You've probably seen tanks get hit in various battlefield videos, but have you ever wondered what actually happens to the crew inside? That depends on what they were hit with and which tank they were in. And the evolution of how we kill tanks, and what that means for the people inside them, goes all the way back to when tanks first appeared.
The First Tanks and the First Problems
When the British developed the first tanks in World War I to cross no man's land and knock out machine gun positions, the armor was breathtakingly thin. Steel plates measuring just 6 to 12 millimeters, a maximum speed of 3.7 miles per hour, and crews of eight men sitting next to engines and radiators in 122 degree heat.
That armor was so thin that even rifle rounds could get through. And inside a metal box with 8 to 10 people, a bullet bouncing off the interior walls did exactly what you'd expect. The first anti-tank measure was simply armor-piercing bullets for standard infantry rifles.
But even without a penetrating hit, crews faced two problems: spall and splash. When anything hit the armor, the impact transferred a shock wave that broke metal shards off the inner surface at high speed, straight into the faces of the crew. Splash was worse. Lead bullet cores melted on impact from the friction and heat, and the molten metal found its way through vision slits and tiny gaps between riveted plates. The British responded with chain mail face masks and steel goggles, but nobody was betting their eyesight on them.
Riveted construction was a large part of the problem because if the rivet itself was hit, it could break off from inside and become shrapnel. This wasn't fully solved until World War II when riveted armor was replaced with welded construction in most tanks.
World War II Changed Everything
Tanks that appeared in the Second World War were unlike anything from before. Better protected against rifle fire, but the armor race was just getting started. Anti-tank cannons grew from 37 millimeters to 50, then 88, and up to 128 millimeters. By the later stages of the war, the largest could destroy any tank in the world at ranges over 2 kilometers.
The Germans were first to use shells with explosive filler. The shell would penetrate armor, then milliseconds later the filler would explode and burst the core into shrapnel, igniting everything inside. Even without filler, such shells easily ignited a tank's own ammunition or fuel. There's an account from a British tank veteran in North Africa whose unit could hear what happened to the crew of a burning tank because the radio operator was still transmitting. The other tanks fired into the burning vehicle to end it.
But the real game changer was the shaped charge. Instead of relying on speed and energy to punch through armor, a shaped charge uses an explosive to collapse a metal cone into a jet of superheated particles moving between 7 and 14 kilometers per second. This enabled something previously unthinkable: a single infantryman could kill a tank.
 |
| Shaped charge |
The American Bazooka was the first system to deliver a shaped charge by rocket, creating entry holes only about 1.3 centimeters in diameter but producing massive spall that killed crews through burns and shrapnel. The Germans captured American Bazookas and made their own larger version, the Panzerschreck, then mass-produced the even cheaper Panzerfaust that could penetrate up to 200 millimeters in later versions.
Tank crews responded with the first improvised standoff armor. Sandbags, logs, rubber track links, anything to detonate the shaped charge away from the main armor and weaken the jet before it reached the hull.
HESH: Breaking What You Can't Penetrate
The British invented perhaps the most creative way to kill a tank crew without even breaking through the armor. HESH, high explosive squash head, contains plastic explosive that squashes against the armor surface on impact, spreading into a flat disc. A delay fuse detonates it a fraction of a second later, sending a shock wave through the armor plate. When the wave reaches the inner surface, it causes a large chunk of metal, sometimes weighing 2 to 5 kilograms, to detach at high velocity and ricochet inside the tank along with numerous smaller fragments.
 |
| HESH Round |
HESH proved effective against concrete fortifications too, making it a dual-purpose round. In 2003 in Iraq, a Challenger 2 mistakenly engaged another Challenger with HESH rounds at roughly 4,000 yards, killing two crew members and seriously injuring two others.
How Tanks Fought Back
The British developed Chobham composite armor, the most significant advance since welded construction. Ceramic tiles encased in a metal framework, bonded to backing plates and elastic layers. When a shaped charge jet hits, the ceramic shatters into high-pressure dust that disrupts the jet's geometry. The jet's own energy works against it. During the 2003 Iraq invasion, a Challenger 2 was reportedly hit by 14 RPG variants and a Milan anti-tank missile while stuck in a ditch. The crew remained safe for hours until recovered.
The Soviets took a different approach with explosive reactive armor, bricks containing explosive sheets between metal plates. When a shaped charge penetrates, the explosive detonates and throws the plates at the jet, deforming it. But each brick is destroyed after one hit, which is exactly what tandem charge weapons exploit: a first charge triggers the reactive armor, then a second punches through the exposed metal beneath.
The Modern Tank Killer
The APFSDS round represents the pinnacle of kinetic anti-armor technology. A long rod penetrator, 2 to 3 centimeters in diameter and up to a meter long, fired at 1,400 to 1,800 meters per second with no explosive at all. Penetration relies purely on kinetic energy. Depleted uranium penetrators are pyrophoric, igniting on contact with air after penetration, and self-sharpening, maintaining a sharp nose instead of mushrooming.
 |
| Different Rounds and Their Effects |
After penetration, multiple killing mechanisms happen at once. Penetrator fragments scatter through the crew compartment. Armor spall sends fragments inward. Pyrophoric ignition sets fire to fuel and ammunition. Everything soft inside essentially ceases to exist.
During Desert Storm, these rounds devastated Iraqi armor. The T-72's autoloader carousel, which placed ammunition in a ring at the base of the turret directly among the crew, meant that when the propellant ignited, the chain reaction blew the turret completely off the chassis. Crew survival when the carousel ignites is basically zero.
The $500 Tank Killer
FPV drones have revolutionized anti-tank warfare. Assembled from commercial components for $300 to $600, they create a devastating cost asymmetry where a $500 drone can destroy a $5 million tank. Sources say more than two thirds of Russian tanks destroyed in recent months were taken out by FPV drones. They carry roughly the same warhead as an RPG-7 but deliver it from miles away, hitting the most vulnerable spots with precision.
 |
| An FPV Kamikaze Drone |
Cope cages, improvised armor, and even those absurd turtle tank configurations can't reliably protect against swarms of drones with shaped charges strapped to them. If tanks don't come up with an answer, the way they always have throughout history, the whole concept as we know it might come into question.
From rifle bullets bouncing around inside a metal box in 1916 to a $500 drone hitting the exact weak spot from miles away in 2024. The ways to kill a tank crew have changed completely. What hasn't changed is the race between the people trying to get in and the people trying to keep them out. And right now, for the first time in a long time, it looks like the people trying to get in are winning.
Comments
Post a Comment