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flatsix911 — M103 Heavy Tank
#armor #army #gun #military #tank #war
Published: 2014-11-15 02:23:10 +0000 UTC; Views: 1553; Favourites: 36; Downloads: 0
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Description
This beast is huge, note the seven sets of roadwheels. It had a 120mm main gun that was significantly different than the modern 120mm guns being used now. This tank weighed about 60 short tons and was powered by a Continental AV-1790, 12 cylinder air-cooled gasoline engine. For those interested it had an Allison CD-850 cross-drive transmission, 2 forward gears, 1 reverse gear, semiautomatic.This was not a particularly successful tank. It was underpowered and the transmission was not robust enough for the heavy weight. The US Army developed new armor doctrine shortly after the M103's introduction. This new doctrine eliminated the light, medium, and heavy classes of tanks in favor of the main battle tank concept. The USMC used the M103 for quite a while longer than the US Army. They were finally retired in the early 1970's.
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Comments: 17
Oh I see... Yuma Arizona! 
Very nice photo Flat6!
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Thanks for commenting. You're right, that hot dry climate is good for long term storage of old tanks.
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Is this some sort of desert museum? Must be amazing, driving through the desert and suddenly you find a bunch of tanks!
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It's sort of a museum. Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) is where the US Army does a lot of their product testing. It's located about 42 km out in the desert where the summer heat reaches 49 degrees C for months at a time. Late summer brings monsoons, which gives you a side order of humidity to go with your hearty serving of intense heat. Because of the environmental extremes, YPG is an outstanding place to test the reliability of combat vehicles. It has been in use since the 1940's and this little display is a sampling of some of the many vehicles that were put through their reliability torture tests. The US Government does not pay to maintain these vehicles and they just sit on their parking pads, in the bright desert sun, waiting for their infrequent visitors.
I have a few pictures in my gallery of some of these tanks under the Milky Way. I'm happy that you are enjoying these pictures I've posted.
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Wow, that's some interesting information. 49 degrees C, yikes. I've been in 45-odd, in Angola-Namibia, and I thought I'd shrivel up!
I am enjoying them, great stuff''
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I was in Iraq and went to get in my truck one afternoon. It had armored glass windows that couldn't be lowered and the air conditioner was broken. The temperature inside the truck was 155 degrees F (which i like 69 Celsius). And we couldn't get the temperature down. That was kind of uncomfortable. I come from Florida and thought I knew what heat was, but Iraq and Yuma have raised the bar so to speak regarding what I consider hot anymore.
I'm glad you're enjoying my pictures. I had them on my computer for while and figured it was time to share some of them.
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Wow, that is hot. I don't know exact temperatures, but we had terrible heat in Southern Angola sitting in our Ratel vehicles. (Did you know it was the ancestor of the MRAP?) All our vehicles were already mine-protected in the 1980s.
I am indeed enjoying your photos!!
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Ratel, yes I'm familiar with it. I was a field service rep for BAE Systems (the Ratel was built by OMC which was acquired by BAE in the mid "aughts"). My vehicles were the RG31 (the South African model) and RG33. It was a very interesting job, but my wife got tired of my numerous deployments to the middle east so I resigned and took a mind-numbingly tedious job that keeps me closer to home.
In an earlier life, I was an Armor officer in the US Army.
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Maybe you could tell me about BAE's setup in the Mid East.
Sorry to hear about your boring job. I expect you know your stuff, having been in "Armor". Was that tanks, other vehicles?
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I would prefer not to talk about BAE's support activities as those are still active operational zones.
In the US Army, Armor Branch has two main specialties, armor (tank) and cavalry (tank and Bradley). Although I served in a cavalry squadron, my primary speciality was tank. I started with the M60A1 as a lieutenant. The A1's had coincidence rangefinders, mechanical ballistic computers, and active IR night sights. The active sight required that the target be illuminated with an IR searchlight. A searchlight, capable of both white light and IR light, was mounted on each tank. Through the years, I also served on M48A5 (M48 Patton with diesel engine and 105mm main gun, M60A3 thermal sight, and finally M1-IP. I served in an Opposing Forces unit for almost 6 years where my primary vehicle was an M551 Sheridan, modified to give the visual signature of a USSR T-72 main battle tank.
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No problem.
Very interesting. I've seen the photos of the M60 with the big searchlight on the front and often wondered about it. Sounds like you had an interesting time in armour!
