It is interesting how much has been learned by the US about tank design. US tanks used to be sh*t. (Germans always designed good tanks, of course...
). The Sherman in WW II, for example, was a bathtub with treads and a turret on it. The reason the US armored divisions managed to defeat the Germans was sheer numbers, and air support.
It's hard to tell just from that photo how bad the damage to the rest of the M1 was, but it is entirely possible that the main body of the tank was not touched. There are all sorts of safety features and 'firewalls' in the design of the Abrams tank. But that's still quite an eye opener. As far as I have heard, the Iraqi resistors (uniformed or not) do not have 'anti-tank' missiles. They are using RPGs. What does an Abrams cost? Aren't they getting to be something like fighter planes, costing close to $100 million each? The 'special' armor is very expensive, I know that much. Yet a cruddy little RPG, designed in the 1970s and costing a few hundred dollars, can disable it. And they are so simple that many 'third world' nations manufacture them (under license) instead of buying them directly from the Russians.
You can see why they don't want to go into close-in 'urban' combat from images like this. The Abrams has normal steel armor on top, NOT the 'special' armor that can resist shaped charges. It was too expensive, and too heavy, to use on all surfaces. If you can do this to the tough side armor at reasonable ranges with a mere RPG, then you could certainly destroy one if you could get a shot from above (in the upper stories of building, for example). I think they designed these tanks with US air power in mind. Every war we've fought since aircraft were invented, we've had air superiority. So they felt they could presume the tank was safe from above and save weight. If some clever person figures out how to make armor-piercing mortars, or how to use RPGs in that fashion (shoot up and then come down) our super-duper tanks will be in deep doodoo.
[ April 04, 2003, 22:01: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]