What happens if a grenade is tossed down a tank barrel?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ก.ค. 2023
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Literally subscribed to you like 40 minutes ago, what turnaround time
Okay this one is for you then!
New vids from the MRE guy today too. You two should partner up, he gets crazy views
Definitely one of the best channels out there
His turnaround time is amazing. Johnny is awesome
The more the merrier.
If you think a grenade down the barrel is bad, just imagine Bugs Bunny blowing on his glove to inflate his hand and plugging his finger into a tank barrel. Now that's some maximum damage.
Professor Popeye, is that you? (The Dictator reference)
Well, he is rumored to be a reality warper, so...
It would split the barrel open but barrels can be replaced, a grenade on the other hand would damage the firing mechanism, you’d need to replace the entire cannon
@@tomdelvetto9906what if they fired while the gun was blocked
Don't mess with Buggs. He'll frick you up.
Funny story...
In basic training for the US army, we had grenade training. We used training grenades that had the fuse, but no explosives and a hole in the bottom to allow gases to escape. We had multiple training scenarios we had to train on. One was tossing (you don't throw a grenade) into a mortar position. I had removed the thumb clip, twisted and pulled the pin, then tossed the training grenade at the position. It had spun, as I was used to putting spin on football after playing for years, and landed bottom first straight down the tube of the fake mortar. Once the grenade went off, the gasses launched it back out and flew almost 50 meters down range. We had to stop the exercise and find the hull, as they are reused and must be collected. My DS said it was the weirdest thing he had ever seen in his career. 5:05
wait... forgive my ignorance but what's the difference between "tossing" and "throwing" and whatever the difference is; why can you do one but not the other? I need to google exactly what "tossing" is. I've always used it interchangeably with throwing for 40 years and no one has ever corrected me.
@@DrSardonicus ok... I'll try to explain this as best as I can. You don't throw a grenade like a baseball. There are two reasons for this. One, you want to toss the grenade from behind cover. If you were to throw it like you traditionally think of throwing, you would have to be upright and your head exposed. Two, grenades have a 3-5 second fuse. If you throw it directly at a position, it can get there too quickly and have time to be tossed back. By tossing it slowly on an ark, it has a longer travel time. As for what is "tossing" or lobbing, it is overhead "throwing" of the grenade. This allows the individual to be able to toss it when laying in their side only exposing their arm, while standing and not exposing their head, or even underhand into doors when breaching.
@@DrSardonicus Your right, they are interchangable terms. Tossing is usually an underhanded throw, like the initial action of a tennis serve. Throwing is a more general term but usually infers an overhanded throw that imparts more energy to the object then a toss would.
@CannedCoochie lol, no. He did make me shoot the M203 (grenade launcher) for live fire. He told me I had to get the projectile inside the truck (shooting at an old Chevy pickup), or he would smoke me. I fired it right into the drivers window.
@@DrSardonicus, I got yelled at for "throwing" instead of "tossing" but I still qualified Expert... "tomayto, tomahto".
The Tiger tank was equipped with a demo charge for insertion into the barrel when abandoning the tank. Most crews discarded it because the commander didn't want an explosive charge stowed right next to him (Otto Carius, for example, carried a bottle of schnapps in the container for it instead). Without the charge, the way they used to disable the gun was to drain the recuperators then fire a round. This would cause the gun to jump its trunnions and destroy the recoil mechanism. You can see this in some WW2 photos of abandoned Tigers.
In Germany, I once saw a Chieftain tank deliver cans of beer to infantrymen in their fighting positions, by sliding them down the barrel.😁
An ex-military friend told me that, while returning to the UK from Germany, they stocked up on a certain brand and bottle size of Schnapps which fit very snugly into the tank barrels without a Customs-alerting rattle. Duty-free fags by the ammo box full, with a decorative layer of belt ammunition ... Very likely, the Customs knew all these tricks (some ex-soldiers join them, after all) and just didn't care.
That’s honestly awesome, little beer delivery tube. Cans are only like 60mm. And modern ones use smoothbore so the beer isn’t even shaken up. That’s sick!
@@Hrrrrrrrrrrengnah man, the Brit’s still use rifled barrels. Most modern tanks are smoothbore but not theirs. That being said the Challenger 3 is moving to the L55 so will be smoothbore
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The thermite grenade down a barrel was a standard technique used to disable enemy guns in WW2. It was usually done when an artillery position had been captured but there was a likelihood that the enemy could recapture it. It would work just as well with an abandoned tank which might be recovered to make it unusable. As others here note though, it would be a likely suicidal thing to attempt if the tank was manned and operational.
The stated way in the M60 and early M1 manuals to disable a tank that the crew abandoned was two thermite grenades down the barrel.
@@501Mobius Usually you rig inside the tank as well. Radio equipment e t c should be destroyed if you have the time. Intelligence is worth way more than a single tank canon.
A thermite grenade is very different than a fragmentation hand grenade designed for use against personnel. A frag grenade wouldn't destroy the barrel, much less the tank. Thermite grenades are incendiary grenades. They don't explode, they BURN white hot and melt or burn through whatever they are placed on. They are used to destroy equipment that is being left behind so that it can't be used by the enemy.
Thermite grenades were built for this exact purpose. Thermite burns right through metal in a slow controlled reaction; it isn't an explosive. A frag grenade, while probably not good for the barrel and would fill it with some shrapnel, wouldn't destroy the breech block. The reason why you see the tank erupting in flames in the video from Syria is because the grenade went through an open breech block and blew up the ammo in the crew compartment
Exactly, but the question is referring to frag grenades, not thermite grenades. Frag grenades wouldn't do anything to the barrel.
I'm glad you eventually mentioned thermite, which we were trained to use in School of Infantry. Were we trained specifically to slide them down tank barrels? No, but we discussed it in school.
It is possible. But the engine or tracks would be a better target before the Barrel
Cylinder head.
