- 2 days ago
The safest seat in an Abrams tank may belong to the gunner—but the most dangerous one is the hatch that gives a commander the clearest view. This military history analysis ranks all four crew positions, from the protected gunner and isolated driver to the loader handling ammunition and the commander exposed above the turret.
Using the Battle of 73 Easting and lessons from the Iraq War, the story explains how armor, roadside bombs, open hatches, and battlefield visibility shaped crew safety and prompted upgrades to the M1 Abrams. A focused look at tank crew roles, armored vehicle survivability, and life inside a four-man tank for military history fans and anyone curious about how the Abrams operates.
Using the Battle of 73 Easting and lessons from the Iraq War, the story explains how armor, roadside bombs, open hatches, and battlefield visibility shaped crew safety and prompted upgrades to the M1 Abrams. A focused look at tank crew roles, armored vehicle survivability, and life inside a four-man tank for military history fans and anyone curious about how the Abrams operates.
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00:00In 1991, the U.S. Army had close to 2,000 Abrams in the Gulf.
00:05When government auditors counted the wreckage afterward,
00:08nine had been destroyed, seven were hit by other Americans by mistake,
00:12and the last two were blown up on purpose, so the Iraqis couldn't capture them.
00:17So the armor works.
00:19But 12 years later in Iraq, tankers started dying anyway,
00:24and the Army's chief of armor eventually said where most of those deaths happened.
00:28It's the last place you'd guess.
00:31Four seats.
00:32One is about as safe as ground combat gets.
00:35Another one gets people killed.
00:38Imagine you're a brand new private walking up to one of these for the first time.
00:42It weighs more than 60 tons.
00:45It burns jet fuel, so the whole motor pool smells like the flight line at an airport,
00:51and the engine winds up with a whine that sounds more like a jet than a truck,
00:55and somebody is about to point at a hole in the armor and tell you that's where you live now.
01:01Here's the layout.
01:03Three men ride up in the turret, and they swing around with it every time the gun moves.
01:08The commander and the gunner sit on the right side, one behind the other,
01:13while the loader works the left side of the gun by himself.
01:16The fourth man, the driver, is alone in the front of the hull, cut off from the other three.
01:23Now look at where the dangerous stuff went.
01:26The main gun rounds live in the back of the turret, in an armored compartment behind sliding doors,
01:32with panels in the roof, built to blow outward if the ammo ever cooks off.
01:37The fuel sits behind armored bulkheads.
01:41The logic is simple.
01:42If something on this vehicle is going to explode, push the blast away from the people.
01:48So in theory, every seat is protected.
01:51Spend a year riding in one, and you'll find out they aren't equal.
01:56To rank them, we're going to ride along with one real crew.
01:59On February 26th, 1991, Captain H.R. McMaster led Eagle Troop of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment
02:09into what became known as the Battle of 73 Easting.
02:13McMaster rode in the commander's seat, and Staff Sergeant Craig Cock sat just below him as his gunner.
02:20And before that afternoon was over, the man up front in the driver's seat
02:24would find out something about his job that never makes it into the recruiting video.
02:30Let's start with the safest seat in the tank.
02:33It's the gunner.
02:35The gunner sits low on the right side of the turret, tucked below and in front of the commander.
02:41His knees are close to the turret wall, and his face is pressed into the rubber brow pad of a
02:46site,
02:47usually damp with his own sweat.
02:49That site is his entire world.
02:52It's stabilized, so the picture holds steady, while 60 tons of steel bounces across open ground,
02:59and it has thermal night vision and a laser rangefinder built in.
03:04Here's how deep this guy is buried.
03:07Pull up the hatch diagrams in the army's own technical manual,
03:10and you'll find a driver's hatch, a commander's hatch, and a loader's hatch,
03:16with nothing marked for the gunner.
03:18When he wants out, he climbs up through the commander's.
03:22Claustrophobic?
03:23Sure.
03:24But it also means the gunner never has a reason to stick his head outside,
03:28and he can fight an entire war from behind the turret front,
03:32which is exactly where the Abrams was built to take hits.
03:36If this were a car, the gunner would have the back middle seat,
03:40with a body on either side of him and the engine block out in front.
03:44At 73 Easting, that seat called the fight.
03:48As McMaster's tank came over a low rise in blowing sand,
03:53Koch reported tanks directly to their front.
03:56McMaster counted eight Iraqi T-72s dug into prepared positions.
04:01By one eyewitness account,
04:03Koch fired so fast that the first enemy tank blew apart,
04:07before McMaster had even finished shouting contact over the radio.
04:11The gunner fires the main gun,
04:14and he does it from the safest chair in the tank,
04:17which is a pretty good trade.
04:19Is it perfect?
04:20No.
04:21He shares the turret with everyone else,
04:23so if something punches through,
04:25he's in it too,
04:26and if the crew ever has to bail out,
04:29he's stuck waiting in line for someone else's hatch.
04:32There's no casualty table broken down by seat,
04:35so you read the evidence another way.
