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Canada Send Leopards To Afghanistan

Discussion in 'Post-World War 2 Armour' started by Grabbers, Sep 15, 2006.

  1. Lone Wolf

    Lone Wolf New Member

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    I seem to remember that the Leopard 2 was used by the Germans in Kosovo but I don't think it saw any combat. The Leopard 1 has seen combat - there is an account of a Danish Leopard 1 in Bosnia being set upon by a Bofors gun which it quickly dealt with.
     
  2. Grabbers

    Grabbers New Member

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  3. CometFan

    CometFan Member

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    Danish Leopard 1 tanks serving in Un-units in Bosnia were involved in incidents - I have found this on google ( search term : Operation hooligan buster)

    THE MOUSE ATE THE CAT

    By ROD NORDLAND
    c.1994 Newsweek
    (Distributed by New York Times Special Features)

    TUZLA It was late at night when the Bosnian Serbs began to shell a United Nations observation post called Tango Two in the Sapna Finger, a Muslim-held salient near Tuzla. Danish Lt. Col. Lars Moller of the Nordic Battalion ordered two platoons of his Leopard tanks to charge to the rescue, which was just what the Serbs expected. As the seven tanks reached the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain, the Serbs opened fire with antitank missiles, artillery and machine guns.

    ”It was an ambush, and a damn good one,” Colonel Moller said. ”Tango Two was the cheese, and we were the mouse. But this time the mouse ate the cat.”

    One Danish platoon took cover behind buildings; the other maneuvered to high ground and counterambushed. When it was over, nine Serb soldiers were dead.

    The ”Nordbat” suffered no casualties. More important, it had done what no other U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia had done before: strike back at the Serbs with force.

    The April 30 battle of the Sapna Finger does not signal a change in U.N. strategy; in fact, U.N. officials in Sarajevo later played down its significance and hinted that Moller's troops had overreacted.

    For some, though, it made a deadly point about how Western peacekeepers might fare against a Serb force that until now has had the field to itself.

    Confrontation with the Serbs is not in the U.N.'s official playbook. That was clear a few days after the Sapna Finger fight.

    When Bosnian Serbs violated their own agreements and blocked a convoy of British peacekeepers on their way to the U.N.-designated ”safe haven” of Gorazde, the U.N.'s special representative, Yasushi Akashi, cut a deal.

    In exchange for letting the U.N. troops go in, he allowed the Serbs to move at least five tanks across the 20-kilometer zone around Sarajevo from which heavy Serb weapons are banned under threat of NATO airstrikes.

    The tanks reportedly were redeployed on the Serbs' southern front. Incensed, Bosnian government authorities demanded Akashi's resignation as the top U.N. official in the former Yugoslavia.

    Other U.N. officials in Sarajevo tried to cover up the continued presence of 100 Serb soldiers within three kilometers of Gorazde and some heavy weapons within the no-go zone around that city, too, despite NATO's orders that they withdraw or face airstrikes.

    In contrast, the Nordic Battalion, drawing on a long history of peacekeeping work by its Danish, Swedish and Norwegian troops, has showed how a tough stance can work in Bosnia.

    When Croat troops massacred the villagers of Stupni Do, Nordbat moved in, protecting survivors and preventing further violence against Muslims in the nearby town of Vares. Then, when Muslim troops took Vares, Nordbat intervened to make sure there were no reprisals.

    They didn't go looking for a fight at Sapna Finger; the battalion's Tango Two post had been shelled 28 times since February, and their tanks had come under Serb attack nearly a dozen times in a month.

    Moller, 40, the battalion's deputy commander and its top tank officer, is a past karate champion; his father was a Danish Resistance fighter in World War II, and his brother is also a U.N. soldier in Croatia.

    He speaks English sprinkled with American slang he picked up on NATO maneuvers, but with an English officer's accent that seems to match his walking stick. ”Turning your cheek is the wrong way down here,” he says. ”There's a lot of macho bullshit down here and you have to adapt your behavior accordingly.”

    The battle at Sapna Finger was an important lesson in what might be in store if a NATO peacekeeping force is sent here.

