Thanks to Shawn M. from South Africa (damn, nice to have readers even in Africa) :)
Here’s what happened according to Shawn and local news. This tank was transported on a rig, driven by a female driver (*insert generic sexist joke about women driving*), doing promotion tests in Van Reenen’s Pass. The combined weight of the truck, trailer and the Olifant tank you can see on the picture was allegedly as high as 105 tons. The driver was a newbie – she was going down the hill, when she shifted gears, which is something you don’t do in a 100 ton vehicle going down the hill. She panicked and slammed the brakes, the breaks immediately burned and the rig went into a slide, ending in a ditch. During the slide, the tank slipped off the trailer, did a barrel roll and ended up in the ditch as well. To complete the humiliation, the army could not recover the tank and they had to call a civil contractor for the job.
Poor tank
why drive tank on truck? why not just drive tank?
More expensive and damages the roads, I guess.
Lol, our roads here in South Africa are so bad as it is, those few scratches make is blend in.
Shawn M.
Yep, $10k in pot hole suspention damage, bad roads……
That tank incident damage is hardly noticable above the rest.
Logical answer: fuel
Well, a modern tank eats around 5 Liters of fuel per KM ! For most tanks the Fuel/100Km ranges at 300-600 Liters of gas, depending if you drive on the road or terrain.
A truck takes a lot less gas and can go faster than most tanks.
And at south african fuel prices , its cheeper to buy a fleet of trucks. And for some unknown reason, diesel is more expencie than petrol in SA……
‘coz it’s a bit more expensive to make. The only reason why diesel is less expensive in EU is the fuel tax which is lower for diesel…
Diesel is actually cheaper to make then gas.
Except in South Africa.
In the UK Diesel is alot dearer than Petrol.
Higher demand due to the perceived reduced costs of a diesel car over a petrol.
I used to be cheaper in the US too, but for the past few years its been more expensive.
One dose not simply let womens drive
Men crash much more often.
l2 read statistics
Most of the Big Mines over in Western Australia Prefer Female drivers to Male, Females generally treat the machinery better leading to lower maintenance costs
Viva Australia!
wasnt aware that threathing the equipment better equals being better and safer driver.
That’s because there are more men driving than women.
Drunk drivers , drunk driver everywhere !
What tank?
Olifant, upgraded SA Centurion.
Yep, Was an Oliphant tank which is an upgrade Centurion tank armed with a 105mm rifled barrel. Was a joint project with the Israeli Defence Force during our Apartheid years of isolation to buy new tanks to go against the T72′s during the Angola border war.
There was an option to buy the German Leopard 1′s, but costs and sanctions made it too expensive so the SA government went with the Israeli idea.
By the way: on which Server do you South-African players play?
NA East server has lower pings for some reason.
It seems that you South-african players have a better fiber-optic connection to USA than you have to EU.
Its weird, would have thought that the EU servers would run better, but apparently not.
They do. Average ping from Cape Town on EU2, 170ms
That would make playing much better. But now to transfer my account…..and then to deal with EU WG…may as well stay on NA
Really. I have always wondered about that. I actually get 220 ping to the test server whereas 300 to NA East
How much ping do you get? I’m from South America and I get around 180-230 and it feels pretty bad.
average about 300 on East and 350odd on west
oh god and im complaining about 65+ on EU….
adds another dimension to skill levels when you have to compensate for the slight lag
180-250 from nz to SEA not as bad, but i can agree with the extra skill required…….. server retical is less of an option and more of a requirement.
Also from NZ on US server: 150 to West coast, 230 to East.
I know of 3 SA players who play on EU.
do you know what their pings are like?
Im from Mauritius, not far from SA, and wot alocated me to EU server.. best ping i ever got was around 250ms.. i can handle up to 300ms but when it goes beyond that shit just hits the fan.. with lag… lol..
It would be great to have a SA server, i can only dream to be able to play with 60ms.. and i never play with server reticle as i find it a huge pain.. it just increases the feeling of lag..
I am South African but I play on NA. From Cape Town, I get 220ms to NA East, 280ms to NA west. EU servers are about 160ms while RU varies from 200ms to 300ms. SEA is the worst, 400ms :-)
I registered a new account to test the EU servers, if it is successful I wonder if WG will migrate me? Probably not
Most (well a lot at any rate) of us play on the EU servers. Despite WG’s website tying to direct South Africans that the NA cluster. Something we’ve been trying (in vain) to get them to change because the ping is much better.
