Winter camouflage for Swedish S-tank

I was going to start this with "I have seen the movie" but,
You are obviouesly right Gino, a modern tank would allways take aim and fire.
It is still true that accuarcy drops with distance, speed and terrain.
And I would not want to drive an Abrams through a Swedish aker at 40 mph hoping to hit anything...
Anyway, Heart before Head.
Sorry, no offence intended and I hope none taken.

VBR
Johan

 

JohanT wrote:

Now who is shooting from a moving tank hoping to hit a moving target at more then 500m, hands up please?

The Abrams, Challenger 2, Leopard II, LeClerc, and I am sure the STRV-122.  Not sure about the performance of the other (I assume they are all pretty comparable), but the Abrams with a good crew can lock onto and hit a target out to about 2500m while at full throttle run of about 40 mph and take it out every time. 

You are right.
And so is Gino.
If you want to fire from the S 103 you stop and aim.
Target selection and aim is all digital but can be manually overridden.
Hit accuracy from a stand still position is more then accurate.
Now who is shooting from a moving tank hoping to hit a moving target at more then 500m, hands up please?

Yeah, yeah,
In my view it was effective enough, no one messed with us for the duration of the cold war.
But maybe that was not only the S-tank, the 155MM Self Propelled Mortar 77, the Viggen fighter jet and the SAAB robot defense system could also have tributed. Not to mention the Bofors guns...

Pros and cons of the Strv 103 can be argued (and have been argued) for decades.
Swedish tankers remember them because the heating system was a bit quirky (that is NOT what you need in -24 C'), the turbine sounded as a 747 at takeoff and the hydraulics where a bit like the pneumatics in a Citroen. Special.
But it is a cool looking, absolutely unique pice of armor and guess what, we still take pride in it

What happened to them?
Well, think S-Tank the next time you take a shave.
If it is close, the blade is from Sweden

BTW,
constantly upgraded? what tank is not?

do you know if they're going to offer them up for export and sale to any smaller countries and has any one taken them?

 Sorry, no idea what they will or have done with them.  I doubt any other nation would buy them.  There are newer, better, and cheaper tanks on the market now.  These were 1950's technology.  They were constantly upgraded, but still old technology.

HeavyArty wrote:

the doog wrote: Amazing how it can hide in "hull down" position--kinda makes turrets obsolete! I hope we never go to war with Sweden! Actually, the S-tank is no longer in active service.  It was phased out in the early '90s in favor of the Leopard II (STRV-122). The lack of a turret actually was a bad thing.  You couldn't quickly react to a threat to either flank.  It was only really good in a static defensive position with the enemy coming straight from the front.  For these same reasons, the allies in WW II didn't have any Hetzer or Stug type assualt guns/tank destroyers.  The Germans used them mostly is static positions, while the allies were constantly on the move and in attack mode, not defense.  Also, the S-tank could not use a stibilizad gun system since the gun is hard-mounted to the hull.  Due to this, it couldn't fire on the move.  It looked good on paper and would have been pretty good as a counter to a Russian invasion, for a short time, but in the grand scheme, it wasn't very effective.

I wonder what they're going to do with them all; do you know if they're going to offer them up for export and sale to any smaller countries and has any one taken them? Might be some cool new camo schemes to consider?! 

the doog wrote:

Amazing how it can hide in "hull down" position--kinda makes turrets obsolete! I hope we never go to war with Sweden!

Actually, the S-tank is no longer in active service.  It was phased out in the early '90s in favor of the Leopard II (STRV-122). The lack of a turret actually was a bad thing.  You couldn't quickly react to a threat to either flank.  It was only really good in a static defensive position with the enemy coming straight from the front.  For these same reasons, the allies in WW II didn't have any Hetzer or Stug type assualt guns/tank destroyers.  The Germans used them mostly is static positions, while the allies were constantly on the move and in attack mode, not defense.  Also, the S-tank could not use a stibilizad gun system since the gun is hard-mounted to the hull.  Due to this, it couldn't fire on the move.  It looked good on paper and would have been pretty good as a counter to a Russian invasion, for a short time, but in the grand scheme, it wasn't very effective.

MAAAAAAAAANNN!!!! Is that thing COOOOOL! Amazing how it can hide in "hull down" position--kinda makes turrets obsolete!

I hope we never go to war with Sweden!

I just found a bunch of great movies on youtube. Just go to http://www.youtube.com/ and search for "Strv 103" (S) and "Strv 122" (Leopard 2).

Here's a seven minutes long documentary on the S tank. Quite informative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fARGfVA7Mm8

And here it is in actio:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uxzDq8IpjI

/Tony (skål, Larsa!)

Hi jvkx,

there are some really good pictures to be found at primeportal:
http://www.primeportal.net/tanks/strv_103.htm

Also this link could be useful for you:
http://www.militarymodelling.com/news/article.asp?UAN=432&v=1&sp=

Bulten's picture is a mono green under whitewash but in more recent days (skål Bulten ) the white replaced the brown and light green in a three tone splinter camo.

The splinter scheme is a nightmare but don't let that turn you off, the effort is well worth while :)

Larsa

I also had some problems finding pics, even when I searched for "Strv 103" and browsed Swedish sites.

But I found a model that was painted exactly as I remember how the winter camoflage looked like during my time in the army. This is quite on the spot:

More pics here:

http://www.track-link.net/gallery/3434

Hope that helps,

/Tony

I dredged this one up off Google;

That was about all I found.