OBSERVATIONS OF THE CHRYSLER TANK

General Polk: Per your request. Ardys Jackson

OBSERVATIONS OF THE CHRYSLER TANK

Driver’s Station

It is cramped. The driver has fuel on each side of him as he sits in the center of the hull. The driver lays on his back when he is buttoned up. The back of the seat that he both sits and lies in rotates in up position for head-out driving. With the turret at 45 degrees from the front, it is almost impossible for the driver to get out. General McEnery sat in the driver's seat and said it was comfortable, but cramped.

 

Loader's Station

He has a simple hinged hatch cover with provision in the center of it for rotating vision block. The M60 machine gun is mounted on one of three standard pintle mounts - one to the front, one on the side, one at the rear of the hatch. Very simple, very cheap, and rather ineffective. He sits strapped in and can reach (so they say) 24 rounds in the bustle. He has a knee switch which opens the ammunition door giving him access to these 24 rounds. Knee switch looks like a good idea. The other 20 rounds are carried in the bustle, but he must manually slide open a door and restow this ammunition from the far side of the bustle to his side where he can reach it. He also has a curved metal arm which is attached to the safety shield. It is hinged with a rubber pad on the end. After he loads, he swings this arm around so it is directly behind the breech. This rubber pad knocks the brass straight down to the floor and I understand also serves as a gunner safe arming switch.

 

Commander's Station

It has a simple powered hatch with vision blocks only. He has no telescope and no capability to swing the turret to coincide with his powered hatch, being the hatch has only three positions - all the way open, shut, or vertical. The 50 caliber machine gun mount is very simple with no antiaircraft capability, or so it appeared. (The Colonel from the Armor Division said that they are now thinking that AA is very important.)

 

Gunner's Station

It looks standard and I couldn't tell much about it.

Chrysler has some redesign problems to fix the following:

a. Redesign for more main gun ammunition stowage.

b. The bustle top cover plate was one big sheet of armor that blows off and they indicated that they would adopt the GM design of several plates.

c. The exhaust of the personnel heater is poorly placed.

d. They left space for the Bushmaster which they must now redesign.

 

Other Comments

The square boxes on each side of the turret are not armored and are simply for stowage of vehicle equipment.

They carry 3 boxes of 50 caliber ammunition stacked on the floor one on top of the other in the rear of the turret basket - seems very awkward. They also car carry 50 caliber ammunition inside the layers of the armor of the turret. On the top of the turret they have 4 small doors, each the size of a 50 caliber box, that they open to load ammunition boxes inside the armor. There is then a trap door inside the turret that they open to take the ammunition out. It seems like a bad idea from the vulnerability standpoint, as they have cut holes in the last layers of armor in order to reach the ammunition.

General Comments

Overall the tank looks pretty cheap compared with GM’s tank, and I would guess it more vulnerable from the location of the gunner’s main sight, from the 50 caliber ammunition carried in the hull, but the configuration of the frontal armor should make it quite strong from that aspect.

My final conclusion is that we have a winner.

 

General James H. Polk 7 May 1976