Are the turrets on tanks held in place by gravity only? If you turned a tank upside down would the turret just fall out?

im no expert but i would have thought there was some mechanism to hold them in place,

if not then a violent manuever etc would send the turret flying! #:-)

cheers

joe

Hi. Well, if there is, it can't be too much, because there are a lot of combat photos that show them either cocked up at an angle or blown completely off. Of course I thinking of W.W.II photos here and nothing modern, so maybe things have changed. Don't believe there is anything that holds the main gun turrets on battleships, besides their weight. Can remember that book put out about the man who discovered the resting place of the Bismark and they show a computer re-creation of when this ship turned over that the turrets fell off. Assume this was by their own weight.

Would be nice to know, one way or the other here, just for curiosity's sake.

Take care, Sgirty

Actually, they are just screwed on. If you rotate 360° only to the left more than 10 times in a row, the turret will unscrew and pop off like the lid to a jar. Remember: righty tighty, lefty loosey.

Actually, once the tank is on the race ring there are a series of stays that are bolted down to keep the turret on. In other words, if you were to get a big crane and attach lifting hooks to the turret, it would lift the entire tank off the ground (if the stays were strong enough to support the tank's weight). Most likely the stays would bust as the crane was lifting a heavy tank like an Abrams.

Hey All,
While battleship turrets were for the most part held in place by gravity,( several hundred tons doesn't move much onit's own ) Tank turrets are indeed held in place mechanicaly. The turret and hull openings are ringed with gear teeth, whicj are held together with a system of seals,( to keep out water), and bolted together to hold them in place. It's a simple but effective sysytem.