614: Chapter Six Hundred and Seven: Recycling 614: Chapter Six Hundred and Seven: Recycling Uriyangko was about to climb onto the tank when Gao Yang quickly said, “Don’t go up there!
The enemy has a lot of snipers, and they have large-caliber sniper rifles and heavy machine guns.
It’s too dangerous to go up now.”
Uriyangko, unconcerned, said, “It doesn’t matter.
I don’t believe they can hit me.
Did you see the helicopter above?
If anyone dares to fire, my highly paid men will teach them a lesson.”
Polovich also reached out his hand, and after helping Uriyangko up, he immediately said, “Quickly check if the top hatch is locked.
I really hope we don’t have to force open this iron coffin.”
Gao Yang whispered, “Hey, don’t get too excited.
What if there are still people alive inside?”
After patting himself down, Uriyangko reached out to Gao Yang and said, “Just in case, give me a grenade.”
Gao Yang sighed, climbed onto the tank himself, took out a grenade, unlocked the safety, and gestured to Uriyangko to open the hatch.
Uriyangko grabbed the handle of the top hatch and lifted it easily, creating a small gap, then Polovich, delighted, said, “Great, they didn’t lock the door, haha!”
Once the top hatch of a tank is locked from the inside, it’s difficult to open from the outside unless forced open with something like an oxy-acetylene torch.
Using an iron bar or similar tool to pry it open is virtually impossible.
However, if the top hatch is merely closed and not locked from the inside, opening it is, of course, quite easy.
The space inside a tank is very small, and the field of view is limited.
Relying solely on periscopes and observation ports makes driving and observing very difficult.
Thus, most of the time, tanks operate with an open window and top hatch to allow the commander to quickly pop out for observation and to ventilate the hot and stuffy interior.
Even during combat, few would choose to lock the top hatch from the inside.
An important reason for not locking the top hatch is that if the tank is hit, it’s much easier to escape through an unlocked hatch than a locked one.
At that moment, even reducing one action can be beneficial.
With the hatch not locked from the inside, everything was easier.
After Uriyangko slightly opened a gap, Gao Yang immediately shouted inside, “Is anyone alive?
If someone’s alive, speak up quickly, we’ll throw a grenade otherwise.”
There was no movement inside the tank.
After a brief wait, Uriyangko nodded, opened the top hatch completely, and listened.
Still hearing no movement, Polovich quickly peeked inside and immediately said, “It’s okay, everyone inside is dead.”
Gao Yang breathed a sigh of relief, looked inside himself, and saw two people, apparently the gunner and the loader, motionless and prone in their positions.
Uriyangko climbed into the tank, reached for the gunner who was motionless in front of the tank’s sight, and pulled him backward.
The gunner then leaned back, his eyes staring at the position of the hatch.
Upon seeing the gunner’s face, Gao Yang was startled.
He had seen many dead bodies, but it was his first time seeing one whose face looked fine yet was slightly bleeding from the seven orifices, his eyes wide open.
After making eye contact with those lifeless eyes, Gao Yang felt disgusted and quickly turned away.
Seeing dead people didn’t scare him, but making eye contact with them was too unsettling.
After a glance, Polovich immediately said, “They were shaken to death.
Oh, I have a bad feeling about this.”
Polovich’s physique had grown portly, and the space inside the tank was extremely cramped.
With the bodies and Uriyangko inside, he wouldn’t fit, so Polovich urgently said from outside, “How’s it going?
Anything usable?
The tank cannon should be okay, right?”
Uriyangko didn’t answer his question but came out of the tank cab, a look of helplessness on his face as he shook his head at Polovich, “Destroyed, everything is destroyed, nothing is usable.
Viewfinders, fire control system, anything made of glass or similar materials is shattered.
Even the cannon is damaged.
It looks fine, but it’s completely unusable.
And as for the engine, there’s no need to look; if the gun is damaged, the engine must be wrecked too.”
Polovich also sighed with disappointment and said to Gao Yang, “Friend, how much C4 did you use?”
Gao Yang gave a wry smile.
“Three kilograms.”
Uriyangko, leaning out from the top hatch, sighed and said, “This is the first time I’ve encountered this; I really didn’t know before that three kilograms of C4 exploding under the vehicle could completely destroy a tank.
Well, even though it can’t be salvaged, it’s good to know this.
I’ve learned something.”
Polovich pointed at another damaged tank and said, “Let’s see that one.
Although it took a hit from an anti-tank missile, there definitely should be some usable stuff left inside.
I hope the tank cannon isn’t damaged.”
Another tank wasn’t far away, and they could get there quickly.
As Gao Yang stretched out his hand to pull Uriyangko out, he said, “I’m really curious — how much is a tank gun worth?”
Polovich chuckled, “That depends, you have to consider the model and whether it’s new or old.
A new German-made tank cannon is worth at least tens of thousands of dollars, and even the old ones are valuable, whereas a Russian-made cannon is much cheaper.
