Playing baseball with tanks and rocket launchers
Last night, NTV attempted to determine the speed of a baseball fired from the barrel of a tank. To conduct the epic experiment, they enlisted the help of the Cambodian military, which saw the TV show as a means of spreading PR about how Cambodia is now a peaceful nation with a professional military.
Cambodia’s military initially responded to NTV’s request by suggesting that the experiment be conducted with a rocket launcher (RPG) instead of a tank:
The attempt ended in a spectacular failure. The baseball, which had been taped onto the rocket, fell off the moment the weapon was fired. The rocket propelled grenade blew the dummy batter into pieces, making it impossible to continue with the experiment.
After the disappointed NTV crew returned to Japan, they got a call from the Cambodian military promising that they could come back and use a tank.
The program claimed that the Cambodian military made a modification to the type of shell fired by the T-55 tank so that it could launch a baseball. However, the actual loading of the gun was blurred out as a “military secret,” so it is impossible to know whether or not some fakery took place. A baseball did appear to come out of the cannon, and NTV measured its speed to be 327 km/h (about 203 mph).
Bonus Clip: As part of the promised PR work for the Cambodia military, NTV had actor Takatoshi Kaneko participate in some military drills with their troops. Below is a clip of Kaneko freaking out like an idiot at the sight of firearms.
[If you liked this post, you'll probably like our older post about rocket launchers being fired at bulletproof glass!]
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Yeah what a kid. In Japan though it is illegal to own a firearm, so it could be the first time he seen one live t__t 旋条の初めて一泡吹かせる.
I know that most Japanese have never seen a gun but come on now. He is a grown man! He should have a bigger pair then that.
Awesome, thanks for uploading this! I mentioned this on my Twitter and a bunch of people wrote me asking if it was online somewhere. Sadly, neither my wife nor I could remember the name of the show!
I agree there could have been some serious funny business with the tank, and I’m having trouble understanding why a ball moving that fast would bounce short of the target, but it clearly wasn’t coming out of the barrel on a straight trajectory.
If they had really used a tank shell and the tank’s gun I believe the barrel would have moved. The barrel would have recoiled backwards into the tank, whether they used blanks or not. That’s the basic mechanism. In fact, it remains completely stationary.
Also, a T-55’s barrel is rifled, and there would be about 28mm of play between the diameter of the barrel and the width of the ball. The ball, being pushed through the barrel at a high rate of speed, would have gotten thoroughly chewed up just traveling the length of the barrel.
I think it’s likely they stuffed the baseball into the tip of the barrel with a few M-80s behind it.
I think it’s faked. Mythbusters would have done it much more accurately. Grant Imahara can act goofy, but he’s not Don Knotts caliber the way Kaneko is.