Re: Elevation/Depression of AFV main arms

On Wed, 22 Mar 2000 13:01:56 -0800, Ndege Diamond <nezach@earthlink.net>
wrote:

>I remember seeing concept designs for "cherry picker" (a telescoping
arm
>type deal that could elevate weapons quite a bit above the hull of the
>vehicle) mounts for weapons somewhere.  The benifit is you could park
the
>vehicle behind cover, then have the weapon pop up and fire, and you
could
>cover those dead zones.

I have a book, "Tank Versus Tank" by Kenneth Macksey, a Canadian tanker.
This
book came out in 1988, and is a good overview of tank development to
that
date. The book lists a "gun over hull" AFV. Basically, instead of a
manned
turret you have a protected gun, with autoload system. The gun sits much
lower
than a turret, and could be elevated about a metre or so. The crew
reside
entirely in the hull.

The advantage of this design is that it's about the same size as an
assault
gun/tank destroyer but it has the advantage of a rotating main gun. Even
if
the gun is targeted, it's harder to hit than a turret and if it hit the
crew
is still okay.

I don't know how far, if far at all, this kind of design was carried to.
The
book said that most of the technical problems had been overcome, but I'd
imagine we're still talking about a pretty finicky system.

Note, this book comes out prior to the Gulf War. The Abrams is listed as
not
having been tested in battle. As anyone will tell you, nothing affects
weapon
development like actual combat. (Can you say, "aluminum hulled
warships"? I
thought you could...).

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@interlog.com
Goodall's Grotto: http://www.interlog.com/~agoodall/

"Surprisingly, when you throw two naked women with sex
toys into a living room full of drunken men, things 
always go bad." - Kyle Baker, "You Are Here"