Merkava Mk.1 (USA)

Description

File:Merkava.JPG

Merkava mk1 on the battlefield

The ' is a Rank USA medium tank with a battle rating of (AB), (RB), and (SB). It was introduced in Update 1.87 "Locked On" as a prize from event.

At a glance, one may mistake it for Centauro , which is already infamous on it's own, because they share similiar traits - an extremely long vehicle with turret on it's back, that sports very long cannon. However, this vehicle has even lower profile and drives on tracks instead of wheels. Due to this, it's significantly slower. The amount of damage it can cause, though, is similiar.

General info

Survivability and armour

This tank has extremely low profile, and on top of that, it's frontal armour is extremely sloped everywhere. It may seem like yet another light tank hybrid. Thing is, it's looks are extremely deceptive. Do not even think about it as of Centauro .

Merkava mk1's secondary shields

Even if anything penetrates the front of the hull, shell then hits fuel tank, which shields the engine, and even if that is penetrated, here is still a list of rolled homogenous armour, and even if that is penetrated, the engine will take entirety of shrapnel with seemingly no failure. If one tries to fire straight at driver, shell will most likely just ricochet, bounce off the turret and fly away, unless it was APDS or APDSFS. Even then, any shell that hit directly from the front will likely only take down driver and fly out.

And then, when you try to fire onto turret, you realize, that this extremely angled turret is just the first layer of defence, a decoy, that is simply made this way to dissolve as much of shell's energy, as possible, before it enters. Upon entering, Shell meets layers upon layers upon layers of homogenous armour lists. As such, anything short of APDS from specifically sniper tanks like Chieftain Mk3 or APDSFS have high chance of doing no damage. The only place with no protection is the turret ring.

Not only that, but it seems that firing ATGM at front of the hull is pointless, as module placement absorbs as much damage as IPM1 and M1A1 Abrams NERA, so missiles should be fired at the turret instead, unless one tries to just burn the vehicle. In Realistic battle mode, hitting turret with ATGM might actually destroy vehicle in one hit.

On top of all that, Merkava MK1 cannot be hull broken.

Ammunition is stored in the very back of vehicle, at the very bottom and is covered with even more armour lists. Most of attacks from front of vehicle or from above will inevitably hit side skirts, turret, or other modules in way of the shell and achieve nothing. In case enemy tank attacks from behind, even tank's back is protected with layers of spaced armour, rolled homogenous armour and fuel tanks, completely neutralizing weak chemical shells (such as HESH), or derailing HEAT-FS spall away from critical components. Only firing HEAT-FS diagonally through the shield in middle of Merkava's rear seems to achieve hitting ammunition or crew. Using AP based ammunition instead is highly adviced.

Side hull armour of the tank is considerably weaker, though, and can be penetrated even by APDS equipped SPAA and light tanks. Tracks still block some shots, but it's possible to destroy entirety of turret compartment with high enough rate of fire, before tank turns around. AP-I belt would probably fail to penetrate it, though.

The sides of the base of the turret seem to be a viable target for HESH, unlike the rest of the tank. Though, even there vehicle has a little fuel tank, which has tendency to derail spalling away from last turret crew member.

As such, Merkava should avoid exposing it's sides, to protect it's turret crew and ammunition.

To top off it's armour, vehicle has smoke launchers and smoke shells to cover itself.

Mobility

In arcade mode, Merkava MK1 should have top speed of about 51 km/h forward. However, either due to extreme recklessness of it's drivers, or better than average acceleration, it often gets to position faster than expected. It's reverse speed is quite low, though, being about 10 km/h at best.

In Realistic mode it's top speed is supposed to be about 46 km/h forward and about 8 km/h in reverse.

Armaments

Main armament

Merkava uses 105 mm Sharir cannon. It has two-axis stabilizer and autoloader. Reload rate with autoloader is about 8.7 sec, first-stage ammo stowage has 14 shells.

Default ammo for this cannon is HEAT-FS M152, with 400 mm of penetration at 0 degrees.

Additionally gun can be loaded with:

HESH M152, which can penetrate armour about 127-142 mm thick for 260 SL per shot.

APDSFS M111, which can penetrate 337 mm at 0 degrees and 194 at 60 degrees point blank for 390 SL per show.

Smoke M416, with 20m coverage range for 50 SL.

Machine guns

As machine guns Merkava MK1 has 12,7 mm M2HB and three 7.62 FN MAG 60-40 machine guns.

Their penetration statistics seem to be standart for their calibre.

Usage in battles

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Pros and cons

Pros:

• Armour is surprisingly effective, due to it being multi-layered
• Sometimes capable of just driving into capture point, as if it doesn't care
• Has weapons and ammunition similar to SPG Centauro, which is enough for most encounters
• Different ammunition types are cheap to use
• ATGMs may have problems destroying this vehicle, as well as small rockets and HESH

Cons:

• APDSFS does not care about module-based protection and will go straight through entire vehicle, and a lot of vehicles at it's BR can use it
• Second layer of defence has a lot of openings, which can be exploited with side shots, so vehicle cannot be angled a lot
• Turret ring and middle rear weakspots compromise vehicle's defences and make it vulnerable to APHE at close ranges
• Side hull armour is weak and thus vehicle can still be destroyed by even light tanks with 30+ mm guns, although default ammo usually fails to penetrate it
• In uptier it's going to be slower than most of adversaries
• Can be simply burned, if cannot be put down normally

History

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Media

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See also

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• reference to the series of the vehicles;
• links to approximate analogues of other nations and research trees.

External links

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• encyclopedia page on tank;
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