MoD kept failure of best tank quiet
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
12:01AM BST 13 May 2007
One of the British Army's Challenger 2 tanks was pierced by an Iraqi insurgent missile more than eight months earlier than the Government has previously admitted.
The Ministry of Defence had claimed that an attack last month that breached a tank's armour was the first of its kind in four years of war in Iraq. But another Challenger 2 was pierced by a powerful rocket-propelled grenade in August last year during an attack that blew off part of a soldier's foot and injured several others.
The injured soldier's family has accused the Government of a cover-up and demanded to know why soldiers manning Challenger 2 tanks had not been warned of the failings with the tank's armour.
Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said he would challenge the government on why the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had apparently misled the public over the timing of the first incident in which the hugely robust defences of the Challenger had been breached.
He said: "Obviously, no armour is indestructible and there is no doubt that the insurgents have increasingly sophisticated technology but it is important in maintaining public confidence that the MoD and the Government tell the truth to the -British public."
The Challenger 2 is reputed to be one of the most sophisticated tanks in the world and those used in Iraq by the British Army are built with Dorchester armour, the composition of which is top secret. The tank is also fitted with explosive reactive armour (ERA) at its front that should deflect any weapon fired at its hull.
The MoD has finally confirmed that the tank's armour was breached last August and has said that an investigation was conducted to discover why the ERA appears to have failed. However, the department refused to comment on its findings, citing security reasons.
In the August attack, which occurred during an operation to arrest a leading insurgent in the town of al-Amarah, in southern Iraq, the Challenger was damaged when a Russian-made rocket-propelled grenade, known as an RPG-29, defeated the ERA and penetrated the driver's cabin.
The RPG-29 is a much more powerful weapon than the common type regularly used by insurgents to attack British troops. It is specifically designed to penetrate tank armour, although this is the first occasion on which it has managed to damage a Challenger.
During the attack Trooper Sean Chance, a 20-year-old serving with the Queen's Royal Hussars, lost half of his left foot; two other crew members were injured.
The unit's commander described the moment the tank was hit by the missile in a letter he wrote to the wounded soldier in March. The officer wrote: "I recall seeing it [the RPG-29 being fired] and thinking, 'Oh Christ, that's bad.'
"As it slammed into the hull, I was picked up by the shock wave of the blast and thrown against the back wall of the turret. The explosion singed my eyebrows and burnt my face slightly. The tank was full of acrid smoke and fumes. I became aware of you screaming, 'I'm hit, I'm hit. My foot's off.'
"Daz [another crew member] and I looked at each other in slight disbelief - after all, what could possibly breach a CR2's [Challenger's] armour?"
Tpr Chance's mother Kay, 49, from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, said her son had been told that the Challenger was the best in the world and essentially impenetrable to any weapons the insurgents possessed.
She said: "Sean often told me he felt totally safe because he was in the best tank in the world. But we now know that is not the case. The Government has covered it up.
"If I was the mother of the poor soldier who lost his legs last month I would be horrified to think that an earlier attack like this had happened before but none of the soldiers were told about it."
His brother Luke said that Tpr Chance had been "abandoned" by the Army following his injury. He said: "Sean has been forgotten about. He hasn't received his Iraq medal. He's been told he is going to be medically discharged because of his injury but no one has told him when and what sort of pension he might get. It's a disgrace."
A spokesman for the MoD said: "We have never claimed that the Challenger 2 is impenetrable. There is no question of a cover-up. Any suggestion that this was the first successful attack against a Challenger 2 tank was given in good faith based on the information available at the time.
"We would like to reassure the family that lessons were learnt from the incident last August and measures were taken to enhance the protection of our personnel."
On April 6, a Challenger was damaged by a roadside bomb in Basra. In that attack a soldier lost both his legs. Details of the incident were not made public until April 23, when
the MoD claimed: "This was the first successful attack on a Challenger 2. It's the first bomb to have damaged it."
Telegraph.co.uk
