Why no twin barreled tanks?

[Setzer]

Why don't any tanks that I know of (now or in the past) use more than one main gun?

[Stormbringer]

Why don't any tanks that I know of (now or in the past) use more than one main gun?

Because you need crew and the space for them if you want to double the refire rate. Also there are fire control problems when you have two barrels being fired, and especially off axis. In short, it's not that effective and not justified.

[Sea Skimmer]

Accuracy/fire control, space, recoil, weight, maintaniance, lack of realistic target scenarios requiring two spaced main gun rounds.

The closest you'll find to a multi barreled tank is some AMX-30 models, which have a very heavy 20mm coaxial autocannon in place of the standard 12.7mm machine gun and the BMP-3, which has a 30mm alongside a 100mm in addition to a 7.62mm machine gun.

[Beowulf]

Easier to put in a bigger gun than shoehorn a second gun in.

[Master of Ossus]

One bigger gun is better than two smaller ones.

[TrailerParkJawa]

What kind of target needs to be hit by two tank rounds, assuming you can fire both at the same?

If a target requires a second round to finish it off, Im confident in the ability of Army and Marine crews in M-1's to quickly reload and reengage.

[Howedar]

Anything that won't be killed by a single M1 hit won't be dented by two smaller caliber hits.

[Enlightenment]

What would be the benefit to building a twin-barreled tank?

No benefit = not worth the money to build.

[The Dark]

I would also think it would cause problems with firing one round at a time. To the best of my knowledge, the guns are always on the centerline of the turret, so their recoil imparts no spin. If a two-barrel design were used, firing the port gun alone would either cause the turret to spin to the left or require some sort of locking mechanism that could fail and thus allow turret spin.

[Vympel]

This twin-barreled thing seems to be a misconception based on playing too much Red Alert. In real life armored combat- either a target is penetrated, or it is not. There's no damage meter that says if I fire two rounds at one target I'll kill it quicker.

[The Yosemite Bear]

The Panzer Kamphwagen Mk. I

Two rapid fire, 25mm cannons.

Basicly Crowd control & dealing with cities

[guyver]

Trust me. You would never want to put a second gun in any MBT. If you ever did you would need to make the tank much bigger. The space inside a tank is very small.

In the M1A1 for example, you have all of this (and this is just in the fire station):

Gunners station
Fire computer
Fire control
Range finder
Gun Switch
Envro controls
Smoke controls
Personal gear

Loaders station
Ammo box
Ammo foot switch (opens Ammo box blast door)
Ammo catch net (after shells are fired the get put there)
Ammo ready net (next shell to be fired_
Ladder to top of tank
trap door to under tank
Personal gear

Commander Station
Backup Fire computer
Backup Fire control
Backup Range finder
Backup Gun Switch
Envro controls
Smoke controls
Ladder to top of tank
Personal gear

[Vympel]

The Panzer Kamphwagen Mk. I

Two rapid fire, 25mm cannons.

Basicly Crowd control & dealing with cities

The Panzer Kampfwagen Mk 1? Two 25mm cannons?

No sir- two MG-13 7.92mm machine guns on both the Ausf. A and Ausf B.

[guyver]

The Panzer Kamphwagen Mk. I

Two rapid fire, 25mm cannons.

Basicly Crowd control & dealing with cities

The Panzer Kampfwagen Mk 1? Two 25mm cannons?

No sir- two MG-13 7.92mm machine guns on both the Ausf. A and Ausf B.

If you want to see a Panzer 1 check this site (granted they are models)

http://www.kithobbyist.com/AMPSNewZeala ... sepz1f.htm

[Vympel]

Pretty dinky little tank eh ... Panzer III was always a favorite of mine though. At least for the Germans. All time WW2 fave is T-34/85.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Yeah, I had a brain fart.

Basicly All it was good for as I said was Crowd control and Training.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Yeah, I had a brain fart.

Basicly All it was good for as I said was Crowd control and Training.

