The retirement of Scorpions due to fumes was only part of the story. Under the Conventional Forces In Europe Treaty (CFE treaty), the Scorpion was classified as a "Heavy Armament Combat Vehicle" due to it's 76mm gun, while the Scimitar, with it's 30mm gun, wasn't covered by the treaty at all. The treaty set separate limits on "Main Battle Tanks" and "Armoured Fighting Vehicles", the latter including AIFVs, APCs and Heavy Armament Combat Vehicles. This meant that NATO could have as many Scimitars as it wanted, but every Scorpion would come at the expense of a Warrior, Bradley or Marder. Since AIFVs numbers were important and Scorpion's recon duties could be performed just as well by a Scimitar, the Scorpion lost out and they were all converted to Sabre "pseudo-Scimitars". This isn't to say the fume problem wasn't real, but it explains why no serious effort was made solve it.
it is sad how the tank museum puts a real effort in explaining all the political and industrial background on some armors but in others (like in the Scorpion case) they limit the presentation to the technicall issues. It is very reasonable to drop scorpions from the category in which Bradleys and Marders are, since these are much more capable beasts
@@Dockhead The current excuse for a British military complex. Ringfencing 10% of GDP for defence spending. Would ensure our armed forces, military ordnance producers and supports services, become the largest employers in the country. The boost to the entire economy and society, being tremendous.
@@Dockhead US Generals: With the changing nature of warfare there is a greater emphasis on light infantry which will require new kit for primarily urban warfare with insurgents. Pentagon: Ok, here are 5000 brand new M1A1 Abrams tanks.
An adopted relation of mine was part of the design team on these vehicles. It was his idea to use aluminium to build the chassis and armour and the Jaguar engine to power it. If it was uncomfortable, got a bit smokey inside and broke down a lot, don't blame Johnny Brewer, blame the penny pinching civil servants!
I always like that the failures of military specs and crappy engineering are always blamed on the favorite targets of “useless politicians!” and mindless bureaucrats who control the purse strings. If those in charge want to get it done they have more than enough ability and clout. When they fail it’s always the faceless government employees who get the shaft. Class horses*** never ends.
Hello. I would be interested in a video covering the “optics” used in tanks during WW2. I have read , perhaps in Renders book, that the practice of smothering a say Panther with 6lb Sherman fire, could force it to withdraw due to damage to the aiming system. This appears to demonstrate that armour thickness and gun size etc.. was only part of the story. Thank you.
@@californiadreamin8423 ok so 6lbr was a 57mm in US service the Sherman had a 75MM. FWIW but thats an interesting topic! that would be a great one for the curator because he goes into such minute technical detail
Not at the Bovington NAAFI! The NAAFI manager in the early 1980s was killed when a Scorpion drove over his Capri while he was sat in it! The driver’s seat in CVR(T) was held up by two bungees, one of which snapped, causing the student driver to slew across the road…
I remember in the early 90s the Army were selling off Scorpions. I know that they were being sold on closed bids and was told that they were going for £1500 with a new gearbox and Jaguar engine!.
Ive never heard of Sabre. I heard of Scimitar. Scorpion was my favorite as a boy. My friend got the action man one and.I was most jealous of him lol. Cheers for the vid.
Better the tank than the action man helicopter...used too absolutely kill your finger trying to keep the blades spinning....my other friend had the action man training tower...death slide...brilliant fun.
I spent the last few months of my Royal Armoured Corps experience at Lulworth. There I often witnessed the Fox being rescued by Scorpions from being bogged down. I left in May 1972. The Scorpion and Fox were coming into service at that time. I was always confused as to why they adopted the 4.2 Jaguae engine, when the 5.3 has just come out. Seems curious. The smoke inhalation problem of the 76mm was nothing compared to the 17 Lb'er, that thing was lethal ! In my first trade test firing at Warcop in 1965 I fired 7 rounds and couldn't see the hand in front of my face at 6 inches. It was like breating pure Amonia. My Troop Sgt went through the Korean War and claims to have fired 53 rounds from a 17 Lb in one firing battle !!! God knows how he managed that ! I just want to state that I had the privilege and honour of crewing a Centurion for 3 years. Jan 66 to Sept 69. What a tank that was, I loved it to bits :) Gonna shut up about the Chieftain !!!
On the engine, the 4.2L engine was likely settled on early in development, as building around an already available engine is a lot easier than one that's still in development itself. The 5.3L might have been a superior design, but as you say, it had just come out. The CVR(T) would have entered production at the same time, if not earlier, and the engine is a long-lead item that needs to be ordered well in advance of a production run starting.
