, and this is why the M1 HA was crash developed and fielded. Worse was to follow, for historically the US static fired HEAT warheads to test penetration. But the US discovered the Russian HEAT rounds, when tested dynamically, could penetrate as much as 40% better than static detonation showed. This was because their HEAT was specifically designed to take advantage of the velocity from the cannon launch. Source for these shockers was Dr. Joseph Backofen (world class HEAT expert and the CIA's SME on HEAT) at the Soviet Threat Technology Conference (U) 1985. This was a SECRET//NOFORN /WNINTEL  (No Foreign,/Warning Intelligence (Sources and Methods) Involved) no notes conference in which a terrified CIA, in the Year of the Spy, brought in its top Soviet weapon experts and told the defense industry threat people how bad things really were. Please understand that because its reports drew on contractor data and other proprietary information (PROPIN), we contractors hardly ever got to see what the CIA knew. During my 11+ years as a Soviet Threat Analyst, the only CIA reporting I saw was at that conference.

What we saw, in topic after topic, was terrifying, and it's a wonder no one died from one horrible shock after another. Not kidding! At least one guy was removed from the auditorium after getting into some sort of health difficulties. To give you some sense of how bad it was, thanks to great memory and specialized memory training, I came back and wrote up the entire conference, topic by topic. The resulting 40-page report turned the Operations Analysis Department manager's face paper white and moth agape. He was my boss's boss there. After reading it straight through and surfacing from that reading visibly traumatized, he decreed that only I, he and his boss were cleared to read it in its entirety, and others in the department were permitted to read only that part directly pertinent to their work--under his direct and constant supervision. Stated simply, in practically every military field, the Soviets had us dead to rights, and that was without factoring in the devastating crypto penetrations resulting from getting the crypto gear from the seizure of the USS PUEBLO and the key cards from the tremendously effective Walker-Whitworth spy ring. In the armor-anti-armor presentation, not only could they penetrate us and we couldn't penetrate them (T-64/T-72/T-80), but every anti-armor weapon in the inventory other than the Hellfire and the Maverick was judged useless frontally. The get well program cost the US billions. As if that wasn't bad enough, by the time we found out about a particular tank, it was often a decade or more before we got to really learn about it. The T-64 was kept in the interior military districts, well away from western eyes, to such effect we didn't see it for 20 years, dubbing it the M1984! 

Am hoping that CM: Cold War reflects these and other grim realities.

Regards,

John Kettler

 

Edited March 31, 2021 by John Kettler

[John Kettler]

MikeyD,

US-trained ARVN tankers and M41s and later with some M48s tore NVA armor apart in several engagements, doing it from ranges so extreme radio intercepts from panicked crews of PT-76s and T-54s indicated they thought they were in antitank minefields! In one of these engagements, the NVA employed Russian-supplied AT-1 SNAPPER ATGMs, well before the AT-3 SAGGER captured the West's terrified attention and led to declaration the tank was dead.

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited March 31, 2021 by John Kettler

[IICptMillerII]

There is so much wrong with the above post. God bless him at least he is consistent and keeps all of us honest. Variety is the spice of life!

Im going to avoid directly quoting anything here because I am already not looking forward to the inevitable gobbledegook word salad response, but I have to point out the idea that the US was unaware of the T-64 is especially hysterical to me. It was a well known tank, and it was not kept in the interior of Russia. In fact, GSFG were entirely supplied with T-62/64/80 tanks throughout the late 70s and 80s. 
 

Ahh but what am I doing? Why bother. 
 

The PT-76 is a real fun light tank to play around with. It’s featured in a very well done scenario by @MOS:96B2P I won’t spoil anything about the scenario, but it’s a good one!

[MikeyD]

By coincidence just today the testers got a fresh Beta build with M60A2's weapons specs downgraded. There had been several urgent 'it performs worse than you assume it did' emails swapped on the topic. Some months back I convinced 'em to include the modern war 'ECM Warfare' feature after I stumbled on a early 80s Pentagon report cataloging in detail the Soviet's robust ECM capabilities at the time.

Edited March 31, 2021 by MikeyD

[John Kettler]

On 3/30/2021 at 8:39 PM, IICptMillerII said:

There is so much wrong with the above post. God bless him at least he is consistent and keeps all of us honest. Variety is the spice of life!

Im going to avoid directly quoting anything here because I am already not looking forward to the inevitable gobbledegook word salad response, but I have to point out the idea that the US was unaware of the T-64 is especially hysterical to me. It was a well known tank, and it was not kept in the interior of Russia. In fact, GSFG were entirely supplied with T-62/64/80 tanks throughout the late 70s and 80s. 
 

Ahh but what am I doing? Why bother. 
 

The PT-76 is a real fun light tank to play around with. It’s featured in a very well done scenario by @MOS:96B2P I won’t spoil anything about the scenario, but it’s a good one!

The CIA report on the T-64B is available at the CIA site's FOIA reading room, and it was quite specific about what we knew and when. The T-64 was NEVER paraded, and I, after a quick glance through the CIA T-64B doc I saw years back (link below), was late by a few years for the T-64B.   According to that CIA report, the first indication the US had of the T-64 was when an agent for the CIA (spy, not US intel type) got his hands on a wargame manual for a pending exercise. In it, were the ratings for the various weapons. The baseline T-62 was rated 1.0, but this previously unheard of tank was rated 1.5. As it happens, though I didn't have access to CIA docs, I did have access to DIA docs. For a long time the T-64 was kept inside the Soviet Union. Suvorov/Rezun, who participated in the 1968 Operation Dneiper extravaganza said it was brought in and was going to be in the exercise, but then the plan was scrapped.  Here is the T-64B doc, and there's much more to be had in the CIA's FOIA reading room. Among other things, it says when the T-64B showed up in the GFSG. Though heavily redacted, it's a treasure trove.