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Best job I ever had...
Quote from the current movie "Fury" about an M4 Sherman tank crew in WWII.
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Glad to hear it.
I was initially a "troep" in the back of a Ratel, later commanded the "stick" and rose to the high rank of corporal! 
I loved the whine of that engine, I still get all nostalgic hearing it!
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The Non-Commissioned Officers are the backbone of a military force. Their leadership is the glue that keeps units together when things don't go right. They train the privates, and they do a lot of the training for lieutenants. The awesome power that a cohesive tank company can project would not be possible without the tireless efforts of professional NCOs. You have my greatest admiration as one of those soldiers who ensure the fight gets taken to the enemy...and what an enemy you had!
The MRAPs do have air conditioning, and it is extremely effective. Most Hummvees have a/c also. However, it was never an option for tanks. Tankers got pretty hot in there but we never complained. Besides that, we always had an ice chest full of cold drinks strapped on top of the turret. Always had cold drinks, but we never, ever had apricots on our tanks. Those evil things are bad luck and every tanker knew it. To this day I do not allow apricots in my house.
My favorite engine was the one in the M551 Sheridan, a Detroit Diesel 6V53 with Roots blower and turbocharger. The two-cycle 6V53 had a unique sound and a very good power-to-weight ratio in the Sheridan. My vehicle broke the speedometer on one mission which meant it exceeded 60 mph that day. Pretty fast in a tracked vehicle.
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I feel very humbled by you kind comments. I knew guys I really admired and never thought of myself as anything more than a kid who was very confused by it all and tried desperately to take complex op orders and tell the "troepies" what to do about them.
I also think junior officers should be included in the list of those who make things happen. I recall my Dad's admiration for the WWII German Army and have read that they gave their junior officers leadership to decide on the spot what to do. Modern armies have all adopted that concept.
The enemy we had, as I read it now, is much more scary than we thought then! Little did I know the USSR thought Southern Africa was a key goal. I read that some East Bloc air forced didn't have the MiG 23 when the Angolan AF already did. The Sovs were serious!
Glad to hear the MRAPS now have a/c, it was much needed. Oddly enough, my Dad was a tanker, but when I showed him a video about modern tanks (Abrams, Leclerc, Leopard etc) he got quite sad, saying the tanks he was trained on in the Royal Hungarian Army (Toldi, Turan and Pzkw IV) were really toys by comparison.
I don't remember too much about the Ratel engine, except it was six-cylinder diesel and they told us it was "as big as a Volkswagen".
Wow, 60mph would be about 85 or so kms! That's pretty fast!
You lost me on apricots, though!
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I usually do lose people when it comes to apricots. Back in the 1960s, troops in the field were issued Meal, Combat, Individual (C Rations). They included a meat portion, a starch portion, a snack (hard tack crackers and peanut butter), and a dessert portion, commonly apricots. The meals were generally disliked but the apricots were particularly detested and wide spread rumor started that having apricots on your tank would bring bad luck...thrown track, blown oil cooler line, run over a mine, get ambushed. You never knew what was going to happen, you just new something WOULD happen if you had apricots on your tank. Everyone in my tank company was particularly sensitive to apricots, one day the mess hall brought chow out to our field location and there were several containers of apricots. We graciously gave them to the Infantry company next to us. They were very appreciative of the extra treats, but we tankers were the true lucky ones as we had passed off the evil influence of the apricots to someone else.
Its funny, but this is a persistent story. This distrust of apricots has been around since at least the 1960s (some say the 40s). The soldiers in Afghanistan do not trust apricots. Just having them on your vehicle is enough of have something bad happen during convoy (like a blown power steering line). If someone knowingly eats them, something honestly bad will happen. Ever since I was a young lieutenant I have had a deep distrust of apricots. Life is safer that way.
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I'm tempted to invite you to Sunny South Africa and offer you some tins of apricots!
Seriously, though, it seems a funny superstition! I can't say I have any similar food anecdotes, but I did go through a phase after survival training (called "refresher" courses, somehow all the courses were "refreshers" in this or that). I developed a yen for eating weird and wonderful things and my party trick became "peeling" Christmas Beetles (June Bugs) and eating them. We ate a lot of "mopane worms" www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-he… which are very popular with local folks and you can basically just peel them and eat. We used to heat them up on the engine, which was very "lekker" (nice). I eventually grew out of eating odd things and have become quite boring in my food choices!!
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