Inside and Out: BMP-2 Infantry Fighting Vehicle Tour

hey guys and welcome back to my channel i'm sophie line we're at the national armor and cavalry collection here at fort benning in georgia and i'm here with one of the dedicated volunteers from the team and we're going to show you a new vehicle today hello everybody it's bill again uh from the national armored calvary collection i'm one of the volunteer mechanics here uh today we're going to talk about a slightly different vehicle i'm used to talking about which is the bmp2 now the bmp2 is the second iteration of the bmp series of course it started with the bmp1 this one has a lot of very different features than the bmp1 had it also has some of the same features especially in the hull so this vehicle came out about 1986 1988 used extensively by the soviet union also a lot of warsaw pac countries uh middle east uh it's probably one of the most proliferated proliferated vehicles in the world and just so everybody knows i am not a bmp2 expert so when i get something wrong kind of take it with a grain of salt okay so we're going to start a little walk around here of course this is the bmp2 one of the first things you notice between the two and the one series of course is the size of the turret now the early bmp-1 of course had a one-man turret had a 73-millimeter man gun fired an at4 missile off the top now the bmp-2 they went to a two-man turret shooting a 30 millimeter automatic cannon with an at5 missile system on the top which of course you can see right now is somewhat missing but we'll rectify that as as time goes by i'm going to start up here at the front and just point out some some of the things that are the same some of the things that are different okay so the basic hull of the vehicle is much like the bmp1 it's slightly higher it's got a very high ground clearance the tracks are the same the basic hole retains the same shape same power plant same entrance and egress doors but what makes this vehicle different which is kind of exciting for us but not maybe not so much for you are the fenders now when you look at a lot of bmps it's just a standard thin piece of sheet metal that extends out over the tracks uh just to keep down on dust and also help propel it to the water because it is amphibious uh these fenders are actual originals and what it is they're almost a foot thick they're full of foam so that foam increases the buoyancy of the vehicle in the water it's the only vehicle we have in the collection that still retained its original fenders i know it doesn't sound exciting but it's just one of those neat little isms so the trim vein here just like any other vehicle the trim vein is made to fold out helps to keep a nose up attitude when it enters the water that way it just doesn't plow down under and of course helps it with buoyancy here right in the front you have the the driver's station of course behind him is the two-man turret with the 30 millimeter auto cannon and the missile launcher right behind the driver would be the dismount squad leader so he's the guy that jumps out with all the guys that live in the back until they make contact on the turret itself uh the standard soviet style smoke grenade launchers uh three on each side for total six uh the gunners primary site is right up there next to that is a is a daylight searchlight over on the other side is an ir searchlight for night operations so you have the 30 millimeter auto cannon next to it would be for the coaxial machine gun gunner on the left vehicle commander on the right which we'll go over that as we get inside i just kind of show how cramped and how much is actually in there uh and then down the hole side here you have three holes these are for the f3 inside to fire their weapons in combat from the protection of the vehicle so this one you notice it's larger than this one and that one that is for the machine gunner there's actually a special mount that you'll see once we get in there that he mounts his machine gun in there and then these two guys right here are just firing their standard ak-47s or ak-74s so continuing on uh standard bmp track now unlike some of the other amphibious vehicles the soviets have this one doesn't use any kind of propulsion in the water as as far as like a uh a water jet or an extra propeller it actually uses the tracks to move the water to propel the vehicle forward and that's why there's these flats back here to draw in water and actually force the water around the tracks therefore allowing it to propel itself forward okay getting to the back doors here i have one open one closed there's a reason for that i want to get one open so far still working on the one on the right side now this vehicle looks rough a lot of rust and things like that but what makes this vehicle great is it is so complete rust can be sanded away paint can be applied but to actually have a vehicle that is as complete as this one is great for us because then we're not trying to scavenge parts from other vehicles to to bring it up to 100 so the back doors real simple two doors and it retains the same as the bmp1 and everybody gets all excited about this those rear doors are actually the fuel tanks so yes that is there is truth to that i know a lot of people don't like that because it gets hit there's explosions there's fire but just think when these are empty that's spaced armor for the rear of the vehicle so of course the other side now as you'll notice on this one there is another firing port for the guy in the back that opens up and that's for his ak-47 now the one on this side doesn't have one i don't have a reasoning behind that except that maybe all they needed was was one machine gun facing through the rear it also has two top hatches for the crew to to stick out and stretch their legs uh along road marches of course they'll close those before they go into contact you look down the right side of the vehicle it's basically a mirror image of the left side of course machine gun port up front the two ak-47 ports uh the same fenders same smoke grenade launchers and there's the ir spotlight up there on the vehicle commander's hatch so with that we'll dive inside okay okay so here we are in the back of the bmp2 uh nice shady spot plenty of legroom as you can see now this the people who designed this vehicle really didn't care much for crew comfort because when you think about it you've got