Micro-Balrog wrote:If these apply - I suspect they do apply, as the TIE pilot needs to climb out fully almost fully out of his vehicle hatch to see, as seen in the art in the first page - then what we have is this:
The TIE tank is much more agile than the Leman Russ (being capable of speeding at a 90 kph speed, much faster than most RL combat vehicle), while the Leman Russ is small...
The Russ is indeed a smaller target; I'm not sure the TIE tank has greater 'agility.' 90 kilometers an hour is about 55 miles an hour, which isn't vastly greater than the road speed of typical modern armored vehicles on a paved surface (like starports with concrete pads). Moreover, the TIE tank's sheer physical size makes it harder to turn in confined spaces, and likely imposes a very large turning radius on the vehicle. Vehicles with treads have to turn carefully by nature; it's not as simple as turning a steering wheel, which is one of the main reasons bulldozer operators and the like have to be specially certified and trained.
So in many ways the Russ might well be the more 'agile' vehicle, in that it can turn tighter and go places the TIE tank can't, while being little or no slower in terms of straight-line speed.
1. It has a crew of only one person, woh is forced to both drive the tank, search for targets, and shoot the guns.
2. Because of how the tracks are laid out - the propulsion and the engines are located into bulky slab-like bodies to the left and right of the cockpit, extending higher and further to the front and rear than the cockpit - the TIE cannot see or shoot to its sides unless the pilot actually stops driving and climbs out out the hatch (and he can't just poke his head out - the treads are meaningfully taller than the hatch and he needs to see over them). To shoot at you, the TIE Tank needs to turn its glassy, vulnerable cockpit to face you.
You are very right to point this out.
For fighter aircraft with machine guns this strategy works, but mostly because the extreme mobility of fighter planes makes it impossible to shoot effectively
except by pointing the whole plane at the target and flying straight toward it, so that the guy pulling the trigger has to be the same guy who has control of the plane's movement. Even there, a lot of fighters evolved towards the two-man model of pilot and weapons officer once radar and missiles appeared on the scene.
Another consequence of the issues you describe is that the TIE tank will have to expose much of its hull for an extended time when driving around a corner. Since it cannot fire to the sides, and its sides will necessarily be exposed as soon as it rounds the corner, there is a high risk of suffering a "mobility kill" when the TIE-tank eats a main gun round to the tracks as soon as it drives into the Russ's sights.
Should the LR commander spot the TIE tank he would obviously order the main gunner, and any other gunners that can bring weapons to bear, to open fire. This would probably be the end of the TIE tank. If the LR sponsoon gunners spot the TIE tank first, they would alert the rest of the crew and open fire - even if they are armed with the more low-key weapons, opening fire would at least make it dangerous for the TIE tank to turn its face towards the threat (As that would endanger its cockpit). Hopefully they're be able to penetrate. The only way for the TIE tank to kill the Leman Russ is -much like in RL tank combat - by seeing it first. Which is difficult, again, due to its dubious one-crewmember ergonomics and limited field of view.
Agreed. There are good reasons why in real life nobody designed one-man tank destroyers with fixed forward weapons and no view to the sides, though at least the TIE-tank's operator doesn't have to manually load shells into his own cannon the way a 20th century tank crew would.
