"Leopard I tank armor compare" Topic

Hello All,

I have read somewhere that armor on the Leopard 1 tank was weaker than other contemporary tanks.

I figure the members here would have a good idea of the truth behind this assumption.

How did the Leo's I armor compare to other tanks in service, such at the M60, T-55, T-62, and Chieftain?

Thank you

Yep – not massively so, but its armour was somewhat lighter than most of its contemporaries – German thinking at the time was that HEAT rounds in particular had reached a point where an MBT's main gun was pretty much guaranteed to penetrate anything, so better to thin down the armour scheme so that it would still protect against lighter weaponry, but save weight to improve mobility. Figuring out who had exactly what gives me a headache, but here's a good starting point at least:

collinsj.tripod.com/protect.htm

According to Wiki's sources, the Leo1 was only armored to take 20mm cannonfire, 70-90mm of armor all around.

What that did was make the Leo1 very capable of scooting across open areas and quickly relocating after it fired. That's not a bad idea, since modern infantry movement is built around the same idea: sprint out of cover to the next covered location.

However, even 1970s vintage ATGMs will open a Leo1A0 up like a tin can, so the Leo2 has much better armor protection.

Had modern-day active defenses been developed back in the 1960s and 70s, I think the Leo1A0 could have soldiered on for a while.

It depends which Leo you are talking about, the 1A1 was the weakest, but even the 1A3 was comparable to an M60 and the Leo 2 is of course a modern supertank.

The Chieftan was in a class of its own compared to the Leo 1 of course.

Leo1 was intended to fight hulldown if possible. IIRC they never improved the glacis but steadily improved the turret protection from 1A1 through 1A4 models.

Ex leopard crewman here. The leopard was a sports car, fast and highly maneuverable. When we got rid of them in 07 for the Abrams some were used as range targets and I can confirm 20mm was penetrating them. Practice sabot rounds were penetrating them. Will try and find the picture of the damage.

This is all good information, Thank you.

How much better did the 1A4 get?

The turrets of the 1A3/1A4 were significantly better armoured than the 1A1 or the 1A2, having a new "sandwich" (is that the correct word?) armour and a better shaped mantlet. Penetration resistance was much improved but still nowhere near the levels of contemporary British or American tanks.

Jurgen

The T-72's no slouch, but the Leopard 1 wins easily, in regards to speed, anyway. I dread to think what a 125mm fin round would do to it!

YouTube link

@Hazza31B: Yikes!

Scary to think that a Bradley has better armor protection than a Leo1!

Makes me wonder about the Marder which I believe is still in service. How armoured are they?

The Marder, which is now going out of service, is well armoured for what it is, being resistant to 20mm APDS rounds at point blank range in its original armour configuration but now having protection at least equivalent to the Bradley.

Jurgen

Yep. Back in the day, general thinking was that HEAT had made armor obsolescent.
-Kle.

It is the great trade compromise.

Gun, armour or mobility.

Things like chobham and gas turbine engines have had a pretty good impact since the mid sixties when the Leopard One came off the drawing board.

,,,ok,,, a drawing board is something that was used ,,,

Those penetrations seem to be from the side …

The Leopard 1's armour was partly a reaction to the belief that HEAT rounds had made thick armour pointless and partly the result of a design philosophy that was itself rooted in the view that German tank design of the 1940s had gone down an evolutionary dead end with vehicles becoming heavier, slower and more cumbersome with each new design. The new philosophy taught that a big gun, high speed and manouverability were more desirable than heavy armour.

Strangely, the British in particular adopted entirely the opposite philosophy, meaybe because they had fought the stupidly heavy German tanks.

Jurgen

Yes, and in the Chieftain, they also adopted the idea of having an unreliable power pack, along with the thick armour and massive gun. Those German heavies must have made a real impact!

As one Chieftain crewman remarked to me. 'I'm in the safest tank to go to war in, because I'll probably breakdown before I get to the battlefield!

The new philosophy taught that a big gun, high speed and manouverability were more desirable than heavy armour.

That was certainly the preference of the average German tank crewman during the Italy campaign… More gun, more reliable, more mobility.

