Centurion 169041 of the British Army, nicknamed The Atomic Tank, was involved in a nuclear blast test at Emu Plains in Australia in 1953. It was placed about 500 meters from the bomb being detonated and left with the engine running. Upon return to the tank for subsequent examination it was found to have been pushed away from the blast point by about 2 meters and that its engine had only stopped working because it had run out of fuel. Antennas were missing, lights and periscopes were heavily sand blasted and the cloth mantlet cover was heavily carbonised but the tank was able to be driven away from the site. Had the tank been manned, it is unlikely that the crew would have survived due to the shock wave created by an atomic blast.
169041 was subsequently transferred to the Australian Army who later used it in the Vietnam War and is now located at Robertson Barracks in Palmerston, Northern Territory. Although other tanks were subjected to nuclear tests, 169041 is the only tank known to have withstood atomic tests and subsequently gone on for another 23 years of service, including 15 months on operational deployment in a war zone
uh…I’m not buyin this buddy, this had to be an underground test- there IS NO WAY that a tank would survive an above ground thermonuclear weapon being detonated 500 meters from ground zero pal.
…remember Trinity, the bomb tower that supported the first Fat Man was completely vaporized- and that was an ATOM bomb. The temperature would be over 2000 degrees, enough heat to turn sand into glass. A centurion tank would have been completely vaporized, or best case a giant ball of slag.
That is kilotons right Phil? 10 kilotons detonated at 500 yards-compared to the paltry 20,000 ton (tnt) dropped on Japan…hmmmm sorry my good friends, I believe our great Australian allies tested nukes, but, I’m still havin a hard time swallowing the tank story, mates, sorry.
I have been to Trinity Site and seen what happened there. The crater alone was huge and everything within about a half mile of it was vaporized or melted. The sand-come-glass is still there.
I have also seen the US test footage of what happened to vehicles that close to ground zero; pretty much nothing left. The vehicle would be radioactive for many years as well.
I don’t know. Maybe it is plausible. I heard about a guy who stopped an RPG round fired from 20 feet away by standing behind his poncho. [;)]
Seriously, do military guys remember the immediate action drills for a nuclear blast. You know, “the lay down with your head toward the blast and cover all exposed skin” drill? Yeah, rrrriiiiiight…
That’s exactly what I was thinking! That tank should have made a Geiger Counter go into overdrive. And remember that in those days “low yield atomic bombs” were not in anybody’s inventory.
The pancho would have possibly caused the RPG (probably a seven) to start the reaction of the warhead as it went thru the pancho. He’d been dead if he was within ten feet of it (backside). The round would have blown up just as it exited the pancho. It’s the nature of the beast. A fourteen might have blown thru the pancho without going off at all, but that’s really a fifty-fifty deal. A block of stryofoam is another story though.