Field Guide to Flying Death, Armor-Piercing Ammo

A Soviet-built tank destroyed by an armor piercing round.

The tank in the picture above was destroyed by a cannon round that had no explosive charge.  A solid shot hit the turret of this Soviet T-72 main battle tank and destroyed it, turning the approximately ten-ton-turret on its side.  

The round that destroyed the 41-ton tank was a 25mm tungsten-carbide dart fired from a 120mm smooth-bore cannon in an American M1A1 main battle tank. The 25mm round is wrapped in 120mm casing that breaks away just past the end of the gun.  Because the 25mm round is propelled with the force of a 120mm charge, the tungsten-carbide dart flies at more than a mile per second to its target.  

The round makes a small hole when it it hits, but the mile-per-second impact can punch a hole in armor more than a foot thick at a mile or more of distance.  The impact turns the armor on the inside of the tank into hot shrapnel that kills the crew and destroys the tank.  At close ranges in can flip the turret over as in the photo above or even take the turret off a tank altogether.  

When compared to firing explosive ammo at a tank, the solid-shot APDS (Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot) round is also more accurate.  The trajectory of an APDS round is so flat that point blank for a tank firing the round is one kilometer. 

If cannon ammo was a football, the path of an APDS round is like a screen pass thrown by a strong quarterback--it flies flat and straight to the receiver. A high-explosive round flies like a 70-yard touchdown pass that rises steadily up for sixty yards before dropping into the receiver's arms.   

I was a tank commander, before electronic computers became part of armored warfare. When my gunner fired at a tank or tank-sized target less than a kilometer away, he simply had to put his crosshairs on the target and fire. 

We Like the Hospital

Nigel and I had Thanksgiving dinner together in his room.  

Mine is in the paper plate in the foreground.  

My son Nigel has been in the hospital for the past week. He should be out in a couple of days, but he came in very sick. He has diabetes. We don't know which type yet, but the symptoms he had and all of the tests point to this diagnosis. 

Despite his diagnosis Nigel is happy in the hospital.  He likes structure and he likes to be around people, even the people who woke him every hour for four days in the Intensive Care Unit.  

In the world COVID has made, Nigel can have only one visitor for his entire hospital stay. That's me. Now that he is mostly free of IVs, we can walk together. Tomorrow we will watch the Grand Prix of Bahrain. We both cheer for Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton and he is on pole. 

Like Nigel, I never minded being in the hospital.  The several times I have stayed in the hospital for two days to two weeks, I needed to be there. Every time I have been in the hospital, I have had something (or many things) wrong that would most likely get better. And I very much wanted to get better.  

Most people who get into medicine want to get people well. I am a a good patient in that way. I come in really messed up and I leave happy and on the way to healing.  

Many well wishers hoped Nigel could get out of the hospital as soon as possible.  They were, of course, projecting. Nigel, like his Dad, is okay with being in the hospital if he needs to be.  

While Nigel's diagnosis is not clear, he came to the hospital through the emergency room, was very sick and is now very much better. 

The Movies in Paris

 

A year ago on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I drove southwest of Paris on a cold, cloudy day to visit the Circuit de Sarthe, the site of the annual 24 Hour Race at Lemans, France.  

In a delightful coincidence I had just seen the movie "Ford v Ferrari" ("Lemans 66" was the title outside America) in a Paris theater. It is a great movie that was nominated for Best Picture.

When I arrived at the track, I hoped to walk the 8-mile circuit, but found in another delightful surprise, that there was a 24-hour race nearing it's end and I could watch an amateur competition at Lemans. I visited the museum and saw many laps of the race.   

In another coincidence of timing the movie "Midway" debuted in theaters while I was on the trip.  I saw both movies in their original format with French subtitles.  With "Ford vs Ferrari" this gave me a chance for some French practice and some extra laughs with the translations of Carroll Shelby's Texan English.  

In the movie "Midway" the Japanese sailors spoke in their own language, sometimes in complex speeches. The subtitles were, of course, in French.  My French definitely got a workout trying to follow translated Japanese dialogue.    

It is strange to think how much the world has changed in the past 12 months.  No more movie theaters, the annual race at Lemans was delayed for months and who knows when I will travel across the ocean again.  

But with all that, the memories are wonderful.