... or above a fuel source with a buffer plate if you feel like a good run.
thermobaric grenade could do the work too
@@Autobotmatt428with thermite barrel is best, or inside
@@jantschierschky3461 I was thinking more in terms of if the tank was active not static an unmanned.
In Marine Corps artillery we were taught to disable our howitzers, to prevent capture by the enemy, by setting off thermite grenades in the muzzle and breech, and using picks to puncture the tires and pneumatic lines, as well as taking a sledge hammer to the sights.
Cant believe we left all the gear in Iran , I stand corrected,Afganistan, the other place where women are abused and boys and goats fear towels ,and didn't even disable it ,,dont get that shit but someone outlghta hang .
@@shawntailor5485Afghanistan.
@@jimarcher5255 thank you jim ,I realized the error when my dipshititus cleard up .lol
@@shawntailor5485 It was for the local forces but they folded like a house of cards when the government collapsed.
@@shawntailor5485they actually did disable plenty of things, just not all. The afghan military also gave them plenty of non disabled equipment from us which is more of the ones you see being used for their propaganda.
My father was a 105mm gun mechanic in WW2 and his battery was overrun, they were out of 105mm ammo, and he was directed to destroy the guns. He first destroyed the gun sights with a sledge hammer and had the pieces thrown into nearby farm ponds. Then he pushed grenades with the pins out and the spoons off down the gun barrels with the cleaning rammer. The grenade would go off and screw up the rifling in the barrel, making the gun wildly inaccurate if the enemy did find some ammo. The rammer would be pushed out and the process repeated.
Finally, he removed the breech blocks, beat them up with sledges, including the locking surfaces on the guns, and then had the breech blocks thrown into a mud pit and covered up.
The enemy COULD rebuild the guns....but it wasn't going to be fast.
IF they had still had ammo, his plan would have been to load one round in the gun, with the fuze set to impact, wedge another shell into the muzzle set to impact, point the whole shebang into the ground, and pull the lanyard with a LONG rope, hoping to petal the gun.
I know that the point is to deny the use of the weapon again, however it seems like it's excessively I'm assuming job, you're probably going to be overrun. Most gun replacements for issued thermite packs, there were to be placed on the transversing gear and in the muscle. I know in the case of the self-propelled howitzer. There is usually multiple thermite rounds in a special box, that's designed to be somewhat bullet resistant and Flame proof. And our size specifically to fit the barrel. You're supposed to load the specialized grenade into the barrel close the breach block and pull the cord. This detonates the grenade inside the barrel with a breach closed. It Wells the breech block to the barrel. Or the muzzle I should say and there's no way you can even open the gun. Then if time allows the other gmailing charges that are in the box, look something like a cotton flour sack. They're supposed to be laid on top of the barrel before the Detonator is pulled. These bags the underside will become molten while the top of the bag glows bright red. And she basically calls the barrel to fall off. It's a melting and cutting charge. In training we were taught to deploy both of these and do this in less than 2 minutes. Preferably you did it simultaneously as you didn't want to be near the end of the barrel when the thermite slug was going off at the breach. It's quite a bit of flame smoke and other nastiness would come out. After that we didn't care about hydraulic lines and tires. Occasionally tires would be shot. Or someone wanted to damage their bayonet they would try to stab it through the sidewall. However most military tires are many fly of Steel belts and rubber. You're going to have quite a bit of difficulty and jamming a knife through them. But again the point is disable the weapon by whatever means possible supposedly during World War II one gun crew in the Pacific. Intentionally blocked the barrel of their gun, by slamming another round into the end of the muzzle. And then firing the gun into it. When the two shells met each other. It caused the barrel to peel open like you see in a cartoon.
@@allen_steel1236 Having thermite charges would have been great for my dad, assuming they were issued to gun batteries in WW2.
Too much is made of reading TOE manuals and assuming everyone had all their kit. Even if they did, batteries were not equal. 'A' Battery had 6 HEAT shells total for its 4 tubes, while B and C batteries had none-they were never issued.
The historical term is "Spiking" the gun, as it used to be accomplished by driving a nail down the touchhole of a cannon. Cavalry troopers would often carry nails in case they took a battery.
In the same time his comrades attached their guns to trucks and drove away into safety...
@@Aldornas A nail ... or a bayonet made of hardened (and so, brittle) steel, then striking the wedged bayonet sideways so it snapped off near the fuse hole. A mechanic might be able to clear the touch hole, but at the cost of several hours work per cannon. Which achieved the end of making the guns unusable against the retreating unit.
Sometimes "lead gunners" were issued with barbed "nails" designed for "spiking" the guns.
I expect modern guns have some such mechanism designed in form the drawing board. A locking mechanism that locks the breech lock shut, maybe.
The Girls Und Panzer clip was a fantastic and unexpected addition.
When my father and his friends were in the military they figured out that the inedible canned pea they were given was the exact same diameter as the barrel of a T-55, so they had the genius idea to load in a can and put a normal round behind it. The barrel didn't explode, but it was severly damaged. No one found out what happened, so they thought it was an accident.
What a perfect drunk story
Which military was your father in? The Red Army?
@@davidhoffman6980 Soviet era hungarian army
@@domonkosszabo398explains it
@@domonkosszabo398 thanks for the reply.
I read once that in the German Army Field Manual in WWII on infantry anti tank tactics in the absence of proper dedicated anti tank weapons, one rather clever way to at least significantly reduce the effectiveness of a tank in acquiring visual targets was to tie two smoke grenades together by a length of cord or rope or wire or whatever you could find, and toss them like a bolas OVER the barrel of the tank, where they would continue to emit smoke that would disrupt the vision through the optics for the gunner, and potentially through other viewports on the tank as well depending on where the barrel was pointed and which way the wind was blowing.
A smoke grenade down the barrel could well cause enough trouble to the crew, as well, depending on ventilation.
Only for those tanks that keep the breech open in combat-so probably none of them.
@BDNeon The Dutch army field manual for infantry that my dad had did list the exact same concept for anti-tank tactics.
that and of course the infamous molotov cocktail ...