all these guys lined up and i'm six foot tall so maybe i'm a little tall for your standard crewmen but this is how they sat the rifle between their legs and then of course the ports for their weapons so on a long road march this could become rather troublesome for tall people so as i was talking about the firing ports before so that's an ak-47 firing port that's an ak-47 firing port this is the firing port for the actual machine gun and you'll see all it is is a simple system this part comes out it slides it goes around the ak-47 then when you put it back in it locks into place and they just look out their periscopes which are not in right now and fire their weapon so these were made to mount to the side and the whole idea was to hopefully vent the gases coming off the weapon to the outside that way they were back here choking and squeezing and carrying on so now up here is the machine gun mount once again doesn't look like much but it's kind of nice that it's here uh same idea but you mounted an actual machine gun here so this guy in this position was looking through his periscope trying to fire the fire's machine gun off to the left front of the vehicle so kind of an interesting setup of course behind him is another fuel tank so get internal fuel yet external fuel normally they would burn off that external fuel on the movement up and then once they get into contact they would switch to internal fuel tanks uh batteries electronics so on and so forth uh nothing real special or eye-catching back here just not a lot of room okay great okay well here we are in the commander's position of the bmp2 uh as you can see it's a tight fit uh i actually couldn't get all the way in here because i couldn't get my legs over the gun controls uh so just to point out a few of the major features so of course starting down here by my left knee is the weapons control system i don't read russian so i really can't explain in detail what everything means uh then going up this actual hopper here is the hopper for the spent cartridges so they come out of the gun they fall in you discard them later by my left hand is the ready box leading up to the coaxial machine gun that mounts here and of course over to the 30 millimeter auto cannon uh and if i could get the turret to the gun tube to race i'm not going to show you a little more of that but it's a little stuck right now we'll fix that in the next episode uh and then over to the commander's night vision viewer uh normally it's on a race so you can kind of look around there's a corresponding search light out there with it that you saw earlier and then over to the commander's site for the main weapon and the controls for his weapon what's interesting about these controls is both on this side and you'll see the gunner station in a minute on that side it's pretty much the exact same controls so regardless of what side you're in you can perform the same basic functions of firing the weapon and also another interesting little tidbit when you look in here and if you ever look inside of a t72 or any other russian tank the controls are very very very similar so if you can theoretically operate one you can operate the other because it's still the same muscle memory so going around the back side here of course your standard issue russian radio uh nothing super special but this one's in really really really good shape we got about four of these now been kind of uh scrolling my way um down here by my right knee is the ammunition feed system so the ammo rides up between these bars and goes up into the gun if you can kind of see that so it's a it's a fixed shoot here it's a semi semi-flexible shoot up here to feed the rounds into the gun all your rounds are actually stored down here underneath my right foot i actually got the cover down so the rounds come are stored under they come around behind me into the main ready box right here so you're feeding rounds actually from where the camera person is sitting all the way around here is a rack for one of the anti-tank missiles put it here because it's easy easy to get to that way you can go up there and put the new cartridge in it doesn't load like a sagger did we could actually load it from inside these here are so bulky kind of like a tow missile you actually have to get up there and click a new one into place so with that being said we'll move on to the gutter station okay well welcome to the bmp2 gunner station uh we've moved over here from the commander station as you can see it's a little less room than what the commander enjoyed on the right side uh same basic setup uh control handles just like on the commander's side uh the gunners sight both daylight and ir set slightly higher with commanders were still hard for us tall guys to get in there but it's possible traversing mechanism for the turret is here and then down on your left hand is your manual traverse for when these go out and your right hand is the manual elevation for when you can't do this anymore so over here is your turn azimuth indicator lets the gunner look quickly and uh in relation to the hole which way he's pointing uh that way if he sees the target he can call it out and say you know i've got a target at 10 degrees and the commander can check it out and even tell him to fire not fire so as far as that goes the gunner station's a lot more simple uh he can still reach the the gun control panel down here just like the commander can uh he can still get to the radio behind here maybe a little harder and still get to the stored missile that's stored down between the two people he does have all-around periscopes even though they're not in yet that getting from left to kind of a a front right view and that's pretty much it for the gutter station so i'm i'm not six foot i'm about 510 or a meter 79 if you don't speak freedom units but this is actually a lot more comfortable for me than for bill is and it's not so bad actually it can reach everything kind of just fine and it's quite a bit more comfortable for somebody that would be my height or below so not so bad so far of course i said this is the bmp2 it's the the next version off the bmp series uh now they're already up to bmp4 now the the main difference is when you go from a bmp2 to a bmp3 they're wildly different vehicles uh they look nothing alike they actually in the later versions they went with the same 30 millimeter cannon but they also