    ”The ambush was bad juju on their part. We are not here to take incoming,” Moller said. ”Fortunately for them, we are not here to get involved either. We could have destroyed all of them and been in Zvornik by morning.”

    In setting their ambush, the Serbs had deployed Soviet-made T-55 tanks in fixed positions; they are accustomed to fighting artillery duels against forces with little ability to fire back.

    The Danes watched the tanks' infrared searchlights try to find and target their Leopards, but easily stayed out of their sights.

    The T-55s were sitting targets, but the U.N. tanks never opened fire against them: under U.N. rules of engagement, they are not allowed to attack Serb tanks unless sensors show that the opposing cannons are warm, meaning that they have recently been fired.

    Tank commander Maj. Carsten Rasmussen said the Danes prevailed thanks to superior training, tactics and technology all assets that a NATO peacekeeping force would bring to Bosnia.

    Most U.N. troops on peacekeeping duty in Bosnia have been neither as aggressive nor as successful as Nordbat. Although last week U.N. commander General Sir Michael Rose praised the tank action during a visit to Copenhagen, many U.N. officials privately have criticized the Scandinavian troops.

    Rose himself has repeatedly turned down their requests for airstrikes when they are attacked by artillery beyond their cannon range. Unless some kind of settlement brings NATO peacekeepers to the country, Moller's dragoons will remain more of an exception than an example.




    May 5, 1994, Thursday

    HEADLINE: In Bosnia, U.N. Troops Finally Go to War;
    After Serb Shelling, Frustrated Danish Tank Crews Punch Back

    DATELINE: TUZLA, Bosnia, May 4

    When Serb fighters shelled an isolated U.N. observation post near here last Friday, it was an unremarkable event. In nearly two years of U.N. operations in Bosnia, this country‘s combatants have routinely shelled, sniped and humiliated U.N. soldiers - even sometimes robbing them at gunpoint of their weapons and uniforms.

    But Friday night, the Serb fusillade elicited a U.N. response more incendiary than the usual verbal protest. A cigar-chomping, karate-kicking Danish officer, Lt. Col. Lars Moller, ordered his white-painted Leopard tanks to fire back at the Serb artillery position. By dawn, the Danish army had fought its fiercest battle since the Nazi invasion of 1943 - and Moller had shown that the United Nations need not always retreat in the face of frequent military challenges by the Serbs.

    Moller, who speaks fluent English with the accent of Sean Connery and the slang of a U.S. Marine, said his tour in the Balkans has taught him that ”if you are scared down here, you‘re going to get kicked. That‘s the way it works.” In Bosnia‘s civil war, he said, ”all sides are full of a lot of macho bull. . . . You have to adjust your behavior accordingly.”

    The Danes‘ destruction of a Serb artillery position underscored the dilemma of U.N. peacekeeping. U.N. soldiers and foreign aid workers here often express frustration with the U.N. forces‘ passivity in the face of provocations. But the Danes‘ momentary aggressiveness was similar to that attempted as policy - and abandoned in frustration - by last year‘s peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

    Moller, for example, does not view his troops‘ riposte, in the end, as a victory. Despite his own version of macho bluster, he sees it as a defeat.

    By finally shooting back, Moller and his troops destroyed bridges of confidence and trust that they painstakingly had built to the Serb side. The Danes had built a four-mile road for Serb children to use in walking to school from the nearby village of Pelemsi, so they would remain safe from Muslim shelling. They had arranged shipments of diesel fuel to Serb road repair crews and seeds to Serb farmers.

    But, Moller said, given the bellicose psyche of this region, its deadly macho games of chicken and its adoles cent tests of strength, he cannot regret giving the order to fire.

    ”The U.N. should not bow its head to any of these people,” he said. ”Once you do that, you lose your dignity and, even worse, the other guy will keep walking over you. In the Balkans, you‘ve gotta stand tall.”

    Standing tall has been difficult for the Nordic Battalion - a U.N. unit composed of 1,753 Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and Dutch -- that is based around the Muslim-held region of Tuzla. Over the last two months, Serb gunfire has destroyed four of the battalion‘s armored personnel carriers. By luck - an open safety hatch here, a poorly aimed rocket there - no one has been killed.