I think it must have been 70's - early 80's print.
During the Winter War, the Finnish were disabling Soviet tanks by throwing Molotovs onto the air intakes (located behind the turret)
This both stalls the engine and forces the crew out
Smart
My vote for the T 72 is it was staged with an abandoned tank using C4 (preplaced on a couple of discarding sabot rounds to sweeten the blast) with a remote detonator of some kind because:
1. The delay between the grenade being thrown and the explosion was only about 3 seconds which is very short for a grenade,
2. Grenades produce fragmentation but little in the way of a fire ball and tanks are specifically designed to survive internal spalling (when a round strikes the armor, doesn't penetrate but causes flakes of metal to scab off the interior hull plate),
3. Throwing a grenade all the way down the length of the barrel at that angle is something a major league baseball player couldn't pull off and this guy barely patted the end of the barrel let alone winding up for a throw,
4. While the secondary jet of flame looks like what you'd get from gunpowder burning off, the initial blast which triggered it was too large for a grenade and too small for a catastrophic failure of stored HE tank rounds.
yeah the huge fireball you see in movies from grenades is pure BS. The explosives inside a frag aren't very big at all. Mythbusters did an episode on disabling a grenade by shooting it with a shotgun...it works. Once blown apart the explosive is just a big pfssssssssssssssst.
It looked suspiciously Hollywood, which tells me they 100% staged it.
@@muskokamike127I have watched plenty of Russians tanks exploring with big ball of fire so idk
M67 grenades have a 3-5 second fuse. Everything else, I won't comment on as idk
The wagon that got knocked out by a grenade down the gun barrel was an abandoned vehicle, with a bomb load of ammo, and its MA breach was in the open position.
One of our guys did the same to a T-55 by chucking a British L2 frag in to the turret. It did go up, full bomb load. (Op Granby 1991)
"Thermite welding" is a real industrial welding process, along with "explosion welding"
The former is used for things like welding segments of train tracks together and the latter is used for welding large sheets of metal face-to-face.
Once friend told me that he was a trainee in Finnish railroads and he had a change to participate in few occasions where they did thermite welding of tracks. Also there are videos on youtube of this. Pretty cool and effective stuff!
True, but it takes kilos of material in a special crucible clamp assembly to precisely place the molten stream on the rails. The actual effectiveness of a thermite grenade is very limited unless precisely placed.
@@Juissimies84 I've seen the videos, and we talked about it briefly in either my Metallurgy or Inspection and Testing class (can't remember which).
@@johnscarborough4746 The clamp/crucible thing also keeps the rail segments from moving around from thermal deformation. I'm not sure exactly what they're made of that lets then withstand the heat.
A thermite grenade was demonstrated to me by a Sargent pulling the pin, setting it on top of a 5 gallon can full of water, and we watched as it melted the top of the can, fell into the water, produced a lot of clouds of steam from the can, then melted through the bottom where it fell on the ground still burning. It was the size of a soda can. Very impressive. The final product is molten iron and aluminum oxide powder, and a lot of heat.
It really seems like the best-case scenario for throwing a grenade down the tank's barrel is that it creates some sort of fouling, and the next shot from the cannon does the actual damage when it gets hung up.
A grenade going off inside the barrel will likely foul up or damage the bore, at which point its going to be unsafe AF to fire any live round with said barrel
Heck, an unexploded grenade might do as much, or more damage, just by virtue of being in the barrel.
@@SoranPryde It won't make it unsafe, but it make it inaccurate. Realistically, though, it'll at most cause a bit of pitting in the barrel and that would do nothing at all. The grenade is significantly smaller than the breech so it won't do much in terms of pressure. And if detonated inside a building with a concrete floor it just chips the concrete.
On older Soviet tanks, the engines are protected by a grill on top of the base of the tank. A grenade placed on top of the grate could destroy the engine and even start a fuel fire. Russia is using such tanks now in Ukraine and Ukrainian drones have been able to destroy Russian tanks by hitting the grill with bomblets. Russians tend to leave their tank hatches open so tanks are getting destroyed from that weakness too.
@@WardenWolf especially for smoothbore guns, which most tanks built today use for a variety of reasons. Given that most shells now are fin stabilized, it's entirely possible that if a grenade went off inside the barrel, the sabot wouldn't even notice, and the dart coming out would be completely unaffected. HEAT or HE shells might be affected, but they won't go off since their fuse won't even be armed until well after it's out of the barrel.
Depends if the breach is up or down. If the breach is down, it'll roll into the turret. If the breach is up, it might cause some pits inside the barrel but no damage to the turret or anyone inside.
Even with the breech up, a small explosive like a hand grenade would need a lot of luck to "destroy" the tank. Pretty hard on the crew, but ammo and fuel are probably safe. Even "delicate" items like electronics and optics could probably survive, unless directly struck by fragments.
As a retired Armor Officer, I can say that having an infantryman stuff a grenade down the barrel isn't even on the radar. The tank has its own machine guns, for one. Plus tanks never operate alone, I would get on the horn and ask my platoon members to eliminate any tank killer teams too close for me to engage. Their fire, while killing the enemy, would just bounce off my armor. Last, you fight in Combined Arms Teams , which means there is infantry with the tanks - whose primary mission is to kill the tank killer teams. So next to zero probability
That argument relies on the tanks being competently deployed and operated, though.
We've seen plenty in Ukraine that weren't.
@@gimmethegepgunOK, any army except the Russian
@@ROBERTN-ut2ili am from iraq and many abrams didnt have infantry with it because when infantry existed our guys would use rpg and run away
So thats why many tanks were alone
*russian tanks love to be alone tho!
