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Merkava Mk. 2


Marko

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6 hours ago, Marko said:

I am by no means an authority on the subject but I was under the impression the Merkava Mk 2 had smoke grenades fitted ?

The MK2 in SB does not seem to.

http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/Israeli-Tanks.php

 

http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/vehicles/tanks/merkava/MerkavaMk2.html

later ones did, but the early ones did not. 

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1 hour ago, dejawolf said:

later ones did, but the early ones did not. 

My bad for not checking before I started the mission, I wonder what the punishment for getting a whole company of merkeva's wiped out is. LoL

The model is very well Done but wish you guys had modelled the later one with the smoke grenades.

 

Edited by Marko
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Mortars cannot replace smoke grenade discharges, as the mortar smoke rounds create the smoke far away from the tank.

Both the light mortars and the smoke discharges were gradually fitted to the Israeli Centurions, M48s and M60s starting from the late 70's, as lessons from the 1973 war. The Merkava didn't get smoke discharges until the mid 80's.

That's after, for some reason, the Israeli army preferred to remove the Centurion's original smoke grenade discharges after the 1967 war.

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14 minutes ago, Azure Lion said:

I would wager a guess that the designers felt there would be no need for smoke as the main role when designing the Merkava was for a mobile defense platform. Get there, dig in and give no ground strategy.

You could well be right on that Azure Lion.

It was my first time using the Merkava in game last night proberly I had a look when I first downloaded 4.0. the model looks great

I had a company of Merkavas in a fairly good defensive position.

I was surprised at how well  three company's of T-72M1's did against the position.

With out arty or ATGM's I expected more from the Merkava. Probably too much

 I only discovered it had no smoke grenades when I decided to abandon the position for a secondary position as it was about to be over run.

Did not end well for me lesson learned. LoL

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if you want to do a realistic lebanon scenario with merkava vs T-72, you'll want to go with the T-72M. 

the T-72A/M1 is fitted with BM-32 by default, which will chew up merkavas wholesale. against the traditional export rounds of BM-15 BM-12 or BM-9, the merkava will be nearly impervous, 

even on the weaker hull glacis.

i believe BM-9 is what was used by the syrians in the lebanon war. 

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1. One might dispute that the decision to place the engine in the front compromises the tank's performance on the assault, but it is certainly not designed to fight only in defense.

The Merkava is designed and used as a main battle tank, an offensive weapon system, tasked with leading deep armored assaults, according to the IDF's doctrine of quickly transferring the fight to enemy's territory.

The Merkava always had the best armor, speed and mobility among IDF tanks, so surely Merkava-equipped formations were the ones to spearhead IDF offensives into enemy territory at the "hottest" sectors in any conflict. For example, all available Merkava (they were Mk. 1 at the time) tanks were pressed into battle in Lebanon in 1982.

 

2. All this has nothing to do with smoke discharges.

 

3. The Syrian T-72s in 1982 were of the oldest model's export version. They were used for a very short time in the last phase of the war.

The most common Syrian tank used in the war was the T-62 and on the Israeli side it was the M60A1.

 

4. A scenario that includes Merkava Mk. 2 and Syrian T-72A tanks was possible in the mid 80's, since the Soviets sent T-72A tanks from their army stocks to Syria as gratitude for the ERA-equipped M48s Syria had captured in the war and sent to the Soviets.

During the cold war, Syria was the only foreign country which the Soviets had agreed to supply with the T-72A. All other clients had to settle with export versions. 

Edited by Iarmor
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 8/18/2016 at 6:02 PM, dejawolf said:

the T-72A/M1 is fitted with BM-32 by default, which will chew up merkavas wholesale. against the traditional export rounds of BM-15 BM-12 or BM-9, the merkava will be nearly impervous, 

even on the weaker hull glacis.

i believe BM-9 is what was used by the syrians in the lebanon war. 

The interesting Oryx blog post named "Syria's Steel Beasts: The T-72" claims that they got BM-42 for the T-72A and also BM-22.