Also, a 120mm cannon is definitely much more expensive than a 105mm one.”
Uriyangko also smiled and said, “It’s even harder to say with recycled old cannons.
The Chieftain uses a rifled cannon, not a smoothbore, and only the British can make those, which are quite difficult to manufacture.
So, they are expensive.
Even if it’s an old cannon, as long as it’s in good condition, it can sell for two hundred thousand US dollars.
Of course, that’s our selling price.
For buying, well, I can offer you twenty thousand.”
Gao Yang grimaced and said, “That’s really steep.”
Polovich shrugged, “It’s junk if you keep it, but you get twenty thousand if you sell it to us.
So, why not sell?
If it were anyone else, I’d only offer two thousand dollars.”
Gao Yang was completely resigned.
Uriyangko and Polovich truly were colleagues, cut from the same cloth.
After the three of them climbed out of the tank, Gao Yang suddenly remembered something and said, “Right, Uri, the crew inside that tank we just saw, were they Russian or British?”
Uriyangko thought for a moment and said, “The driver had the face of a Russian, but it’s hard to say about the others.
Oh, one person wasn’t wearing a tank crew uniform but was in desert camouflage combat gear, probably not a tank crew member.”
Gao Yang was delighted and immediately shouted to someone not far behind him, “Big Dog, there might be someone from Holmsney in there, do you want to check it out?”
Glolov perked up upon hearing this.
With nothing else to do, he set down his machine gun and quickly ran over, telling Gao Yang and the others to go check the other tank while he went alone into the tank cabin.
The other tank looked much more pitiful.
There was a small hole blown in the roof, almost exactly in the center, with a patch of charred metal next to it.
The hatch on the top of the second tank was also unlocked.
This time, Uriyangko skipped even shouting and opened the hatch door, not minding the dirt, and immediately crawled inside.
The crew inside the tank hit by anti-tank missiles, or rather, the bodies, were beyond recognition.
Although there was only a small hole in the tank’s roof, inside, the tank was riddled with signs of metal jet strikes and burn marks, and the bodies were peppered with holes.
The warheads of anti-tank missiles are armor-piercing shells, and the destruction caused by the armor-piercing shells isn’t indicated by the size of the hole made on the tank.
Once an armor-piercing shell penetrates the armor, it immediately creates overpressure inside the tank, and at the same time, it increases the temperature to three to four thousand degrees nearly instantly, but there is only a small hole on the outside, without seeing inside, you wouldn’t know how horrific the situation is inside.
Armor-piercing bullets also rely on overpressure and the formation of splinters and superheated metal liquid during penetration to kill personnel and destroy equipment, but armor-piercing shells, because they focus mainly on penetrating armor, have less effect on the crew and equipment inside the vehicle than armor-piercing bullets, and the likelihood of igniting fuel inside the vehicle is also lower than that of armor-piercing bullets.
Moreover, after armor-piercing shells penetrate armor thicker than one hundred millimeters, the dispersal angle of the fragments and metal jets is only about thirty degrees.
However, for thin armor, the angle increases to over one hundred degrees, whereas the dispersal angle after armor-piercing bullets penetrate armor is very stable.
After penetrating the armor, the angle of fragment dispersal is sixty degrees, regardless of the thickness.
The top armor of the Chieftain tank is the weakest part of the whole tank, but it’s still thick.
So, though the people inside the tank hit by anti-tank missiles were definitely dead, the damage to the equipment wasn’t particularly severe.
That is to say, although the tank destroyed by the helicopter looked more severely damaged than the one Rafael destroyed, it likely still had significant salvage value.
Another key point is that, although the Chieftain tank is an old model, it still has quite good protective performance.
If it were a Russian-made tank, the ammunition inside might easily have exploded, blasting the entire tank to pieces, leaving nothing but scrap metal to sell.
But the Chieftain tank was still intact.
Indeed, enduring the strong stench of burning inside the tank, Uriyangko checked around for a long time.
Finally, black-faced, he stuck his head out of the hatch and after a few deep breaths, said with satisfaction, “Not bad, not bad, this tank could still sell for two to three hundred thousand dollars.
Ram, I’ll take it for twenty thousand, how does that sound?”
Polovich too had a smile on his face, “Not bad, very good.
This trip, we could earn an extra two hundred thousand dollars at least.”
Gao Yang helplessly said, “Guys, sorry, but I can’t help asking; you’re already wealthy, does twenty thousand dollars really excite you this much?”
Uriyangko and Polovich, in perfect unison without missing a beat, said together, “Of course it’s worth it.
You don’t understand, these days are tough for arms dealers, especially since all the profits from this kind of deal go straight to us!” (To be continued.
If you like this work, please come to qidian.com to vote for it with a recommendation ticket or a monthly ticket.
Your support is my biggest motivation.
Mobile users, please go to m.qidian.com to read.)