"How often do tanks throw tracks?" Topic

I realize that this is very much a "depends" question.
Some of our TMP-ites have served in tanks, so I am asking them how often they had to do it.
What tanks were notorious for this?
Amusing ancedotes?
Non-amusing anecdotes?

And so on.

Enlighten the ignorant, please.

I would presume that the most TMP members that have served as tankers have done so in post-WWII designs that might have had less mechanical liabilities than their WWII predecessors.

" how often they had to do it."

I don't think anyone forced them to do it:)

In John Foleys 'Mailed Fist' I can only recall one reference to one his troop throwing a track after they landed in France. It was during the Ardennes and after they'd all piled out to help fix it (both the track and track guards were caked with frozen snow, which was why it come off in the first place) they were hit by an appalling blizzard, but stuck in the middle of nowhere in the snow in the dark, didn't have any choice but to fix it. They were comforted by tins of Heinz self-heating soup.

I thought of cross-posting to Modern discussion, but the quirks of TMP dictate that THAT would be the front page topic it would have shown up under.

With luck and proper track tension,not so much.I drove a M-113 for a couple of years and kept on top of the maintenance,never lost a track.

I did see one of our recce callsigns throw one going through a very large 3-4ft deep pool of muddy water.Silly boogers were going to try and fix it in place,we suggested that perhaps a tow cable would work better.We waited until they were good and wet though,then we pulled 'em out;one chap had to get down in it to attach the cable.On a side note ,I did see one sink in a swim test,damn thing ran underwater for hours,funny watching guys standing on the deck going down with the carrier.Not so funny,all the T.O.W. equipment(brand new thermal sight included)getting a wet down.

"…post-WWII designs that might have had less mechanical liabilities than their WWII predecessors."

That's not really the issue. You can't change physics.

Track is either "live" or dead; "live" track has rubber bushings in each track block which hold the track blocks flexed in relation to each other, forming a curve on a roll of un-installed track. "Live" track is thus under tension when it flattens out to pass over the return rollers, until that tension is relieved as it passes around the drive sprocket. This tension helps reduce the tendency to throw track. It's also quieter. M1, M60, and WWII-era M4 Sherman tanks are examples of vehicles with "live" track.

Dead track has no bushings and just rattles around the suspension as the vehicle moves. Often there are no return rollers, and you can see the track sag as it returns to the drive sprocket. Examples would be the M551 Sheridan, M113 personnel carrier, and the T-34 series.

Both "live" and dead track must have their track tension adjusted properly. If not, they will throw the track more easily. You throw track most frequently when crossing obstacles, or moving across a side slope in rough terrain.

I can think of no amusing anecdotes regarding thrown track. Nothing funny about it when it happens to you. It invariably happens at an inconvenient place for putting the track back on, so that you have to tow the bvehicle to a flat spot where you can work on it.

It's damned hard work, and miserable in bad weather; if you're lucky, you won't have to do it in mud or freezing slush.

Allen

IIRC, most of the Churchills at Dieppe threw a track due to the shingle – rocks the size of your fist.

As usual, Allen covers the technical side rather thoroughly.

Trust me, nothing about throwing a track is fun. My worst was having to recover the tank and put the track back on when 3 feet deep in mud in 40 degree weather.

OK, what's involved with getting them back on?

To answer John's original question, there is no way to quantify the answer. Too many variables: design of the track, how well are they maintained, how worn are they, what are the surface and weather conditions, how skilled is the driver, is the TC assisting the driver or trying to fight the tank?

I've seen the newest innovation in tracked vehicles which has a custom automatic tensioning system which moves the front and/or rear wheels forward or backward to maintain the tension in the track regardless of what you are crossing. They were using it on a field prototype of a new remote tank/gun platform.

OK, what's involved with getting them back on?

Presumably a lot of swearing for starters…

I remember reading about German tanks in 1940 coming upon a railroad track and looking for a crossing rather than run the risk of throwing a track going over the tracks.

