John,
100% right on the combustible ammo cooking off-it’s impressive!
It’s probably for a training scenario but I’m not really sure about that.
Dan

I've heard sometimes those 120 mm paper-casings start to disintegrate, probably due to improper storage and/or handling. Probably not a common phenomena, but still...

@John L: I did clearly state that one doesn't want to be there when a large surface / unconfined (not tamped) propellant burn occurs, such as when a putative surface-stored "dud" round might be ignited by small-arms fire. It is a flash fire. The fire-ball would be intense and large, and if you were in it or very close to it, you would be incinerated. But it won't do much, beyond scorching, to the tank itself. What, in brief, I said. Light off a "black Cat" fire-cracker in your open palm-of-hand, and you'll feel a sting and be quite startled. Close your hand around that tiny popper and light it off... and have someone take you to the hospital to try and save your hand or fingers. The effects of tamping the charge.

Military folks do a lot of seemingly odd things in the practices of war and training for war - been there, seen and even done that, as have many out there. The IDF tankers doubtless have a lot of field experience to inform their seeming oddities of practice.

Nobody ever seems to express much surprise nor dubiousness about the real burn hazards posed all manner of German and US / Allied vehicles covered with gasoline cans, spare ammo in wood cases, land-mines, mortar rounds, etc. - The stuff we armor modelers LOVE to pack onto our builds! Flash-fires, big burns, even true explosions, all just waiting to happen. Nobody raises questions about this because we've all seen the photos showing this happened and all likely recognize that the guys doing this probably KNEW a LOT about the immediate pros and cons of their actions. Israeli tankers today are equally likely pretty aware of the risks and of the alternatives. And today's IDF strongly emphasizes crew / troop survival over EVERYTHING ELSE.

Of course, we here probably have very little actual KNOWLEDGE as to what the real story is behind these "dud containers". I KNOW I don't. Maybe they are rarely if ever actually used? Maybe they are actually seldom ever even seen on tanks in the field / in action (sort of like those seemingly ubiquitous rear-mounted fuel drums on Russian tanks... used in long-distance road movements, but dropped for field action). Perhaps it's one of those idiosyncratic crew-devised things and no sort of normal practice at all. Maybe they ARE used - but for only sufficient time as needed to find someone to hand off the dud to... ?

If it appears in some photos of Merks-in-Action, I'll assume that the containers do/did appear on at least one Merk... so it's a legit item to model - regardless of what that crew was actually using it for!

Bob

Hi Israel,
The touch-ups I'm talking about are on pages 36, 38 and 39 (and others, too, but very particularly here), and show what appear to be small touch-ups on the side skirts that match, almost perfectly, the existing paint color, not really brownish.