Reply #28: Oh, man, there's a job I don't want.

[sofa king]

Perhaps it's changed, but when the Soviets made their bread and butter by selling crummy T54/55s around the globe, they never put in climate control systems. In the tropic sun, those things heat up just like rocks or black plastic car seats. And some poor sonofabitch is going to be expected to crawl around in those things. Above a certain temperature--around 130 deg. F, I think--the human brain actually forgets to breathe, and you have to do it consciously or suffocate. Screw that!

But tanks work surprisingly well in the jungle, if you have plenty of people to tend 'em and occasionally drag them around (yes, drag, with human muscle power when necessary). One tank showing up to a jungle fight has sometimes been enough to end it. At the Battle of Kohima, British soldiers bulldozed a trail to a mountain summit, then dragged a single Grant tank up it, then turned it loose on the Japanese position below at the Deputy Commissioner's (former, totally destroyed) tennis court, which helped to crack the entire Japanese line.