# Nasty anti-tank weapon



## Torch (Sep 30, 2010)

Supposedly an Isreali rocket.


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## evangilder (Sep 30, 2010)

Ker-friggin-boom!


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## BombTaxi (Sep 30, 2010)

That would make your eyes water a bit...


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## mikewint (Sep 30, 2010)

I would like to know more about the tank that was hit. those fires appear to be Class D metal fires which would lead me to believe that it was an aluminum armored tank. Al is a fairly reactive metal and can be made to ignite with sufficient heat.
used to see similar reactions with the m113 and 551 para tank, all of which are Al armoured as is our Bradley.
don't know any of your experiences but i've seen the inside of those aluminum tanks after being it with a rocket. not a good way to die


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## Matt308 (Sep 30, 2010)

Looks like the magazine cooked off.


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## mikewint (Sep 30, 2010)

agreed, about the midde of the clip you can see interior explosions but all those sparks and the intense white ligt would indicate a metal fire, much as with thermite which was my first impression of that first hit


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## Matt308 (Sep 30, 2010)

I'm not sure what kind of tank that is (Centurion?), but I would think that simultaneous detonation of 50+ rnds of HEAT, APDS, smoke and illumination rounds would cause just about anything to catch on fire.


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## Night Fighter Nut (Sep 30, 2010)

I believe the reason those aluminum tanks burn so well is because it has magnesium in the metal. Break out the wienies.


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## Torch (Sep 30, 2010)

What you are about to watch is an actual event. Our forces filmed this in actual time. What you are about to see is a fully armored Syrian tank, a Russian made T33/34, with a crew of four being hit by an Israeli laser-guided, steel-penetrating, phosphorous-filled "hand held" rocket. The rocket is small, very portable and is a tightly controlled weapon, each one is accounted for when they are checked out and back in. There must be no fewer than 2 soldiers present to verify the use, one must be a senior officer with a minimum of 10 years military service. (Sorry, the name and program is kept secret.)

This tank was headed for one of Israel 's settlements, there were four more tanks one mile to the rear of this tank. (They obviously fled the area.)

You can hear the ammunition going off after the initial strike. No tank member survived this event. this event did not make the news, it is an everyday event for our forces and we do not "embed" news sources with our armed forces like the Americans do. This is for our survival, not for "news" entertainment


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## Night Fighter Nut (Sep 30, 2010)

That tank must be an R/C tank, it looks very old having a squarish turret and high profile.


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## mikewint (Sep 30, 2010)

iron/steel are fairly non-reactive in atmosphere (20% oxygen) so you may melt or soften it to the point of deformation or turn it into shrapnel but the metal itself does not ignite such as in magnesium where you get that same intense blue-white light
A russian PT76 hit by a TOW near Ben Het
A "burning" tank note color of flame


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## Night Fighter Nut (Sep 30, 2010)

Sorry, didn't know it was actual footage. It looked more like a training film.


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## mikewint (Sep 30, 2010)

OK, torch, make more sense now, seen plenty of Willey Pete in action. used WP grenades but only thrown into tunnels. Nasty, nasty stuff. seen chunks embed into flesh, and then reignite when you try to remove and oxygen hit it


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## Night Fighter Nut (Sep 30, 2010)

On second look at that film, that is not a T-33/34. The turret it way to wide and the under carriage doesn't match.


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## Torch (Sep 30, 2010)

I'm wondering if it's a sales clip with a life size remotely controlled tank to demonstrate the affect of the rocket.


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## vikingBerserker (Sep 30, 2010)

Holy crap!


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## RabidAlien (Sep 30, 2010)

Yeah, WP'll pretty much set rocks on fire. Wouldn't want to be inside a small, confined, metal-enclosed space full of painted surfaces, wiring insulation, copper/aluminum electronics, fuel, oil, and explosives when a bunch of Willy Pete decided to punch its way through the hull and say hello. The only nice thing to say about something like that, is that it'd be a quick death for those inside.


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## evangilder (Sep 30, 2010)

A quick death, sure, but certainly not pleasant. White phosphorus is nasty stuff, as Mike said. If you somehow managed to survive a willy pete hit, you would wish you were dead.


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## mikewint (Sep 30, 2010)

and the white smoke, diphorous pentoxide is toxic to inhale. remember skyraiders droping wp. nasty, nasty stuff.
just as an aside, anyone know why strike anywhere matches were removed from common sale?


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## tail end charlie (Sep 30, 2010)

mikewint said:


> and the white smoke, diphorous pentoxide is toxic to inhale. remember skyraiders droping wp. nasty, nasty stuff.
> just as an aside, anyone know why strike anywhere matches were removed from common sale?



