“Inside, tankers carry full-length M16s for crew protection from crunchies.” Jeff detected a few puzzled looks and clarified, “Tankers call anyone dismounted ‘crunchies.’ That’s tanker humor. Since M16s are ungainly to shoot out of a tank hatch, they don’t have much more than the tank commander’s Beretta nine-mil pistol for a ‘get off my tank’ weapon—hardly an ideal tool for the job. A stubby submachinegun or a perhaps a compact riotgun would work far better. In case a tank gets enveloped by infantry, the crew usually depends on co-ax machinegun fire from other tanks in the platoon to hose the crunchies off. It’s a mutual support function.
“Oh yes, one other design flaw of the M1 that I should mention is that it doesn’t have a bottom escape hatch like its predecessors, the M48 and the M60. Despite its shortcomings, however, the M1 Abrams is a very tough nut to crack.”
Mary asked, “If their armor is so tough, how do we stop them?”
Jeff replied, “Well, like Mike Carney used to say on the shortwave,‘They’ve got to get out and pee, sometime.’ The best time to destroy a tank is when it is parked somewhere in a garrison or kasserne setting, unoccupied. The only other halfway decent time would be when a tank is in the field, but parked.
Then you might have a chance to take out the sentries and do a thermite number on it. If tanks are in motion, traveling in mutual support, and carrying live rounds, you can pretty well forget it unless you want to take a tremendous number of casualties.
“The five most susceptible targets on M1s are, number one: the ammo storage blow-out panels. These are on the back of the turret. They are often covered with strapped-down bags of camouflage nets and other gear. This works to your advantage. You can get on the back deck and shove a thermite grenade between and under the bags. If they are strapped down well, they’ll interrupt the operation of the blow-out panels causing blow back into the turret.Very nasty.
“Number two: The fuel cells. You can see the two rear covers on either fender. Pull the pins, open the caps, drop the grenade in one of the strainers, jump, and run like crazy. Leave both caps open for propagation. The right tank is the one I would choose since if the fire doesn’t get the whole tank, it will get the battery box and electronics routing box, which are right next to the right fuel tank.
“Number three: The loader’s hatch, which is on left side of the turret. It is the thinnest bit of armor on the whole tank.
“Number four: The Tank Commander’s hatch. The TC’s hatch is relatively thin, just like the loader’s, and has a conveniently provided lip to keep the grenade from rolling off if the hatch is battened down. If by chance it isn’t battened down, throw in a frag grenade and follow it with gunfire! If the crew has the hatch in the open position but aren’t sitting up in it, they are too stupid to live a full life anyway.
“And five: The engine cover, in the center of the back deck. It’s a big, thinly armored target. Again, a thermite grenade will go right through it.
“Now remember boys and girls, if you are destroying a parked or otherwise unoccupied M1, don’t forget to reach over and switch the M2 .50 cal to safe, and then you can pull the two pins on the left side and take it home as a souvenir! Of course, the back plate on the tank model is different than the standard ground model. There are no spade grips, and the charging system is on the left. But we have friends in the Moscow Maquis that happen to have a couple of spare standard M2 back plate assemblies, and at least one spare tripod with pintle. That’ll be fun. And naturally you’ll want to take as much ammo as you can before you burn up the tank. Ditto for any other stored gear, if tactical conditions allow you time to haul it.
“Another hint: If the commander has his hatch in the ‘open-protected’ position and the loader’s M240 is mounted and has ammo, take the M240, shove the muzzle through the opening under the edge of the TC’s hatch, and spray away. The bullets will bounce around very nicely inside that spam can and make Swiss cheese out of most of the crew. You can even use your personal weapon if necessary, but the Provisional government provides a machinegun and in most cases a long belt of ammo for just such purposes, so why not use it?
“Oh yes, I should also mention that there are also two small lifting holes, one on each side of the tank commander’s weapons station—the demi-turret—which go all the way through. You can fire into these holes if the TC is buttoned up.
“Most of the techniques that I’ve just described involve climbing onto the tank. This should be done only if the beast is stationary. Never try to climb on a moving M1 series! Likewise, never try playing Tarzan and dropping or jumping onto it from a tree, overhang, overpass, or nearby bank. We will discuss some standoff techniques next time. Any other questions?”
In the dim moonlight on that July evening, Todd looked at the four Abrams tanks parked on the other side of the rise, and remembered Jeff’s question. He belatedly asked himself in a whisper, “Yeah, Jeff, how do I get close to these monsters without getting myself killed?” He crept back down the reverse side of the hill and consulted with the others, quietly.
At just before 2 a.m., Todd reconnoitered the area around the tanks. Moving slowly and stealthily, the reconnaissance took nearly an hour. Curiously, he found no nearby infantry, and no sentries posted. He went back to brief the others and attach longer fuses to the grenades.
The crews inside the tanks were asleep. The tankers had become lackadaisical in their campaign across the western states. They had long since decided that the biggest threat that they would face was a high-powered rifle, perhaps something like a .375 H&H Magnum. A few .50 calibers were rumored to be floating around, but even those bullets bounced off an M1. The worst a .50 BMG could reportedly do was, by luck, jam a tank’s turret ring with a well-placed shot.
The tankers didn’t bother posting a guard, even though it was a violation of their official SOP. They had a saying, “There’s a time for SOPs, and then there’s real world operations.” Except in extremely hot weather, the tankers slept “buttoned up” with their ballistic doors closed. Feeling virtually invulnerable under the current circumstances, some of them had also lost the habit of collocating with infantry at night. The infantry was noisy, frequently begged for extra food and smokes, and always woke the tankers up before dawn for “stand to.” The general consensus among the tankers was that the infantry could take a flying leap. More and more, the tankers laagered by themselves.
At precisely 3:10 a.m., Todd, Mary, and Jeff lit the fuses of eight thermite grenades, on cue. There was one over a blow-out panel, and one on the engine cover of each tank. They taped them down with long strips of duct tape that they had cut in advance and wrapped around their pant legs. The tape ensured that once the thermite reaction started, the grenades would not roll off the tanks from the force of the venting molten metal. They walked away quietly at first, and then they ran. After they crested the top the hill and had starting down the reverse side, Todd whispered to Mary, “I feel like I’m playing ding-dong ditch-it.”
Mary replied with a low laugh, “Ding-dong, thermite calling.” After they had jogged on a few more yards, she added, “I’m glad we had that extra cannon fuse with us, so we could extend the fuses. I want to be a long, long way off when they go off.” They didn’t stop running until they were more than nine hundred yards away, on a ridge in heavy brush.
The automatic Halon fire suppression systems were turned off in three of the four tanks. They had been disabled by the crew because they had a tendency to go off unexpectedly. Even if they had all been working, the fire suppression systems wouldn’t have helped much. The iron oxide in thermite provides all the oxygen required for the reaction. Thermite will even burn underwater.