Big tank small tank.

[Cabbage Patch]

...Tanks are mainly meant to engage enemy armor or fortified positions. They can be vulnerable to enemy infantry if the friendly infantry can't keep them clear...

Tanks are actually extremely effective at killing infantry, especially when they attack in mass. An M-1 has a 120 mm main gun. The anti-tank rounds aren't that effective against anything but other tanks, but the HE rounds should be quite effective. And the M-1 has an anti-personnel round that is basically a five-inch wide shotgun shell firing razor-sharp flachettes capable of shredding ranks of human bodies.

The M-1 has three machineguns. There is a 50 caliber on the turret with a 100 round belt that can be operated by the commander from inside the tank. There is a 7.62 mm machinegun on the turret that has a 200 round belt, but (on older models) can only be fired while exposed. Then there's a 7.62 mm machinegun mounted alongside the canon. This one is the real killer. It is linked to the tank's fire control computer, and can accurately hit "point targets" (read individual people) at about a mile range, which makes it almost as effective as a sniper. And that gun is fed by a bin containing 14,000 rounds, and there are another 10,000 or so rounds stored inside the turret so it can be reloaded during a battle.

There have been some gnarly battles that pitted tanks against massed infantry. The best example is probably the Battle of Kapyong during the Korean War, which pitted American tanks with Australian and Canadian infantry against a large scale Chinese infantry attack. The terrain and obstacles slowed the Chinese advance, giving the tanks, infantry, artillery and air support the maximum time to fire on them. Chinese troops still broke through the line, and swarmed some of the tanks trying to open hatches and throw in grenades, only to be swept off by machinegun fire from other tanks. In the end the Chinese withdrew, leaving behind 1,000 dead and many more wounded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kapyong

If Colonel Kimmet had learned the lessons from this battle Fort Irwin might not have fallen.

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