"Will armour burn?" Topic

I believe I read an article in the past 20 years that the armour on todays AFV, while taking a pounding by all manner of projectiles, will in the right circumstances burn. If anyone has a source for that kind of info I would greatly appreciate. Then again maybe I dreamt it. Thanks TMPers
JM

Depends on what it is based on M113 and m551 tanks would.

Aluminum armor burns, if it has magnesium as part of the composition it will burn too. You just have to get a hot fire burning. A HEAT round and a ruptured fuel container will usually do the job.

Yes, I have personally seen an AAV burning, so much so that the front end collapsed and we couldn't tow it with another AAV, had to call an M-1.

V/R,
Jack

Anything that oxidizes will burn. That included aluminum, titanium, iron and, most intensely, magnesium.

Well I have seen the results of large pieces of heavy equipment that have caught fire. Very hot and intense. All the aluminum melted out and flowed like a river from the cab. Nasty and toxic as plastic and paint and other nifty stuff burns off. Not much you can do but maintain the perimeter to avoid the fire spreading. I had one contractor with a Foam Machine. Small version as used around airports for fire suppression. The kind you have when you know you will be dealing with fuels. That One Day finally came and He had to deploy it. Wow, that sure snuffed it out!

Magnesium will definitely burn, take magnesium tape we used to use it in science classes as a fuse. A lot of what we used to do in Chemistry and Physics classes back in the 1970s would now bring the HazMat people roaring in. Wimps.

As you can imagine though it doesn't look like wood or gasoline burning. If you can find it (it has to be on youtube) there's video of an Iraqi tank with its turret cooking off in Desert Storm.

Yes, steel will burn. It either needs to be really hot, or have extra oxygen. Or both.

This ignores the fact that a tank has loads of diesel fuel, hydraulic fluid, and ammunition to light on fire first.

Mostly it is paint, ammo and fuel/other POL products

I have a photograph of a Bradley that was destroyed by an IED in Afghanistan and if the caption had not said it was a Bradley I would never have recognized it. About 80% of it was just gone. There had obviously been an internal explosion as well that blew out to the rear. Among the debris were what looked like intact AT4s. Most of the damage was due to fire rather than explosion because other than the AT4s and a scattering of charred stuff all the destruction was inside the vehicle. The ground around it had no debris. The stuff that was scattered behind the AFV could have come from internal blast out the rear ramp or some of the crew bailed that way and left an opening an internal explosion could hurl stuff out of.

The Russian air-landable AFV's have all magnesium armour, not aluminium and the Israelis discovered you only needed .50 cal tracer to set it off.

Metas do burn. Titanium however will only burn in chunks as oppoesd to powder in high airflows and at high air pressures where there is more oxygen than normal oxygen and enough airspeed to dislodge the surface oxidation which would prevent it burning anyway.

Steel burns that is how thermic lances work but again it need high concentrations of oxygem. Like pure oxygen for a thermic lance.

Magniesium is strange. It needs lots of oxygen and lots of heat. Not enough heat and it conducts the heat away so doees not sustain. Thin ribons of magnesium don't conduct well so taht is how you can get it to burn.
Bit supprised that tracer alone lights magnesium. I can imagine that lighting a fire that would iun turn supply enough heat to light the magnesium. The only sure way to see if the likes of magnesioun has lit and not just melted is to look to see if any steel bolts have melted as well. If they have then its a good bet the magnesioum or aluminium has lit. If the steel is the right shape then its proably just melted the aluminium/magnesium. It proably make no diffrence to the ocupants if it burnt or melted as there is only one greade of dead and that is independent of that particular temperature difference.

Seen a m113 burn, after a gas BBQ bottle was ruptured, a very intense bright blue flame as the aluminium and magnesium burnt

Early BMD -1 had high magnesium armour content , the Russians learnt a hard lesson in Afghanistan with high losses in the airborne units

The Tosan(scorpion) light tanks have a high magnesium content, these are still in use by Iran

Cheers
Matt

Yes, as an M113 Mech Co Cdr, '87-'89 … we dismounted often …

I remember once in high school chemistry my study group and I managed to release chlorine gas from hydrochloric acid, still don't remember how we did it, but class was dismissed while all windows were opened.