While it is not as sexy as many of the weapon systems that were introduced in the 1980s, the Royal Ordnance L7 should be considered the gun that won the Cold War and every war involving Israel from 1967 to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. As I am working on the vehicle specification sheet for Lebanon 1982 it surprised me that every tank used by Israel had this weapon. (less the M51). This weapon dates from the beginning of the Cold War after Britain was able to examine a T54. Now that I have the gun stats down I have to figure what the load out is. If anyone can shed any light on this please let me know as the choice of rounds is rather long.
Model from the Peter Pig site.
APDS- APERS-T ("Anti-personnel-tracer")
- APFSDS
- HE
- HEAT
- HESH
- Smoke-White phosphorus incendiary
Tank load outs tend to be mission specific, so a standard load out wouldn't exist as such. The Israelis also developed a APFSDS-T round for the L7, but no idea when this was. Presumably it replaced APDS. Israeli tanks carry smoke dischargers or a mortar, so I doubt they'd have many smoke rounds for the gun. Centurion and Merkava carried 62 rounds, don't know about the M48/60.
ReplyDeleteThe mortar on the Merkava is interesting as the Israelis talk of the use in anti personnel and smoke rounds but so little is written about the weapon itself.
ReplyDeleteI see that as my next area of research.