ShakyJake

Well yes, that's an assumption. The shell is hitting the forward side hull, which makes it a little easier to forget about that.

What Yankeedog says correct. When a shell is capable of significantly more penetration than what the armored plate represents, it won't lose a proportional amount of energy getting through it, but rather much less. There should also be some deformation of the nose in the shell as Yankeedog says, but I'll ignore it now out of convenience. Nathan Okun's published equations for single-plate equivalency of two spaced plates is expressed as: Total Resistance = [(Resistance Plate1)^1.4 + (Resistance Plate2)^1.4]^(1/1.4) With a little manipulation of the above equation, you can substitute a gun's penetration for the total resistance, and the plate you're examining for one, and the remaining plate will effectively become the remaining penetration potential of the shell. Rearranging the equation it could be expressed as: Remaining Penetration = [(Gun Penetration)^1.4 - (Resistance Plate)^1.4]^(1/1.4) In the OP's scenario, you have both a Stuart and Sherman being penetrated at about a 500m range. I can't see the Stuart's profile, but the Sherman is being struck at around a 30° angle, so we'll assume the same for the Stuart. The shell passes through both 29mm armor plates on the Stuart, and penetrates the 38mm side hull armor on the Sherman. At 500m, the 75mm L/70 can penetrate up to 168mm at 0°. So doing it step by step, we find that: Stuart first side armor plate: 29mm@30° ~ 35mm, shell penetrates with 154mm of penetration remaining. Stuart second side armor plate: 29mm@30° ~ 35mm, shell penetrates with 140mm of penetration remaining. Sherman first side armor plate: 38mm@30° ~ 48mm, shell penetrates with 116mm of penetration remaining. So from a pure penetration point of view, the OP's scenario is highly probable. Following the calculations through, it could even exit the second Sherman to go through a third Sherman completely before being stopped on the side armor of a fourth. It would even appear that some minor deflection of the shell may have happened in this case, as the two explosion sprites don't quite line up with the Panther's position in the back. So everything above is probably working as intended in the physics model. The only thing missing is the HE burster setting off the shell after the first penetration. The shell shouldn't have continued through so many penetrations without detonating, and if casualties are being determined with the HE burster calculated on each penetration as surmised in the half-track thread, that could be a problem.

Well, if this scenario was to happen in real-life with that requirement, I imagine the HE burster would have gone off after all... eventually. If the HE burster's fuse is anything like the standard model, it has to be armed though the centripetal force of the shell's rotation pulling a side stop out of the way of the percussion pin and the starter block, after which the only thing keeping the two apart is a spring. Since there's no magical way to say "detonate on 30mm or more of armor!" to the fuse, it would have to operate on impulse, so that once the shell lost a proper fraction of its current velocity the starter block would continue traveling forward (against the resistance of the spring) into the pin, setting it off. Even though each small penetration is less than the designed-for resistance, so many of them all in probably less than a tenth of a second would have probably been a sufficient impulse to strike the pin. Take that with a grain of salt, if you like. It's not documented fact or researched opinion, but rather a chance for me to throw a little Engineering towards something fun for a change. I'd even be willing to bet that a shell designed under that specification would probably go off by firing it through a thick enough bank of leaves. Well, a very thick bank of leaves. It is a fairly interesting piece of engineering, though, as this would allow shells to be fired into a target behind concealment or light cover without risk of the shell detonating prematurely, assuming it all worked correctly. Thanks for the share.

Sorry, but I don't know that I'm following your meaning, here. All German AP rounds 20mm and up had an explosive filler. The only shells to lack this bursting charge was the tungsten-cored PzGr.40 ammunition, for obvious reasons. If this Panther was using the standard PzGr.39 ammunition (which had a bursting charge), you'd expect it to detonate the shell immediately following the first penetration. I suppose it's possible that thin-skinned vehicles might have armor too thin to set off this bursting charge, as it's the sudden deceleration of the shell as velocity is lost through the penetration which triggers the fuse. This is complete speculation on my part, though if the engine models the physics to this level that's pretty cool indeed.