EDITED TO "M48" CAUSE SOME OF YALL CANT SHUT UP: My grandpa, while not a tanker himself, was Motor Pool in Nam and made friends with a lot of em. They, at one point, had an M48 that they had to disassemble the cannon of because a VC had tried this with some sort of explosive followed by a uniform sleeve full of sand, and it soft-welded/bent the breech enough that they couldn't open it manually. The guys inside were fine but described the blast as "like someone hammering the side of the bathtub you're in" and had some nasty headaches.
the vietcong sure were despereate enough to try this , damn
@@Anonymuskid It did the job though. They were fuckin' good at their work
@@Anonymuskid fail lol
@@caelodevorago608 Communists aren't exactly known for being intelligent...
@@caelodevorago608 I know. It's still quite the desperate act.
As an Abrams systems mechanic in the Army i can say i don't believe a normal frag grenade would damage the barrel to the point that it couldn't be used.
Would you think it would say foul the rifling inside the barrel though?
My thinking is it would go off and the fragments would be inside and barrel and the next round fired it would foul the barrel then.
@@deanpruit4216 That would be the most likely scenario but I'm thinking much of the shrapnel would be blown out the open end and the rest would fall out when the breach block is opened up. This is a theory only.
@@deanpruit4216 That is a possibility that I find more plausible too. Instead of flat out destroying the barrel. It could damage the inside enough to affect accuracy.
@@deanpruit4216 Abrams don't have rifling. Smooth bore.
Brother was a m1a1 Abrams crewmember and he told me if his tank was disabled and about to be taken by enemy they were to toss one thermite grenade in the commanders hatch, one down the barrel and one in the driver's hatch. It would absolutely destroy the tank but it would prevent bad dudes from getting a tank. It's called scuttling
For as little damage as it could do, the idea of sending a grenade down a tank's barrel seems to have been around for a while. I remember watching an episode of (IIRC) "Greatest Tank Battles", and one of the veterans mentioned they faked being knocked out when they stopped for a night trying to get back to friendly lines. He mentioned he depressed the gun barrel below the horizontal, because he "didn't want some son-of-a-bitch rolling a hand grenade down the barrel".
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the fact that you have a tiger tank in your room.
Lol it shoots BBs too
....huh?
Yeah I didn't notice it either. Time stamp?
@@JohnnyJohnsonEsq reminds of the gorilla running across the stage that nobody noticed...E...
also worth mentioning, even if you somehow got to the tanks barrel, had the right grenade, and the barrel was withing reach, if the tank fired it's canon at that point, you'd suffer from serious concussion as those guns create massive explosions at the end of their muzzles
You would die as your insides would turn to jelly
@Vashtstamped yep, I read somewhere that even standing close to a .50 cal barrel, or close to where the round hits cn cause enough of a concussion, it can cause serious brain damage. It can also just liquify parts of your inside if even closer.
Say for example if a .50 cal round passed by you within a few inches.
@@Rykiz_Vidz Absolutely ridiculous !! If it didn't hit you it would cause zero damage. If you were standing close to the muzzle when it went off you would feel some concussive force but that is all. Ive felt it many times and even beside a 105mm recoiless rifle again, you feel a concussive force like as if you got punched in the nose, but again that is just a feeling, my nose didn't bleed. These are playground myths. Stuff 10 year olds tell each other on the playground.
@@Vashtstamped If the concussion were that bad, the crew would also die.
@@Rykiz_Vidz Slow mo guys disproved this one. .50 cal has a lot of concussion, but they shot a .50BMG at a CANDLE and it couldn't put it out. If it can't put out a candle flame by passing within an inch of it, it won't do anything to you if it passes within an inch.
Nothing happens, unless the breach is open.
Now these are the questions that would keep me up at night
The charge in a grenade is insignificantly less than a typical tank charge. A barrel designed to handle that kind of explosion.
if the breach was open maybe, but if it was closed would probably knock the turret out of action
It might cause scoring to the barrel, as the forces the barrel is normally exposed to, are not the same as that of an exploding grenade, which is multi-directional. An open breech could cause some shrapnel to enter the crew compartment, too.
@@Godstud yes it may do superficial damage to the riffling but it won't blow up the barrel.
@@3ggh3ad they kept the mail box open so they can get barrel presents.
@@Shinobubu Yeah I don't think it will blow up the barrel outright but it may cause enough damage that the barrel is no longer safe to use or accurate when firing. I know I wouldn't feel particularly confident firing a cannon that's had a frag grenade detonated inside of it.
I don’t know why, but as a kid, I always played with my army men and I pretended that the gun barrel would be destroyed by a grenade and so would the tank. Great video in general and lots of useful informations. ❤
Id argue if youre a kid playing with army men, pretty much anything goes.
I vividly remember throwing a tantrum becouse my mom ordered me to tidy up my room with toys scattered around becouse those units were out of fuel and had many wounded men so they couldnt relocate and I was upset she was messing up my wargame.Good times.
Back then, I used my M1 Bradly toy as a regular tank that I imagined it having a big cannon instead of the small 20mm. So I would pretend that it used 105mm rounds. I pretended that the ERA was some sort of super armor that wouldn’t break because it was, Y’know super and thick and it dominated the battlefield taken place in my head. I didn’t realize the M1 Bradly uses the 20mm, or it even having ATGMs. I thought that bag looking thing to the side of the turret was where the shovel and other tools went.
Until after I had a M4A2 model and a M60A3 to play with was when the M1 Bradly got boring so I used it as a weak tank.
Edit: I forgot the M1 Bradly has a 25mm not 20mm. Im not an expert, but I do have a interest in tanks and I am thoroughly disappointed in myself.
During my Toy wars, the tank was always the badass gamechanger. Heavy, powefull and had always a best trained crew and always access to any support in any case 😂 ...
I always made tanks these unstoppable death machines that took extreme flanking tactics to take out, almost always with a shoulder-fired rocket or equivalent energy weapon, or an air-to-ground attack. A tank could take out 2 dozen men in a very short amount of time, and I'd use them to create drama and piles of casualties in the story.
I like how the second part of this video is a list of the best ways to actually do it
I don't believe anyone who shouts "ALLENS SNACK BAR" ALLANS SNACK BAR while their hands are waving in the air
For the T-72's case, It could easily be the crew's fault that they left it open, if there was crew inside at the first place.