Actually, after seeing someone kit together a Mech modle using the folding fin rockets from an Apache, I joked that they should add some smoke dischargers for CS gas, some machine guns & a water cannon. Make the first mech that was actually designed for the one thing they might be good for. Riot Duty.

[Atlan]

Whoot, first post!

The Germans seriously considered a double barreled tank(destroyer) as a replacement for the Leopard-1.

Several prototypes were build, the one above having two autoloaded 120 mm cannons. OTOH, it would have been driven more like a jetfighter than a conventional tank: the driver aimed and fired the guns, and the commander looked for targets to relate to the driver.
The two cannons were there to ensure at least one (or two) hits during the swinging side to side motion the tank would have made while driving/aiming, and quite a intricate FCS was build in. This vehicle weighed less than a LEO-2, but still carried a1.5 times the armor over the frontal arc. It would have been, and would still be, virtually invulnerable to all current AT assets, apart from maybe a Maverick or a LOSAT missile. With it`s low weight ithad a 2000 HP engine. Performance would have been.... interesting, to say the least.

Ultimately the Germans went with the LEO-2 not because the tankdestroyer didn`t work, it did so very well, but because it would have been a primarily offensive weapon, whereas the bundeswehr has a mostly defensive duty.

Atlan.

[Vympel]

Non-turreted tank destroyers are understood to be a defensive weapon, not an offensive weapon- you'll see this rationale in any discussion of the Jagdpanther, Jagdtiger, Hetzer etc for example- their job was to sit far away and plink enemy tanks at range, being cheaper and safe with their nice aggressively sloped, thick glacis with not turret ring to complicate things. A turret is more important for offensive work.

Now an assault gun (StuG series, SU-122 and SU-152) is understood to be an offensive weapon in the sense that they're for blasting enemy positions, but in this case, equipped with twin 120mm AT cannons, we can safely say that it's meant for defensive work.

[Atlan]

Non-turreted tank destroyers are understood to be a defensive weapon, not an offensive weapon- you'll see this rationale in any discussion of the Jagdpanther, Jagdtiger, Hetzer etc for example- their job was to sit far away and plink enemy tanks at range, being cheaper and safe with their nice aggressively sloped, thick glacis with not turret ring to complicate things. A turret is more important for offensive work.

Now an assault gun (StuG series, SU-122 and SU-152) is understood to be an offensive weapon in the sense that they're for blasting enemy positions, but in this case, equipped with twin 120mm AT cannons, we can safely say that it's meant for defensive work.

You didn`t actually read the post, did you? It was meant as a offensive tank hunter. The two guns would have been fired in sequence by the FCS, when the whole tank swung past the target. And it was meant to be fought that way, because the guns themselves are only stabilized in the vertical, then don`t move in the horizontal at all.
Think of it this way, you`ve got a 50 ton tank, with 2000 HP engine, zipping across the battlefield in a kind of zig-zag manner, with the commander looking for targets and relaying them to the driver/gunner. It moves more in the manner of a fighterplane than anything else.

And I`m QUITE sure I`m right. I climbed over one of those things in the WTS in Koblenz, and all the documentation they had on this seventies project speaks of the same way it was to be used, as a offensive weapon.

[Vympel]

You didn`t actually read the post, did you? It was meant as a offensive tank hunter. The two guns would have been fired in sequence by the FCS, when the whole tank swung past the target. And it was meant to be fought that way, because the guns themselves are only stabilized in the vertical, then don`t move in the horizontal at all.
Think of it this way, you`ve got a 50 ton tank, with 2000 HP engine, zipping across the battlefield in a kind of zig-zag manner, with the commander looking for targets and relaying them to the driver/gunner. It moves more in the manner of a fighterplane than anything else.

And I`m QUITE sure I`m right. I climbed over one of those things in the WTS in Koblenz, and all the documentation they had on this seventies project speaks of the same way it was to be used, as a offensive weapon.

