Armored Vehicle Lost In Fallujah For Five Hours

POSTED: 11:41 a.m. EDT April 14, 2004
UPDATED: 5:33 p.m. EDT April 14, 2004

An armored vehicle carrying 20 Marines was headed for a frontline position Tuesday in Fallujah when it got lost and ended up nearly half a mile inside the city.

It was surrounded by more than 100 armed guerrillas.

One Marine described it as stumbling into the wasp nest.

The Marines took shelter in a nearby building and waited five hours for a rescue convoy, which found them by following the plume of black smoke from their burned-out vehicle.

http://www.local6.com/news/3004688/detail.html

The rest of this Florida radio station article described all the activity in Iraq today.

The Marines use the "AAVP7A1" which is 10 feet Tall, Ten Feet Wide and 26 feet long (and can haul up to 25 men). The Army used the M113 in Vietnam (and still uses it in Support of the M2 Bradley). The M113 is much much smaller, 7 Feet wide, 8 Foot Tall and 21 feet wide and was design to haul no more than 11 men. The M2 Bradley while bigger than the M113, is still smaller than the AAVP7 (The M2 Bradley is 10 Tall, 10 feet wide and 21 feet long, but its height of ten feet is made by its two man turret which gives its almost two more feet of height over the compartment where the infantry travel in). Thus the M2 has the same technical height as the AAVP7, if you exclude the turrets in both the M2 is MUCH SMALLER. The M2 was design to haul 9 men in addition to its two man crew.

My point here is the M2 Bradley is a fully armored Vehicle design to take punishment over and above what the aluminum armored M113 and AAVP7 are designed to take. Why would you move such a big bulky item like the AAVP7 into any street when you can opt for a M2 Bradley or even the M113? The M113 has similar armor protection to the AAVP7 (and the M2 has superior armor protection to both the M113 and AAVP7) so why would you operate such a large vehicle in any urban terrain. It is plan stupid. No wonder the Iraqis were able to blow it up.





For the AAVP7
http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/aavp7a1.htm

For the M113
http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m113.htm

For the M2 Bradley:
http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m2.htm

;-)

Jay

and others are called "tanks". I wouldn't enter a hostile urban environment in anything BUT a tank. Out of curiosity - anyone know if we've lost any M1A1s or M1A2s?

but I know we have lost plenty. Many unsuspecting news networks even showed several different, burned out, M1's. if they had know it was US gear, at the time, they would never have shown them.

Jay

Encounter same problems as the AAVP7A1, too large to be useful in cities. The biggest vulberability of tanks is from the rear, where the armor is the lightest, imagine how easy it is to flank a tank in any city, even modern ones. Too much cover for the lightly armed and armored insurgents. Plus tanks are anything but swift in attack from any angle but the front, and best against other armored vehicles and stationary targets. Not to mention that mobility is limited to wide roads only, not the many winding streets designed for more modest vehicles.

These Marines are very lucky to be alive.

This vehicle was mainly made to get troops from a ship to a shoreline with some measure of safety. It is not really an infantry combat vehicle like the M2/M3 Bradley.

If anything, it is another example of troops not having the equipment they need to do the job at hand. Or maybe an example of using the wrong type of troops for an urban assault/recon mission.

By the way, the old M113 would have been a deathtrap. They rushed the M2/M3 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle into service because the M113 was basically a box on tracks that could not survive on its own.

First it was NOT designed to withstand anti-tank rockets. Its armor was "proof" only against 50 Caliber bullets. Furthermore do to its use of aluminum Armor it was lighter than a Armored Personal Carrier (APC) with Steel armor and thus easier to transport by Air AND used less fuel (But at the Cost that Aluminum tends to burn when hit by a Shaped Charge Rocket aka the Russian RPG and burn till nothing is left).

On the other hand the M113 could float and given its light track weight could travel in softer ground than any tank (In Vietnam the M113 could go places the M60 and M48 tanks it was operating with could not do to their greater weight). Thus the M113 was a good vehicle, in some ways better than the M2 that replaced it (The M113 has Much better fuel economy and more internal room, through the M2 gives its troops better armor protection and more fire power).

Thus my point the M113 was and is a very good design, one of the best in the post war era. In an environment with a lot of RPG and other antitank weapons it would be better for the infantry to walk than travel in a M113, but most times you are going to a combat zone not in one, and when traveling to a combat zone the M113 was at its best.

It had a steering wheel (weeeeeeeeee!) I swear that thing had a vertical climb like a mountain goat. I have to admit that driving an M113 was one of the funnest things I've ever done. It's the only vehicle I've ever seen that will literally "stop on a dime".