    Although the Serb attacks have grown intense, the U.N. political command in Zagreb, Croatia - directed by special envoy Yasushi Akashi - has rejected at least four of the battalion‘s requests for NATO planes to fly close air support for U.N. troops here, Moller said.

    In one incident, on March 18, Serb fighters destroyed a Swedish armored personnel carrier with an antitank missile and six tank rounds in the northern town of Gradacac. Moller reported it, clearly blaming the Serbs - but U.N. officials in Zagreb contended that the source of the attack was unknown. On April 14, Serb artillery shelled Tuzla‘s airport for four hours, in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution ordering the Serbs to allow the airport to open or risk NATO airstrikes. Since the shelling, the airport has remained closed.

    But on Friday, the United Nations‘ response came not from Zagreb or New York. It came from the Danish soldiers in their 43-ton, German-built Leopard tanks, the most advanced weapons system of the meager U.N. arsenal in Bosnia.

    Since the Leopards arrived in the Balkans in the middle of last year, they have been a target of the Serbs. For four months, as the United Nations tried to move the tanks here through Serbia, the government there held them up outside Belgrade.

    Finally, the United Nations sent them to Split, Croatia, and drove them to Tuzla in March. Since then, the Serb forces that ring the Tuzla region have declared open season on the Leopards. Danish army Maj. Carsten Rasmussen, who commands the tank squadrons, said Serbs had fired on the tanks a dozen times. Once, he said, in early April, the Danes fired back destroying a Serb bunker and a 40mm antitank gun. It was only a matter of time, Rasmussen said, before a major clash would erupt.

    Shortly after 11 p.m. Friday, Serb gunners around Mount Vis, to Tuzla‘s south, opened up on a U.N. observation post called Tango 2. Since October, according to U.N. figures, the Serbs had shelled the post 28 times with 96 shells. As they always do, the Leopards responded.

    Moller and his men sped east from Tuzla in seven tanks and two armored personnel carriers. At the village of Saraci, in view of the Serb gunners, the Danes stopped and - in accord with U.N. rules of engagement - illuminated their white vehicles with searchlights to let the Serbs know they were there.

    The lights drew shellfire. One Serb shell landed 30 feet from Moller‘s vehicle, he said. Others blew metal shrapnel over the tanks.

    ”At that point we turned the lights off,” Moller said. ”Goooood thinking, as the Brits say.”

    With that, Moller‘s Operation Hooligan Buster began in earnest. The Danes had practiced the routine.

    Four of the Danish tanks and an armored personnel carrier sped to another village, Kalesija, which was closer to Tango 2.

    The Serbs responded by lighting up the night with artillery and rocket fire. An antitank rocket erupted 15 feet behind one tank, Moller recalled.

    Arriving in Kalesija, Rasmussen moved two tanks up the hill toward the beleaguered observation post, and placed two others behind houses in the village. Then, the Danes said, the Serbs stepped up the attack, firing 40mm antitank cannons.

    By then the Serbs had been firing for 30 minutes, the Danes said. When the troops in Saraci reported that more antitank rockets were on their way, Moller and Rasmussen ordered the three tanks in Saraci to fire warning shots - four in all. When the Serbs continued the attack, the Danes fired in earnest.

    The first round silenced an antitank gun, the second destroyed the post of a forward artillery observer - and the third plowed through a Serb bunker, the Danes said.

    ”Things were getting out of hand,” Moller said. He and Rasmussen agreed to hold their fire and ensure that Serb shelling of Tango 2 had ceased. After 30 minutes of quiet, the forward tanks began moving back to Saraci - but the Serbs began attacking them again.

    Moller said he ”began to get [ticked] off.”

    The officers ordered the tanks in Saraci to reopen fire. Continuously. For 15 minutes.

    One round plowed into a Serb ammunition dump, igniting a massive, concussive blast. Not since a 1943 battle against the Nazis - and before that an 1864 clash with invading Prussians - had Danish forces been in such a fight, the Danes reckoned. The two earlier ones, they had lost.

