Tank magazines

[Blue Ghost]

How much space would an extra tank magazine take up?

[43Supporter]

Originally Posted by Blue Ghost

How much space would an extra tank magazine take up?

One -- same as everything else. Do note that for the bigger guns, that "magazine" may only contain the one shot....

[swordtart]

Yep, no matter how many tanks the magazine holds...

I'm sorry, I'll read that again...

[Blue Ghost]

Originally Posted by 43Supporter

One -- same as everything else. Do note that for the bigger guns, that "magazine" may only contain the one shot....

Kind of like "how deep is the ocean". Okay, I've got to give this some contemplation.

[Racer]

The PzKw Mk X Lion from Military Vehicle Guide if it sticks to the ⅓ Space Per Side for Weaponry/Equipment Rule , should only have 26 Magazines rather than the listed 39 . Both the Spaces used for the Turret (8) & the Rocket Magazines (6) for the Turret's twin Super Rockets seem to be conveniently forgotten ...

27 Rounds for a 50 Ton Heavy Tank is a joke .

Having actually seen the actual size of 120mm Tank Gun Ammo & 155mm Howitzer Ammo , our groups have applied 'The Rule of Logic' & use 3 Shots per Mag for TG 12 Ammo & 2 Shots per Mag for TG 14 Ammo .

Size of 8 Inch Ammo (200mm/203mm in Game terms) :
https://www.alamy.com/shells-for-8-i...ip%3d0%26pl%3d

I've seen 12 to 18 inch Naval Shells at London's Imperial War Museum . I'd reckon that with Cordite Bag Charges , a 12 Inch Shell would take up same volume as myself - 2 to 2½ Spaces as a Passenger . We've not really used different Space House Rules for Artillery Ammo - Tank Destroyers/Self Propelled Guns etc are exempt from ⅓ Space Rule anyway .
I'd say that only the Artillery 17 & 20 Ammo rounds would take up 1 Space per Round .

As Car Wars: Tanks Rules were very rushed , full of contradictions , bare little parity to the sample Vehicles & mainly devised by someone with a few problems with mathematics , we feel they should be taken with a large dose of Salt . Otherwise TG12s & TG14s would be an extreme rarity on gaming battlefields - most of our Official Rules compliant Heavy & Super Heavy Tank designs feature two TG10s or two/three TG9s to good effect .
My standard 120 Space Hull 'Centurion 21' Heavy Tank , uses a TG10 with around 70 Rounds of Ammo . Using one to fight a Haig MBT (Tanks page 47) with only 23 Rounds of Ammo (+ 4 Missiles) , is hilarious when Haig runs of Ammo ...

Conclusion : when using Tanks or other Military Vehicles/Equipment in Car Wars games , be willing to go beyond the limited Rules written 28+ years ago ;-)

[Blue Ghost]

I tell this story every so often, but back between 1991 and 1993 I was down at FMC in Sunnyvale (they made the Bradley Fighting Vehicle) when they were presenting something called the Combat Command Vehicle Light (I can't remember the exact name). It was supposed to be a tank killer that could travel really fast (upwards of 85mph or some such), mounting I think a 100 mm gun. It had compartmental armor, if it flipped you could hand crank it upright with a crank that manually turned the turret, the magazines had component armor, and could operate with a crew of two because it was the first American tank to use an autoloader (I think the Soviets were big on autoloaders for their tanks).

But the Pentagon didn't buy it. Years later, over at the Amarillo Design Bureau website I learned that apparently the thing had survivability issues, in spite of a new armor design, and a model with reactive armor fitted to her turret.

I bring this up because from a Car Wars Tanks design standpoint the magazine … trying to recall from memory of looking down the autoloader mechanism … was maybe … three spaces big, more or less. It was like a revolver hand gun; the rounds spun in a rotary chamber like a handgun revolver, and two metal arms reached down to grab the next shell and load it into the chamber. I still recall one of the engineers calling the rounds "HEAP, HEAP, SABOT, SABOT, SABOT" as they cycled the magazine.

I guess in retrospect it was a good tank for the wrong era. I recently saw a History channel documentary on the Sherman, and apparently its nickname was "deathtrap" because it took several Shermans to take out a Panzer; flanking it to fire at its backside because the Sherman's gun couldn't penetrate the Panzer glacis. I think that was the final parallel analysis for FMC's tank buster--it couldn't shrug off a direct hit, or so it was believed, but the design was such that it was supposed to "absorb" hits instead of "resisting" them with heavy armor.

I'll have to do some research … maybe come up with a CW design for one. It was a real interesting two days for me. I'll never forget that.

[43Supporter]

Originally Posted by Blue Ghost

I bring this up because from a Car Wars Tanks design standpoint the magazine … trying to recall from memory of looking down the autoloader mechanism … was maybe … three spaces big, more or less. It was like a revolver hand gun; the rounds spun in a rotary chamber like a handgun revolver, and two metal arms reached down to grab the next shell and load it into the chamber. I still recall one of the engineers calling the rounds "HEAP, HEAP, SABOT, SABOT, SABOT" as they cycled the magazine.

I think the Soviets used a similar autoloader at one point; it proved finicky (which is why Western designs rarely if ever used autoloaders).

Originally Posted by Blue Ghost

I guess in retrospect it was a good tank for the wrong era. I recently saw a History channel documentary on the Sherman, and apparently its nickname was "deathtrap" because it took several Shermans to take out a Panzer; flanking it to fire at its backside because the Sherman's gun couldn't penetrate the Panzer glacis. I think that was the final parallel analysis for FMC's tank buster--it couldn't shrug off a direct hit, or so it was believed, but the design was such that it was supposed to "absorb" hits instead of "resisting" them with heavy armor.

The "failure" of the Sherman was one of doctrine -- the Sherman was an infantry-support AFV; the job of killing tanks went to dedicated "tank destroyers" like the M10, M18, and M36. When it was learned "one never has the right kind of AFV in the right place at the right time", the notion of separate "tank" and "TD" types was disposed of; and the doctrine became "tanks fight tanks, infantry fights infantry" (best illustrated by the Soviet "tankodesantniki" -- put a squad of INF on each tank; if a tank is sighted, the INF decamps while the tanks fight it out; if INF is sighted, the INF hops off to engage while the tank provides support). Meanwhile, the US and Britain developed units like the Sherman "Firefly" (M4 with British 17-lb. cannon as main gun...).