While visiting the battlefront of the Iran/Iraq war, we inspected lot of tanks - T-50's, 60, and American M-47's, 60's and Chieftains from Iran. We would personally inspect these items to make sure they were not in use and were indeed hulks - not appearing 'abandoned' for a skirmish once the Canadian peacekeeping force went away.
What surprised me was that most of the tanks that did get penetrated were nothing but molten aluminum inside yet looked pristine on the outside. Once a tank cooked off - you rarely found remains inside as it was a molten-metal mix.