It's a shame about the powerpack issues the Chieftains had, because otherwise I think they were a good tank…

Damon.

The Chieftan has often been described as a British Tiger.

Yes, Panthers and Tigers did make a very big impression.

Modern western super tanks are all 'Tigers' of course, except they work most of the time.

The poor Leo1 was certainly outmatched. The standard Soviet 125mm round in 1980 would generate around 500mm of penetration at the muzzle and 450 at 2000m (BM-22). The Leos hull was only about 170mm. The turret was somewhat better at around 350 with some areas slightly higher. Still at any combat range it would be penetrated unless the angle of impact was extreme.

Heat rounds were dicey. The later models of Leo1s had spaced armor and some rather active standoff armor on the outside. Both tend to degrade HEAT rather than KEP depending on the angle of the hit. It could possible withstand a turret hit from an AT4 or AT7. Not so much from an AT5.

It was however fast. It was also a great shooting platform.
The Leopard 2 was a badly needed replacement.

Joe Collins

The Israelis have long had a high regard for armour. They loved the Centurion and helped develop the Chieftain. They've done pretty well with tanks.

Gennorm , I thinks that's partly a product of the terrain they normally fought in and their use of armour as their premier weapon of offense. The NATO design was always slanted towards defence (turrets often better protected, with a mind to hull down defensive engagements).

Joe, the BM-22 might have been able to KO a Leopard I, at 2 km, but the big-vanned dart, guided by mediocre Soviet optics, manned by conscripts, would struggle to get a hit on a hull down Leopard I at half that distance, even using volley fire. Meanwhile the Leo is firing twice as fast and hitting twice as often at twice the range.

In reality, it is probably dropping to a full defilade position, or moving to an alternate firing position as the T-whatever commander is desperately trying to work out what has hit his tank platoon, repeatedly.

I think that there is a real misunderstanding in merely comparing penetration data and armour thickness. Milites has expressed it rather better than I could but the Leopard 1 was not designed to fight the type of battle where its light armour would be a huge disadvantage; firing from a hull down position against less technologically advanced vehicles crewed by not very well trained conscripts advancing across open terrain, and then using its speed to relocate rapidly to a new firing position, the Leopard 1 would have been a formidable opponent.

The Israelis like heavy armour because they cannot afford to lose tank crews in the type of aggressive warfare they have to conduct in order to gain the rapid victories that they need; their population is too small to absorb the sort of losses that their opponents can. They may have done quite well with tanks but they have been fighting against some magnificently inept opponents equipped with vehicles which are sub-standard even by Soviet standards.

Jurgen

Flecktarn, if I'd have written in German, you'd still be scratching your head! Your written English is far superior to most of my students.

As for armour comparisons, the ones laughing the loudest would have been to Soviets. Da, whilst you savaged our lead regiments, we would have been finding out where you were not!

A T-whatever, versus some HQ trucks and panicking rear echelon troops is what the Soviets were aiming for. Quantity has a quality of its own as they say, even in the relatively dense WG arena.

Milites,

Where are your students from?

It is true about the Soviets; while NATO forces were holding up some of their spearheads, the rest would have been flowing around the flanks or through the weaker elements into the strategic rear and causing chaos.

Of course, that assumes that they could have got their tanks moving that far and fast while their fuel and ammunition supplied were being interdicted.

Luckily, we never had to find out what would have happened:).

Jurgen

I'm a secondary school teacher (11-18) in Cambridgeshire, most of my students cannot spell, and have a woefully poor knowledge of grammar. Still, I like my job and keep pushing them to push themselves.

As for the interdiction of POL and ammo, I think some of the NATO guestimates were far too optimistic, given the fragility of most of their strike aircraft (needing hardened runways) and the difficulty of locating targets. This did change substantially with J-stars and the later PGM's, but even in ODS, only 30% of munitions were guided.

I think the Soviet timetable would have probably run off the rails due to their overly optimistic estimates of rates of advance and ability to control the battle space.