paired it with 100 millimeter cannon uh but it's also 100 millimeter low pressure gun much like the 73 millimeter was so you don't you don't have a lot of recoil and blast and such but for them now it gives them an anti-tank and an anti-infantry capability in the main gun alone paired with the at5 that they mount up top now when you look at the diff between the bmp1 and the beam p2 and the bmp3 and b4 they actually start getting a little smaller their their external sizes seem to grow but their internal sizes seem to shrink when you look at the bmp-1 the guys in the back actually enjoy pretty decent room but because it was only a small one-man turret that's what gave them that room now they've grown this turret to a two-man turret added in an ammunition handling system and radios and stuff like that uh they're taking away room from their main purpose which is to carry these infantry guys into combat and dump them off in contact okay well we're outside now i wanted to cover a little bit of this top part uh that we talked about inside and also talked about on the ground this way you can actually see it so as before you have the vehicle commander's hatch here the gunners hatch here the squad leaders hatch here we'll talk about that a little more in a second and then of course the driver's hatch on the front left and we'll be covering that next so starting with commander's hatch of course we talked about that's his ir searchlight has its cover on right now uh this is the cover for the commander's site system that i pointed out earlier going over this is the launcher for the at5 uh slightly different than the at4 on the bmp1 it was actually set forward and it was a missile on an at5 it's just a tube much like a tow is and finally ending with the gunner's hatch his daylight searchlight and the gunner siding system that i pointed out earlier so there's his periscopes as we go forward this is where the 30 millimeter cannon comes out of the turret the coaxial machine gun to the left of it and of course the night search light with his cover on again off to the right so as we move forward now the whole area where the camera is currently taking up space this is all engine and transmission so on from the very front of the turret all the way to the edge of the front hull and then from the driver's hatch to all the way to the right is all engine and transmission and they get to that through different access points and of course the main door right there with the alligator armor on it so now going over here to the squad leaders hatch what i always found makes this hatch interesting is there's a very small area going from here to the back so the guy that takes up this area if something were to happen to this vehicle and he can't get out that hatch i.e a catastrophic hit they rolled over whatever he has a very slim chance of getting out because that's such a hard area to navigate to get out of here now he can get out through the driver's hatch but if you're in a situation where that hatch doesn't open you're going to be in the same situation with the driver's hatch so kind of a bad spot to be you had the same hatch on the bmp1 uh and that guy actually had a searchlight that mounted right in front of his hatch that in turn blocked the main gun from traversing over to the left that actually had to raise the gun up over it so they got rid of that dead spot but it's still a really really bad place to sit so i'm going to move on to the driver station so how are we going to do this feet first customer so welcome to the driver's position on the bmp2 uh right now i'm actually sitting in the seat for the squad leader i was talking about earlier and as you can see behind me with the turret right there i've got a very small egress to the rear uh so he also has an area here to fire his ak-47 using the same system as in the back uh and imagine being the driver right here with your head right here and a guy firing his rifle on full auto six inches from your ear so probably not conducive to good hearing all right so the driver station itself is very very simple so all around periscopes so you can see from about the front right of the vehicle all the way around to a hard left interesting controls kind of like a a bicycle so push down go right push down go left standard pedal arrangement gas pedal braking clutch everything else you see back there of course once again cyrillic there's a lot of valves uh to control fuel flow to control the trim vein up front uh just basically the nerve center of the vehicle he also has a system down here if you can see it that lets him know at what inclination or degrees he's currently driving so if the commander says hey i want you to drive at 30 degrees for 30 miles all he has to do is watch that and then watch how how long he travels or how far he travels to get to where he's going kind of a rudimentary navigation system not like what you had before was basically a computer screen that just points you in the right direction yeah keep it simple yep so standard gauge setup rpms fuel uh heat of the transmission heat of the engine you know not much difference uh circuit breakers across the top uh warning lights and such patch control lever which i won't do now and of course his seat now once again the seat is actually folded down if i was sitting right here right now i would probably be at about above shoulder def late sticking up on that hatch so once again made for for rather short guys to operate these vehicles and also kind of a challenge to get in and out of i can barely look up and see the camera um so with that that is the interior and exterior view of the bmp2 [Music] that feels so good [Music] right that was not built for you i have problems i got nothing but problems [Music] all right cozy not bad actually for me but once again we have to put that seat down a little bit i think i feel a bit exposed slightly thank you guys so much for watching bill and i are out here at the national armor cavalry collection and if you want to see more of that i have some links down below follow them on social media to see some more vehicles and more progress on the collection as it goes like and subscribe this video for more and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Sofilein

Views: 426,213

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Id: 5aNYPipsqOI

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 13 2022