Has a sniper ever disabled a tank?

Upvote:-7

In theory, a sniper can disable a tank.

  • shoot out the gun sight
  • shoot out the driver sight
  • wait for crew to open the hatch because they can't see

[...]

Not true. You are in a case of ocular centrism psychological bias. You can see, so you aren't able to realize how far one can do without seeing.

Put a fold around your eyes and try to do your own routine. You'll find that it was hard, but with a little help you were able to do.

Now picture yourself as a driver of a tank, able to hear, able to feel, able to drive, able to shout, able to read maps, able to compute travelled distances because can see the speedometer, able to see where compass is pointing, able to communicate through radio.

You'll figure out a sniper with no ready anti tank support (specially if unable to call them) is worthless against a tank's crew (specially if they are able to call support).

Upvote:-4

https://www.quora.com/Is-there-anyway-a-gun-can-take-out-a-tank

The first answer contains a story of an entire tank unit disabled that way by snipers in the Gulf War.

Upvote:14

Tank commanders will often stand up in their hatch with their head out of the turret to get a better look around. In this position they were vulnerable to being shot, and quite a few tank commanders were shot by infantry of all kinds, including snipers.

enter image description here

A good sniper might be able to get a bullet through a vision slit, and some probably did. But firing at vision slits was more to blind the tank than to kill the crew directly. Infantry is trained to fire at a tank's vision slits to force the crew to get away from the openings. While the tank is blinded, anti-tank teams can move in.

By far the ways snipers have killed tanks is with a dedicated anti-tank rifle. This is a very large, very heavy rifle designed to penetrate about thin armor at 100 to 300 meters.

enter image description here

Anti-tank rifles were developed between WWI and WWII. At the start of WWII tank armor was relatively thin. The German tanks started the war with 10 to 30 mm of armor and ended with 150mm and more. Thin early war armor could be penetrated by a large, high velocity rifle bullet at close range. The Soviet Army made extensive use of anti-tank rifles, even late into the war when tank armor had become thicker and the rifles were considered obsolete.

More post

Search Posts

Related post