.50 cal machinegun armour piercing

[dog of war]

the .50 machine gun had a armour piercing capability is this modelled in the game

.when it is used against light armour,i never see text saying armour penetrated

was using the british light tank mk6

[zdenka]

i forget which scenario but i had two 38-T's knocked out by a DSkH 12.7mm.multiple partial penetrations of the side turret

[ParaBellum]

The 0.50 cal can penetrate weak armour just fine. Try it out against some SPWs.

[zmoney]

It will ko light armor. It just doesn't tell you detailed pen data like it does when you shoot something with an AT gun.

[Waycool]

I remember ages ago in a CMBB I had some russian 12.7mm DSHk's take out an early PZ IV. The particular version of Pz IV had very poor vision slot protection.

[Sergei]

Likewise, German MG-34 and MG-42 HMG's have AP capability.

[John Kettler]

dog of war,

The Mark VI can and does kill Italian tankettes. I know this for a fact, having done had it done to me in ROW vs. Londoner, I believe. OTOH, the 81mm mortar will kill Mark VIs, too. .50 cal MG fire can also kill light armor, even frontally. 251s get eaten frontally at ~200 meters if memory serves, and I lost a Hetzer once to a jeep driveby shooting via a high speed flank shot.

Regards,

John Kettler

[birdstrike]

When shooting at a vehicle with the .50 zoom in on the target and you should hear the bullets either penetrating or bouncing off the armor.

And I can confirm that it is very effective against medium tanks when aimed at their weak armor.

Had a Sherman kill a PzIV once in the Perano scenario. The Sherman came to a stop ~15m right on the left side of the obviously surprised German tank, but it refused to fire it's main gun. I cursed at first, but then I realized that the commander was firing with his flexible .50 which he deemed to be sufficient. And really, the first salvo must have already caused a casualty, because the PzIV did not even try to turn its turret at my tank, and after the 3rd or 4th salvo the crew bailed, only to be chased down by my tank in a stylish "drive-by-shooting" before the turn ended.

End of story: one abandoned PzIV with all crew killed, used 75-mm rounds: none.

[Screamineagle Bob]

As a side note...While I was in the Army, we trained on the 50 cal against old M113's...and they would penetrate.

[SpitfireXI]

I use .50 cal's and Dskh's like PTRD's on steroids.

[SgtMuhammed]

I think the .50 cal is supposed to penetrate 2in RHA at 0 degrees with AP ammo. That penetration is even greater with the new SLAP rounds but I don't know the exact figures.

Remember that it was an AT weapon when first fielded in WWI.

[JasonC]

2 inches? I don't think so. More like 1 inch if you are lucky. SLAP was used to get penetration above 30mm to deal with Russian choppers in Afghanistan, for example. Plain AP didn't cut it. As for the original purpose, it was anti-material yes, but not anti-tank. Weren't any German tanks to speak of to anti. There were planes, though.

The 50 cal was meant as an AA weapon first of all. That is why it was used so widely in WW II - at the time the US was planning the force, the Luftwaffe was still a terror and the role of air support was played up in all the popular accounts of "blitzkrieg". So they put 50s on everything. In the event, the kind in the wings of P-47s and P-51s had dealt with the Luftwaffe already, so the ground 50s wound up shooting mostly at ground targets.

[Denwad]

JasonC

German captured large amounts of allied tanks during WWI

[Other Means]

I've had a .50 kill 2 PzIV in one battle. He was in the upper story of a building as they went by below and he went straight through the upper deck.

They were unsupported as my opponent had to come through a band of trees and I had BIG arty.

Good times

[JasonC]

Denwad - define "large amounts". Try giving an actual number. Operational counts preferred. Dates would also be helpful.

The only opportunity for any was Cambrai, and they would have been lucky to get a few dozen running after that one.

[jbertles]

Pz IVs seem to be 50 cal magnets. Happened to me as well. A .50 on a hill fired down on the rear of said Pz IV, and the crew bailed on the next turn. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

[JasonC]

Just for the record, the German produced only 20 tanks in WW I, and appear never to have had more than 15 of their own operational. They used about twice as many captured Brit tanks, making less than 50 total.

The Allies produced and fielded 6500 tanks of all types by the end of the war. By the end they were using 30 tanks per mile of front in the biggest offensives. Chances were thus more than 100 to 1 that a tank encountered in WW I was Allied.

Nor was the 50 cal MG designed as an anti-tank weapon. Browning explicitly meant for it to be used against aircraft, both from the ground and as an aircraft mounted weapon itself. It was first accepted by the US army as a ground AA weapon.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

I've seen pre WW 2 newsreels (maybe even official footage) in which watercooled .50s are shown and described as antitank/antiaircraft machine guns.

Regards,

John Kettler