On 6/17/2015 9:29 PM, Greg Chalik
wrote:
>Not being a war
expert I have no idea what these numerous problems were. What
were they?<
From memory the
problems were those of strategic deployability, with the Abrams
units requiring greater numbers of personnel and MT support,
operating, withunits requiring significant climatic conditions
modifications in-theatre, and some component and sub-system
failure for same reasons.
The filters they deployed with weren't designed for the sandy arid
conditions they faced; they were designed for European climatic
conditions because that's where a lot of them deployed from and
where the ones that were stateside were earmarked to deploy to in
time of war. Once they got the filter issue squared away it became
another legend that was used to bludgeon the tank.
There were cases of
'cannibalism' with the Army stripping most of the M1s that were
delivered to the USMC due to in-theatre shortage of spares.
Performance in some terrains left much to be desired; M1s had
been tested in sand terrain which I later found out to be a lot
on a General Dynamics property, and not something that would
have been expected or for that matter unexpected, in combat
operations.
And yet, they performed spectacularly and crossed terrain that
hadn't been crossed by mechanized vehicles before. I worked with a
guy who deployed with the 2nd ACR was pretty much right there at the
tip of the spear as an M1A1 track commander. When we talked about
the event, the only negatives were that the tanks, and pretty much
everything in theater, required more maintenance, spares were
sometimes difficult to get for everything because there was no built
up infrastructure like there was in Germany, and that he wished the
main gun was magazine fed like his Beretta so his gunner didn't have
to wait for the loader to load the gun. Beyond that, his main
comment was that training was often more challenging.