Not from Sci Fi

I promise - this is a real tank:


Yeah.... It looks like should be from some computer game, or Hollywood action movie, but it isn't.

Its from... you guessed it: Russia. Where shit just be crazy.

What we have here is actually a MIG-15 jet engine mounted onto the top of a T-54 tank - so basically combining two of the stalwarts of the early Cold War into Russian indestructible awesomeness. All you have to do is mix in a AK-47 and a Soyuz capsule and you would have an epic shrine of Russian do-it-cheap-dirty-and-reliable engineering.

What was it used for though, other than scaring the living bejesus out of the West Germans to stop them from defecting to Russia (this is why, according to the Russians, the Berlin Wall was built after all).

Well - this here is a mine clearing tank. You take the thrust from the jet engine and vector it out of that contraption which looks like a sci-fi death doom tank I would have imagined when I was 7, and you blow it against the ground in order to clear away the mines. Turns out this thing could clear 6km of mines with its onboard jet-fuel tank.

Of course, in a pinch, I think it could have been used against the local insurgents, demonstrators, or anyone who questioned the sheer terror beneficence of Mother Russia.

Comments

  1. I can't imagine how loud that'd be in the tank. But it also makes me wonder--maybe it's not that bad! Was muzzle blast from the guns mostly quieted to the crew because they were safely inside? Maybe it's insulated from sound pretty well...?

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