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Newbie Joined: Apr 24, 2008 Posts: 7 Status: Offline

I was wondering, that supposing that all other ordinance is expended, and someone on the ground needs a tank dead NOW, would it be feasible to attack it with a 20mm cannon? I'm not sure what it would do to the front armor, but the top, rear, and treads might provide the possibility of a mobility kill. 511 rounds of PGU into the turret should do something, but does someone with any experience know what types of targets an M61 is generally used for?

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Enthusiast Joined: Nov 07, 2005 Posts: 36 Status: Offline

Its not the gun or the velocity of the ammunition that does the damage, it is the type of ammo that you use; HEI, TP, API, HEIT, ect... API will do a very nice job on the tank. Cool

Active Member Joined: Apr 22, 2004 Posts: 143

Well...The M61A1 was not designed to kill tanks. Even the API will not do much against a modern battle tank. The round loses velocity over longer distances(shallow strafe) and often doesn't hit the target with enough velocity to fuse, not to mention the low angle often hits the armor at its thickest or ricochets of the thinest. Next, High angle strafe requires the pilot to fire from longer distances (reducing accuracy due to mil dispersion, trajectory sag, wind, and decreased velocity) because of the required distance to safely recover above the ground. All in all, I'd use the gun on tank if I was out of other munitions or if there were no other targets suitable. Maybe I could deafen them.

Elite 1K Joined: May 10, 2005 Posts: 1089 Status: Offline

CAS_117 wrote:

I was wondering, that supposing that all other ordinance is expended, and someone on the ground needs a tank dead NOW, would it be feasible to attack it with a 20mm cannon? I'm not sure what it would do to the front armor, but the top, rear, and treads might provide the possibility of a mobility kill. 511 rounds of PGU into the turret should do something, but does someone with any experience know what types of targets an M61 is generally used for?

I'd bet something other than a tank.....you are gonna want to hope that somewhere in the vicinity of an area where a tank is likely to be encountered there'd be an A-10....who even if winchester on mavs and bombs, has a gun designed to do more than make people in tanks annoyed at you.

Of course, you could always steal a Hind and kamikaze into it head on.....

WW2 "Jabo" pilots supposdedly tried to ricochet .50 rounds off the road into the weak belly of German tanks. It is a matter of controversy whether this really worked. The rockets they carried would devastate the tank, but were not very accurate.

The 20mm might damage the treads and suspension of a modern tank, if a sustained burst hit just right.

WW2 also the mustang and t-bolt pilots would just concentrate their fire on the tops of the tank or the rear. the tigers and panthers always had hatches on the tops that were thinner then the rest of the armor. even if you spent those "whole 9 yards" on the tank and only 2 or 3 rounds got through, that was good enough for the guys on the ground that couldn't match the firepower of these tanks. even so the pilots would also try and hit the tanks from behind. the .50 cal would easily penetrate the engine compartment of any german tank and you would get a soft kill do to the fact that the panther and tiger's turrets were so large that they had to be electrically transversed. no engine, no electricity. but today, yeah the gau-8 on the a-10 is the only really effective tank killer. it has more muzzle energy then the 75 mm howitzer put on b-25's in WW2 for anti-shipping roles. with the API DU rounds that were used, they could penetrate any side, top, and rear armor on the world.

there are part of a tank's top that are lightly armored that an API round will wreck, namely the top of the engine compartment. Even at a shallow angle, it would do damage. That damage may just make it into a stationary pillbox, but as we all know, anything that shoots and sits still on a battlefield won't be there for long.

There's always the golden bb.

Newbie Joined: Apr 24, 2008 Posts: 7 Status: Offline

I have another question. What is the expected injury radius for the PGU-28? I've seen videos of strafing attacks on Iraq, and it looks pretty effective. However I've also heard issues that are reflective of the issues of the 5.56x45 NATO round in the M-16. For example, I think that there is actually a story on this site where after expending all ordinance on a bunker that was too close to a firefight for a 500lb bomb, the enemy was still not incapacitated. Does anyone have first hand experience with the M61 vulcan? Thanks for your time.

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M61A1 lethality: Would it damage a modern tank?