Kurt, initial deployments in 1990 were by units from continental US, not Europe.
Ft Hood, TX is not known for its mild climate.

Sure the coalition forces crossed that terrain.
Terrain crossing for 100 hours isn't however a particularly demanding requirement for an AFV.
This is what I'm saying. The Desert Storm performance is not indicative of the threat environment that the NATO forces faced in Europe, and is not to be used as a design retrospective.

Greg

On 18 June 2015 at 12:11, Kurt Feltenberger <kurt@thepaw.org> wrote:
On 6/17/2015 9:29 PM, Greg Chalik wrote:
>Not being a war expert I have no idea what these numerous problems were. What were they?<
From memory the problems were those of strategic deployability, with the Abrams units requiring greater numbers of personnel and MT support, operating, withunits requiring significant climatic conditions modifications in-theatre, and some component and sub-system failure for same reasons.

The filters they deployed with weren't designed for the sandy arid conditions they faced; they were designed for European climatic conditions because that's where a lot of them deployed from and where the ones that were stateside were earmarked to deploy to in time of war.  Once they got the filter issue squared away it became another legend that was used to bludgeon the tank.

There were cases of 'cannibalism' with the Army stripping most of the M1s that were delivered to the USMC due to in-theatre shortage of spares. Performance in some terrains left much to be desired; M1s had been tested in sand terrain which I later found out to be a lot on a General Dynamics property, and not something that would have been expected or for that matter unexpected, in combat operations.

 And yet, they performed spectacularly and crossed terrain that hadn't been crossed by mechanized vehicles before.  I worked with a guy who deployed with the 2nd ACR was pretty much right there at the tip of the spear as an M1A1 track commander.  When we talked about the event, the only negatives were that the tanks, and pretty much everything in theater, required more maintenance, spares were sometimes difficult to get for everything because there was no built up infrastructure like there was in Germany, and that he wished the main gun was magazine fed like his Beretta so his gunner didn't have to wait for the loader to load the gun.  Beyond that, his main comment was that training was often more challenging.


--
Kurt Feltenberger
kurt@thepaw.org/kfeltenberger@yahoo.com
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not living enough." - Me 
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