M1-A1 Destroyed

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Pretty amazing stuff. I'm not certain if the turret blew off or if the entire thing was blown upside down and they pulled the hull off the turret. In the shots where you can see the turret, the interior seems pretty intact. Since it is physically improbable that the ammunition cooked of and blew the turret off, my guess is that the loader and TC were the KIA, the gunner the WIA and the driver the survivor.

In the details: lots of fluid around the tank means that nothing caught on fire per say, just diesel and hydraulic fluid everywhere; a kevlar helmet on the ground near one of the skirts, the front few skirts are made of incredibly heavy armor, it takes and enormous hit to take them off like that; no tracks, did they take them off before they flipped the hull back over? It may have been easier to pull them off when it was upside down than when it was right-side up; the damage to the suspension was probably mostly from the mines and partly from rolling it back over. In an image of the hull, you can see the door next to the turret ring open and the gun tube cleaning pipes partly out. I had forgotten about that stuff on that side. On the other side of the turret ring is the NBC system.

Seeing the hull without a turret reminded me of cruising around the country north of El Paso thinking that it would be really cool to have an M1 without the turret. It isn't a slow feeling vehicle, but without the weight of the turret it would make a real fun off road vehicle. You could put in some seats and maybe a sun-shade of some sort in place of the turret and have a nice camper. The back deck is large and flat and stays warm from engine heat for a long time.