Stabilizers

[low_bidder]

OK, I found some pictures of the inside of a turret on a T-55, with a stabilizer. So my information was wrong.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4008399/Inside...reat-Tanks

Scroll down to the T-55 section. Note there at least 2 US WW2 tanks had them. In the above URL, there is a write up where a former crewman says they turned off the stabilizer because if the gun stays still while the tank is going up and down then you have a big chunk of steel swinging wildly around inside a very cramped turret. Makes sense to me, given that the whole fire on the move thingie is pretty much overblown. Most think that means going flat out, but it doesn't. Anyway, I'm still looking for a picture of a M-48 with a stabilizer. I think it wasn't called a stabilizer. I'm looking at "gyro-Control" now.

When I was a teenager, I used to go to the swimming pool at Ft. Meade and pick up girls. I would take them under the fence to the parking lot behind the swimming pool where they stored M-48's. I most distinctly remember the inside of the turret. My helmet got polished for the first time in the turret of a M-48. It isn't the sort of thing one forgets. I'm just not sure if it was a stabilized sight that access panel led to.
Meanwhile, what does Tom clancy have to do with anything?
It is a matter of historic fact that Soviet weapons were badly designed and poorly built. While there were exceptions, they are few and far between. How ever, the Soviets were absolutly first rate at telling lies. They were so good they started believing their own lies, which is why the Soviet Union collapsed.
Very poor quality control. That is because the workers pretended to work while the state pretended to pay them. Battlefields tend to expose pretenses. Google the battle of the Golan heights during the om Kipper War.Less then 100 Israeli tanks destroyed 2 Syrian Soviet style Armored divisions. With T-62's against mostly M-48's.It would have been worse but the Israeli's kept running out of ammo.