*sigh* when presented with such a moronic idea as this machine I was obviously pointing out it would be much better suited as a defensive weapon. That you climbed over it isn't evidence in and of itself, but if the documentation says that was it's mission, that's what the documenation says- although I would like to know who wrote it. If it's accurate, it's probably why the thing was cancelled- having this thing charge into Soviet T-XX hordes and swing around is so mindnumbingly brain dead I can't believe they even built a prototype. It makes NO sense.

Fighterplanes don't act like that btw. This thing acts just like any armored fighting vehicles- the commander looking out for vehicles and telling the gunner what to shoot- nothing new. Unless you meant fighter plane in the sense that they expected it to flit around the battlefield and 'out-maneuver' the opposition.

[Atlan]

[
*sigh* when presented with such a moronic idea as this machine I was obviously pointing out it would be much better suited as a defensive weapon. That you climbed over it isn't evidence in and of itself, but if the documentation says that was it's mission, that's what the documenation says- although I would like to know who wrote it. If it's accurate, it's probably why the thing was cancelled- having this thing charge into Soviet T-XX hordes and swing around is so mindnumbingly brain dead I can't believe they even built a prototype. It makes NO sense.

Actually, they made three, each testing a different configuration of guns/armor/drivetrain.

And it makes a lot of sense, considering that the thing was armored like there would be no tomorrow. It also has a lower profile than a normal tank to boot, so that was another plus point.
Keep in mind that targetting consisted of putting a recticle over a enemy tank, and the FCS fired automatically when the barrels swung past the enemy. It was apparently a very effective system, but it was very much a single purpose system. The autoloaders were rather simple (thus cheap), and switching from AP to HE would have been a bitch. So it was a very good armor hunter, but very little else.

Fighterplanes don't act like that btw. This thing acts just like any armored fighting vehicles- the commander looking out for vehicles and telling the gunner what to shoot- nothing new. Unless you meant fighter plane in the sense that they expected it to flit around the battlefield and 'out-maneuver' the opposition.

Exactly, that is it. It`s speed, maneuvrability and armor would have made it a very tough opponent.
It just wasn`t what the Germans needed.

[Vympel]

Actually, they made three, each testing a different configuration of guns/armor/drivetrain.

Yeah, I just looked up some of the variant pictures on jed.simonides.org- such a wierd vehicle. I didn't know 110mm weapons existed...

And it makes a lot of sense, considering that the thing was armored like there would be no tomorrow. It also has a lower profile than a normal tank to boot, so that was another plus point.

Except the lack of a turret, no matter how well armored it is, means it is at an inherent disadvantage when on the offensive- no matter what it's power to weight ratio it wouldn't have been able to turn it's mass for one of the cannons to fire as easily as a tank can just move its turret- especially when it's outnumbered.

Keep in mind that targetting consisted of putting a recticle over a enemy tank, and the FCS fired automatically when the barrels swung past the enemy. It was apparently a very effective system, but it was very much a single purpose system. The autoloaders were rather simple (thus cheap), and switching from AP to HE would have been a bitch. So it was a very good armor hunter, but very little else.

I do wonder though why this FCS wasn't retained for the Leopard 2 however, you'd figure such a system would be pretty useful against enemy tanks- and you could switch modes when you wanted to use HEF (not that NATO tanks were very big on HEF by that time). Either it was too expensive, or it didn't work as advertised.

Exactly, that is it. It`s speed, maneuvrability and armor would have made it a very tough opponent.
It just wasn`t what the Germans needed.

I just honestly can't imagine that's what they were trying to do with it- noone would use such a weapon in an offensive capacity- it's so single-minded and the idea behind it of such dubious value I just can't believe they built it- no turret, no machine guns, no chance of firing HEF effectively, an offensive weapon? Never. The mech infantry would get no support at all, and it'd have no way of dealing with Soviet Motor Rifle units.

[Sir Sirius]

The WW2 German Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus had two cannons, 1 128mm KwK 44 L/55 und 1 75mm KwK 44 L/36.5.

Click here for more details about the Maus.

[Vympel]

Dumbest. Tank. Ever.