The blue is practice rounds …The black is the combat one … I see from the Type 90 set from tamiya the soldier loaded a black round for practice … so do usa use combat round for practice ?
Not usually. War shots, service rounds, cost more than practice rounds and are saved for when needed for combat. Also, some service rounds such as Depleted Uranium are restricted from practice due to environmental concerns.
I heard once that 120mm Sabot rounds cost about 5 grand a piece. Is that true?
Don’t have an exact price, but that sounds about right. A 155mm Copperhead laser guided artillery round cost around $30K each, for some point of referance.
We never used anything but the blue training rounds during tank gunnery training. Still a deadly piece of high velocity metal.
In the seventies, we used a mix of training and service rounds. Things must be different nowadays. There were a mixture of “hard” targets and plywood targets down range to blast away at. Usually in our firing table plan, we were required to use the service rounds on hard targets exclusively for obvious reasons. With the advent of the smooth bore 120mm Rheinmetal, the ammunition cost doubled or tripled. The ammunition was much more sophisticated in its design and components due to the fact that the round had to stabilize itself, rather than relying in rifling in the tube. There were several proposals to adopt ultra high velocity weapons in smaller calibers for the arming of US armor in the late seventies. This initiative was snuffed due to the extreme pressure on the US Forces to commonize with NATO . The British were especially resistant to adopting German tank guns. They held the line, partly due to the fact that thier forces were small in number in comparison to the other NATO players.
I still remember watching those Chieftains shooting the big 120mm, using a single tracered machine gun round as a range finder. First they would pop one fifty round, observe the tracer burnout, and then that long tubed 120 would start talking.
We also used a single shot .50 cal mounted on the guntube and shot gunnery tables on a “mini” tank range, using the tracer of the .50 cal round mimicking the ballistic characteristics of HEAT ammunition. This was akin to a penny arcade shooting gallery and was kind of silly. The loader didn’t really get any effective training out of it and we used this system grudgingly. All in the guise of saving dollars on the training budget. This was before the days of simulators etc. Ther was also an adaptation of this system using an M16, mounted externally on the mantlet and firing tracer.
Steve
I have used mainly training ammo . However when I was posted in Germany , we did fire service HESH ( High Explosive Squash Head ) . It produced spectacular effects , especially when fired on the wrong scale ( IE Sabot Scale ). An explosion , about 400 M , in front of the tank , would result. The guilty Crew Commander , would be told to " Clear Guns " , and and report to the " Tower ". There he would receive ,a severe " tongue lashing " from the Range Safety Officer , for poor " crew supervision " . To add " insult to injury " , during " Beer Call " , he would be ridiculed by his peers , and end up buying beverages for everyone.
Frank
" PERSEVERANCE "