A piece of drone video ostensibly from Ukrainian forces in or around Mariupol. Date unknown.
Spoiler alert: GRAPHIC. And things don't go well for the Russian tank crew.
0:08-0:15 Ivan Tankovich tooling around Mariupol. (I leave it for armor aficionados to ID it as a T-whatever.)
0:16 First round hits them in the rear (engine) compartment. Not any kind of a kill, but they stop in a moment or two. How bad an idea this is becomes apparent momentarily.
0:20 Second impact, again in the left rear half of the tank. But still not a kill, as they are able to reverse briefly, and the turret slews left looking for something to shoot back at. But they're still in the fight, for a moment. They just don't know where or with who. UPDATE: As noted in Comments, backing up reveals that their left tread is no longer a continuous thing, and self deploys off the road wheels as they reverse. They're now a mobility kill: Can shoot? Yes; Drive? No. Bad juju for tankers, as a general rule, esp. under fire. {cf. sitting duck}
0:38 Third hit, this time on the right main turret/turret ring. This is when shit gets real. You know this for two reasons: You can see a flash of flame from the loader's hatch to the left of the top turret. You also see smoke evacuate out the muzzle of the main gun. That last round penetrated into the crew compartment, hard enough to go off inside, and blow the gasses through the open breech and out the barrel. The commander (sitting on the impact side) is probably splattered on the inside of the turret and his co-workers at this point.
0:43 Either the loader (unless they have an autoloader) or the gunner opens the loader's hatch on the right side of the tank. Someone (or someones) in the turret are still alive, and trying to GTFO.
0:45 The driver, in front of the turret on the hull, makes the same executive decision: Abandon tank. The tank is dead.
0:48 Coup-de-grace: Final hit, to the rear turret bustle. This is where the tank's main gun ammo is stowed. All that rapidly billowing smoke is probably the propellant and/or warhead on at least one round brewing up. Which is kinda bad for anyone who was in the main turret compartment. As gravity will make apparent in a few seconds. You can see several things blown upward out of frame.
0:59 The driver, who successfully un-assed his little coffin up front before the last blast inside, can be seen trying to flip and flop his way off the front of the hull. He makes it to the street, shaken, but still functional, and tries to depart at bottom center to the side of the road. The body of the gunner is seen on the ground by the turn arrow to the left of the tank. He's dead, to a 99% certainty.
1:04 Another round (#5) impacts about 10m from the driver on the street.
1:14 When the smoke clears, the driver is down on his belly at center bottom, possibly/probably not only shaken, but now almost certainly pretty fucked up by shrapnel from the street impact. He can be seen trying to side crawl along to keep moving away from his dead tank as the view shifts downward, for the next few seconds.
1:26 [SQEAMISH ALERT] What lands on the road near the double center line behind the tank is the head, torso, and various other body parts of probably the tank commander (whoever was in the other open hatch when that last explosion hit), which the explosion launched upwards like a rocket, and those bits have now returned earthward to land in the middle of the road. This is what happens to people who take a second too long getting out of a metal turret, while standing in a steel ring, which suddenly becomes a body-torpedo launching orifice. Or are already sitting in their seat, already KIA.The ground impact does no important damage, because the poor SOB was dead on launch from the explosion inside the tank compartment. Probably even before that. What hits the road is just the leftover meatsuit pieces that weren't obliterated by the blast. The driver, wounded and slithering away, probably never even notices his crewmate's unceremonious landing.
I have no idea if that tank was hit with main gun rounds, AT rockets, or both. But that tank, and most if not all of the crew, are now ex-everything. This kind of stuff is why Putin's forces have lost probably 10% of the entire armored strength of the Russian Army in a bit over three weeks; it's also why his forces are trying to hang around outside of towns, and shelling the occupants to death in the rubble: fewer Russian losses.
One Russian tank totally dead, and 3-4 tank crewman kicked their air addiction, and are KIA, on the spot. For 5 rounds expended.
Solo tanks, unsupported by infantry, are a good way to get bushwhackwed like that, and combat with high explosives just doesn't give a shit.
Murphy's Rules Of Combat:
Armored vehicles are bullet magnets: a moving foxhole that draws attention.
Try to look unimportant; the enemy may be low on ammunition.
Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. When in doubt, empty the magazine.