Mike, I had a discussion about this with a German guy and after reading about it the history of matches is completely different on the two sides of the Atlantic. Something to do with recognition of rights patents etc.
The inventor of the first match came from my home town (so they say his name was John Walker), the inventor of the safety match came from Sweden but the intrduction of safety matches into the USA and exactly what is a safety match is a complicated subject. The first matches were as dangerous as some military equipment, the person who lit fires in stately homes was the lowest of the low...no one wanted to do it, the fumes were literally killers.


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## mikewint (Sep 30, 2010)

tailend, the strike anywhere contained red phosphorus an allotrope of the white form. phosphorus is highly toxic by injestion. many children died by chewing on them and quite a few murders were committed by cutting off the ends and mixing them in food. the safety aspect of safety matches is the removal of the red phosphorus from the tip and the placing of it on the small red strip where you strike the match.


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## mikewint (Sep 30, 2010)

Mods, i'm not sure if this is to explicit to post here, if so please remove
1. in case anyone is in doubt about what willey pete does to the human body...
2. you wanted to be far, far away when willey came calling so pics are rare, i caught one skyraider dropping WP on a VC position


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## Matt308 (Sep 30, 2010)

Torch said:


> What you are about to watch is an actual event. Our forces filmed this in actual time. What you are about to see is a fully armored Syrian tank, a Russian made T33/34, with a crew of four being hit by an Israeli laser-guided, steel-penetrating, phosphorous-filled "hand held" rocket. The rocket is small, very portable and is a tightly controlled weapon, each one is accounted for when they are checked out and back in. There must be no fewer than 2 soldiers present to verify the use, one must be a senior officer with a minimum of 10 years military service. (Sorry, the name and program is kept secret.)
> 
> This tank was headed for one of Israel 's settlements, there were four more tanks one mile to the rear of this tank. (They obviously fled the area.)
> 
> You can hear the ammunition going off after the initial strike. No tank member survived this event. this event did not make the news, it is an everyday event for our forces and we do not "embed" news sources with our armed forces like the Americans do. This is for our survival, not for "news" entertainment



Torch, this is a Western (NATO or W. European country) training film. Your imagination is taking the best of you. This film has been posted on this forum a half dozen times.


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## Matt308 (Sep 30, 2010)

mikewint said:


> Mods, i'm not sure if this is to explicit to post here, if so please remove
> 1. in case anyone is in doubt about what willey pete does to the human body...
> 2. you wanted to be far, far away when willey came calling so pics are rare, i caught one skyraider dropping WP on a VC position



Not WP, Mike. Just a cook off.


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## mikewint (Sep 30, 2010)

matt, how sure are you of that? its been 40 years for me but all that white smoke and streamers sure look like WP, followed by a cook off of the ammo, and in the 3rd part the metal of the tank seems involved as the entire tank seems to ignite with the intense white heat of a metal fire


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## Matt308 (Sep 30, 2010)

Pretty damn sure. WP is not the weapon of choice for cracking tanks. Likely a shaped charged chemical warhead hitting the vulnerable turret ring. I can't quite tell the tank make, but the first blast are likey the rounds not protected and the others ignite once the water/physical lockers are breached.

Never heard of a WP warhead on a guided missile for AT use.


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## Matt308 (Sep 30, 2010)

... and certainly not a T-34.


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## mikewint (Sep 30, 2010)

Torch seemed to present this as a new tank busting weapon so i thought perhaps a shaped charge to make the initial armor breach and then a secondary charge to blow WP into the tank. I've seen several m113's hit by anti-tank rounds and the initial hole is about the size of a quarter but on the inside a huge crater where 5lbs of Al vaporized. I've also seen turrets blown right out of the tank but the basic metal structure remains intact like the PT76 in my pic. this clip seems to show the entre tank structure involved in the white hot fire. like to see some after pics


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## Matt308 (Sep 30, 2010)

Here's the video that I recall. Again, not a tank guy, but looks like maybe an upgraded Cromwell perhaps? This gives you a better view of the cookoff. Not sure if it's a TOW though. Definitely not a Javelin.


_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJe9mSzC5RQ_


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## Glider (Oct 1, 2010)

On the second video it looks like a Centurion hull but where the Turret comes from I have no idea as it isn't a Centurion. Also call my a little odd but the turret in the first part of the film where the tank is head on looks a lot bigger compared to the second part when the tank is hit.


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## tail end charlie (Oct 1, 2010)

mikewint said:


> tailend, the strike anywhere contained red phosphorus an allotrope of the white form. phosphorus is highly toxic by injestion. many children died by chewing on them and quite a few murders were committed by cutting off the ends and mixing them in food. the safety aspect of safety matches is the removal of the red phosphorus from the tip and the placing of it on the small red strip where you strike the match.



mike below is from wiki 
as you can see the banning of white phospherous was an issue, something about thoise with the patent rights for safe matches refusing to license meaning other manufacturers produced unsafe matches. After much pleading and bargaining the stuff was banned outright. I cant find the original article I read on it but as below it was a world wide problem, debated for decades. For some reason the situation was different in the USA and Europe putting red phospherous in the striking strip was patented in Europe in 1855 but this wasnt adopted in USA eventually the president intervened after the invention of non poisonous match in 1910. It seems every new match that was safer than the last was called a safety match so there are now more than one type.


