The M1 has a long and illustrious history. When the project was started it looked like another one of the army's failures, turbine trouble, gun trouble, ammo stroage trouble, ect... Now it is the worlds leading tank along with the Merekava M.k4, Leapard 2, and Challenger 2. This topic is on the M1 and its devlopment from a probable failure to the worlds leading tank.



The M1 progarm was started in 1979 with the 9 test bed units called the XM1, problems started right off the bat, trouble with the turbine and sand, the sands fine particles would eat away the turbine and would need to be replaced in a few hours of operation, the the 105mm rifle gun strated in with having accuacy and ammo trouble, the ammo storage then wasn't working properly the the doors would jam and the blowoff panels didn't blow.

This was all fixed by 1980 and was shown at Aberdeen Proving Grounds and the high brass agreed to its production the XM1 hit the production line as the M1 it had spaced armor, new thermal sights, and turbine enegine. Its upgrade or newer version the M1A1 and M1A1HA where bettered with a larger main armerment, better 2nd generation thermal, Chobam composite armor, and a state of the art Fire Contol System. The M1A1-HA was a M1A1 with heavly armored plates attached to it. The M1A1 was produced in 1982. The M1A2 was put into planing and made it into the approval stage but was never poduced and the kits where sold the allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The M1A2 SEP (System Enhancement Package) is a new design of the M1A1 with a new thermal sight and better FCS, and inergrated computer system, alot of the A2's are built on M1A1 platforms or are built by General Dynamics. The M1 Grizzly is a engineering vehicle using the M1 chassis and it has a shovel and hydralic lift on it to dig trenches of defeat anti-tank barriers.

M1


M1A1



M1A2 SEP


Crew Compartment of the M1A2


M1 Grizzly

wuts so great about a smoothbore cannon, is it relly much better than a rifled one?

i know it is needed to launch apsds rounds and sabot types of rounds, but how does it work

The M1 progarm was started in 1979 with the 9 test bed units called the XM1, problems started right off the bat, trouble with the turbine and sand, the sands fine particles would eat away the turbine and would need to be replaced in a few hours of operation, the the 105mm rifle gun strated in with having accuacy and ammo trouble, the ammo storage then wasn't working properly the the doors would jam and the blowoff panels didn't blow.

this is what i ment in my other thread btw...

In a rifled gun the barrel is rifled with small grooves to spin the round, a APFSDS round does not need to spin in order to be stable as you see in the names FS is Fin Stablized, on the 105mm the rounds where small and less accraute and at times the grooves would fill with metal and or wear away and then must be replaced.



In the Civil War if units had rifled cannons they would look for enemy smoothbore after a battle because it was more accurate and faster.

I see Rocco but that was on the test model the 9 test beds, look at my avatar thats one of the 9 and the one in picture I put at the bootm of the post is one at Aberdeen. It was the XM1 all those problems where fixed and then the M1 went into being produced. High brass had alot of doubt about the program.

Thanks for the diagram.

"In the Civil War if units had rifled cannons they would look for enemy smoothbore after a battle because it was more accurate and faster."

Oh please. You are not an artilleryman. Show me any main artillery pieces today that use smoothbore. Stating that smoothbore is more accurate shows a lack of understanding of rifling. Also in the Civil War both rifled and smoothbore were muzzleloaders. They took the same amount of time to reload and fire. It was only the perfection of breachloading that increased the rate of fire the first time and the invention of the recuperator in the French 75 that speeded it up again as guns didn't need to be relayed after every firing. It had absolutely nothing to do with the bore.

The use of the smoothbore in the M1 has to do with the rounds that it uses and that it is a _direct fire_ weapon.

Originally Posted by Charge_7

"In the Civil War if units had rifled cannons they would look for enemy smoothbore after a battle because it was more accurate and faster."

Oh please. You are not an artilleryman. Show me any main artillery pieces today that use smoothbore. Stating that smoothbore is more accurate shows a lack of understanding of rifling. Also in the Civil War both rifled and smoothbore were muzzleloaders. They took the same amount of time to reload and fire. It was only the perfection of breachloading that increased the rate of fire the first time and the invention of the recuperator in the French 75 that speeded it up again as guns didn't need to be relayed after every firing. It had absolutely nothing to do with the bore.

The use of the smoothbore in the M1 has to do with the rounds that it uses and that it is a _direct fire_ weapon.

feel free to "T-O-T" me on this charge...but weren't cannons from the civil war period more or less direct fire weapons?

Originally Posted by Charge_7

"In the Civil War if units had rifled cannons they would look for enemy smoothbore after a battle because it was more accurate and faster."

Oh please. You are not an artilleryman. Show me any main artillery pieces today that use smoothbore. Stating that smoothbore is more accurate shows a lack of understanding of rifling. Also in the Civil War both rifled and smoothbore were muzzleloaders. They took the same amount of time to reload and fire. It was only the perfection of breachloading that increased the rate of fire the first time and the invention of the recuperator in the French 75 that speeded it up again as guns didn't need to be relayed after every firing. It had absolutely nothing to do with the bore.

The use of the smoothbore in the M1 has to do with the rounds that it uses and that it is a _direct fire_ weapon.

Weren't the majority of Civil War era artillery pieces direct fire cannons? Then the smoothbore vs rifled thing becomes relevent again.
Anyways... about the M-1...

A smoothbore cannon allows for higher muzzle velocities when firing APFSDS and you can fire HEAT with it. [/quote]