I'm from Honduras and the army here still uses these old Scorpion tanks along with the Saladin armored cars, pretty old stuff for a mountainous country that doesn't need tanks lol, I guess they're relics from the Cold War, I've climbed into the Scorpion it's a very cramped vehicle
the one thing about tanks is, they are like a fire extinguishers.. much better to have a few laying around and never need them. then the other way around.
I feel like making the A/C unit mandatory would've been more cost-effective than doing away with an entire gun and turret assembly and then re-designing the turret ring to fit a modified turret from another vehicle and then deciding to throw that idea out the window as well. All that trouble because the British military didn't want to spring for an optional feature.
Scimitar was the best of the bunch. Kept in service for very good reasons. In 1991 Iraq and Kuwait, the Lancers were taking out T55's with ease, using the black APDS rounds. Must have been a considerable pucker factor, facing off against an enemy sporting either a 105mm or 125mm MBT gun. Iraqi T55's had one or the other. Not that it mattered both were curtains for Scimitar. But only if they could hit it! I imagine the drivers were well motivated to use it's speed to full effect. Whiplash acceleration.
@@gusgone4527 As it is only 8 tons it was extremely versatile as it could be air droped and it was amphibious and as it was fast and small it was a extremely hard target to hit hope one day we get a replacement for the platform as there nothing like it in the world there is a good reason Scimitar and Spartan are both still in service today I would imagine the new vehicle being a similar and maybe even faster and a couple of key variants APC,Light Tank(There would be two variances of the light tank one with a 35mm and another with a 110mm)
Me too! Catterick and area, driving like maniacs and stopping off for a brew and a wad at a greasy spoon. Loved it, and we got paid! As for the gun toxicity, load of rubbish. We always fired with the hatches open on the ranges, and I don't think it would have been a concern in combat. Plus the GPMG chucked out loads of fumes too, which always made my eyes water more than the main armament, we used the coax far more than the main gun. I am sure that the H&S enthusiasts would argue about the gun fumes, but for soldiers who actually served on Scorpion it was never a problem, in my experience. Re the effectiveness of 30mm APDS, I believe a 16/5L Scimitar engagement in the 1st Gulf war resulted in a Type 59 (I think?) being knocked out through penetration of the frontal armour. Just saying.
@@bsquadronguy Yes, Catterick and I also remember stopping at the greasy spoon. It was winter time too, bloody cold. I was 17th/21st Lancers, what were you in?
Seems it would have been cheaper and less of a hassle to simply install a fume extractor in the 76mm. Hell, they could just put an air extractor fan in the roof if they wanted a cheap solution for that matter.
The CVRT range had Controlled Differential steering which made it much easier to drive ( especially as it had a seperate brake unlike 432 ) but a bit hard to understand how it works. As trainee VM's we were told that to turn left you pulled the left lever which applied the right brake which made the right track speed up, the left tract slow down and you turned left! As you can imagine it took us a while to get our heads around how that worked!
I thought it was left lever slowed the left track allowing the right track to come around. Some of my military instructors had zero business teaching soldiers and would have better served their nation trying to confuse small animals from a great distance.
@@islandmarksman2781 I couldn't find a decent animation to show how it works but this might give you an idea. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CGnmfUelM7U.html Imagine when you watch it (it's very short ) you have pulled the LH lever - you will see the that the RH brake applies, the LH drive slows down and the RH one speeds up and you turn left. This animation shows three differentials, on CVRT the two final drives are epicyclics but the effect is the same.
It was not the 76 mm that was the problem it was the fumes (toxicity) from the co-ax 7.62 machine gun. People would pass out due to the fumes and after a day on the ranges you would do cordite farts.
Everything exists within a context and the cost of a vehicle has wider implications. As other militaries have seen, having the technologically "best" isn't always a good idea if you have less of them or have to wait longer for them. Everything is a compromise.
I was a REME gun fitter, I was on detachment to 1RTR to help their gun fitter in modifying the traversing gear on the Scorpions. I was testing one that had been modified. My only vision was through the gunners sight. A group of black berets suddenly appeared. So I shouted "Turret traversing, get your f***ing heads out the way". Next thing I heard was someone climbing up on the tank and the RSM's head upside down peering through the commanders hatch, "Next time you tell the colonel to get his f***ing head out the way remember to say SIR". Another notable time with a Scorpion was with a Field Workshop. We were doing another modification where the gun was removed using the overhead crane in one building and the main work being done in another, on the far side of the workshops. I was the worse for ware after a very enjoyable night of boozing. I was suppose to be working at the shed with the crane, our staff sergeant took pity on me and sent me to the other shed so I was out the way in case someone senior appeared, the other shed was too far from the offices for any one senior to wander over to. I climbed in one the tanks being moved from one shed to the other, sitting in the gunners seat. Having a hangover and peering through a moving gunners sight (which wasn't attached to the gun) wasn't a good idea. Boy did I feel poorly. That modification program meant most days were we still working after everyone else had left the workshop. With no one around when moving the tanks we would race each other, sometimes it would be the army verses the MOD police who were our gate keepers. Complaints came in about tanks being raced from the civvies living near the workshop. Of course we knew nothing so the MOD police were asked if they knew anything about tanks racing , oddly they hadn't seen anything either.
