I have a few questions on ARVs, perhaps to start a discussion on them.

When they attempted to recover under were they able to hook up the tank to be recovered while still protected by armor, or would they have to expose the crew to fire while hooking up?

How far from the front lines would a ARV normally be? If a tank broke down, or got stuck, while in a fire fight, would the ARV take minutes, hours, or days, to get to it to get it out?

Would a Sherman ARV likely to be able to get a stuck Sherman out of swamp, a creek, or really soft ground, all by itself, or would it possibly need two of them to pull it out?

These are really just conversation starters as much as anything. Anybody else have some questions jump in.

According to FAS.org
"Within Force XXI, HERCULES will operate as part of the Forward Support Company (FSC) Combat Repair Team (CRT) that provides combined organizational and direct support maintenance to each maneuver company. The CRT is the maneuver battalion’s first level of maintenance support."

Because they are forward deployed, depending on verious factors (unit commanders approval to go and recover the vehicle, position, readiness of the crew, how spread out the units are) I would say anywhere from half an hour to a couple hours.

As far as recovery while under armor, I don't think that is completely possible. The M88A2 has a lot of features that reduces workload on the three person crew, but I think that is one of the reasons for body armor and suppressing fire. Take into consideration that a supporting tank would probably be nearby supporting the disabled tank; even the disabled tank could have the potential to provide covering fire depending on the amount of damage received.

If the fighting is still too hot, another supporting Abrams can tow its disabled comrade to relative safety while the Hercules comes up.

Jeff

Yes the crew has to get out & carry the cables, hook up the pintles/hooks/etc, and all that stuff.

One doesn't really recover under fire per se, but police up the battlefield after the fight has moved on.
Armor/Mech battalions have some recovery capability, backed up by DS maintenance. Basically how quick they start the work depends on where the fight took place in relation to the Bn/Bde/Div trains, etc. But we're really talking same getting it done ASAP. How quickly one gets everything cleared is a function of the number of recovery vehicles, the number to be recovered, and distances to travel (to a collection point). Also note that in some cases, crews/maint can take actions to self-recover a damaged item so an ARV isn't needed. I'm thinking of "short-tracking" & things like that ....

What it takes to recover something depends on a lot of factors -- condition of the vehicle to be recovered, terrain, and all sorts of factors related to effects on the pulling power of the vehicle and/or winches. My worst recovery was that of an M88 in a bog where to get the right pulling angles we were restricted to an intersection of narrow dirt roads; we used the stuck M88's front winch pulling against a 2nd M88 which was an anchor (it's front winch was inop), using the winches of a D-7 dozer & M123 tractor pulling from the side & rear. Others have been much more straight forward ....

I recommend Belton Cooper's book, "Death Traps: Survival of an Armoed Division in WW2" as a good read on the whole battlefield recovery, maintenance, and resupply operation ....

John (who was Ordnance Automotive Maintenence, Mr Good-Wrench to an Armored Bde, before they made him a Quartermaster bean-counter, sob !!!!)