Tank blowing an engine in "Bridge at Remagen"?

[willysmb44]

 

I've always wondered what happened to this M-24 in this scene. All of a sudden it's just throwing out white smoke but keeps going. Blew a header maybe? I have no idea but have always wondered...

[Navybean]

Smoke screen?

[12A54]

Some tanks had smoke generating capability. When you engage it, raw diesel sprays onto the hot manifold and is vented out the rear grill doors. It was a good thick screen, but often silhouetted the generating tank. And the screen was thick, so it worked best if the formation was in echelon with the smoke providing cover to the trailing tanks.

[willysmb44]

This is for a movie shoot. If you see the film, the tank shudders before it starts spewing out smoke. It's also not remotely relevant to the plot.

Sure looks like some manner of mechanical malfunction, but I never dealt with tanks with gasoline engines when I was in the Army, so I'm not sure what kind of malfunction would do this.

[hbtcoveralls]

couple of things it could have been

1 overheating, the M-24 had twin cadillac engines and a large single radiator that was subject to overheating and when it did the plume was tremendous

2 I've see a broken transmission cooler line do the same thing. the M-24 had automatic transmissions with remote coolers and when the line would break spewing hot transmission oil all over the hot engines you got huge smoke if you're lucky or smoke if you're not.

3 could've been a blown engine, although most of the time it doesn't keep generating smoke it just puffs and stops.

Tom Bowers

[Third Herd]

I don't know if the M-24 had a vacuum assisted hydralic system, but when I was in Korea one of their M-16 Halftracks was pumping out smoke like that. A Tech Rep I worked with was a WW II Vet said that it was sucking hydralic fluid into the cylinders with the fuel/air mix.

[hbtcoveralls]

I don't know if the M-24 had a vacuum assisted hydralic system, but when I was in Korea one of their M-16 Halftracks was pumping out smoke like that. A Tech Rep I worked with was a WW II Vet said that it was sucking hydralic fluid into the cylinders with the fuel/air mix.

In that case the halftrack would be sucking it's brake fulid into the intake manifold due to a broken hydrovac unit. That would indeed make a lot of smoke too, however the Chaffee tank did not use hydraulic assisted brakes but instead had mechanical direct acting brakes.

Tom Bowers