I’m sure such a manual exists, but it’ll be absolutely enormous because there is so much to understand. Crews will absorb the basics during special-to-arm training (typically 3-6 months), then the individuals will be placed with an experienced crew and do continuation training within their unit. No way you could get up to the standard of a modern NATO tank crew just by having a book to read.
Ah the Tigerfibel and Pantherfibel’s, comically arranged manual’s that tried to interject some humour into the training for the tank crews so they would remember all the servicing tasks and other information on how to operate the vehicle, needed due to the drop in quality of the crews training as much as anything else.
You are very correct PDF, although my experiences predate the Abrams by some years, the Advanced Individual Training, that training specific to the occupational specialty of an Armor Crewman was scheduled for 8 weeks in the U.S. Army. During this comprehensive training, all aspects of the care, and feeding of the tank would be learned in detail in both class room, and in the motorpool, and field. Particular detail was paid to maintenance which comprised the majority of the crewman’s daily activities both in application of maintenance procedures, and keeping records, and documentation updated in the log book of each vehicle. Operations were also comprehensive, tactical formations, and usage were given a week of their own with special emphasis given to communications at Company, Platoon, and between tank levels. This by either Radio, flags, or hand signals. As to gunnery, that took nearly as much time as maintenance, and covered absolutely every detail of direct fire gunnery (no Tank Destroyer Doctrine to hinder us in our work ) Every detail on the main gun, the basic load of munitions, fire control, and crew interaction/communication was taught, and drilled extensively. As was the use of the 2 Machine Guns. A U.S. Tank Crewman could if need be, go from the Armor School, to the battle field, and get to work.
This was generally not needed though, and once at his permanent duty unit, there would be additional training in the home unit’s particular blend of operations. There were always variations depending on whom, and where a Unit might be fighting. We also had a manual which was called the “dash 10”. Manuals were produced for different levels of use, and maintenance. The -10 was the crew level, the higher the dash No. the higher the level. The -10 was a legal sized book, and about 2-1/2 inches thick, and filled to boredom’s limit with the usual half tone prints of everything the crewman needed to take care of, and operate any system in the vehicle. This manual was the strictly G.I. book, but the was a small magazine that came out from time to time called PS magazine, it was done in the graphic novel style, and dealt generally with all manner of maintenance tips for everything in the Army. This little book while being published by the gov’t was not part of our standard kit.
With the Abrams Tank, things are much more complicated, and would require much more, and detailed training in order to make a competent crewman. The training schedule is 15 weeks IIRC,nearly double the time of the previous Patton/M-60 series, and includes far greater use of latest tech simulators that can train the entire crew at the same time. This alone is one valuable asset, a competent crewman is necessary, but a competent crew is essential to fight the vehicle successfully. Its more the 8 armed creature in the tank than the tank itself that makes the weapon.
In the 70’s an adequate crew could engage, and close fire in less than 15 seconds, with 2 hits. (which was generally considered to be more than enough to knock out any Soviet tank.) A truly good crew could do this in 10-12 seconds. The munitions of the time pretty much assured successful reduction of the target, but it took a really with it crew to make best use of the vehicle’s attributes.
This is a side note, but since the subject was brought up in various threads, The Hot rolled face hardened armor used in German tanks was very expensive to produce, and required involved, and expensive manufacturing procedures in order to be made into Hulls, and turrets. With the advent of APDS, and Heat munitions, it made no sense to use Hot Rolled anymore as it afforded no more protection than did cast homogeneous armor. They also made the “Heavy” Tank a wasteful expenditure of resources, as no amount of armor that could be driven around at the time, would defeat the HEAT, or Sabot munitions. So everyone in NATO switched to cast armor for MBT’s This was the way of things till Chobham armor showed up, and changed everything. The Abrams is said to cost over $4 million per unit, the M-60 I had in the 70’s (I am told) cost about $250,000.
Excellent info in posts previous, thanks guys…
The Germans used spaced plates on their thinner armoured vehicles to set off/spend HEAT charges, a type still used against RPGs by light armour today…
I 've seen pictures of WW2 Shermans festooned with all kinds of extra ‘armour’ including wire-wove beds to stem
Panzerfaust’s hot jets…
The idea of resilient RHA of sufficient thickness & slope was to [hopefully] have the brittle super-hard tungsten ballistic
[ex-sabot] penetrator either ‘slip off’ the face of the plate, or break-up when flexed by the give in the plate…‘like butter’
The ‘spaced’ armour was add on armour to improve the resistance to conventional AP shot by making the plate thicker often a stop gap until the production vehicles were made with thicker armour, it often had a small gap between the two plates and this helped defeat solid shot (British 2 pdr rounds would often penetrate the first and shatter on the second).
The turret and side skirts (Schürzen) are often mistaken as protection against HEAT rounds but were introduced to counter Soviet AT rifles.
Hot rolled armor had an advantage when faced with the kinetic shot projectiles generally in use at the time, and stand off armor would in most cases help protect against such shot using Ballistic caps. It may also have helped to lessen the effects of the small shaped charge weapons of WWII Bazooka, Panzer Faust/Schreck, as these fairly small warheads could not deliver a great deal of energy against the target sufficient though they usually were. This is not the case with later Tank Main gun HEAT munitions which were far larger,and capable of penetrating regardless of standoff plates, or other such shielding. This goes to expand upon the reasons why NATO, and most everyone shifted from any sort of expensive hot roll, to plain cast homogeneous armor. The face hardened hot roll could not provide any sort of real protection from these munitions, and actually increased the incidence of crew injury from spalling, and other secondary fragmentation. This effect was more pronounced when using arrowhead or other rigid composite warheads as well as the later APDS. Cast armor was purposely made to be more ductile, allowing a penetrator to pass through without creating undue amounts of spall/fragments.
