Congratulations on your retirement. I had to leave after 10 years (4 of that being university and training in the Summer) due to medical release myself, but my service was all peacetime/Cold War and mostly on the 6 wheeled Cougar pieces of crap we had in Canada as opposed to Leopards.SABOT wrote: ↑Sat Apr 07, 2018 4:38 pm I have recently retired from a career of 30 years on main battle tanks. My speciality was always Gunnery. I have fought in the sand on two tours etc. So, I would like to help where I can from the technical aspects of tank gunnery etc. My aim, always to help.
Bearing in mind it’s at least a six week full time course to become a basic qualified Gunner - then years of experience to gain a fuller knowledge.
Dadlamassau has his finger on it with his explanations.
The jump in technical quality from WW2 to present day is staggering , yet we still cannot aim at a certain point on the target and hit it there - not possible at any range because of dispersion. When everything is lined up correctly, the gun sight relationship is boresighted 100 per cent and range is spot on - even then you cannot pin point your fall of shot. The main reason is because of the Gunner aims at the centre of the observed mass in order to overcome dispersion. That variation in lateral and vertical movement cannot be made consistent due to manufacturing tolerances and therefore in Gunnery terms cannot be compensated for by the fire control computer. In tank gunnery consistency is far more important than accuracy.
I will pause here and if any interest I will answer any questions but overall you lads have pretty much got it covered. Not bad for a bunch of ‘Civvies’
I'd be really interested in your thoughts and experience are on the frequency of immobilize results?
My training also emphasized aiming for the centre of visible mass and I never tried anything else during my own gunnery training and neither did any of my gunners at the regiment and on the range or live fire exercises. But I've since read and listened to WWII vets who claim they did try to aim for certain areas, but as Faustnik has pointed out, there were in desperate circumstances against Tigers or Panthers. In the 1990s, I was shocked to hear our former honourary commandant of the Armour School on a documentary describing how he instructed his squadron's (company) gunners to aim for the very small area of the lower part of the Panther's mantlet.