Been waiting for roaming to happen (which may not) to actually test it to see. Been playing for too many years on NA to start over on EU
YOLO -.-
WOT physics working as intended
Exactly my thoughts :D
The nave HAVOK is pure comedy gold :P
At last we clearly see how belly of a tank (at least British) looks like :D
BTW, were are emergency exits at the bottom?
Lol. Saw that happen with a 15 ton boat and a small family van
break
verb \ˈbrāk\
: to separate (something) into parts or pieces often in a sudden and forceful or violent way
brake
noun: brake; plural noun: brakes
1.
a device for slowing or stopping a moving vehicle, typically by applying pressure to the wheels.
“he slammed on his brakes”
verb
verb: brake; 3rd person present: brakes; past tense: braked; past participle: braked; gerund or present participle: braking
1.
make a moving vehicle slow down or stop by using a brake.
“she had to brake hard to avoid a milk float”
So Polish tankers are now in Africa?
(Its a joke, dont take it seriously i have nothing against polish people)
Polish tankers don’t have a sense of humour, you will be reported for shaming
Nope, they are preparing for COIN in Ukraine with shiny new Leo 2A5s :)
When i saw “meanwhile in south africa” (I used to live there) i just thought “Oh Sh*t what have they done now!”
Well at least living in New Zealand, i dont have to worry about escaping tanks, a we have no army vehicle that is more than 10t XD
Lol! I just shook my head when I was sent this and it was too good not to send to FTR
Anywhere elce in the world it would be unexpected, but in SA, im just not supprised. I would not be shocked if it happened monthly back over there.
Sad thing is, something similar happens like this too often. Like our brand new subs we bought. All 3 are in the docks due to some or other human error.
And the train network going up in joburg, but the native train developing progect failed, so they bought our 50 year old trains that we were retireing. Huh, they probably have all be burnt to the ground for being late by now anyway.
they burnt some trains, don’t know if it was those ones :)
we borrowed a tank (not sure witch one) from aus
interesting, did not know that
Do a barrel roll! – Come on, don´t look at me that way. Somebody had to bring that stupid joke. Ok fine, i´m out…
So that driver pressed R or Z twice…
‘R’ twice and then panicked and could not find the ‘Z’ key
Ouch….
Noob (female) driver. :D, her driving skills needs a buff.
Seriously why did they let a newbie to drive with such load?
Good question. Prolly cheaper? Or life lessons.
Well is it rather sad or funny that nobody is asking what happened to that woman? ^^
I guess that all, like me assumed that if she was hurt badly it would have been mentioned.
mfg eX (currently banned for unsportsmanlike conduct)
She was lightly injured along with her trainer
Well, I see they have got the pre-test server as the Havok physics haven’t yet been implemented. We want those too! Oh, wait. We don’t because flipping your tank around doesn’t make for much of a fun game, not looking forward to that. ^^
Btw, is this the Olifant Mk1B or is it the A? The camera angels in combination with the turret being all smashed up makes it so I can’t tell.
Probably was a MK1B.
No worries. Ductape can fix the damage XD
Soo… they hired SerB’s construction company to do work..
I think that WG could hire the driver, because she has experience in wrecking good tanks.
Not much of a hill, I was expecting it to be steeper.
That pass is long and drops over 650m during it’s 36km length.
It’s not too much of a full on gradient, but there are some people who go hell for leather down the pass (much to the enjoyment of the KZN traffic dept’s bank account!) and basically drive like morons.
Couple that with an inexperienced driver managing a hefty load and I’m not surprised it got out of control.
FWIW about pings from SA, I solved that problem by moving to the UK :D Though the guys back in SA who I platoon with run about 220-300. I see tons of Saffa’s on the EU servers.
this is why you can’t just tell a newbie to do a hardcore stuff,, and now look,, more money lost on recovering a tank and it’s rig
I am proudly South African. You probably have more SA readers than you know SS :-)
Same here man. (By the way is your username pronounced the Afrikaans way? :) )
HEHEHE been wondering the same.
why in the hell let a women drive
Possibly because women are less likely to drive like the vehicle is an extension of their tiny tiny little dick and hence behaviour like morons on the road?
Why let women drive? Why stop there? Why let them vote? Why let them work? Why let them pick their husband?
Are you starting to get my drift?
Or are you still sitting there with your head buried in the 19th century?
U have readers in Belize too mate(y)
Well, THAT’S a career-limiting error.
First thing I noticed on back of truck was “Abnormal” sign. That caused my brain to flash to “Young Frankenstein” and the whole scene in the lab
“Would you mind telling me whose brain I did put in?”
“Abbie someone”
“Abbie someone…Abbie who?”
“Abbie Normal”