"Breaking" track involves using special tools to pull the track tension tighter so the connectors and center guides between the track blocks can be removed. Then you remove and replace any damaged track blocks, crank the tension tight again and reconnect everything. In theory, a trained crew should be able to replace a track block in 45 minutes sitting in the motor pool. In reality, 6-10 hours are not unusual when you are cold, tired, working in the dark and in a foot of mud. If the track just started to come off a roadwheel or drive sprocket and the tank is sitting where you can work on it, you can usually break it, line it back up, and reconnect it in a couple hours. More than likely, the tank is probaly sitting in a creek bed or ditch or slope that helped the track come off. Then you need another tank or recovery vehicle to pull you out, then go back and pull out the track if it actually came off. Then you will need the recovery vehicle or other tank to help reinstall the track. You have to break the track, lay it out flat alligned with the roadwheels, pull the tank back onto the track, wrap the track over the roadwheels and reconnect it. One side of an M60 series track weighs over 2 tons.

On the M48's we constantly checked the end connectors; the officers constantly complained about not doing neutral steers to get around corners. Thrown track usually required the M88's winch, or a bunch of guys on ropes.

Once we lost a fuel line … on the underside of the engine…had to pull the motor pack.

Tanks are a pain in the ass.

Break the track by knocking out two end connectors that join the track on the outside and inside of said track,"breaking" the track(M-113),run the vehicle forward a little and bring the track back onto the bogies.Then attach a pair of come alongs(large adjustable clamps)to both ends of the broken track.Tighten up the Track shoes(come alongs)until the end connectors will fit back on then grab your ten pound sledge and knock the connectors back onto the track.Do a rolling halt with vehicle in neutral and adjust tje track tension with grease gun.

I was on the team that changed EVERY rubber track pad on every vehicle in the battalion.This entailed breaking track,flipping track over,knocking out the old pads with ten pound sledge and re-connect track and repeat.We got it down to a science after that,I could change track in my sleep after that.

OOh ,that was a bit of a jumble,please forgive my repetitive rambling.

Rule of thumb: a tank requires 8 man hours of maintenance for every hour of operations. Former tankers tend to make very good civilian mechanics because they are so good at figuring out a way to make it go because the mechanics are usually far in the rear sucking on coffee and they probably don't have the parts anyway.

Threw one track in my army career…driving at Hohenfels in 1984…nightime…cold, wet, muddy, with frozen slush rain coming down…TC had me drive on a slope and the ground gave way and threw the left track onto the inside.
There are two types of throws…Inside and Outside. If you have to throw a track, hope that it's an outside throw.

Having a track thrown is bad, but whats worse is having a track BREAK when you are travelling. You physically suddenly lose control of approx. 50% of your tank…which is a scary thing.
Somewhere in my box o' pics I've got photos of the tank I was on in Ft. Drum, when the track broke. You can see the damage that these track blocks can do…even to tanks…

Tracks…

John..I'm going to give you a quick run down on tracks, (M60 series and modern style)….

A tank track is made up of the following parts.
The track block: upon which there is "the track pad", and inside are "track pins", (Pray these don't break), or else you have "dead track".
The track is kept in line with the road wheels with "center guides", (the metal V shaped piece that goes between the road wheels when the tank is moving.
The track is kept together with other pieces of track by "end connectors", which are kept in place by "Wedge bolts"

Breaking track usually requires the following tools:
Sledgehammer
Tankers Bar
Cheater pipe
Track Jack
Wrench with extensions and sockets, (which you can almost always never find)…

Someone you can trust to swing the sledgehammer while you hold the tankers bar in place to knock off the end connecters.

Someone in the drivers seat to move the vehicle, once the track is laid out.

Replacement pieces of track if any is damaged, (same with road wheels)…

Note: All of this is for nought, IF not only do you have a thrown track BUT you have sheared off sprocket bolts…(then it requires an M88 to pull the back, and hull mechs to help get the bolts out of the hull and replace them, and then you get to put the sprocket back on, and THEN you get to fix the track…

Simply put..there is nothing simple about tank maintenance…track work is perhaps the most essential, and yet it is also the most hated because of the amount of work that it requires…

Ref: TM 9-2350-253-10
Tank Combat, Full Tracked, 105mm Gun, M60A3 w/ TTS…

Throwing a track is only funny if it happens to someone else

Two old friends were US Army Armored Corps, one was a mechanic who – as Cold Steel notes – did spend a lot of time in a warm shop, pulling out engines from M-48s with a big A-frame – the other was a Major whose comments on how much time, money and effort were spent to keep them running would be confirmed by the discussion to date

Great thread

I saw it happen several times in the army, mostly due to inexperienced drivers.