I don't think it's staged but it could be a deserted tank.
It's probably really hot inside the tank in the middle of the summer, especially in Syria, so that they might find a "genius" idea to left the breech open as an additional airway...
It fires in the video so it was crewed.
You can see at the very end a guy on fire coming out
I might be wrong but in the video it looks like someone is climbing out of the tank and is falling off
it also might be just the hatch melting or some other part from the tank
@@odynith9356 No it was a hatch open or a piece of camouflage. It's there before the explosion, during the fire and then falls off.
In the original video there is a first attempt but the main gun fires before the grenade explodes. It is the second attempt, after the tank may be engaging with coax, that the grenade succeeds in igniting the propellent charges. The breech may have been left open because loading a round would have caused the gun to elevate making the coax incapable of engaging targets.
3:37 not to mention the risk of being unfortunate enough to be standing near the main gun when it fires, turning you into spaghetti sauce all over the place
for the whole ammo blowing up thing, most modern tanks have blast doors that seperate the ammo compartment from the crew meaning the grenade would only strike the crew and/or the breech, barrel, though if the door was left open maybe a very slight chance it hits a round but if the crews fine they possibly could close the door quickly and let the blowout panels (if the tank has any just using modern abrams as an example) do the work before exiting
Running up to a tank's bow also puts you in line with the rest of the tank, should the driver happen to start driving forward at that moment. You'd also not enjoy being near the gun's barrel should they happen to fire, either. And in modern tanks, the crew's visibility is a lot better than it was in WWII.
I think the tank kill in syria was a staged action in the sense the tank was already abandoned with the breach open. However I don't think it was any more staged than that. Destroying tanks you're incapable of recovering makes perfect sense.
Also considering how catastrophically tanks can explode, I don't think it's something people would willingly repeat too often unless absolutely necessary.
Yea if its one thing T series tanks are good it, its turret pops lol
The tank has an autoloader so the breach doesn't stay open. They would have opened it themselves as filled it wth with explosives to make this happen.
This is a fully staged video (one of many) where they make it look as if there's is a battle.
@@Gracefulwarrior2124 I think that's a myth based on the tanks being hit with extremely overwhelming modern antitak weapons.
All tanks lose their turrets when overwhelmed like that because it's a universal point of failure. Look at the Abraham tanks destroyed by mines.
@@Theduckwebcomics Well, after reading this post, I check and it's BS. Found plenty of pictures of m1s burned out. Shit happens. Found *exactly* 1 m1 with it's turret blown off from a mine though. The catch is it didn't just hit *a mine* . It hit a mine sitting on top a thousand pounds of explosives.
*Nothing* is going to take that. It didn't just blow off the turret. It blew off the track. It blew off the road wheels. It blew off the top of the hull. It blew engine maintenance panels off of the top of the hull.
Even so, you can clearly see that there was no sympathetic detonation or secondary ignition. Just an overwhelmingly massive concussive force.
0:27 average Squad player
The t 72 series has an automatic loader, in wars it has been shown that a hit that would not normally destroy a tank can cause an explosion of ammunition in the loader. a grenade inserted into the barrel can cause a similar effect, especially if the breech is open.
This is a very detailed video on the subject of tossing a granade down a tank barrel. Probably the best one found anywhere on the internet. Anybody interested in the matter will certainly benefit from it :)
Considering the T-72 has an autoloader and the barrel angle is fairly level (required for loading) there is a chance that the breech was open at the time the grenade was thrown in. The tank doesn't appear to be very active and may have been abandoned if the auto-loader malfunctioned.
There is a spared machinegun, that would gun down anyone close to the barrel, its literally a kill zone and you are guaranteed dead if you enter it if there any crew inside
I have seen the full footage. That tank has just fired a round a few seconds earlier. The grenade in the barrel was that guys second attempt.
@@DeltaEchoGolf In the full footage that "shot" a few seconds earlier between grenade 1 and grenade 2 "happens" when the insurgent is directly under the barrel that's some serious concussive force potentially fatal but he doesn't flinch, cover his ears, have his clothes move and no dust is kicked up/muzzle flash. Top of all that you can hear the audio slightly cut and a quick fade out of an "aloha akbar" a split second before the tank "shoots" as well as what sounds almost like the trailing end of the same muzzle retort cut in as if the start of the audio clip the editor used got cut too early while recording back to back shots from another clip(note as well the video doesn't skip or have any oddities at this point so this is only the audio track). I did 2 years of video in HS and still edit shit on my free time and was/am good with granular audio editing stuff, this is clearly as day a sloppy audio edit to me. I am extremely certain this was a demolition of an abandoned un-crewed T-72 where the first attempt to cause an ammo cook off failed and the second succeeded, staged to look like a hero insurgent killed this tank in live fire.
True statement
@@n00bist723 you can see a guy on fire climbing out at the very end.
Of course, like others, I immediately thought of that scene from Band of Brothers where Winters and Easy Company took that artillery emplacement and used German "potato masher" grenades to trigger blocks of TNT shoved down the barrel. Far more realistic, and well documented. 😮
They used to issue engineers and others with special barrel diameter long fused explosive type grenades (thermalite I believe) to slide down barrels and blow them up
@@Ukraineaissance2014 Well, that's better than charging like the Light Brigade...when they were ordered to charge the Russian guns, they didn't even have the tools necessary to spike them. 🙄🙄🙄
@@User_Un_Friendly it was a miscommunication, they were ordered to recover their own guns being taken after the turks fell back and left some at redoubts, but went at russian ones instead, and the charge wasnt actually as big of a disaster as made out.
@@Ukraineaissance2014 That's apocryphal. And I'm more inclined to believe that Cardigan was covering his aristocratic a$$. I question his competence.
@@User_Un_Friendly 1. it was literally covered in parliament. 2. Cardigan didnt give the order.
