Yrys
Army.ca Veteran
- Reaction score
- 12
- Points
- 430
http://www.cbc.ca/news/reportsfromabroad/durham/20070615.html
Even as a passenger, I had reservations about going along for a test drive in a Leopard 2. I had
to remember it was my idea to do this. The problem is I'm claustrophobic so the night before my visit
to the Royal Netherlands Army Base at Amersfoort, I was sleepless. I imagined the suffocating feeling
of having to film inside such a hulking piece of metal. But I did want to find out what these second-hand,
German-made Leopards are like. Canada is buying a fleet of them after all. And I wanted to know about
the soldiers who drive them. You can imagine my delight when I arrived on the base and saw my test
drive vehicle. It was a modified Leopard 2, called a bubble tank. Instead of a steel-encased turret it has
windowed cab on top.
Bubble tank Bubble tank (picture in CBC link)
It was up there that I spent most of my time, watching and listening as Sgt. Andy MacDonald learned the ropes.
MacDonald and I sat in bucket seats on either side of and just behind the Dutch trainer. We wore helmets with
voice-activated mikes both to hear each other and to give instructions to the virtually invisible driver below.
The driver — in this case, Sgt. Mark Bell — sits deep down in the front, right corner of the tank. All that could
be seen of him as we rolled up and down across the Dutch training area was a bit of his back. It was dizzying
to look out the window and, yes, it was fun.
Not a Ford Pinto
Sgt. MacDonald has been in the Canadian Armed Forces for 22 years and he's spent most of that time with tanks.
These upgraded Leopards put a smile on his face. "I'm actually very excited about getting these. Our other tanks
were getting really old and we had to do a lot of maintenance on them. It was getting to the point where we were
doing as much maintenance as we were doing driving, so the students weren't getting a lot of driving time."
Simulator Inside the simulator (picture in CBC link)
I asked Sgt. MacDonald how he would compare the Leopard 1 with this newer version, the Canadian Forces were
about to acquire. "Think of your old Ford Pinto from the 1970s," he said. "It was all right at the time. But now
we've just stepped into a Rolls Royce. " During a break Sgt. Bell showed me how he gets in and out of the
"driver's hole." He winds his hatch back manually and pops in from what you might call the hood of the tank
. Once inside he winds it shut and disappears.
From my perch in the bubble, I was able to crawl down to just behind where he sits in his dark, cramped space
— a metal cocoon filled with instruments, gauges and a small steering wheel that Bell calls a bow. His legs
are stretched out in front of him with a little bend in his knees. "Well I've been driving tanks so long and it feels
comfortable," he says. "It's your safe place. It's just comfortable and you feel secure, you're completely enclosed
and protected. It's a good feeling for a tanker. I felt safe in the Leopard 1 but this is just so much better."
Canada is spending $650 million to buy 100 used tanks from Holland, though the full cost, Canadians only recently
learned, is closer to $1.3 billion when the service contracts are factored in. But for the soldiers I met at Amersfoort
there was no doubting the money is being well spent.
Pretty cool tank
The Leopard 2 should also solve a big problem soldiers face in Afghanistan: Heat. Temperatures inside the old tanks
were reaching 65 C, some drivers reported. The earlier Leopards have a problem with their cooling systems. The
newer models can be fitted with air conditioning. But even without air conditioning, Bell says the operators are better
off. "It's an electric drive turret so it doesn't produce heat, so you're probably 20 degrees cooler in the turret without
air conditioning at all."
Bell was in Afghanistan last winter. He returns for a six-month tour of duty in February 2008 so he'll have a chance
to test the new tank. He's modest about the discomfort of the old tanks, saying "you get used to it and you drink
lots of water and that's all you can do."
I can now report that standing near a tank when it's on the move is a terrifying experience, even when you know
the driver is friendly. The roar, as a tank approaches, and the incredible vibration of the ground made me want
to run, which is the whole idea of tanks, as Sgt. MacDonald explained.
"When you feel a tank coming there's nothing like it. You know it's a tank." I nodded and said "scary." MacDonald
agreed. "Hopefully that's how our enemies will feel when we come towards them."
