Advantages of rear engine tanks with front drive sprockets

"Inches are everything." - The Chieftain 2020

I'd never thought about it before, but stalls and missed shifts probably happened constantly in ww2 battles. I've stalled my truck at intersections and been embarrassed. I can't imagine the stress of stalling a tank in the middle of a battle, or having a shift linkage break.

9:20 when he says "floatation issues"...... he isnt talking about crossing rivers, folks pretty much all farm equipment uses "floatation" tires..... big, fat, wide tires that spread out the weight in mud they preventing it from "sinking" into the mud..... and instead.... ride on the top ~1 inch of soil if all the weight was in the back on the m18...... the ass end would constantly get stuck 3 foot down in the mud BUT.... because the weight is spread out... the m18 might only sink 0.5 or 1 inch into the mud..... which is very easy for the tracks to overcome.... and speed away from that angry panther

I remember seeing a military related tv show on the Merkava tank. The young woman driver of the tank related that the #1 consideration in the design was crew survivability, since the IDF was so small. She particularly appreciated the fact that rounds hitting the front of the tank needed to penetrate not only the frontal armor, but also the front mounted power pack. She felt a lot safer having a larger mass in front of her.

One of the interesting things about Merkava is that the hull makes a really good APC. The Namer is likely one of the best of the heavy APCs. The US Army trialed some Namers and they liked them but decided against purchasing some. And I always like how Chieftain reiterates that you can't judge a tank based on how many countries use it. Some designs may be so specialized, it's just not practical for another country to use it.

short answer: "these people weren't fools, there are reasons why people do things"

"Inches are everything" -Chieftain 2020

Whoever designed the first modern power pack where you can just yank the whole thing out in 10 minutes was brilliant.

There was another point you said by yourself in some videos. The front mounted sprocket got a cleaner track to work with. On the way to the front the links loose dirt and thus are less likely to damage/wear down the teeth. That may not be the main reason but it is another addition.

Your point about transmission linkages is something I hadn't considered. I used to have a van with a column shifter that required a fair amount of finesse to shift smoothly between gears. Trying to force it when it didn't want to go into gear ran the risk of having the linkage separate leaving you stranded. Having that happen in a situation where people are shooting at you, yeah, I can see why they'd put the transmission in the front.

I got to drive an M113A3 around Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels Germany as a 12B, and since it was the platoon commander's vehicle it was really like having a tracked vehicle to joyride around the mountains of Germany with. They were definitely balanced well considering all the very steep grades I'd have to drive down and up. Checking the oil in the two front final drives was just as important as the engine oil, stressed in the manual and by my NCO's. (One of them called the 113 a 'tracked grenade'.) The up front engine served another purpose very well-at night I'd lay my 3 layer sleeping bag over the engine intake grate on top and get nice residual engine heat for nearly the entire night.

Another T-shirt quote "Inches are everything!'

The weight distribution is a very significant factor - if you have the turret in the middle of the tank (which is much easier with the front transmission) you can upgrade/downgrade the turret and don't bother with the balance, but if you have the front placed turret you will have problems as with soviet T-34-85 which was particularly nose heavy despite the fact they'd played with the turret armor thickness to reduce the weight as much as possible. Also, the middle position is most comfortable when you driving through the bumpy terrain. And what soviet engineers had done immediately when they were making the new medium - they'd placed the turret in the middle on T-44 (but managed to keep the engine/trans in the back by mounting all the machinery transversely).

Glad he addressed the mechanical advantage of pulling the track forward (think block and tackle) and that it's way down on the scale of considerations for a tank design .. always love your talks

That moment when u Realize that the YouTube small screen button is a iron cross.

The argentine TAM also has the engine on the front, with a small hatch on the back for loading ammo and stuff. It's a german design, the chasis is a marder derivative and the turret was to be the upgraded leopard 1 turret, but leopard 2 make that useless, so german engineers use ir for the TAM project instead

I've been watching YouTube videos for a very ling time. It's becoming clear that many channels are becoming very fine operations. This is a perfect example of the more professional work as opposed to amateur videos. Keep up the good work.

I happen to be wearing my significant emotional event t-shirt right now. Nicely timed Chieftain.

10:50 what? A true APC has the ramp at the front so that Assault Terminators or Veteran Squads can charge the enemy immediately

A sprocket pulls the slack out of the track not push the track. Thus if you have a front sprocket , the slack is pulled out of the top of the track leaving slack in the bottom to help the track flex more on the bottom to follow the boggies on the suspension better and allow the boggles to remain in better contact with the track. This works better on most types of track suspension types and not just on tanks but most track systems Inc construction equipment, snowmobiles etc.