The guy at a local cemetery where we buried my dad last year was a marine and showed me the fragments of an exploded grenade. I’d hate to be near one when it goes off. The metal is thicker than I always thought it was. I was army infantry and only got to use 2 of them in OSUT. Good memories.
3:00 instantly thought of Girls & Panzer!😅
10 seconds later...
"It totally worked!"
Guess i wasn't the only one😂👍
Another reason that approaching a tank cannon is a bad idea that you didn't mention is that the concussive blast of the main gun firing can be lethal (It can be lethal if you are beside the cannon, not just in front, (I think it is ~270 degree arc within 10M for an M1A1 Abrams, although this is purely speculation). This is kind of the primary reason you don't see modern infantry as close to tanks as they would be in WWII.
not to mention the hull, co-ax, and any turret-top mounted MGs
in WW11 the Sherman had no fewer than 3 .30, and usually a .50 on top... because thats what Americans do.
they see empty space on a fighting vehicle and they have an overwhelming urge to plant an M2 on that spot
no tank is going into battle without some infantry support and all its hatches down and locked
Lung decompression.
that's on modern tanks. During WWII there were tank destroyer crews who were equipped with hatchets to hack open the air intake screens on Tigers and drop molotov cocktails down into the engine compartment. Another SOP was to have 2 satchel charges tied together with a rope to throw over the gun barrel.
This is why infantry/tanks were symbiotic. Infantry prevented infantry from disabling/destroying a tank.
Visibility out of the tank is so poor when buttoned up you can literally sneak up on one and they wouldn't know it.
So tanks Literally have a Shockwave Shield for Infantry.
There are reports of Tigers attacked by Soviet infantry driving them off by just firing the main gun.
Tanks also practiced what the British called "back scratching" where one tank with unwelcome guests aboard would request another tank to brass them up with their MGs.
4:20 my uncle was a tank commander in WWII and he lost one of his tanks to a white phosphorus trap in Japan (he was part of the mop up operation). the look on his face when he described the tank burning is something i will never forget. and he had installed extra automatic fire extinguishers on his tanks too before then, but that doesn't do much against WP
no foreign army has ever set foot on the Japanese home Islands with out permission from japan, so as you may imagine this smells of bs.
@@8vantor8he wasn’t necessarily referring to the home islands, but rather an island like Okinawa. So, as you may imagine this smells of you having 0 IQ
@@8vantor8 probably meant some island. or the southern most area of japan, as that was landed one. southern as VERY south
Mr. William Peter, he don't care. He'll burn up your tank.
@@8vantor8 You forgot Okinawa.
I certainly didn’t expect a clip from Girls Und Panzer here. Very nice
Now that's content that covers stuff I've actually pondered
as an osint nerd who started off looking at syria the theory around the syrian footage is not that it is fake, it is theorized that the T-72 was already abandoned contrary to what the rebel group claimed. as well as there is theory that additional explosives were placed inside.
It is not "theorized" it is obvious
I think that's what they mean by fake. I'm pretty sure they blew up a real tank, but it wasn't a successful attack, it was staged.
Nice done, as usual.
I don't know for the T72 but I know same kind of thing about the french B1bis. French "after action reports" often mention the fact that 37mm anti tank rounds from the Pak36 entered into the barrel of the 75 mm hull gun of the B1bis.
The famous B1bis Jeanne d'Arc, received over 150 unpenetrated hits from the pak36 but the 75mm gun has been blocked by a single round.
Digression: The high rate of fire of the pak36 hammered the B1bis armor. In addition to destroy everything prominent on the hull (antena, sighting blocks, coupola) this heated the metal to fusion point. The armor broke into hot metalic pieces into the tank, damaging the mecanics and injuring the crew.
This have been reported by two different crew from two different divisions who received two different lots of production. (Bernard Lemaire from 4DCr at Abbeville 28 of may, and crew of the 1DCr at Flavion 15 of may)
The B1bis has a complex oil system (Naeder) into the drive sprocket. It always spit oil, the B1bis has the flanks covered of oil... The oil takes fire when heated by hundred of pak36 rounds.
So, this to say: B1bis is NOT invicible, even face to small unpenetrating pak36
In 'Band of Brothers', they used dynamite set off by German stick grenades to blow the barrels, they knew a grenade alone wouldn't do the job.
I doubt any standard anti personnel grenade would produce pressures capable of destroying a barrel.
Nah the pressure from the shell alone is far more than any antipersonnel grenade could do would be like throwing a firecracker down a metal pipe won't do nothing.
@@DustinDonald-cz9ot Yes, and no. IF an American frag grenade went off in the barrel, it MAY obstruct the barrel with enough fragments that firing a round COULD case jamming of the fragments in the barrel bands and therefore increase barrel pressures and cause a massive over pressure of the chamber. NO good gun crew would fire with that possibility. Barrel obstruction is a major concern.
You are awesome! Thankfully, I played alot of World of Tanks and always wondered about the grenade in barrel scenario.
Interesting topic man. It looked to me like the hatch was already open, perhaps a dead tank. ? Thanks again Johnny, see ya on the next one.
Thanks man! That's what I was thinking too.
Thermite is what we used to weld with before arc welders and torches. A thermite grenade can take out any tank, new or old. I've seen a thermite grenade burn through a jeeps hood, complete engine, axle, and make a 2 foot deep hole under it all. Fun stuff, and very simple to make.
If you happen to get a mobility kill on a MBT and it's crew is stubborn enough to go all "Ride or Die" on you a convex shaped charge made with C4 can put a plasma spear where it'll do the least good. It's like a stand-off HEAT round.
@@dalecrowe7757 It's not plasma, it's "just" high speed metal that does the same thing.
"It's gonna blow!"
I don't know about explosive shrapnel from a grenade jamming things up, but what guys used to do after graduation of gunnery school was tape their old cap brass to a shell and fire it down range. I would think that the forces from firing the next round would propel everything out safely. That being said, we were taught to spike our own guns with an inverted shell stuffed down the muzzle and a normal shell in the breach with as much rope or shoelaces to pull the lanyard. This was to prevent enemy capture of the guns.