This thread was inspired by two things.
One was Allen's picture in the "Worst Post WW2 Tank" thread, and his comments on fixing track on the "inner" sections.

The other was the ubiquitous track sections that festoon Battlefront's models. I have often wondered if they were merely improvised armor, like logs or mattresses or schurzen, or if they were actually "spares".
I have long suspected that there was a bit more work involved than jacking it up and changing the tire.

I was asking for "amusing ancedotes" only in the "idiot lieutenant" sense. One of those "funny 10 years later, if then" anecdotes.

I don't have any "thrown tracks are fun" stories…but I do have one that will let me say that without a doubt…a bottle of Jack Daniels will fit a 105 gun breech in an M60A3 and said bottle CAN be fired downrange in Grafenwohr…compliments of a HEAT round…

and yeah..those "extra pieces" are always spares…

I spent my National Guard career in tanks. I saw an idiot platoon seargent (armorer moved to tanks to get rank) throw both tracks to the inside tearing up the final drives. We were at Fort Dix. He decided to put out a brush fire by neutral steering on it. Of course Fort Dix was scrub pine and sandy. Sand built up and threw the tracks. During my career, I never threw a track, but my first tank commander preached maintenance. Every time the tank stopped, I crawled out with a hammer and checked the track. Later as an NCO myself, I made my boys do the same.

Breaking track usually requires the following tools:
Sledgehammer
Tankers Bar
Cheater pipe
Track Jack
Wrench with extensions and sockets, (which you can almost always never find)…

You forgot MUCH swearing

Was a Mech Co Cdr(M113) and before that a Mech Bn and Mech Bde BMO. I feel your pain Boys … With AFVs you have to cater to the "Iron Monsters". PMCS … before … during & after … So I guess to answer the question … AFVs rarely throw a track … But it does happen …

Can't think of any "amusing" thown track stories, even if it is the other guy. It takes a lot of work and time to repair no matter what and usually happens when it is cold, wet and muddy.

Why do tanks throw tracks?
-improper track tension or missing connectors (poor maintenance)
-a block breaks.
-a build up of mud, rocks, wire, sand, etc around the wheels.
-hitting an obstacle like a curb, tree stumps or rocks at an angle instead of straight on.

How do you fix?
-if you're really lucky and the track isn't broken you may walk it back on to the vehicle by moving slowly and guiding it back on.
-Otherwise, prepare to work long and hard.

Most memorable story was at Hohenfels our battalion had a batch of defective drive sprockets. At one point we had 7 (including mine) of 44 tanks with drive wheels sheared off and track thrown. That was a long night.

I'm told that a full case of beer fits in the gun tube also…and makes a handy dispenser!

"…a bottle of Jack Daniels will fit a 105 gun breech in an M60A3 and said bottle CAN be fired downrange in Grafenwohr…compliments of a HEAT round…"

Tiger Is used to slip tracks if they turned on the spot according to a couple of testimonies in Agte's book on the LAH Tigers.

Seems drivers were advised not to turn on the spot, especially in mud or snow, as the tracks would pop off.

Be a getting them back on with some Russkie trying to use your nipples for target practice.

Heard that a bottle of vodka will fit in the bore of the 105mm gun of the early Abrams. Makes quite the impressive blue fireball when assisted by a sabot round. At night, in the Yakima range…

@Saber6: You mean that Troops of any nationality, any branch of service are capable of communication without profanity? You must be kidding.

More often than they throw parties!

Forgot to mention: besides being back-breaking, muscle-straining work, it's real easy to get hurt, sometimes pretty badly, when breaking and reconnecting track, just because you're working close to big hunks of metal with heavy tools. You take it as easy and carefully as you can, but there's a horrible temptation to cut corners when you're cold (or hot) and exhausted, and covered in mud or ice (or dust). And that's when you make mistakes. So you just slow down and work more carefully--if you're smart. I think we were usually smart. None of my guys ever got hurt.