*The early matches, including the noiseless match, were dangerous to both the users and the people who worked in the manufacturing companies that made them. This was due to the use of white phosphorus. One reason why this occurs is the tendency of the element to stick to the skin. Phosphorus burns carry a greater risk of mortality than other forms of burns due to the absorption of phosphorus into the body through the burned area, resulting in liver, heart and kidney damage, and in some cases multiple organ failure

The search for a replacement for white phosphorus led to what was known as the "safety match." However, this term is now confusing as it covers both the modern safety match and the modern strike-anywhere match. These two different types of matches are discussed separately below.

Both of these types of matches were more expensive to make than white phosphorus-based matches, and customers continued to buy white-phosphorus based matches. Laws prohibiting the use of white phosphorus in matches generally had to be passed before these safer types of matches came into widespread usage. Finland banned white-phosphorus based matches in 1872; Denmark in 1874; Sweden in 1879; Switzerland in 1881 and the Netherlands in 1901.

An agreement, the Berne Convention, was reached at Bern, Switzerland, in 1906 to prohibit the use of white phosphorus in matches.[7] This required each country to pass laws prohibiting the use of white phosphorus in matches. Great Britain passed a law in 1908 prohibiting its use in matches after 31 December 1910. The United States did not pass a law, but instead placed a "punitive tax" on white phosphorus-based matches, one so high as to render their manufacture financially impractical, in 1913. India and Japan banned them in 1919; and China in 1925.*
and from inventors.about.com

*In 1830, the French chemist, Charles Sauria, created a match made with white phosphorous. Sauria's matches had no odor, but they made people sick with a ailment dubbed "phossy jaw". White phosphorous is poisonous.

In 1855, safety matches were patented by Johan Edvard Lundstrom of Sweden. Lundstrom put red phosphorus on the sandpaper outside the box and the other ingredients on the match head, solving the problem of "phossy jaw" and creating a match that could only be safely lit off the prepared, special striking, surface.

In 1889, Joshua Pusey invented the matchbook, he called his matchbook matches "Flexibles". Pusey's patent was unsuccessfully challenged by the Diamond Match Company who had invented a similar matchbook (their striker was on the outside, Pusey's was on the inside). His patent was later purchased by the Diamond Match Company in 1896 for $4,000 and a job offer.

In 1910, the Diamond Match Company patented the first nonpoisonous match in the U.S., which used a safe chemical called sesquisulfide of phophorous.

United States President William H. Taft publicly asked Diamond Match to release their patent for the good of mankind. They did on January 28, 1911, Congress placed a high tax on matches made with white phosphorous.*


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## Night Fighter Nut (Oct 1, 2010)

I wish I could see that youtube video. Can't see it with the computer I have. From the other video originally posted, my first thought was a training video and an R/C tank. Mostly because the tank obviously wasn't Soviet made and also the tank rolled a good distance before it came to a stop after being hit. Usually if the driver is dead there nothing to make the tank keep going and the tank would almost immediately stop as he has to push on the excellerator. If it were an actual attack by some unit, there would also be more tanks and lots of grunts running around the tank as part of an assault. Not one lone tank, that's suicide. I use to drive M113's at my first duty station and worked around tanks a lot. As for identification, it resembles a German Lepard II at first glance. The turret has squared sides with a gradual slope from the barrel back. It also has torsion bar suspension. Soviets didn't use torsion bar suspension until the later model tanks. I'm sure there is some tank guru who could id the tank much better. Anyway that's what I make of this film.


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## mikewint (Oct 1, 2010)

Matt, thanks for the second film. the second film is clearly a cook off as you stated and the white is clearly molten metal and not WP and the main tank metal is not involved in the fire so it is not an Al armored vehicle but i'm also with nightfighter in that there seem to be differences in the two videos. the initial hits do not seem to be the same. i don't see that initial white flash and smoke. WP is also used as a marker. do you think that there might have been a small WP charge just to mark the hit?


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## Torch (Oct 1, 2010)

I copied and pasted the comments, I never saw the video before so i posted it. I'll refrain from posting until i search the whole site first for duplicates.....


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## mikewint (Oct 1, 2010)

torch, no problem, it gives us something to discuss, just wish we had a Flyboy-like tech for tanks


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## Matt308 (Oct 1, 2010)

Yeah don't worry about it, Torch. There are too many to worry about duplicates. Trust me.


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## Torch (Oct 1, 2010)

Ok no problems.....


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