WW2 the germans who had to scuttle broke off a valve on the recoil dampener and fired a round off thus making gun usless without a trip to factory to re-mount gun
Good question
good thing that grenade was nice enough to patiently wait for that guy to climb out
The hazard from grenades is shrapnel, not the explosion. The shrapnel can damage the bore rifling or projectile.
Running up to a tank barrel is extremely dangerous because the mere shockwave of a tank firing will maul and kill you.
The grenade can damage or destroy the bore evacuator and the crew will be inhaling toxic fumes every time the breach opens.
Heh, finally got around to watching Girls und Panzer. It's lit.
Anything is possible in the chaos of combat
Absolutely. Extraordinary examples of everything we wouldn't think possible has happened in combat.
I reckon the Syria footage is most likely of a disabled tank that has been abandoned. The opposition most likely got inside, opened the breech, then popped in a grenade from a position of relative safety outside. Praising god afterwards was superfluous, then again they're probably just the local rabble making a PR video rather than soldiers taking strategic or tactical action.
And i thought it said “What happens if you shoot a grenade out of a tank barrel”
The risk is great and the payoff is not worth it. So it'd be best to open the top hatch and dropping it in rather than down the barrel is a much better way to do it.
Another great debunking video on Hollywood vs reality. And another great use of Girls und Panzer, I really liked that part.
That would require the crew not having the hatch dogged down
@@itsjohndellWell the hatches weren't closed on the T tank at 0:25
@@Gracefulwarrior2124 It might have been abandoned.
That opening clip from The Walking Dead always makes me chuckle. The guy yells "GRENADE!" as a warning, but he was the only one in the tank😂
When I was in the Australian army Artillery we were taught if we were over run to pull out the firing pin destroy it and put a grenade down the barrel
About the T72. My guess is an abandoned that they opened the breach and pullede out some propellant bags, then set up the filming.
BTW, in artillery school, the first thing they teach about PMS is check the barrel for obstructions.
More likely with older tanks. Modern tanks have less risk of this
As long as the breach is close
@@xenomorph9114 which would be hell of timing since it takes only seconds to load and close the breach. You would have to wait for the main gun to fire then toss your grenade in and you don't want to be anywhere near that cannon when it goes off.
you aint gonna destroy it but whoever is inside is in for a fiery treat
Never thought I'd see a Girls Und Panzer clip in a video about tank realism.
Considering it is not realistic at all. It is extremely fun to watch though (the tv show is more grounded then the OVAs are)
Still a nice short and direct video. Not bloated and just get to the point quickly. Nice!
Great tank grenade video
Well Johnny, you forgot about the most obvious problem with tossing a grenade down a tank barrel to destroy it.
As a USMC Viet Nam Veteran, I’ve tossed many, many grenades at enemy. Our practice in Viet Nam was to bend the “spoon” back and forth several times to break it off before tossing it a the enemy. By tossing a grenade down a tank tube before doing this, the l “spoon” will not have enough room to fly off and arm the grenade. It’ll be just a grenade sitting in the tank barrel without the cotter pin.
Interesting. I never considered that.
depends on the grenade type.
there are grenade types like the german WW1 and WW2 Stielhandgranate wich dont have a spoon.
@@zhufortheimpaler4041Yeah, though I don't see a potato masher being very good at rolling down a tank barrel...
@@scottthewaterwarrior it's not about rolling down the barrel but about fitting in and having no spoon while simultaneously having a big charge, that is strong enough to damage the barrel close to the muzzle
Combat Infantry Vietnam vet here - two tours. After the pin is pulled, the spoon flies off instantly once it is released/the grenade thrown. There is no way the spoon would stay on long enough to make any difference in any situation. Of course, in the real world that person would have been dead long before he got close enough to an active tank to do this. AND, you can't reach the barrel from the ground so you would have to: 1 - avoid all the machine gun bullets from that and other tanks and, 2 - toss the grenade from ground level into an (approximate) 120mm diameter hole. Yeah, right!
FWIW In certain combat situations sometimes the spoon was released (intentionally) before throwing the grenade to allow the fuse to burn down for a couple of seconds to reduce the chance of the enemy throwing it back before it detonates. We did this in combat on occasion but it was NEVER a "taught" or recommended practice.
this video has taught me that to destroy a tank you have to commit war crimes or have another tank
That T72 footage almost certainly shows the stored ammo in the turret being detonated with the hatch open. It could have been initiated with a grenade but more likely an improvised device or charge of some sort. Since this tank has no blowout panels the visible eruption of flame is just the explosion sending propellant and hot gasses out through the open hatch(es). If they were closed at the time the turret could very well separate from the hull, an event known as a "turret pop" which was observed in the early days of the Middle East conflict, notably during the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991 and "Thunder Run" in 2003.
There is a tank barrel from and Australian Centurion Tank with a damaged end in the Australian War memorial according to the plaque during an engagement during the Vietnam war an RPG round fired at the tank got stuck in the muzzle brake the command fired the gun blowing the blowing the RPG and the muzzle brake off and continued the Engagement
Very cool.
165K subscribers, 1.3K views and 165 likes in 15 minutes. This site is going places!!! People should be more conscientious that likes gives the channel more money and relevance in the algorithm that offers the videos to more new people. Thank´s for another magnificent video!!!
Wow this is some very appreciated support! Thank you kindly.
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I was not staged unless the guy in the turret volunteered to get burned out of the tank.
The trick is getting close enough to achieve such a feat
0:20 100% no way (ish).
I'm not a tanker. I'm not in the military.
However I guarantee that a tank gun with a closed breech would send most of the blast out the end of a barrel. That is what barrels do.
If the gun was loaded with an HE round and the grenade set off the round, the barrel would fly apart like a bomb.
At best the gun was unloaded and the breach was open. One could have achieved the same result by throwing a nade into an open hatch.
