How are Military Tank Turrets Mounted?

[GreensvilleJay]

re: They have rollers, gearing, and such to help them turn, but there is nothing physically keeping them from falling out, just gravity and mass for the most part.

hmm..same as RR car 'bogies' then ?

turret must be well balanced to not move when gun's being fired (recoil ?)

 

[Biker1mike]

Like I said in post # 11. I just did not have pictures.

Russian tanks use an auto-loader which has the ammo in a ring just under and around the turret. When hit in the right place all of this ammo goes off at once and turns the 12 ton turret into a champagne cork. No one survives this.
US M1 uses a 19 kid with big biceps as the loader. Safer, but requires a much larger tank.

 

[ACDII]

On tanks, the weight keeps the turret in place, but on ships there are clamps underneath the ring as keepers. On the Iowa class battleships, if the ship were to turn turtle, the guns will remain in place because of these keepers. If in doubt, watch Ryan's videos on Battleship New Jersey. He takes a camera down into these spaces and shows all the components and such. Really interesting videos on Utub.

Not all BS used keepers, Bismark didn't but a lot of American and British ships do. They used them to keep the ring gears and turret motor pinions aligned during heavy weather. On the Iowa class there are 3 large electric motors used to rotate the turret. The guns elevation motors were hydraulic though. There are also locking pins to keep the turrets from rotating on their own in heavy seas, as well as pins on the gun barrels themselves.

I think on the M1A1 Abrams, there are two sets of carrier bearings as the turret is all in one unit, the floor rotates with it. An IED blew this one off.

 

[xrocketengineer]

I think I found the answer by accident. Watch the video and at the 1:12 mark, you can see the clamps/retainers with umpteen bolts all the way around.

 

[Henro]

I think I found the answer by accident. Watch the video and at the 1:12 mark, you can see the clamps/retainers with umpteen bolts all the way around.

You mean at the :24~:29 portion? The 1:12 point is the end of the video...so I assume a typo regarding the point of interest?

Interesting. Wonder what grade those bolts are? Guess it makes no difference in the end...Don't think I would want to be a memeber of a tank crew these days, especially in one of those Russian tanks.

 

[xrocketengineer]

You mean at the :24~:29 portion? The 1:12 point is the end of the video...so I assume a typo regarding the point of interest?

Interesting. Wonder what grade those bolts are? Guess it makes no difference in the end...Don't think I would want to be a memeber of a tank crew these days, especially in one of those Russian tanks.

You are right.

 

[Biker1mike]

A friend was a Buick driver over there. He always had PBR's behind his seat.
His claim was that the safest place to be was in a moving tank and most deadly placed was in a stalled tank.

 

[xrocketengineer]

Interesting:

 

[Bmyers]

Interesting:

So Russia is following their tried and true method of just throwing as many bodies at the battle as they can hoping to just overwhelm the enemy and be the last man standing.