How do IRL gunners deal with an existing round in breech?

[Wangmaster]

Say the commander sees a T72 and shouts "Gunner Sabot Tank", but there's currently a HE round loaded in the gun breech. I know usual protocol is to just fire it out, but if the enemy tank hasn't seen you, wouldn't that ruin the element of surprise by firing an ineffective round at him? And will the gunner be aware that the round in breech is the wrong one and not aim too carefully or something?

[strykerpsg]

The standard SOP by any military would be to fire the current round, just make it count.
In NATO tanks for sure, they type of round is indexed on the FCU and make appropriate ballistic trajectories for the round indexed. In most snapshot cases, whatever round was indexed, sans smoke or cannister, it will be fired and cause some sort of damage. The next round fired, if available, will do the damages sought. Bear in mind, just because the TC calls for a sabot round, does not mean there's a guaranteed sabot round available.

[Adde77]

Yeah, it's much less work and less risks of injury to fire what you got in the pipe than to try to take whatever round you have already in the pipe out. And tanks with an autoloader I'm pretty sure they go by the same rule.

[YANKEE GO HOME]

Originally posted by Adde77:

Yeah, it's much less work and less risks of injury to fire what you got in the pipe than to try to take whatever round you have already in the pipe out. And tanks with an autoloader I'm pretty sure they go by the same rule.

Yep. It's possible to unload it but a bad idea, as you have to work backwards around the autoloader and do some fiddling by hand to get it to return the round to the tray. It's slow and awkward, so not ideal. You're essentially performing the same procedure you'd use to load rounds into the carousel.

[deees]

Originally posted by Wangmaster:

Say the commander sees a T72 and shouts "Gunner Sabot Tank", but there's currently a HE round loaded in the gun breech. I know usual protocol is to just fire it out, but if the enemy tank hasn't seen you, wouldn't that ruin the element of surprise by firing an ineffective round at him? And will the gunner be aware that the round in breech is the wrong one and not aim too carefully or something?

For rounds with combustible cases, trying to remove one from a hot breech runs the risk of dumping loose propellant into the interior of the turret.

[Tanker D18]

It's tricky to say and very situational. Like deees mentions, if the breech is hot you really don't want to try and get a round out because the combustible cases tend to swell in the breech. If one gets stuck and you can't fire it out you'd have to get your bell rammer and cleaning staffs out and push it out from the muzzle, not an option in combat. Pulling rounds out of a cool M1 breech is pretty straightforward but I have no idea how you'd pull a two part job out in a T-64/72/80/90, I'm guessing cleaning staffs and a bell rammer.

Pulling the round out when the fur is flying isn't an option because it's so much faster just to shoot and reload. If you were in a defensive scenario you would probably have sabot battle-carried because of the tank threat and HEAT is pretty effective on Soviet-era tanks without reactive armor anyway. Or at least 120mm HEAT is, I don't know enough about 105mm to say so but GHPC seems to agree.

On a related note about the effectiveness of HEAT: I remember an old platoon sergeant telling me they preferred HEAT sometimes during the Gulf War (Even though they knew sabot was better.) because it made a more noticeable splash when it hit enemy tanks, whereas sabot would just make some sparks as it rammed a hole through it. Then if the ammo didn't go up and the tank didn't explode you weren't sure if you hit it or not given all the dust kicked up from firing in the desert.

The proper conduct of fire if you have the wrong round in the tube is TC: "Gunner, HEAT, tank.", G: "Identify.", L: "Up!", TC: "Fire, fire sabot.", G: "On the way." Which tells the gunner to fire the HEAT at the tank, immediately index sabot (i.e: switch the round type on the gunner's panel) for a follow up shot and for the loader to load sabot next. I'm pretty sure the game actually does that, now I need to check.

[Macro]

Originally posted by Wangmaster:

Say the commander sees a T72 and shouts "Gunner Sabot Tank", but there's currently a HE round loaded in the gun breech. I know usual protocol is to just fire it out, but if the enemy tank hasn't seen you, wouldn't that ruin the element of surprise by firing an ineffective round at him? And will the gunner be aware that the round in breech is the wrong one and not aim too carefully or something?

I guess you answered your question yourself. Just fire it on a possible other target (if Possible) . Unloading a Round takes longer than Load a New Round and is very Tricky (also not save) in Real Life (and you don't have that time to Play and fiddle around with this). And IF you have a autoloader, not every one is even capable to do this.

[Raddari]

I imagine the crew in the opposing tank are gonna have a bad day receiving a direct hit from a 105mm HE round anyway. It would probably disorient them long enough for a follow up sabot.

[Resolute]

Reports from the current battlefield in Ukraine has first hand accounts of the fact that even a HE round to a Soviet era tank is going to leave the crew with a very bad day. It won't necessarily blow the tank up but it will damage it and injure the crew.

[wildtime]

Fire whatever is in the breech, load the appropriate round and re-index (in this case: lase the target again). You don't want to fire SABOT while indexed for HEAT...especially on the range.