December1991 – January 26th, 2023
A quick primer on Abrams. Yes there’s tons of videos showing them getting destroyed. However in most cases you can see that to some extent the famous blow-out panels on the Abrams do work as intended, directing the blast of the ammo out the rear that could save the crew, while disabling the tank. The video at the end shows how this works.
However, one thing not discussed is how hot the cabin temperature heats up even if the blowout door does work in keeping the blast from reaching the crew. It could theoretically cook the crew if they don’t get out fast enough.
Thirdly, the most important thing most Westoids don’t discuss or selectively omit is this: the blow-out panel cook-offs only work the way they do because in all the tests and real life destruction videos, the Abrams are armed with APFSDS Sabot rounds. These don’t have explosive warheads, and the Abrams’ ammo powder charge is allegedly designed such that it doesn’t really ‘explode’ in accidents and instead just flares out rapidly, and is very difficult to make it ‘explode’ outside of the special conditions inside of the barrel.
But here’s the part they forget to mention: in Ukraine 90% of tanks are rolling with primarily HE ammo, NOT Sabot ammo. Or rather usually an 80/20 mix with a few Sabot rounds but mostly HE. The obvious reason being that tank on tank or armor on armor battles are rare and tanks are used more for direct-fire artillery. HE ammo DOES have a massively explosive warhead. That means a Ukrainian Abrams tank armed with HE would absolutely blast off and kill everyone inside.
