Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Boomsticks: Serious boomstick trivia...

The barrel of the 120mm M256 main gun on an M1A2 Abrams main battle tank (just the barrel, mind you, not the whole gun) weighs 2,592 pounds.

My BMW weighs about 2,800.
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13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but your BMW can't fire a depleted uranium sabot 2000 yards.

12:02 PM, June 20, 2007
Anonymous said...

According to Grassroots Motorsports Magazine, you can get your BMW down to the barrel's weight is you remove all the sound deadening insulation and the passenger seats.

12:26 PM, June 20, 2007
Tam said...

I could probably come darn close by 86'ing the power seats and top...

12:27 PM, June 20, 2007
T.Stahl said...

Ah, just compare it to the Rheinmetall 120mm L/55. ;-)

2:54 PM, June 20, 2007
Tam said...

Like the M256, the Z3 is a German design built in America. :)

3:11 PM, June 20, 2007
T.Stahl said...

Well, yes.

And so is the M-Class.
The Saturn V.
The M60 is a combination of German designs, albeit a bad one.
The Abrams is German except for its engine, some claim.

BTW, what is "86'ing"?

4:20 PM, June 20, 2007
Anonymous said...

to 86 (transitive verb): to drop unceremoniously, round-file; to shit-can.

Source, either the address of an often-raided NY speakeasy, or the form used to delete a memory scheme item in the post office.

BMW started making cars under English license. To get even, a German designed the Triumph twin.

4:48 PM, June 20, 2007
Hunter said...

shamelessly lifted from Fr Frog's page on ballistics comes this bit of not-so-trivial trivia:

KE of the M829 APFSDS-T (Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot-Tracer) 120mm round. It throws a 9.41 pound (that's 65,870 grains), 1.06" diameter, 31" long, depleted uranium dart at 5480 f/s from the 120mm M256 smooth-bore tank canon on the M1A1 and M1A2 tanks.

Lets see now -- KE (ft lbs) = (W * V²) / 450240. That gives us (65,870 * 5480 * 5480) / 450436 which boils down to (hold on to your hats!) 4,391,500 foot pounds (that's right 4.3 MILLION ft lbs).

Whoooeffingwaa!
Hunter
Ketchikan, AK

6:05 PM, June 20, 2007
Anonymous said...

My Z3 coupe with a 3.0 liter in line V6 was not even in British designers wet dreams when they made the Triumph.

mike

8:48 PM, June 21, 2007
Tam said...

[quote]3.0 liter in line V6[/quote]

I want me one of those inline V6's. ;)

10:24 PM, June 21, 2007
T.Stahl said...

Well, there are VR6's, which are kinda like "inline V6's" (at least that'd be the literal translation of the German abbreviation VR).
In fact they are V6's with a 15° angle between cylinder planes and one cylinder block instead of two.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VR6

12:47 PM, June 22, 2007
Tam said...

Two banks of cylinders breathing through the same cylinder head just ain't natural.

9:28 AM, June 23, 2007
T.Stahl said...

Well, it IS a chimera. What d'ya expect? ;-)

11:57 AM, June 23, 2007

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