As you say, thank God only little metal models and figures, of that hypothetical conflict, now burn and writhe on gamers tables! I used to play CW games during the CW, with serving military personnel and most thought they'd last only days, if the '99 red balloons' went up for real. It was quite surreal to have naval officers, playing VG's 'Second Fleet' (GIUK gap plus artic). as the Russians, attacking their real-life vessels! Lots of comments along the lines of, 'I don't fancy my chances much', pointing to the flipped or removed counter.

Milites,

I can imagine that teaching must be both rewarding and frustrating at the same time.

I think that the NATO air forces would have had their hands full during any war in Europe dealing with the scale of the Soviet air force, despite their massive advantage in quality, as well as suffering from the effects of direct attacks on their airfields from a range of weapons.

In terms of interdiction, I was thinking more of the problems that they would have faced from disaffected Poles and East Germans including, by the early to mid 1980s at least, possibly large elements of their armed forces. Perhaps that was why the NVA were able to obtain so few T72s and had to rely mostly on T55s until the very end.

I did not get to do any wargaming during the cold war as the civilian version was unheard of in the Workers' Paradise.

Jurgen

Soviet optics are quite adequate for combat ranges… this is especially so for the T64 series.

Poorly trained conscripts… maybe. Those conscripts had Dad and Grand dads that did pretty well in 44 & 45.

The entire Soviet war fighting philosophy was to force the west to fight the battle they didn't want to fight.

My guess is that the Leopards were in for a nasty surprise.

Joe Collins

I agree that the Leo1s would have been having a BAD day if they got hit, though I also agree that they'd be hard to hit, courtesy of the good acceleration and fighting from hull-down positions.

It would not have been fun, and I think we need to defer to Flecktarn about the capabilities of Soviet kit.

Lion,

Please, do not set me up as an authority on Soviet kit; my knowledge is limited to what I spent time around as a child and youth and the experiences of my father and his former colleagues.

While I am flattered, I am not an expert.

Jurgen

lkmjbc3,

I agree that the Soviets did well in 1944 and 1945; however, that was a very different situation from that of the Cold War, particularly its latter stages. The speed and ease with which Communism collapsed in the Soviet Union and Europe is an indicator of how motivated the Soviet military were; compared with Western forces, their training was also poor.

As for the T64, the versions that the Leopard 1 would have encountered had significant issues which would have resulted in a much poorer than planned combat effectiveness. Key issues were unreliability, issues with the autoloader and the small crew.

Jurgen

I've no doubt that the speed, armament and fire control of the Leopard1 would have made it a formidable opponent for the T55/62/64/72 when defending from hull down positions. But that is a rather narrow definition of what a tank is for. What we are talking about here is really a 'tank destoyer' like the M10 or M36 of WW2. While such a defence was a high priority for NATO it was also envisaged that the ability to counter-attack – general or locally – was also necessary; a mission for which good protection is advisable. Looking again to Israeli experience, the Golan Heights were defended using mobility and accurate gunnery then the same tank spearheaded the advance over the Suez Canal.

Gennorm,

The war plan did not involve significant counterattacks by German forces; it was about slowing the Soviet forces down and forcing them to lose momentum and use up fuel and ammunition.

It should also be remembered that another part of the design philosophy was that no armour was proof against HEAT rounds so why bother with thick armour at the expense of speed, gun size, manouverability and ammunition stowage.

Jurgen

@Flecktarn: Ah, sorry about that. I thought you had served in the East German army, so had first-hand experience with Soviet equipment.

Lion,

No problem:).

I am an officer in the Bundeswehr; my father was a general in the NVA.

The collapse came a very short time before I was due to be conscripted:).

Jurgen

Interestingly the 25mm gun on the Bradley had no problem penetrating the turret armour on the Chieftain. Brad crews driving through Iraq were shooting up old tanks they came upon and at one point they found a Chieftain, presumably a war trophy from the Iran/Iraq War, and shot up the turret. Every round penetrated clean through. Perhaps it was the DU ammo the 25mm uses?

Most modern MBTs have what we would regard as scanty side/rear armour.

This has been the big change in armour distribution since WW2/early postwar era. As tank designers found they needed more and more armour on the frontal arc to defeat threats they had to steal from somewhere. Keeping armour distribution the same as WW2 tanks would have resulted in immobile behemoths.

A generalisation, but a mostly accurate one.