From the way the fire is spraying out I don't think it was a grenade I think it some other weapon probably consisting white phosphorus.
well, interesting question and point... but as a former tank commander, i do not recomend to anyone to try this... in other hand we, the tankists, our greatest fear was attack from rear or above... so... one advice to anyone who want to be a tankist: stay at home or you would have a still grave
I was thinking it could only work if it occurred simultaneously while the tank was reloading. That would make the most sense.
It's so wild how I put this video on my Watch Later because I thought of The Walking Dead, then that's the first clip shown
Great work as always Johnny!
It actually wouldn’t put the man in danger if he doesn’t go where the machine gun goes the machine gun is placed on the other side of the barrel either left or right if you know which direction the machine gunners are depending on the tank you’re safe but there is the possibility of the commander being out and spotting you and shooting you with their machine gun on the top
For sure, an avoidable risk, but one more thing that can tear you apart to be mindful of if you are going to try it.
Just fire the main gun, anyone close to the muzzle will wish they hadn't done that, that's if they wake up from being knocked out with ruptured ear drums and Im sure other ailments and didn't just die. I can watch Abrams fire from where I'm at and the blast is impressive at night
@@brasstard7.627how would that ever happen if it did the tanks barrel would explode and break and anyways if it didn’t go all the way down it would possibly break the barrel probably
During the Second World War, soldiers actually use an incendiary thermite grenade down a German tank barrel. It actually burns 5,000°F and also welding the metal barrel together without destroying the barrel itself. Tank crew not knowing what happened to the barrel itself and then the rest is actually history.
Hermann SalutKanonens Channel is absolutely amazing! I love seeing the way the old tank cannons were fired and reloaded!
Always wanted to know this
Lose the gun, and yet keep the rest of the war machine and its experienced crew safe otherwise. Good trade-off, I would admit.
Huh, first time hearing the English dub of GuP der Film in this channel. Not sure what to exactly think about that.
Johnny please do a video on why tank crews, artillery crews and mortar crews don’t go deaf.
There may come a day when the blown-apart muzzle in the last of the Indiana Jones movies doesn't make me laugh, but that day is not _today._
Idk where but I’ve heard if you stay to close to a modern tank when it fires, it could knock you out for the force. So I imagine running up to a modern tank and throwing a grenade down the barrel while it’s firing wouldn’t be a good idea.
If it's going to kill you when it fires, then throwing a grenade down the barrel seems like desperation, and not " a good idea.".
Probably not knock you out but you have to keep your mouth open
there is co-axial machinegun, so you wouldnt even come close to that barrel
I think in most cases, if you ended up in a situation were you had to throw a hand grenade down a tank barrel, it may be better to try to find something bigger like a satchel charge or a grenade bundle, put in a bag, and just hang it onto the barrel to damage it. 🤷
Thank you for clearing up that scene from Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade. Legit 👍
The opening scene is from The Walking Dead. The 12 second fuse on that grenade is CRAZY xD
It's for disabling the tank, more precisely the main gun to prevent firing, not to kill the crew or blow up the tank, and for that it works just well enough. As you mentioned, maybe in some rare occasions when the breech is open it could possibly injure the crew, but highly unlikely.
A normal frag grenade would do little to nothing, a thermite grenade on the other hand would put a barrel out of order due to the slag causing an obstruction and most likely warping if not melting the barrel.
@@SilvaDreams No tank commander in his right mind would fire the gun after a grenade of any kind have exploded in it.
@@SilvaDreamsStop spreading your video game knowledge falsehoods, as others have mentioned no doubt a commander would reline the barrel asap
@@amorag59 A fragmentation grenade might damage the rifling inside the gun barrel, causing it to fire less accurately and to increase the wear and tear on the barrel.
Most modern tanks have smoothbore gun barrels because it enables them to fire more diverse types of ammo.
To stabilize more conventional ammo, these rounds are fin stabilized.
Armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS), long dart penetrator, or simply dart ammunition
(yes i copied it from a different comment, but it is right, and i am lazy)
@@8vantor8 At the end of the day I believe we both agree. I wasn't referring to damaging rifling, but just simple metallurgy (the barrel isn't infinitely hard and durable), the fact the fragments would create divots and obstruct the round. If a bit of sand is a worry then a fouled barrel with frag craters is a worry. The fatigue strength of the barrel after shrapnel crates point load impacts etc.
I've seen commanders need to realign barrels after running it into a tree so there's no way they would keep carrying on fighting just on the aim distortion caused alone.
Great video! I honestly didn't expect it to be this nuanced.
BTW: you're probably better off tossing a piece of rebar or similar metal debris into the barrel than a frag grenade. Also, a Thermite grenade could probably have minimal damage, if the gun is fired just after the grenade is dropped in.
A thremite grenade is highly likely to permanently damage a barrel.
Thermite will result in a lump of iron fused to the inner barrel
@@AdrienLegendre However, it will take time. If you fire the cannon within 1s, it will probably eject everything.
I read that the Browning .50 Caliber BMG was first developed as an anti-tank weapon, to take out the tracks & wheels and disable it.
No, direct tank kill because in those days, tank armor was not as thick, you could penetrate it with an anti-tank rifle. But by the time WWII came along, direct kills became impractical since armor thickness climbed.
I'm sure that a grenade exploding inside the tank's gun barrel would at least damage the gun so it couldn't be used anymore, even if it didn't get into the crew compartment or set off a round
Here is something I've been wondering for a while: what if some form of high-explosive round is loaded and someone managed to fire a bullet down the barrel? Could it be able to set it off?
No, the detonator of an HE round is only enabled after the round spins a bunch of times. Same with 40mm ammo.
Exccellent Johnny, I spent 26 years in the Field Artillery.
Sweet! Well if you found the video good that boosts my confidence 👍
Good luck being close enough to the barrel after the tank fires to throw in your grenade XD
Just to highlight that all this fire is not from the grenade obviously but from the tank's ammunition igniting, this type of jet of fire is characteristic of the burning of nitrocellulose-based propellant.
Great stuff man!