4 ms·
Makes sense about the bridges and roads thing. You need to know that for tanks. Even today in Germany you’ll see tiny bridges crossing a stream, a sign right by
by Top19 9y ago
Makes sense about the bridges and roads thing. You need to know that for tanks. Even today in Germany you’ll see tiny bridges crossing a stream, a sign right by that says “this bridge rated for 70,000 pounds” (so can hold multiple tanks at once).
- fnj 9y agoMultiple? A Main Battle Tank such as the German Leopard 2 weighs 62,300 kg (137, 347 lb). Even a puny WW2 Sherman medium tank weighed in the neighborhood of 70,000 lb.
- sspiff 9y agoAn M4 Sherman weighed about 35 tons when including fuel, crew and ammunition. So technically, it could hold two, though it would be a risky endeavor.
- brndnmtthws 9y agoA lot of bridges everywhere are marked with their capacity. I don't think it's necessarily for the purpose of tanks.
- hoppelhase 9y agoI think he relates to the bridge signs of the NATO. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Load_Classification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Load_Classification
- brndnmtthws 9y agoInteresting, never knew about this.
- xorcist 9y agoIs that literally true? I would have expected Germans to rate their bridges in tons, not pounds/pfund.
- hoppelhase 9y agoI live in Germany and have never seen a sign using pounds, only tons.
- avar 9y agoRead the German Wikipedia article on the subject which shows German signs in short tons (non-metric unit): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militärische_Lastenklasse https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militärische_Lastenklasse
- dom0 9y agoThe class numbers only roughly correspond to weight, so you could just as well consider them metric tons (1000 kg).
- avar 9y agoYou definitely can't consider them metric tons. If the bridge you're about to cross has a maximum advertised load of 120 sh tn and you consider it safe to drive your 120 m tn vehicle over the bridge on the basis of that you're going to be putting a 132.3 m tn load on the bridge, or roughly 10% more than it's rated for.
- dom0 9y agoAs I said above, these signs do not show a literal maximum weight. They show a load class.
- avar 9y agoRight, I was overly simplifying. I meant to say a 120 sh ton MLC-calculated weight, not a vehicle that's exactly 120 tons since as the article goes into the class needs to take into account axle count etc. What I don't understand is your claim that "you could just as well consider them metric tons". These are short tons with caveats, i.e. the eventual number depends on more than just the raw weight, but the raw weight is one aspect of the calculation. So if you were to make that calculation on the basis of metric instead of lbs how aren't you going to introduce something like a 10% error in the MLC you come up with?
- dom0 9y agoThose are MLC (Military Load Classification) signs.