The cold war HEAT munitions used by NATO would unless there was something very substantial in its way, go through both sides of the target vehicle’s turret, so stand off screens, or plates would be of limited benefit. The 17 pounder gun had an APDS round available in 1944, though at the moment, I dont have any specifics as to its specs.The Cold War NATO 105mm Sabot used a boat tailed spitzer shape in the sub-caliber penetrator as distinct from the present day “dart” penetrator, and made of Tungsten Carbide, sheathed in a supporting jacket which may have been aluminum (I don’t recall exactly at present) to protect the core at impact. The penetrator was between 50, and 60 mm, and had a speed of just under 5,000 FPS. It was spin stabilized. It was said that it would penetrate over 4 ft of homogeneous armor, or 5 T-54’s which ever came first. 
The HEAT was said to be good for 18" of solid armor.
The playing field was by the 60’s fairly level, from the standpoint of a hit pretty much guaranteed a hole, and he who hit first usually won the engagement. Fire control was the issue then, NATO having in the M-47 onward a useful rangefinder, and ballistic computer, could outrange the Warsaw Pact Tanks, which gave a distinct advantage at distance, and a fair advantage closer in, 500-1200 meters using what was referred to as “Battle sight” range preset to 1,100 mtr indexed to HEAT munitions. Using this method, 2 hits in 8 seconds was not improbable.
More excellent data, cogently put, thanks, T-G.
I note that while the 17pdr used the discarding sabot-type penetrator, there were concerns about its
potential to cause an erratic ballistic trajectory/accuracy problem, & so, the Germans did not use them.
They didn’t really need an APDS munition,Germany had collapsing flange Tungsten Carbide projo’s for their taper bore guns, and those worked just fine, until stocks of the material became so short that Hitler ordered all remaining stocks to be used for machine tooling only. After which it was back to Steel shot which while it was useful in regular guns, was substandard for use in very high velocity Tapered Bore applications. Steel was not strong, or hard enough to withstand the impact, and would break up on striking the target.
Indeed, a problem…
& so, in Speer’s book, an early mention of depleted Uranium as a Tungsten penetrator substitute…
And even less of that than Carbide available, Was there any(at the time) enriched Uranium that was around long enough to have become depleted? Sounds like someone was planning for a future material that would never be available to the Reich.
From memory, the Nazis held quite a stock, & Speer wanted best use made of it, including investigating ‘dirty bombs’…
I understand that getting hold of the German Uranium was a listed priority, post-war too…
Nope, they never had a Uranium enrichment project (what bomb work there was concentrated on Plutonium, which given how badly they screwed up their moderators was a problem!). The Germans did however experiment with natural Uranium anti-tank shells, although IIRC they didn’t make very many.
Ok, then, & thanks for clarifying that, pdf-27…
Can you give a reference - Book - Chapter - page etc
Not at this point, but, - it was, from memory - in his 1st book, written [illegally] while in Spandau…
Speer was often filled with self-aggrandizing shit…
Yet, he convinced the Allied War Crimes Trial that they ought not string him up…
Not a bad effort for someone who was one of Adolf’s B.F.s…
And was a Nazi Party member very early on. I’m not sure if he was one even before Adolph was but might have been…
As far as Speer is concerned, he thought little of taking credit for others’ work. His predecessor, Fritz Todt, laid much of the ground work for the “Armaments Miracle” and Speer would often cherry pick statistics like when gloated over the increase in tank production from 1941 in 1942, deliberately choosing the lowest production month in 41’ and the highest production month under his reign in 1942 to exaggerate the seeming boom in panzers coming off the line. That’s not to say that Speer wasn’t talented, intelligent, and a very good organizer in his own right because he certainly was. I suspect what saved him from the gallows was the fact that he had a supercilious demeanor that seemed contrary to the typical Nazi idiot thugs like Boermann. I think he rarely donned a uniform and seemed more like a German industrialist than a diehard Nazi loyalist. I also believe he tended to largely gloss over antisemitism and didn’t seem to hate Jews in the same vein as the conspiratorial zeal and mindset of Hitler. That’s not to say that killing large numbers of them and working them to death appeared to bother him much, either.
Fritz Todt died in a plane crash, leading to speculation that it was the Waffen-SS that did him in for urging Hitler to end the war in 1941 as he saw the inevitable Red tide turning. Speer certainly had no reservations and was a true believer almost to the end. His statements of regret and remorse at Nuremberg not withstanding…
As far as Speer is concerned, he thought little of taking credit for others’ work. His predecessor, Fritz Todt, laid much of the ground work for the “Armaments Miracle” and Speer would often cherry pick statistics like when he gloated over the seemingly massive increase in tank production from 1941 in 1942, deliberately choosing the lowest production month in 41’ and the highest production month under his reign in 1942 to exaggerate the seeming boom in panzers coming off the line. That’s not to say that Speer wasn’t talented, intelligent, and a very good organizer in his own right because he certainly was. I suspect what saved him from the gallows was the fact that he had a supercilious demeanor that seemed contrary to the typical Nazi idiot thugs like Bormann. I think he rarely donned a uniform and seemed more like a German industrialist than a diehard Nazi loyalist. I also believe he tended to largely gloss over antisemitism and didn’t seem to hate Jews in the same vein as the conspiratorial zeal and mindset of Hitler. That’s not to say that killing large numbers of them and working them to death appeared to bother him much, either.
Fritz Todt died in a plane crash, leading to speculation that it was the Waffen-SS that did him in for urging Hitler to end the war in 1941 as he saw the inevitable Red tide turning. Speer, in contrast, certainly had no reservations and was a true believer almost to the end - his statements of regret and remorse at Nuremberg not withstanding…