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Armor/AFV: Modern - USA
Modern Armor, AFVs, and Support vehicles.
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Dumb Civilian, E- Nothing Question....
b2nhvi
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Nevada, United States
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Posted: Thursday, June 06, 2019 - 02:14 PM UTC
Probably , but I need the wisdom of the pros. How hard is it to put an M1A1 on it's roof? (without the assistants of a large IED.) We had a local with 1/221 Cav. get killed at NTC yesterday/today in a "roll over". With the low CG one would think you'd almost have to plan that. (Seriously, I'm figuring they must have slid off a trail and into a steep, deep barranca, and Sgt. Gallagher was TC, and standing up in the hatch at the time.)
Kevlar06
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Posted: Thursday, June 06, 2019 - 05:39 PM UTC
Easier than you think. I’ve seen an M60, M113s an M1 and multiple HMMWVs and trucks in accidents like this— and with fatalities. All you need is some speed, a soft shoulder, and a bit of an incline off the road to flip an armored vehicle on its top. Compound this with night operations or inclement weather and it’s even easier to flip one. Most TCs and loaders (in the case of a tank) will not be able to get inside fast enough before gravity and inertia pull them partly or fully out— and since your head is no match for several tons of steel, they are crushed like an eggshell. Even in peacetime, military service is dangerous. Just today a West Point Cadet was killed in a truck rollover and 22 other cadets and a couple of enlisted drivers were injured. Heavy equipment = hazardous duty.
VR, Russ
ReluctantRenegade
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Wien, Austria
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Posted: Thursday, June 06, 2019 - 05:47 PM UTC

Quoted Text

How hard is it to put an M1A1 on it's roof? (without the assistants of a large IED.)


Any tank (or AFV for that matter) can be put on its roof quiet easily if the TC and/or the driver don't judge the terrain correctly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xirr74yuDSU
b2nhvi
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Posted: Thursday, June 06, 2019 - 06:33 PM UTC
I remember reading a big issue with the MRAPs was /is top heaviness and roll overs. Soft skins are basically the same as a civilian vehicle, so the same roll over threat. I would have thought something low slung and heavy, like an M1 would be fairly tip resistant. 'Course you go over a cliff, like in that clip .... or my fav, the Merkava in south Lebenon that went over an edge and yard darted on the road about the length of the tank below.(with about half the barrel stuck in the ground. ) Yeah, if you are out of the turret at the time you are mush.
Tank1812
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Posted: Thursday, June 06, 2019 - 11:30 PM UTC

Quoted Text

Even in peacetime, military service is dangerous.


Truth!

As my instructors taught us, the M1A1 is designed to kill, it is good at that mission and it does not about your race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. As I recall he was a Brit, his hand was messed up from a ammo door track incident. It kinda drives the point home. You buck around, you will get bucked up.

We where driving around the northern ranges at Camp Pendelton Ca and our aux hydraulics pump was broken, probably should have deadline the vehicle but hey we have main so whatever. Driving around hills and Murphy shows up and shuts down our engine. Laws of the universe take hold. Without the aux hydro pump we cannot stop the tank until the engine is fired up again. We start rolling towards a +300' canyon at about 2 mph. TC, Gunner and loader (me) jump off and run in front of the tank (driver still inside) to grab some railroad ties. Company CO meets me at the berm to help me. We threw 2 or 3 railroad ties behind the tank to try to slow down the movement. The ties raised the tank enough that it broke the roll. The tank stopped at the canyon's edge at the last roadwheel. No doubt in my mind the drive would have died from rattling around inside.

LonCray1
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Posted: Friday, June 07, 2019 - 03:37 AM UTC
Yeah, the cadet death yesterday is proof that military driving - no matter how big the vehicle - is dangerous. I still remember the M151 jeep issues back in the Cold War days - you'd think the thing was low to the ground but a poor suspension design doomed it to roll over way too often. Most of them had to be cut up to prevent civilians from owning them because they were so dangerous.
18Bravo
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Posted: Friday, June 07, 2019 - 03:52 AM UTC
This one rolled more than 90 degrees outside the COP I was in on the syrian border.

Sabot
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Posted: Friday, June 07, 2019 - 03:59 AM UTC
I've never come close to flipping an Abrams, but in my M60A3TTS during Reforger 88, my platoon was driving down a windingly narrow valley road when the edge of the road gave out. We started to slide, but my driver, CPL Cox was able to keep us on the road.

I instinctively ducked inside the turret, but my loader was a new tanker and did not. As he looked to his right and I wasn't there, he started yelling, "The LT fell out! The LT fell out!"

I reached up through the loader's hatch and grabbed him into the turret. Yelling for him to get in here.

He wasn't fully ingrained into the "roll over procedures" and if we had rolled over, he would have died. My platoon sergeant thought for sure we were going to flip had it not been for the actions of my driver. We put him in for an award, but it was downgraded to a battalion coin.

If the roll over drill isn't second nature to you, you will be crushed. Active duty tankers live and breathe on their tanks and everything we did was instinctive.

While there are plenty of seasoned tankers in the Guard, not all of them have as much time on a tank maneuvering and training these types of actions until it becomes second nature.
18Bravo
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Posted: Saturday, June 08, 2019 - 12:09 PM UTC

Quoted Text


He wasn't fully ingrained into the "roll over procedures" and if we had rolled over, he would have died...
If the roll over drill isn't second nature to you, you will be crushed. Active duty tankers live and breathe on their tanks and everything we did was instinctive.

