27 Facts About Tanks

Here are 27 Tank facts.

1-5 Tank Facts

1. In order to keep the project a secret, the British army used the innocuous name “mobile water carriers” for a motorized weapons project which is the reason we call them “tanks”. – Source

2. Slave laborers making tanks for Nazi Germany routinely sabotaged every part they could, and this caused German tanks to be extremely prone to breaking down. – Source

3. Korean War soldier Eduardo C Gomez took out an enemy tank by crawling across an open rice field, got up on top of the tank, and then pried open the hatch and dropped a live grenade into the tank, killing the tank’s crew. – Source

4. During the Battle of Stalingrad, factories in the city continued to produce tanks. These tanks, unpainted and lacking gunsights, were driven directly from the factory floor to the front line and were often crewed by factory workers. – Source

5. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union, a single Russian tank delayed the advance of an entire division for one day. – Source

6-10 Tank Facts

6. The Australian Mk 3 Centurion 169041 was nicknamed “The Atomic Tank” due to it surviving a 9.1kt blast from 460m away. The tank was simply driven off after the test and went on to spend another 23 years in service, including time in the Vietnam war. – Source

7. In 1989, Chinese army used tanks to massacre ~300 protesting college students in broad open daylight, at the center of Beijing; Chinese government kept this as a top secret and most of today’s Chinese young people don’t know it. – Source

8. A tank designed by the Swiss military had a bug where turning on the heater could cause the main gun to fire. – Source

9. A British Challenger 2 tank was hit directly by 14 RPGs and an anti-tank missile in Iraq. The crew was uninjured and the tank was back in operation 6 hours later. Another survived 70 RPG hits. Only 1 Challenger 2 has been destroyed in combat; by another Challenger 2 in a friendly fire incident. – Source

10. The longest tank-to-tank kill in history occurred when a Challenger tank destroyed an Iraqi T-62 at a range of 5100 meters (over 3 miles). – Source

11-15 Tank Facts

11.”The last great tank battle of the 20th century” took place in the middle of nowhere in the Iraqi desert. Since there were no nearby towns or landmarks, the Battle of 73 Easting had to be named after its map coordinates. – Source

12. In 2006, Hungarian protesters hotwired a 50-year-old Soviet T-34 tank that was part of an outdoor memorial and drove it against the riot police. – Source

13. The Soviet Union created a laser tank. – Source

14. The U.S. Army built a 86 tons tank with a max speed of 13 km/h and managed to lose it for 27 years before finding it in a field. No one knows where it was during this time. – Source

15. 1,300 German Tiger I tanks were produced during WWII. As of June 2013, only 7 tanks remain intact and only one of those tanks are operational Tank 131. This tank was featured in the Brad Pitt film, FURY, the first time an operational Tiger I tank has ever been in the film. – Source

16-20 Tank Facts

16. The Soviets trained dogs to serve as anti-tank bombers, but because they used Soviet tanks to train the dogs, the dogs attacked Russian tanks instead of their German targets. – Source

17. Arnold Schwarzenegger bought the tank he drove during military service. – Source

18. There are only two places in the world where civilians are legally allowed to drive and fire tanks and one of them is in Minnesota. – Source

19. Zimmerit was a putty-like coating containing sawdust which some German tanks in WWII were covered with in order to prevent magnetic mines from sticking to them. – Source

20. The Object 269, created by Soviet engineers in 1959, was a tank that was designed to survive a nuclear explosion. – Source

21-25 Tank Facts

21. The most effective tank destroyer that America had during WWII was actually a small vehicle called the M18 Hellcat. It didn’t have a very powerful gun or much armor but it was the fastest armored vehicle ever deployed until the turbine powered Abrams tank was designed, decades later. – Source

22. While some have been destroyed by friendly fire, not one M1A1 Abrams tank has ever been destroyed in combat by enemy fire.- Source

23. The first tanks in WWI were held together by rivets until it was discovered that explosions would turn the rivets into shrapnel, injuring soldiers in the tank even if the explosion did not penetrate the armor. – Source

24. Since WWII, all British Tanks have been equipped with the means to make tea. This is because British Soldiers used to have to get out of the tank to boil the water, wasting time and endangering the soldiers. – Source

25. During the 1991 Gulf War, 12 American M1A1 Tanks destroyed 28 Iraqi tanks, 16 personnel carriers, and 30 vehicles in less than 30 minutes. – Source

26-27 Tank Facts

26. The Nazis planned a giant tank, 15 times the size of the largest tank ever. The P 1500 “Monster” was like a land-going battleship: too big for road or rail (its 1500 tonne weight would destroy them), with a crew of 100+. Despite initially having Hitlers OK, the P 1500 was eventually scrapped. – Source

27. The only Canadian tank to last from D-Day to VE-Day, once floated across the Rhine, and thereby taking the enemy by surprise. – Source