vehicles/tanks suggestion of squadron vehicle tyran 6 for israel

DracU_91 · February 19, 2023

Tiran 6 is an Egyptian or Syrian T-62 captured in Israeli service with some Israeli modifications

Over the decades since its debut, the T-62 tank has seen many conflicts, but the 1973 Yom Kippur War is perhaps what made it most famous. On October 6, 1973, the armies of Egypt and Syria (supported by their allies in other Muslim countries) attacked Israel with a steel sledgehammer - thousands of their tanks advancing to crush Israel's famous armored forces.

Of all the tanks on the battlefield, the T-62 was the best. Its smoothbore gun bested the old Centurion Sho't, Magach, and Super Sherman tanks on the battlefield, firing APFSDS shells that sometimes went right through them.

In the south, one of the Egyptian T-62 brigades, in coordination with infantry teams and BMP-1s firing their Malyutka missiles, took a heavy toll on an Israeli counterattack during the third day of the war, destroying up to 70 Israeli soldiers. tanks of the 170 deployed.

The other brigade was involved in the Battle of Chinese Farm, one of the largest tank battles in history. As he approached the battlefield, he was ambushed by a perfectly executed attack by local Israeli forces and found himself outflanked on all sides. The skillfully commanded centurions slaughtered the Egyptians - out of the brigade's 95 tanks, only 10 survived the day, while the Israelis lost only 4 tanks.

The Syrian T-62s also suffered heavy losses despite their firepower and armor superiority. The reason for this was the level of training – where the training of Syrian tankers left much to be desired, the Israelis were well trained. Even so, the numerical superiority of the early days of the war brought huge losses to both sides. In one of the most heroic tank actions in all of history, the Israelis with their 177 tanks defended the Golan Heights against thousands of enemy armored vehicles. When the smoke cleared on October 9, over five hundred Syrian armored vehicles (including a full brigade of T-62s) were destroyed on the battlefield – but the price was high. Of the nearly two hundred tanks deployed, the Israelis were down to perhaps a dozen. Of the 72 Sho't tanks, Israel's 7th Armored Brigade had 7 tanks left.

In the end, the Yom Kippur War of 1973 was the only conflict in which the T-62 would, in tank-on-tank combat, have an advantage. When the Israelis encountered it again in 1982, it was considered inferior to the Merkava - but by 1973, it was recognized as a powerful and deadly opponent and the Israelis were never the only ones to waste good captured vehicles. And so captured or salvaged T-62s entered Israeli service under the designation of Tiran 6 (some older sources claim that unmodified T-62s had a designation of Tiran 3, but this is probably not correct).

Unlike the captured T-54 and T-55 tanks, the T-62s were not extensively modified as their guns were replaced with the standard Israeli 105 mm L7 copy. They retained their own 115 mm smooth barrel and therefore had to rely on captured ammunition stocks. The following modifications were made to the vehicle:

Stowage boxes were welded to the sides and rear of the tower
Two .30cal machine gun pin mounts have been added to the top of the turret
Another storage space has been added to the rear of the vehicle.
The mudguards at the rear were equipped with infantry communication telephones and first aid boxes.
The main gun had a mount with a .50cal machine gun added to the top for training and extra firepower in wartime, operated by the vehicle's commander.
The original headlights were replaced with those used on the Patton series of tanks (other Israeli service tanks underwent the same modification)
Spare rail links were sometimes fitted to the turret in WWII style
Contrary to some sources (including Wikipedia), the vehicle did not have its engine replaced by a Detroit Diesel, nor did it receive any advanced equipment, such as a thermal imager. Its fire control system was also not updated.

Having to rely on captured stocks, the tank was never really a top tier vehicle. Israel kept an unknown (but relatively low) number in service with reserve units for nearly a decade. It appears that some of these may have seen some combat during the 1982 Operation Peace for Galilee, as some were supposedly upgraded with a Blazer ERA kit (photographic evidence of this is, however, hard to come by). They were withdrawn from active service shortly after the operation and possibly scrapped - reports of various exports are also likely to be incorrect and originate from Western sources confusing these tanks with the Tiran 4 and Tiran 5 models, which found their way to a number of customers as they were phased out.