04:38Watch where the army spent its money after Iraq,
04:41because none of the big survivability kits were built around the gunner's seat.
04:46The next seat down has plenty of armor too.
04:49The problem is that it sits lower than anyone else in the tank,
04:53and in Iraq,
04:54low turned out to be its own kind of danger.
04:57The driver's station is in the dead center of the front hull,
05:01all by itself.
05:02The front of an Abrams slopes back so steeply
05:05that there's no room to sit up straight.
05:08So with his hatch closed,
05:10the driver lies semi-reclined,
05:12a lot like a dentist's chair,
05:14staring through a few small periscopes
05:16at the dirt right in front of the tank.
05:19That's his whole view.
05:21He can't see the rest of the crew,
05:22and the only thing connecting him to the three men behind him
05:26is the voice in his headset.
05:28Tankers described the backup way out of that compartment
05:32as dropping the seat back
05:33and crawling rearward into the turret basket,
05:37which only works if the turret happens to be pointed the right way.
05:41So the driver gets the loneliest seat in the tank
05:44and the most awkward exit.
05:46If this were a car,
05:47the driver would have the best crash protection in the front
05:50and nothing much under the floor,
05:53because here's what the driver does have.
05:55The heaviest armor on the tank is out front,
05:59right where his face is.
06:00When an Abrams fights the way it was designed to fight,
06:04nose toward the enemy,
06:05the driver sits behind the strongest part of the vehicle.
06:09At 73 Easting,
06:11the danger came from somewhere else.
06:13By one account of the battle,
06:15as McMaster's crew was lining up on a third target,
06:18the driver realized they were rolling through a minefield
06:21and started maneuvering to get them out of it.
06:24He was doing that in the middle of a tank fight
06:27while nobody else in the tank could see what he was seeing.
06:31That was the warning.
06:32Iraq was the bill.
06:34In October 2003,
06:36for the first time,
06:38a roadside bomb disabled an Abrams in Iraq,
06:41killing two of its crew and wounding a third.
06:44A bomb buried under a road
06:46doesn't care how thick the front armor is.
06:49It goes off underneath you,
06:51and the driver is the closest man in the tank to the belly.
06:54The army's answer tells you who they were worried about.
06:58As part of a kit called Tusk,
07:00the Tank Urban Survival Kit,
07:02they added belly armor
07:04and a new mine-resistant seat for the driver.
07:07Why?
07:08The old seat was mounted to the floor,
07:10so a blast traveled straight up through it into his body.
07:14The new seat hung from the ceiling of the compartment instead,
07:17and they strapped him in with a four-point harness
07:20so the shock wouldn't throw him around
07:22inside his own little steel box.
07:25So the driver lands at number two
07:27with strong armor where the enemy usually is
07:30and real exposure where the enemy decided to be instead.
07:34If you're getting something out of these crew breakdowns,
07:37subscribe,
07:38because we put one out every week.
07:41And stay with me,
07:42because the next seat is where the army's emergency fixes
07:45in Iraq actually started,
07:47before the full kits even existed.
07:50The loader stands on the left side of the turret,
07:53and his job is the most physical one in the tank.
07:57It's a workout.
07:58Every round he handles weighs somewhere
08:01between about 40 and 60 pounds depending on the type,
08:04and in the M1A1,
08:06the armored compartment at the back of the turret
08:09holds 34 of them.
08:11Try it for a second.
08:13You're braced inside a turret
08:14that swings under your boots,
08:17hugging a round that weighs about as much as a small kid,
08:20while the gunner is already yelling for the next one.
08:23He hits a switch, usually with his knee,
08:26and the armored door slides open,
08:29just long enough for him to pull a round
08:31and ram it into the breech before it seals again.
08:35Then he does it again.
08:36A good loader is expected to manage that in under seven seconds.
08:41At 73 Easting,
08:43one officer who was in the fight
08:45wrote that McMaster's loader
08:47had each new round in the breech in about three.
08:50Here's the uncomfortable part.
08:52Those doors protect him only while they're shut.
08:55So every time he reaches for a round,
08:58he's standing in front of an open hole
09:00into the one compartment on the tank
09:02that's packed with explosives.
09:04And that's still the easy part.
09:06The loader has his own hatch on the roof
09:09and his own M240 machine gun.
09:12In Iraq cities, that mattered.
09:15Tanks were working in alleys and intersections
09:17with buildings on both sides,
09:19and somebody had to watch the rooftops.
09:22A lot of the time,
09:23that somebody was the loader,
09:25standing up in his hatch with his chest,
09:28and head out in the open air.
09:30Picture it.
09:31If this were a car,
09:32the loader would be the guy riding
09:34with his upper body out the sunroof,
09:36in traffic,
09:37in a bad part of town.
09:39When the army scrambled to protect crews in Iraq,
09:42the loader went first.
09:44The commander's machine gun already had a gun shield.
09:47The loaders didn't.
09:49Demand from tankers was so high
09:51that the first 130 loaders armoured gun shields
09:55were rushed to Iraq in 2005,
09:58before the rest of the tusk kits
10:00had even been put together.