    Moller said the Danes spared three Serb T-55 tanks because, while the Leopards‘ infrared detectors found the Serbs‘ aiming systems turned on, they also determined that the enemy tanks‘ barrels were cold. Under the restrictive U.N. rules of engagement, only guns actually caught in act of firing may be hit.

    Rasmussen and Moller said Friday‘s ordeal was meant to be a trap for the Danes. ”It was an ambush,” Moller said. ”Tango 2 was the cheese and we were the mouse. Only it turned out that the mouse ate the cat.”

    Another incident followed in October 1994 at Gradacac where Danish Leopards allegedly destroyed a Serb gun and damages a T-55.
     
  4. Grabbers

    Grabbers New Member

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  5. Gunter_Viezenz

    Gunter_Viezenz New Member

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    The American and Canadian armed forces often train togethor and yearly they have an event where they have their tanks competing against each other. They shown it on the show "Truth Duty and Valor". At least under uncontroled conditions the Leopards can match the Abrams.
     
  6. Grabbers

    Grabbers New Member

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    Ya its called the Canada Cup I belive its a tanking comepetion that tests manouverability, fire accuracy and comabt command and control...

    Canada usually fairs quite well if we dont win.
     
  7. Siberian Black

    Siberian Black New Member

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    I prefer the British combat style...make sure they're enemies first.

    No offence but when 2 F-18's shoot down a black hawk after misitentifying it as an Iraqi Hind...they should get thier communcations set right. (note: this was the fault of the F-18 pilots as well as the Blackhawk- F-18 did try to identify first but the Blackhawk showed no sign so they fired. BH was on some mission in a UN no-fly zone to some village and the F-18 were on patrol looking for Iraqi fighter (or defending I don't remember which). Needless to say the BW bought it...hard)

    Canada has tanks!?!?!? Yay!
     
  8. Gunter_Viezenz

    Gunter_Viezenz New Member

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    You sound surprised lol. Only because we like to keep them clean and shiny dosent mean they can't be put to good use. :cool:
     
  9. Siberian Black

    Siberian Black New Member

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    No it's the long running joke about Canada's no-existant military. I figured me'd have at least one tank. :lol:
     
  10. Ricky

    Ricky Well-Known Member

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    Although we have friendly-fire too - the only Challenger 2 ever to be lost was shot by another Challenger 2. We do have fewer incidents, but then we do have fewer soldiers.
     
  11. Grabbers

    Grabbers New Member

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    And better training
     
  12. Grieg

    Grieg New Member

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    That is an opinion. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Everyone is not however entitled to their own facts. If you have specifics regarding the training of Canadian or British tankers and how it compares to the training of US tankers then please share it with us.
     
  13. CDN FIRE

    CDN FIRE New Member

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    You wouldn't be from Quebec would you???
     
  14. Gunter_Viezenz

    Gunter_Viezenz New Member

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    Yes I know I live in Canada we love to play that joke esspecially when there are Americans around. Also the one about the muskets.
     
  15. Blaster

    Blaster New Member

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    Alberta.
     
  16. Siberian Black

    Siberian Black New Member

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    I got that one off Royal Canadian Airfarce. Picture of the PM (Cretian I think) stadning in front of an 1812 cannon- our new artillery!

    Anyone heard anything about Caladonia? Nothing's been in the news lately.
     
  17. Gunter_Viezenz

    Gunter_Viezenz New Member

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    Too bad stupid CBC got rid of the show :( It was very good evan after all those years. :cry:
    But Canada having a poorly equiped military is a joke that is commonly told in schools I donno why.
     
  18. CDN FIRE

    CDN FIRE New Member

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    The army now has some good kit check out this site http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/lf/English/6_1.asp
     
  19. Blaster

    Blaster New Member

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    Yeah. Canada has CF18s, so unless you want to call the jet that ousted the F14 Tomcat lame, then I don't think Canada's military is lame. And, just for clarification, does Canada use Leopard 1s or 2s?
     
  20. Canadian_Super_Patriot

    Canadian_Super_Patriot recruit

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    arrghh , we have 1/10--1/4 of hornet fleet grounded due to lack of working part in one system or another. Plus, we dont have enough pilots to fly them all.

    Blaster, we use highly updated leopard 1's.
     

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