M113 was the Gasoline Version adopted in 1959 (Not to many were built, the Army converted almost all of them to M113A1 Standards i.e. with a Diesel Engine. Was the A2 or the A3 the version with the driver was given a magnesium armor (In Vietnam to many drivers where dying from minds so to protect the Driver the Driver area was given an additional belt of magnesium armor to reduce driver losses).

Magnesium burns exceptionally hot and will ignite almost any combustible material, including people. Do you think titanium, like the stuff they use in the A-10 warthog, would be more appropriate?

Aluminum burns (Rapid Oxidation is the more correct term, but I will use burn in this memo) at 1832 F so Magnesium's burn temperature of 1153 F. Thus the burn temperature of magnesium is not that much less than Aluminum. Given Magnesium greater strength to volume ratio, it was easier to retrofit into the M113 than the same mass of Aluminum.

Remember a Shaped Charge produces temperatures in in Excess of 500-600 C (900-1100 F. Now some of the plasma produced in the explosion of a Shaped Charge can reach 20,000 Degrees, effective Tempertures appears to 900-1100 F. Thus Shaped charges start out at about the burn temperature of magnesium but not that far from Aluminum's burn temperature (and within the temperture range Shaped charges are know to produce).

Given that the Magnesium retrofit was INTERNAL i.e. inside the existing Alumium and the great fear was mines not Shaped charge, this is a good retrofit. It was better than doing nothing and given the tempertures both Alumium and Magensium burn at, the greater strength for less volume of Magenism made it a good retrofit FOR PROTECTION OF THE DRIVER ONLY AND THAT IS ALL THAT WAS DONE.


For temperature of Shaped Charges:
http://www.dean.usma.edu/math/research/msce/11th_AUTS/papers/Walters.pdf

For Burn Temperature of Various Metals including Magnesium and Aluminum:
http://www.netl.doe.gov/coolscience/res_archive/q&a_36.html

Conversion computer between Celsius (c) and Fahrenheit (F) temperature Scales:
http://www.onlineconversion.com/temperature.htm

.
.
.

"Many residents have fled neighborhoods around the Marine positions. The troops have taken over abandoned houses, using sledgehammers to bash through walls so they can move between houses without exposing themselves."

Sewing seeds of hatred to last generations.

Can't convince the Iraqis that they are there to "help" them as long as this sort of thing continues.

Why can't they see that?

. . :shrug: . .

If our troops are smashing down houses for cover, it means that "winning the hearts and minds" of the Iraqis is the last thing on their minds.

It means that the troops are in a hostile war zone. We have the worst possible situation. We are at war but our government won't admit it, won't send enough personnel, and insists on outsourcing supplies to for-profit private contractors with no experience in war zones.

Took shelter and waited to be rescued. And this is the town we are going to wipe off the face of the map.

I'm really not sure how much more I can stand to hear about this beleaguered (sp?) town. I know one of the people that went in to help on Sunday, I've read the reports from others that went with. I am concerned for Mari, her step-son and her family..........this is out of control.

This whole situation is beyond my ability to comprehend and I'm almost 50! Damn IT! Haven't we learned anything in at least 100 years? Someone said today something about not being able to get their head around it...........

I'm there, I'm lost...I just can't believe this shit!

(FCC, please forgive my use of an offensive word, hope I didn't violate anything, if I did fine me, not DU).

"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.

>snip<

We have not reached the limit of our military commitments. Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions.


>snip<

How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?"


source-
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lawrence.php

after they had united and helped the British to defeat the Turks, was something T. E. Lawrence never got over.

Very sad story, helps me to understand much of what is happening now. Too bad the history of the area was not required reading for our troops.

the Iraq quagmire while maybe not completely predictable is at the least not surprising .

starring .....:)

A more detailed story in the WP:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12526-2004Apr14.html

I found this paragraph interesting:

"Just before dawn Wednesday, however, AC-130 Spectre gunships launched a devastating punitive raid over a six-block area around the spot where the convoy was attacked, firing dozens of artillery shells that shook the city and lit up the sky. Marine officials said the area was virtually destroyed"

Now I get it: we have to destroy the city to save the city!

the Marines Amtracs were reffered to as Tuna Boats, Desert Winnebagos, and Floating Coffins. These guys were damn lucky they didn't get hit in the right spot with an RPG round.

we're having car trouble.

especially the part about stepping out of the vehicle into the throngs of insurgents, rpgs and bullets and strolling into the nearest house. this is sure to be a NBC movie in about a month.

surrounded by 100 insurgents. Does this sound fishy?

... on how many of the "100 insurgents" were old enough to walk I guess ...