best tanks for jungle warefare?

what kind of tank is most suitable for jungle warefare? I bet it's never the abrams or any other MBT, they are just too big!!! what kind of light tanks and medium could be better for that kind of fighting???

 

An armoured car, almost certainly!

 

There is no tank well suited for jungle warfare as far as I know. Jungle terrain is cramped, with immovable tangles of vegetation, usually wet and unstable ground if any, and the weather is a terrible wear on tank engines. Also, an ambush is so easily set up as to make a tank nothing but a bullet attractor.

 

Small size is key.
Small size + reasonable armour is better.

For example:
The Americans used Stuarts in the Pacific, but these were vulnerable to even the Japanese AT guns.
The Aussies used Matilda IIs, which were still small enough to go most places, but had armour that no Japanese AT gun could penetrate.
They even adopted the Matilda to take a 25 pdr, for infantry support!

However, as Roel has pointed out, most true jungle is a tad too enclosed for tanks.

 

A Hummer would be good since it can cross the most impenetrable forrests and river's. And it also has very good defensive abillities in the form of a 50.cal on the roof, plus the abillity open hatches for defensive fire with smallarms.

KBO

 

can anyone list the light tanks, IFV...in use now? hmm...bionix?

 

Scorpion / Scimitar family, by the British.

That's all I can think of immediately, but there are lots of new designs being made to cater for the tastes of countries unable to afford the Challenger 2 or M1A1 style of tank.

Most people use armoured cars instead of light tanks these days.

 

How can we forget the Jeep????
It can cross most terrains, and it is light enough to be lifted by a couple of GIs in case it's stuck in mud or fall into a trench. Oh year, it's reliable, easily maitained. The Hummer is too wide to navigate through the jungles.
But for armored vehicle, it's gotta be the wheeled corpion. Light, fast, carry descent firepower (30mm, 76mm, some 90mm I believe).

 

The Jeep and Humvee aren't tanks, however.

 

Well tanks are lousy for dense jungle warfare.

KBO

 

Read the topic, thanks.

 

The topic shifted when Ricky said Armored car....

 

In Vietnam there were several armored vehicles that worked as well as the Americans could hope. Vietnam, however, was not a country for tank warfare, with dense jungles and uneven terrain, the country was a nightmare for any tank commander, never knowing when his tin can is going to hit a mine or bobby trap.

Probably the most misunderstood of the US tanks was the M551 Sheridan:
Considered a light tank with airdrop capability, it was armed with a complicated 152mm gun/missle launcher. The gun was big enough to destroy anything the NVA or VC could throw at them. However, put a 152mm gun on a light tank is not the greatest idea, as the Sheridan had a very bad recoil when firing. It was a very mobile tank though, and thus had a place in the Vietnam fighting.

 

On the M551 Sheridan please read:
http://www.fun-online.sk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487

Welcome back to the forum, Zhukov_2003! Where have you been?

 

Hey Roel, I've just been chillin, workin, not being around a computer until lately. Glad to see we still got the veterans here.

 

Yeah, but the Sheridan had an aluminum hull, which proved inadequate against even a 12.7mm round. Author David Drake, who served with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam, called the Sheridan "an aluminum hulled death trap."

 

Australian Centurions fared quite well in Vietnam. Their armour turned out to be virtually inpenetrable to RPG's.

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-arm ... turion.htm