I don't know how reliable it is, I think that the claim about Syria having only 700 T-72s is dubious as well.

There are similar posts in that blog about Syria's T-55s and T-62s.

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4 hours ago, Iarmor said:

The interesting Oryx blog post named "Syria's Steel Beasts: The T-72" claims that they got BM-42 for the T-72A and also BM-22.

I don't know how reliable it is, I think that the claim about Syria having only 700 T-72s is dubious as well.

There are similar posts in that blog about Syria's T-55s and T-62s.

 

BM-42 for the 1982 lebanon war is completely ridicolous, given it was produced in 1986. 

BM-22 for the 1982 lebanon war middle east is also ridicolous, given that this was the best round available for the russian army until 1983, and the russians NEVER export their best rounds. the usually export rounds 1-2 generations older. 

even most of warzaw pact didn't have BM-22 in 1982.

 

if you're talking about modern conflict, then we're talking about the merkava 4, which is a completely new tank, with an entirely different armour composition.

Edited by dejawolf
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48 minutes ago, dejawolf said:

 

BM-42 for the 1982 lebanon war is completely ridicolous, given it was produced in 1986. 

BM-22 for the 1982 lebanon war middle east is also ridicolous, given that this was the best round available for the russian army until 1983, and the russians NEVER export their best rounds. the usually export rounds 1-2 generations older. 

even most of warzaw pact didn't have BM-22 in 1982.

 

if you're talking about modern conflict, then we're talking about the merkava 4, which is a completely new tank, with an entirely different armour composition.

 

You are right of course, that blog post is about modern times and it is not mentioned clearly when they supposedly got these rounds.

It is plausible that they got newer rounds after the 1982 war, together with the T-72A tanks. I doubt that the post-war T-72A shipment included the old BM-9 rounds as before, but I don't really know.

I wonder if someone can identify the rounds in the pictures:

  0_d0339_6a23e8ea_XXL.jpg

0_d0338_2f7853dd_XXL.jpg

Edited by Iarmor
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5 hours ago, Damian90 said:

 

Indeed these are mix of 3BM15 and 3BM42.

 

Something that has often interested me is the way ammunition gets issued in real life.

In SB we simulate tanks that always get a complete load of one type or KE, one type of HEAT, etc.

 

I wonder if the BM42 were loaded in the autoloader, and the BM15 were the spare ammunition?  Or if they were just mixed all up together?

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1 hour ago, Maj.Hans said:

 

Something that has often interested me is the way ammunition gets issued in real life.

In SB we simulate tanks that always get a complete load of one type or KE, one type of HEAT, etc.

 

I wonder if the BM42 were loaded in the autoloader, and the BM15 were the spare ammunition?  Or if they were just mixed all up together?

 

Hard to say, in Poland as far as I am aware, always a single model of ammunition of specific type is issued.

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Even in a "proper army" fighting a war "the proper way" there will be periods of transition, e.g. when a new, better type of ammo is SUPPOSED to replace the old type, but production has just started. In such a situation (e.g. Operation Desert Storm) it seems like all available "new" ammunition is handed out in small quantities (M829A1, then nicknamed "silver bullet") whereas the old type would still dominate the loadout. Syria today appears to be just a crazy mess.

 

That said, Steel Beasts CAN simulate this to a degree with ammo slots #3 and #4 in the Mission Editor's Ammunition control dialog; slots three and four can be of any type.

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16 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Even in a "proper army" fighting a war "the proper way" there will be periods of transition, e.g. when a new, better type of ammo is SUPPOSED to replace the old type, but production has just started. In such a situation (e.g. Operation Desert Storm) it seems like all available "new" ammunition is handed out in small quantities (M829A2, then nicknamed "silver bullet") whereas the old type would still dominate the loadout. Syria today appears to be just a crazy mess.

 

That said, Steel Beasts CAN simulate this to a degree with ammo slots #3 and #4 in the Mission Editor's Ammunition control dialog; slots three and four can be of any type.