10:01By 2008,
10:03the army was buying 2,832 of them,
10:08ballistic glass and steel.
10:10It wrapped around the hatch,
10:12so the man standing in it
10:13could keep his eyes on the rooftops
10:15without catching a bullet in the chest.
10:17So why isn't the loader number one?
10:20Because there's one more hatch on that turret.
10:23It sits higher,
10:24and the man who rides in it
10:26has a reason to be up there
10:28that the loader never does.
10:30The commander sits on the right side of the turret,
10:33behind and above the gunner.
10:35Inside,
10:36he's got six periscopes,
10:38giving him a full 360-degree view,
10:41and on newer models,
10:42his own independent thermal viewer to hunt targets,
10:46while the gunner is busy killing the last one.
10:48On paper,
10:50he never has to leave the armour at all.
10:52In practice,
10:54a ring of small glass blocks
10:55doesn't show you a man with a rocket launcher
10:57in a second-storey window,
10:59or the face of the infantry squad leader
11:02you're supposed to be supporting.
11:04So tank commanders,
11:05especially in close terrain,
11:07ride with their head and shoulders
11:09out of the hatch.
11:10There's no other way to see the street.
11:13Look at the paperwork.
11:15The spec sheet for the original M1
11:17lists its height
11:18measured over the top of the machine gun
11:21on the commander's station.
11:22His position is about as high
11:24as anything on the vehicle.
11:26And he's the one making every decision.
11:29At 73 Easting,
11:31the troop had orders to stop
11:33at a line on the map
11:34called 70 Easting.
11:37McMaster's tanks rolled right past it.
11:39When his executive officer
11:41called from the command post
11:42to remind him
11:43they were already past
11:45the limit of advance,
11:46McMaster later recalled telling him,
11:49I can't stop.
11:50We're still in contact.
11:52In about 23 minutes,
11:54Eagle Troop tore through
11:55dozens of Iraqi tanks
11:57and armoured vehicles.
11:59That fight was won by a commander
12:01who could see clearly
12:02and decided fast.
12:04Now, back to Iraq.
12:06In March 2005,
12:09the army's chief of armour
12:10gave Army Times a count.
12:12About 4,500 soldiers
12:15had served on tanks in Iraq by then.
12:18And of those,
12:19three had been killed
12:20inside their tanks
12:21by roadside bombs.
12:23Another 10 to 15
12:24had been killed
12:25while riding with their heads
12:27out of the hatch,
12:28standing on top of the tank,
12:29or, in one case,
12:31shot by an insurgent
12:33who climbed onto the tank
12:34and fired down
12:35into the crew compartment.
12:37Three killed by bombs
12:39under the armour.
12:40Up to 15 killed
12:41through the open hatch
12:42or out on the hull.
12:44Read that again.
12:45The deadliest place
12:46on an Abrams
12:47is the open hatch.
12:48And the man
12:49whose job keeps him
12:50in it the most
12:51is the commander.
12:52His fix came last.
12:54Tusk 3 added
12:55a 360-degree armoured shield
12:58around the commander's hatch
12:59with transparent armour panels
13:01so he could keep looking out
13:03while he was covered.
13:04The kits also brought
13:06a machine gun
13:06the crew could fire
13:07remotely from inside.
13:09Every one of those upgrades
13:11is the army
13:11admitting the same thing.
13:13The tank was built
13:14to keep its crew alive
13:16and the crew kept
13:17climbing out of it
13:18because that's the only way
13:20to fight it well.
13:21So here's the final ranking.
13:24Safest is the gunner.
13:26The driver comes second,
13:28armoured up front
13:29and exposed underneath,
13:30and the loader is third,
13:32standing over open ammunition
13:34and riding half out of the roof.
13:36And the commander,
13:38sitting highest
13:39and seeing the most,
13:40has the deadliest seat
13:42in an Abrams.
13:43Here's what stuck with me.
13:45The two safest seats
13:46are the two that see the least
13:48and the two most dangerous seats
13:50have the best view in the tank.
13:52A commander can drop
13:53into the turret,
13:55close the hatch over his head
13:56and make himself
13:57almost as safe
13:58as his gunner.
13:59He'd also be half-blind
14:01and a blind tank
14:02gets all four of them killed.
14:04The man in the deadliest seat
14:06chose it.
14:07He's up there
14:08so the other three
14:09don't have to be.
14:10Which leaves one question.
14:12If you climbed
14:13into an Abrams tomorrow,
14:15would you take
14:15the gunner's chair
14:16down behind
14:17the thickest armour
14:18on the tank
14:18and trust somebody else's eyes
14:20with your life?
14:21Or the hatch?
14:23And tankers,
14:24if you've ridden
14:25any of these seats,
14:26tell me which one
14:27and whether you'd rank
14:29them the same way.
14:30I'm betting a few loaders
14:32out there want to argue
14:33about number three.
14:34Next we're going
14:35inside that turret
14:37to see how four people
14:38actually live in it
14:40for weeks at a time.
14:41It's on your screen now.