Getting good penetration...The beasts of war

Have you ever wondered how they test the effectiveness of rounds fired from a tank? I hadn't, until I saw this display at Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset, England. I had spent the morning touring the world's largest tank museum and even got to see some driving around as they were setting up for Tankfest the following weekend when thousands of enthusiasts descend on the museum and it's fields to see many of the display tanks put through their paces. I came across this display and was fascinated.

The image you see above is the entry point of a tank round, I am sorry but I cant recall what calibre the round was ( I think 105mm from a Centurion tank) however considering the thickness of the steel sheet and the fact it went right through I would guess that it was considered an effective calibre.

Below are a couple of other pictures of the solid steel test-plate showing its thickness, I estimated it to be about 14-16 centimetres thick at least. You can see that it's been devastated by test-rounds with ragged exit holes and also a few rounds that never made it right through. You can see these rounds from the back and front angles as below. Keep in mind that these rounds are huge, the British Centurion tank uses a 105mm main gun for instance. I believe the rounds in this steel plate are 105's. (105mm in diameter across the base)

I like army tanks, always have. As a kid I'd spend hours playing with my toy tanks and little green army men but it wasn't until I visited Bovington Tank Museum that I fully appreciated their awesome power and what life must have been like inside one of these behemoths! I think the 2014 movie Fury does a good job at portraying it and in fact the Fury tank from the movie is actually displayed here at the museum. Many of the tanks here were used for the film actually. Seeing the damage a round could do to a solid steel plate made me shudder at what it much be like for the inhabitants of a tank hit by a round. I guess hopefully they died right away, if not they would suffer terribly I guess being mashed to bits by rounds that penetrated into the tank or burning alive.

The tank above is a Tiger II (Tiger 2) the most feared tank in the Second World War as it was incredibly heavily armed and armoured. The American Sherman tanks were rarely a match for it, the rounds would literally bounce off, which is depicted in the movie Fury in a brutal Sherman V's Tiger tank battle featuring three Sherman's versus the one Tiger. Brutal. I think that's a great word to describe tank warfare in general actually.

I know many people simply aren't interested in this sort of thing but a visit to the tank museum for me was mandatory and to be honest my wife found it just as fascinating; Admittedly she has formed a great appreciation for all things historical which rubbed off from me I guess so I'm not really surprised she enjoyed learning about these beasts of war.

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