Wasn't silver bullet the M829A1 issued alongside the M829 because of concern over the strength of or upgrades to T72 and T55 armour (T72M1 turned out to be no real problem but some of the T55 packages were competent upgrades (although they did compromise the mobility somewhat)).

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18 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Even in a "proper army" fighting a war "the proper way" there will be periods of transition, e.g. when a new, better type of ammo is SUPPOSED to replace the old type, but production has just started. In such a situation (e.g. Operation Desert Storm) it seems like all available "new" ammunition is handed out in small quantities (M829A1, then nicknamed "silver bullet") whereas the old type would still dominate the loadout. Syria today appears to be just a crazy mess.

 

That said, Steel Beasts CAN simulate this to a degree with ammo slots #3 and #4 in the Mission Editor's Ammunition control dialog; slots three and four can be of any type.

 

It doesn't look like it's currently set up to accomodate that.

 

For example right now the M1A1 and A1/HA can only load MPAT and Cannister into Slot3/4, on the A2 those slots are identical to Slot 2, Leo2A4 only have PELE/Cannister on Slot 3/4, etc. 

 

I think standard DM33 used to be an option for the Leo2A4 on Slot 3/4, but was removed recently.  Still is an option for the A6/2E, which makes for some interesting scenarios...IE: You have plenty of DM33 and DM12, but only three rounds of DM53 per tank.  Most of the enemy tanks are T-55s, but there's a platoon of T-90s out there...Spend your DM53 wisely, TC!

 

It is possible to simulate some of the OIF ammo loads for the Abrams (Slot 1 Sabot, Slot 2 HEAT, Slot 3 MPAT), but since there's no voice command to indicate Slot 3/Slot 4 is being used human gunners have no idea when they have switched to one, until they miss.  @ Ssnake - can we get a voice for the AI when firing at least Slot 3?  "Gunner, Sabot, Chopper!  Fire Fire Spec.A!" or something just so human gunners know what's being loaded and what to index?

 

Having said that, it would be nice to start copying over the KE Sabot rounds to Slots 3 and 4, particularly for the Abrams series tanks and the M60A3.  As we discussed in our prior threads about the use of M900, it doesn't seem like it was ever widely issued (if at all) to the M60s, although they may have fired some of it at some point.  So, for Desert Storm type scenarios it could be interesting to give M1/IPM1 and M60A3 crews in particular only a handful of M900s with instructions not to waste them on trucks.

 

Furthermore, I need to do a little research, but I understand that there were a few spots in the hull stowage of the M60 series tank that were shorter than normal, and only capable of holding APDS rounds.  Crews in Germany used to carry a few rounds of M392 APDS in those slots well after the introduction of the APFSDS because it was either APDS, or empty.  I'll try to get a solid number for this for you, but it would make an extra little touch of authenticity to leave the player with a handful of ancient APDS rounds at the bottom of the proverbial barrel!

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1 hour ago, Maj.Hans said:

Furthermore, I need to do a little research, but I understand that there were a few spots in the hull stowage of the M60 series tank that were shorter than normal, and only capable of holding APDS rounds.  Crews in Germany used to carry a few rounds of M392 APDS in those slots well after the introduction of the APFSDS because it was either APDS, or empty.  I'll try to get a solid number for this for you, but it would make an extra little touch of authenticity to leave the player with a handful of ancient APDS rounds at the bottom of the proverbial barrel!

 

I think you are misremembering.  The M900 APFSDS is only 1/2" longer than the M456 HEAT.  I know all the ammo storage tubes had at least a couple of inches clearance for the contact head of the Heat round and there was no restrictions on where we could place them in the hull so I don't think there would be a problem for M900s.  The place where you didn't want to put anything but APDS rounds were the two tubes in the crook of the turret wall where it meets the bottom of the rear turret overhang and the turret ring.  Long rounds have a tendency to hit things mounted on the turret wall to the rear of the coax ammo box and/or smash a hand or fingers when trying to get them out quickly during gunnery.

Edited by TSe419E
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