While there are plenty of seasoned tankers in the Guard, not all of them have as much time on a tank maneuvering and training these types of actions until it becomes second nature.


Things don't become second nature unless they're hammered into you through training. It seems to me the company commander would have been at fault for allowing untrained personnel to be in that position.
In 1983 my first position on an ODA was on a MAROPS team. We practiced capsize drills ad nauseum in our Kleppers and our Zodiacs. First on mirror lake at Fort Devens, then in the Atlantic off of the Maine coast, and finally were allowed to do our mission in the North Sea. The whole crawl, walk, run thing for the other E Nothings.
Even now such drills are so ingrained in the Army culture they're even posted in the vehicles as a reminder. (Rollover drill to the right of this one)


Ah, Kleppers, those were the days...
Kevlar06
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Posted: Saturday, June 08, 2019 - 03:23 PM UTC

Quoted Text



.....It seems to me the company commander would have been at fault for allowing untrained personnel to be in that position...


Exactly. It has been my experience that the "buck stops" with the CO. In the end, he'll be the one relieved of command for the peacetime training death of a soldier if the ensuing investigation reveals a training lapse occurred, or an SOP was violated. This is always a "career ender", as it will show up in an efficiency report. .
VR, Russ
TopSmith
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Posted: Sunday, June 09, 2019 - 03:32 AM UTC
Yesterday I heard on the news that a 51-year-old Staff Sergeant was killed when the M1 he was on rolled over. There were no details given as to how it happened.
TopSmith
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Posted: Sunday, June 09, 2019 - 03:59 AM UTC
During my time on tanks we never had a rollover SOP. It was understood that tanks were designed to kill anything including its own crew. When on the tank you yelled traversing before moving the turret or gun unless it was in combat. We understood that anything sticking out of the hatch when tipping was subject to crushing and getting inside was paramount. Major injuries in a rollover were expected because there were no seat belts and if the gun was forced up or down in the rollover something was likely to get crushed inside.
We lost a tank when exiting a landing craft at a port. The ramp was not even/above the edge of the loading dock due to the tide. The driver was given the signal to exit and as the tank started to climb onto the loading dock, the tracks had traction on the landing craft deck and ended up pushing the landing craft back as the tank exited. the tank dropped 50 feet to the seafloor while running with the driver still inside. Fortunately, with the turret to the rear he could swim out. We had no SOP for that either.
Littorio
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Posted: Sunday, June 09, 2019 - 05:29 AM UTC
Not quite the same but rolling a T-72 at speed. Don't know the out come for the Kuwaiti crew.

https://youtu.be/_ZLKkA4DuSM

This was tributed to ice.
b2nhvi
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Posted: Sunday, June 09, 2019 - 09:29 AM UTC
"Yesterday I heard on the news that a 51-year-old Staff Sergeant was killed when the M1 he was on rolled over. There were no details given as to how it happened. " Yeah, that was the incident I started this about.
Sabot
Joined: December 18, 2001
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Posted: Sunday, June 09, 2019 - 11:36 AM UTC

Quoted Text


Quoted Text


He wasn't fully ingrained into the "roll over procedures" and if we had rolled over, he would have died...
If the roll over drill isn't second nature to you, you will be crushed. Active duty tankers live and breathe on their tanks and everything we did was instinctive.

While there are plenty of seasoned tankers in the Guard, not all of them have as much time on a tank maneuvering and training these types of actions until it becomes second nature.


Things don't become second nature unless they're hammered into you through training. It seems to me the company commander would have been at fault for allowing untrained personnel to be in that position.


He was a new private, incidentally, he just turned 50 today. This was Reforger 88 (Sept) so he was 19. We had trained roll over procedures many times, just some of us had trained it more than others over the years. Always trained it on a flat surface as part of hip pocket training. I recognized the sudden drop and went into the drill. I had been on a CEV, M48 and M60 for over 4 years. He was too new and the sudden change in the cant of the tank didn't register with him.

Learning what to do and recognizing what is going on are quite different. We used this exercise as an example to be situationally aware of what's going on.
Tankrider
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Posted: Monday, June 10, 2019 - 03:03 AM UTC

Quoted Text

Probably , but I need the wisdom of the pros. How hard is it to put an M1A1 on it's roof? (without the assistants of a large IED.) We had a local with 1/221 Cav. get killed at NTC yesterday/today in a "roll over". With the low CG one would think you'd almost have to plan that. (Seriously, I'm figuring they must have slid off a trail and into a steep, deep barranca, and Sgt. Gallagher was TC, and standing up in the hatch at the time.)


Honestly, like any other vehicle, a momentary lapse of situational awareness will cause an accident. Compound this by the driver and tank commander having differing views of the terrain as well as distractions when just moving across the desert. Add in the multiple tasks that are required in simulated combat (don't know if was the case in the current incident), there are times when a TC must trust his driver... All it takes is to drop a track into a deep ditch, wadi, or an open vehicle fighting position and something bad is bound to happen...

Having spent two and a half years at NTC as an Observer Controller in the mid 90's, combat vehicle rollovers are not uncommon, nor are other types of accidents, firing incidents, etc. by both the Rotational Training Unit (RTU), OPFOR or the Observers. CTC training accidents happen from pure dumb luck, ignorance, equipment failure, lack of sleep, or overconfidence...

As several said above, combat vehicles are designed to kill those outside as well as inside, who do not stay aware. Personally, I got lucky several times and avoided several dangerous situations with a couple of bruises, when it could have been worse. I know of several others who were not so lucky.

JC
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