Shouldn't the HE bursting charge preclude something like this? Or is there some chance modeled in the game that the fuse will be defective, and this was an extraordinary piece of luck (well, for him at least)?

It doesn't really say "deployed" anywhere, so far as I've found. It'll just say "not deployed" in the profile picture if it's not actually deployed. If you give your MG squad a movement order and hit "/" to give them a deploy order afterwards, they'll start to do it when they stop. You can also check that they've got the order by looking in the proper order tab (can't remember which it is), and making sure that the deploy order is greyed out (currently being ordered to do it).

That's good to know, and certainly something I didn't know before. Thank you. This might be getting a bit off-point and just a correction, but the additional protection I'm speaking of on the Tiger mantlet does not come from the overlap of mantlet and front turret armor. It was a complex shape, and some sections of the mantlet itself were simply thicker than the 100mm figure (sometimes much thicker). There were also 100mm sections, as well as the areas in front of the trunions which seem to have been 90mm. The point I was trying to make is that sometimes these books tend to pull a single value for armor thickness based on an average, since some structures might be too complex to list individually. I'm not saying that's the case with the Panther (and Bastables seems to have a very good explanation here anyway), but offering this up as a suggestion.

According to some sources, sure. But then, GvA gives 100mm as the thickness of the the Tiger's mantlet, too, and there've been core measurements made since showing it to be around 120mm or more in many spots. Separate case, I know, but it's a possibility that could explain this.

Well, after creating my own little test scenario and having at it, I agree that "weapon mount" is a hit to the mantlet. Hits to the "front turret" are considerably more rare, but there is some area showing from the front under and to the sides of the mantlet that can be hit and penetrated. When I used a 20x zoom "over the shoulder" of the 76mm Sherman, it was actually pretty easy to see precisely when these spots were getting hit. I'll also say that I was running into the same problem. Despite loading a scenario with a number of target tanks and 76mm Shermans, any hits on the weapon mantlet (at 200m to recreate your own woes) failed to penetrate. Against a 100mm cast turret (equivalent to about 95mm of RHA), this works out to be equal to the calculated penetration of the M62 round at 30° and 250m. Barring any lateral angle, approximately half of the mantlet's aspect would give this 30° angle or less, so I really expected to see at least some partial penetrations there. Then again, I've seen a few sources that also say this mantlet was more than 100mm, some even going as high as 120mm. This would change the scenario a bit, as in the above case penetration was rather close to begin with. In any case, your idea of the penetration being made "easily" goes right out the window, and if the mantlet is indeed as much as 120mm thick, I guess it fits the ballistics for it to resist even a 76mm APCBC at such short range.

I believe "weapon mount" here refers to the entire weapon system, including the barrel, but not necessarily the mantlet. So in your case my guess would be that shots are hitting the barrel and bursting, knocking the gun out, but failing to continue and penetrate the turret. And based on the discussion talking about exactly your suggestion that the TacAI allow fine-aiming to target weaker areas, I think you'll find them rather unswayed on that point. They seem to have their minds quite made up about firing center mass.

Nope, that AT gun in the HBO clip is again the 3.7cm PaK 36. It has a very distinctive shape compared to the PaK 38. When this episode first aired, I had actually wondered to myself just how many of those 37mm guns were still around and being used in June of 1944.

Hmmm, it might be worthwhile to maybe generate a few charts showing the relative penetration of various guns, shown together, for that purpose. I've just done a fresh reformat and don't have Matlab installed at the moment, but I could probably do that later when I have some time. Or, having the data out of Rexford's book (and particularly the equations), it might be possible to create some kind of embedded function in javascript or something on a webpage. I don't have any experience at all with that, but if someone had some pointers for where to look I'd be appreciative.

Just how common were smoke grenades in real life, during this time? I seem to recall reading that there were very few issued, and those were generally colored smoke for marking purposes?

Didn't the M-18 have the better 5x magnification optics, as well? That could account for part of the higher kill ratio, if it was simply a more precise gun platform.

One must grokk with deliberation, but never with inordinate haste.