I don’t see much on this topic at all. It’s usually the so-called little armored Hummers that take the big hits.
How many M1 tanks in OIF have been destroyed by the enemy? And are the crews surviving the hits?
This one looks like it’s been knocked out by the enemy!
That M1 was taken out by 2 mines stacked on top of the other. While it can be said that it was knocked out by enemy action, it was not by another tank.
Do you know what happened to the crew or was it unmanned at the time?[:(]
Some of the crew died but I can’t remember how many exactly.
If I was an M1 tanker, another tank would be the least of my worries. Seems a few were lost to RPG’s too.
I saw a report on TV tonight in which a Challenger 2 got stranded and took 7 hits from RPG’s and the crew didn’t even need to bail out!
If I was an M1 tanker…I would be worried about everything. Even though it is a well protected tank, at close range, a lot of things that the enemy can throw can cause damage to it either fatal or not.
One must never underestimate the enemy…
No Abrams have been destroyed by enemy tanks. There have been a few disabled by RPGs and they subsequently burned or were destroyed by US forces during the initial invasion to keep them from falling into Iraqi hands. Multiple others have been disabled by IEDs and RPGs by insurgents, most being towed back to bases and repaired. A few, as the M1A2 above were catastrophic kills and had to be scrapped. No idea on the total numbers that have been hit though.
Check out www.undermars.com for more pics of knocked out M1’s and Bradleys.
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292236-2336437.php This article details an M1 knocked out by an un-identified weapon.
http://www.janes.com/defence/land_forces/news/jdw/jdw030620_1_n.shtml This one is almost 2 years old, but contains some interesting material.
http://www.marinetimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-710058.php Is also interesting.
Ryan
I guess I used the word enemy as a general term. I didn’t really mean enemy to mean only enemy tanks. The enemy has used all sorts of devices to thwart our troops. So let me reword the question and ask how many Abrams have been destroyed (or disabled) by the forces that are fighting against us?
Arty…When you say a few is that less than 10? Compared to the number of tanks that are in country, the percentage lost must be extremely low.
I mean, I watched a show on History Channel today where in WWII 3rd Armored lost 648 tanks in less than a year. I know different tank, different war.
Good stuff, from the Marine Times article.
http://www.marinetimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-710058.php
About 4,500 troops have served on tanks in Iraq. Of those, three soldiers have been killed inside their tanks by roadside bombs. An additional 10 to 15 crew members have been killed while riding with their heads out of the hatch, standing on the tanks, or, in one case, by an insurgent who climbed onto the tank and shot down into the crew compartment, Tucker said.
“I am unaware of any case where any tanker in Iraq has been killed inside of a tank by a penetration of a tank round or RPG or any other munition,” Tucker said. “It’s a pretty safe place to be.”
About 1,135 Abrams tanks have seen action in Iraq, Tucker said, some more than once. Of those, he said, “probably 70 percent have been hit or damaged in some way. In fact, it’s hard to find an Abrams tank out there that has fought in Iraq that has not been damaged.”
Eighty tanks have sustained damage that required them to be sent back to the United States for repairs, said Tucker, noting that the damage was “fairly minor” in some cases.
“If a seam or a weld was broken, that’s pretty delicate work, and we couldn’t do that in theater, so we’ve brought tanks back to the U.S. for welding repairs,” he said.
“About 63 of those 80 tanks will go back to the fleet,” Tucker said. The remaining 17 “will probably never go back to the fleet.”
Nice info and a great question! Good reading here!
Fascinating stuff. It’s comforting knowing our tanks can take a beating and so few crew members have been lost.
i have a lot of pitures of tanks towing in another tank due to poor maintenace, these tankers now a days, lol
Well, many Russian tanks in Chechnya were hit by more and were not incapacitated. Same goes for the M1s in Iraq. But some of the Russian tanks were eventually taken out by lucky hits. The Chechens would utterly bombard the Russian tanks with RPGs for just that reason. Apparently one or two M1s have similarly been disabled by lucky hits.
Remember, there is only a tiny handful of Challenger 2s in Iraq, so they haven’t seen nearly enough action to come under the kind of fire that will eventually lead to such a lucky hit. The only Challenger 2 I know of to take a penetrating hit took it from another Challenger 2.
i came across an article i wish i could find it again…it stated that 2 m1a2’s were the very first abrams tanks ever knocked out by enemy fire…that was during the invasion…somewhere near samarra! i have plenty of pictures from my buddy who was there of burned out abrams or abrams missing road wheels due to mines or whatever. anyway…that article corrilates with what he told me since it was his unit that took the “hit”! in fact there was another instance where at night an abrams tank was taking rpg fire and another abrams mistook it for and enemy take firing at them and subsequently put a penetrator round into it…killing the crew and destroying the tank! if i knew how to post the pictures…i would! anyway…that’s my two cents 
In the Gulf WAR in91 only one Abrams was put out of action from a T-72 the crew was not lost and theM1 was put back in service.As for as Russian tanks in Chechnya in 94 while trying to take Grozny Russia lost 105 Tanks out of 120.Thats alot of tanks to be lucky hits.
Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’!
Ryan
This would be rather difficult since the first M1A2 equipped unit in theater, the 4th ID, was sitting on ships off the shores of Turkey when the invasion took place. They eventually disembarked in Kuwait and entered Iraq after the invasion.
Rob beat me to it. I was going to make the same statements. It could’t have been an M1A2, at least not during the invasion.