That's why there's nothing funny about it, even when as TankerTom says, it happens to the other guy. It's just too much work.

The only thing even remotely resembling funny I can think of was when I was a platoon leader. One of the platoon's tanks threw a track just as we finished a phase of the M60A3 TTS test; we were the OPFOR. So the platoon laagered/leaguered (for the Brits) right around the tank, and everybody pitched in. It was January or February--it wasn't the night that Spinks beat Ali; we all piled onto A34 to listen to that, and it was much colder--but it was cold enough, with lots of frozen mud.

I was a 1LT by then; I'd spent almost two years in a maintenance company before getting a platoon (which was superbly trained when I got there; they'd all been together for two years). I'd done a lot of maintenance, and learned a lot of maintenance, and taught a lot of maintenance, and I had previously had the brigade's DS recovery vehicles, so I had a lot of experience getting things unstuck and un-ed when they were so bad the battalions' own maintenance sections couldn't get them free.

And I was kind of a "hands on" guy. I wanted to get in there and work on the track, even though it wasn't A31. But my platoon sergeant and the other TCs kept chasing me off, saying that wasn't an officer's job. Well, I didn't have anything else to do; we were on down time until the next test iteration the next morning. I was never the type to hang out with the other LTs or suck up to the CO (heck of a good guy, though). I wanted to be with my guys: they were smart (they played chess in their down time whenever we were away from Knox), and competent, and a good bunch of troopers. But the darned NCOs didn't want to see me getting muddy!

Not funny, really, at all. Just kind of frustrating at the time. That was right before I started agitating to get my own company command (I did, a year later). Yeah, I was a hard charger in those days…

Allen

M109s are bad for throwing track, and sometimes breaking it. I saw one section lose a track 6 times in a bit over 24 hours. I could not prove it but I was certain they where doing it to make thier section chief look bad. Worked to, only all the NCOs already knew he was a moron.

And of course, after more write-ups than most SP4s got, he was the first of us to make E-7. Only in the Army…..

Robert Crisp said in both Brazen Chariots and the Gods Were Neutral that tossing a track for all the early Brit cruiser tanks was as common as driving on rough ground and trying to turn.

Personally, I'd say that they all deserve the "unreliable" in FoW except (maybe) for the Valentine and Matildas. And even then it depends on when and where.

<<Non-amusing anecdotes?>>

South of Wurzburg, on a downhill highway, a tank lost a track, slewed into oncoming traffic and ran over an oncoming automobile, killing the occupants. Vigilant maintence can reduce failures, but, humanss can make mistakes and parts can fail at inopportune times.

I have to say that if incoming traffic consisted of an armoured battalion, I'd take a different route for exactly this reason.

Robert Crisp said in both Brazen Chariots and the Gods Were Neutral that tossing a track for all the early Brit cruiser tanks was as common as driving on rough ground and trying to turn.

In that case, it was largely due to weak link-pins. The tracks on the Cruiser series were badly under-engineered. And there seemed to be a shortage of spare pins. I read "The Gods Were Neutral" over 40 years ago, when I was in high school, and even then it struck me as odd that the first tank in the troop that had to be abandoned with a broken track pin wasn't promptly cannibalized for spares for the rest of the troop.

"I have to say that if incoming traffic consisted of an armoured battalion, I'd take a different route for exactly this reason."

You don't usually notice columns of tanks coming towards you on the road until they come into sight.

In the UK the heavier stuff usually moves by transporter, and I recall very well one amusing afternoon on the M1 when a transporter with a broken down Challenger on the back had also broken down on an uphill section. They had another transporter next to it and were in the process of trying to winch the tank off the one and onto the other. We were going in the opposite direction, but I felt a bit sorry for the miles of traffic queued up behind it.

Tight turns seemed to be a major cause for the Sherman. Reading about the 28th Division's nightmare in the Heurtgen Forest, they were trying to move armor through a narrow trail that had numerous tight switchbacks and the Shermans were throwing tracks right and left. They left about a dozen of them (and 4 M-10 TDs) littering the trail without the Germans ever having fired a shot at them.

