The night my tank caught fire!
When I joined the Army, every soldier posted into 1st Armd Regt as a driver and progressed to loader/radio operator then gunner and finally crew commander (CC).
I think my IET (Initial Employment Training) course was the first that spent an extra three weeks at Gunnery Wing, School of Armour after completing the Drivers course and marched into the Regiment qualified as drivers and loaders. This was because the Regiment was severly undermanned and a lot of the tanks only had a crew of three - CC, gunner and driver. For live firing (static) the driver would pull up at the firing point and then act as loader. For mobile shooting (battle runs) you would ‘borrow’ a Trooper from another tank to act as loader.
It must have been late '88 or early '89 and I was the driver (and loader) of 11B.
We were out on the range for a few days of gunnery practice and at the time we had a decent ‘bomb load’ on board. The 13 round ready rack was full and the wine rack (main ammo storage next to the driver - so called because it resembled a wine rack) was about half full. Let’s call it 20 rounds, so more than 30 105mm rounds on board in total. 105mm ammo unlike rifle ammo is electrically detonated. The breach of the gun didn’t have a firing pin that struck the base of the round, instead it had a firing needle that made contact with the base of the round when it closed and when the gunner pulled the trigger it would pass an electric current through the detonator to fire it. And it didn’t take a lot of current. Apparently you could set one off with a 9V battery (according to one of the instructors on my loaders course)!
Usually at night we would run double staggered piquets with one crewman keeping watch and another manning the radios - two hour ‘shifts’ with an overlap. i.e. you start by keeping watch with NVGs for a hour, the guy on radios would then go and wake the next guy, you would then man the radios for an hour while the next person kept watch, etc.
Because it was a gunnery excercise we were ‘semi-tac’ and only had one crewman on watch at any time, standing in the loaders hatch and primarily manning the radios (the radios are located on the loaders side of the turret and with double staggered the ‘lookout’ was done from the CC’s hatch so you could fire the main armament if needed).
I was on piquet and only had about 10-15 minutes to go before I could wake my relief when I heard a noise. It sounded a bit like the snapping of twigs/small branches. Here we go, I thought. Someone is sneaking up on us to see if we have posted a watch or are all catching ZZZZ’s. Couldn’t see anything through the NVGs though? There it is again a snap/crackle noise, but that sounded a lot closer? Still can’t see anything out there?
Next moment ‘snap/crackle/crackle/woosh’ and the inside of the turret lit up. I looked down and there are sparks and flames shooting out around the turret floor in a lovely halo accompanied by a distict ozone aroma of burning/arcing electrics!!!
I don’t remember getting from the hatch to the ground… it was that quick. I ran to the back of the tank where the rest of the crew were sleeping and shook the CC awake “Johnny, the tanks on fire”.
Once he was fully awake Johnny Gordon the CC, took one look and said “Well get in your F’ing hole (drivers position) and turn the master switch off”.
I kind of recall whimpering “Do I have to?”
Remember I said that 105 rounds are electrically detonated? They came with what as known as a ‘base safety clip’ because of this, but the only way to stow rounds in the ready rack is to remove the clip. The scariest thing I have ever done was get back on the tank, reach into the drivers compartment and turn off the master switch.
Luckily, as soon as I did this the arcing stopped and apparently any fire also went out… by this stage we were all not only well away from the tank but 11 and 11A had also moved well out of the way.
It turns out that something had failed with the ‘rotary base junction’ which is the electrical power coupling to the turret and every movement of the turret was basically grinding aluminium shavings. Couple that with a lot of current…
The photo below was taken early next morning. I had walked over to 11A (Troop SGTs tank) as their ‘new’ loader while 11B was out of commission. The driver took one look at me, said “rough night” and before I could reply took the shot.