Remember the Scorpion when it came out ... it was featured on 'Blue Peter' the kids programme, and my brothers and I spotted one (covered in a tarp) on the back of a transporter in the carpark of a transport cafe on the A1. There was a tatty-but-mainly-working Sabre for sale very recently on Trademe, the NZ equivalent of ebay, going for NZ$75K (about 45,000 Euro). Didn't sell, probably still available.
my neighbour as a kid,lived near Ipswich,was a captain in the 22nd tanks reg (captain/Mr Smith.stocky build and Scottish as they come). he brought a scorpion tank and a fox carrier to our school ,parked em on the sports field, and we all got to inspect and climb around them..awesome.. love at first sight and still my favourite shell firing tracked thing to this day..
I had no idea the Scorpion was so badly treated. Always reminds me of when I lived in Aldershot, early to mid 70s, you'd see them on the road occasionaly. On Army day you'd be able to get up close to all the vehicles. Especially remember being there in hot summer of '76.
the retirement of the Australian M113 MRVs had less to do with the turret fumes (although they were a concern and training on the firing range was always conducted with the turret hatches open for ventilation) and more to do with the adoption of the ASLAV vehicles in the mid 90s, the 25mm gun vehicles being its direct replacement as a fire support vehicle for the Cavalry
I was always under the impression the 76mm was dropped because it wasn't really an effective weapon, and the fume issue didn't really have much of a role in it. Could well be completely wrong though!
You have a funny uneducated worldview, air conditioning is an umbrella term for all treatment of air ... cooling, heating, filtering, ionization, adding stuff, changing humidity etc (sealed or not) ... only simple people think of air conditioning as just cooling, as thats the best they manage to understand about their cars/houses aircon unit. In tanks air conditioning often goes far beyond cooling/heating, especially whenever its part of the NBC protection system but ofc also for handling fumes from firing. Removing fumes is a very basic function even modern car aircons do these days.
This needs to be redesigned to be 5-6 tons, two man crew, 30mm auto cannon, rubber tracks, with a missile defense systems like on the latest M1ABRAMS, 5 large Switchblade drones, and modern armor . It could be transported by helicopters or dropped by parachute. It could be used with infantry, armored units, convoy protection, recon, protection for support units in the rear.
I fitted the the 1st diesel to the scorpion it was a Perkins diesel the Cummins diesel was fitted after I had left. The hull needed no modification to install the Perkins diesel so it was not possible to tell the difference from the outside.
There us absolutely a need for a small cheap vehicle that fits between a truck and a full on APC/IFV. Needs to be cheap so you can have a lot of them everywhere. These days they have to have an antimissile/antidrone system like TROPHY but the concept is still sound.
Where where the penny pinchers when thay where deciding to scrap the original turret, manufacture new turret, rework/replace the turret mounting ring, repositioning of electric in turret ,ammo stowage and lot more I have not thought of. The cheapest solution would be the mid east version missing its compressor so the fan/air replacement works but no cooling. I would give them the cooling troops would love you for it. Second solution keep the turret replace it with gun from sabre!! What where they thinking???
@@lambastepirate not likely as the Rarden gun was designed to be very free of gas leakage, it uses a long recoil action which allows nearly all the gases to leave the barrel before the breech opens
These vehicles were incredibly small and thin armour, ideal for covert work but any confrontation with enemy armour and you were toast. I favour the the fight for information concept
Its not a tank. Its also better than encountering enemy armour on foot or in a light skinned vehicle. The cannon armed variant is dangerous enough to anything but an actual MBT that other AFVs will still give you a wide birth.
me and Mr Fletcher in a pub with a collection of detailed model tanks for him to talk me around and about.. that would be loverly and worth every single pint I would fetch him.. :-)
Is it me our did the production model's have a foot snapped G.C.P. because that one looked like a Chieftain one. Also we had a guy from 4 R.T.R. nicked one from Catterick to show his friends and family in Glagow 1984 I think.