Both "live" and dead track must have their track tension adjusted properly. If not, they will throw the track more easily. You throw track most frequently when crossing obstacles, or moving across a side slope in rough terrain.

Or making a sharp, sudden turn in soft ground.

Never threw a track in a Leopard, though I did get tangled up in barbed wire which was really no fun trying to pull out of the sprocket/final drive. It also once it got caught in the tracks and started turning with it, cleanly ripped off the side skirts.

With the M113, there was a trick you could do if your track popped off the idler, which was spin in the opposite direction and pop the track back on. This meant that you needed to get the track tensioner spanner out and tighten your tracks.
--
Tim

During the malayan emergency in the early 50s a friend of mine was a White m3? half track driver, these were of ww2 vintage, and apparently a right for throwing tracks on turns. I can't remember if this was cos of their age at the time, and what he was comparing them to though.

The early war British cruiser tanks (A9 and A10) were notorious for throwing tracks; most of those lost in the Greek campaign were abandoned after being immobilised this way, rather than lost in combat.

Once is too damned much, more so if it's thrown to the inside.

I read Brazen Chariots in my youth also … Those early Brit Cruiser were not known for reliability … That's one reason when the Brit Tankers got the M3 Stuart, they called it The Honey. Much more reliable then anything they had previously …

John,

Like you I expected a "Dumb LT." story but was dissapointed not to see one. For those who have been to Hoenfels in the vacinity of Lutsmannstein Mountain I know who is responsible for the flat spot on the south side of the hill. But it wouldn't be nice to identify him so I'LL just give his initials…2LT Edwin S. Maldonado of B Co 1/33 Armor 1976.

Exrta Info…He threw BOTH tracks to the inside, jumped onto another tank which threw its track less than an hour later. Got so bad no one would let ON their tank let alone TC it.

Charles

Good heavens. I think he was in my basic course.

Allen

At Grafenwohr, a tank had gotten slightly off the main tank trail and threw track to the inside as it entered the ditch. The crew was busy getting ready to break track when the Maintenance Warrant officer shows up and says he can get the track back on without them having to break track. So they loosen the track tension and he inserts the tankers bar into the sprocket to try and help the track back onto the sprocket. Do you see whats coming? Quick as a wink, the tankers bar looks like a pretzel, he claims the crew is incompetent and storms off in his vehicle.
At Hohenfels, my platoon sergeant is traversing across and slightly down a slope when the main idler wheel fails (on the uphill side) and the track comes completely off the vehicle. He manages to move the vehicle down the hill to a small trail thru some woods where the recovery vehicle has to wench him thru a right hand turn to them pull him another 100 yds to a flat spot. The track has to be drug down to the same place, broken flat and then lined up on the tank, which is then drove/winched on to the track (which wants to slide away from the tank). A nice way to spend most of the day and unusual that it was sunny and not raining.

Armor breakdowns are a factor of crew quality, thrown track doubly so. If the crew chief keeps up on the maintenance (shake hands with the crew chief – if his hands are clean, don't ride with him), and the driver knows where he can turn sharply (hard ground – soft ground piles up against the outside and eventually offers more resistance than the track guides on the inside, popping the track off), it would be a very rare occurrence based on invisible parts defects. Worst place I've seen it thrown was in eight feet of water on a California beach (so more like 6-10 feet, depending on your timing), and some poor schmuck had to go down and attach the recovery cable.
As a little guy (130 lbs soaking wet in my Lance Corporal days), I quickly became very good at finessing track tension from the driver's seat, making it much easier for guys to get a drift pin into the track with a 10-lb sledge (coincidentally avoiding the comedy of a lightweight raised in the suburbs attempting to drive a drift pin).
In combat I was wheeled, so the only old armor trick that really came in handy was using bolt cutters to liberate a vehicle from concertina wire.

Ah, Hohenfels and wenching! I met a nice wench at a gasthaus in Hoermannsdorf.

It was always interesting to note how effective a wire obstacle was in training, since tankers would not want to spend hours cutting it out of the track.

Allen