The Soviet T-64 Tank: An Updated Assessment

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498140.pdf

Couldn't tell you the year, but in the mid-80s, I did see an overhead image of T-64s being worked on in company strength outside some GSFG tank sheds. Thus, they got there eventually, but were almost certainly very late in the game. By the time Major Nicholson was shot and left to die (which he did) in March 1985, GSFG had T-80s. Spook sources told me he'd previously gotten into one of the sheds and spirited away the operating manual found inside one of those T-80 tanks. Not sure what he was looking for on his fatal visit, but he was again at the tank sheds. 

Made up nothing in what I stated, and what was stated when I first heard it, saw the slides, etc., nearly made me vomit, so dire was the news. The Army's General Gorman did a SECRET level piece for the CIA's classified journal Studies In Intelligence where he looked at the armor-anti-armor situation and also concluded things were dire. Further, the 1984 Summer Study of the Defense Science Board found the same situations to be true. Was at Hughes Missile Systems Group then (we made TOW, Maverick, etc.), and there were some deeply distressed people in the halls as we were forced to rapidly evolve TOW, as shown in pic. TOW 2 gave us not only a more powerful warhead but the ability to operate in bad WX and battlefield obscuration, which the visible band only earlier TOW could not do. TOW 2 could be used by every TOW launcher, but only those with advanced FLIR could use its full capabilities. By the time TOW 2A (complete with double trumpet DU liners and precursor charge to defeat ERA) was in the mill, we already knew that wasn't going to cut it, which is why we fielded TOW 2B with two separate tantalum SFFs for top attack. 

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited April 1, 2021 by John Kettler

[IICptMillerII]

On 3/30/2021 at 7:39 PM, IICptMillerII said:

because I am already not looking forward to the inevitable gobbledegook word salad response

Heavy lies the crown. 
 

For those actually curious right now, the T-64 was a well known tank. In fact, I’m literally looking at a CIA report from 1984 detailing the T-64B, which of course was an updated assessment coming after the T-64A. So the idea of it being completely unknown before 85 or whatever is, to quote myself, gobbledegook. 
Interestingly, the CIA report on the T-64B got a lot of stuff right about the tank. It’s always cool to see how close intelligence estimates come to reality. 

[CaptainTheDark]

In the USA, at about that time, 83 to 84, there was a book going around arguing that US estimates of Soviet strength were exaggerated. Apart from the old story about the need for tankers 5'4" or shorter, I recall much was discussed about the poor quality of machinery, training and maintenance. I vaguely recall it. I wrote my first college research paper for English 102 based on that book, since I was reading it anyway for fun. Personally, I felt they probably didn't have a shortage of short tank crewmen and if it came down to it, they'd just cram your tall a__ into the tank anyhway and say move out, sojer, or I shoot ya. If ya don't like it, lean forward or something.

[MikeyD]

1983 is a long way away from 1979. Quite a few revelations happened in the intervening years. And 1983 is outside of the scope of this title. The NATO allies thought they had a 'magic bullet' in the M735 105mm APFSDS round (and its European clones). Their hearts sank when live fire tests showed the round couldn't reliably penetrate a T72M1 frontally.

[Jabble]

On 3/8/2021 at 8:46 PM, MikeyD said:

That was the battle of Ben Het. I vaguely recall reading the Pentagon became alarmed by reports of just how poorly M72 LAW performed in that battle.

Even before that was the Battle of Lang Vei, where the NVA used PT-76s to overrun a special forces camp during the build up to the siege at nearby Khe Sanh.  The defenders managed to knock out several with M72s, but had many misfires too.

[Amedeo]

9 hours ago, MikeyD said:

1983 is a long way away from 1979. Quite a few revelations happened in the intervening years. And 1983 is outside of the scope of this title. The NATO allies thought they had a 'magic bullet' in the M735 105mm APFSDS round (and its European clones). Their hearts sank when live fire tests showed the round couldn't reliably penetrate a T72M1 frontally.

When the Soviets tested captured Israeli 105mm M111 APFSDS rounds against their own T-72A tanks, they were were shocked in finding that, although frontal turret armour was proof, the M111 was able to penetrate the glacis.

There were also rumors that in the same trials the Soviets tested also a few smuggled M735, and found they were not able to penetrate the target. Are these, by chance, the tests you are referring to?

[MikeyD]

I was referencing an article in AFV News Vol. 40 no. 2 that had an M60A3 firing on a former Czech T72M1 firing the standard Austrian NP105A2 APFSDS round (I assume a M735 clone).

Ah, some kind soul on the internet has posted the old article for reference. 

https://forum.cartridgecollectors.org/t/105mm-apfsds-article/40308

Edited April 1, 2021 by MikeyD

[Amedeo]

16 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

I was referencing an article in AFV News Vol. 40 mo. 2 that had an M60A3 firing on a former Czech T72A,2 firing the standard Austrian NP105A2 APFSDS round (I assume a M735 clone).

Ah, some kind soul on the internet has posted the old article for reference. 

https://forum.cartridgecollectors.org/t/105mm-apfsds-article/40308

Very interesting!

As can be clearly seen by the photos, the T-72M1 used in the test is a model with the additional 16mm thick applique armor plate mounted from 1983 on the T-64B/T-72A/T-80B tanks to make them proof against the M111. So, it's no surprise that the tank resisted the Austrian NP105A2, assuming it performs closer to the M735 than the M111.