rune

No they are not. Look at your own screenshot, there is not a heat round there. I just doubled checked the screenshot, 21 APC rounds, NO heat. Besides, if the round was in production and intruced in December 1942, why would you think you had it in 1941? Rune [ May 03, 2007, 08:38 AM: Message edited by: rune ]

Not at home, what is the month and year of that scenario? Rune

Go ahead, feel free to argue with Mister Jentz, Mister Livingston, Mister Bird, and the Encyclopedia of German Tanks [and American and british], but I don't remember the authors' names. Rune

From an article I read from a Soviet tanker, every assault gun was an Elephant. The translator had to actually put in a note that the tanker meant a StuG. Might have been on the russian battlefield site. Rune

I posted this in other threads. Kettenhund, What are you looking at? The encyclopedia? How many times do I have to say the internal numbers are correct within 1 mm of several authors. I had authors review the penetration numbers that went into the game. I do NOT know what values and angles were used in the encyclopedia. The figures match Bird and Livingston, jentz, and others. Rune PS. I also do not know the type of armor shot against in the encyclopedia.

Kettenhund, What are you looking at? The encyclopedia? How many times do I have to say the internal numbers are correct within 1 mm of several authors. I had authors review the penetration numbers that went into the game. I do NOT know what values and angles were used in the encyclopedia. The figures match Bird and Livingston, jentz, and others. Rune

Exactly, that ammo is not on the tank, so why look at it? When was the date that ammo was released and in what quanatities? Will have to look it up. Rune

Forgot to put in my sources. Panzer Truppen The Complete Guide to the Creation and Combat Employment of Germany's Tank Force 1933-1942, Thomas L. Jentz, 1996 Panzer Truppen The Complete Guide to the Creation and Combat Employment of Germany's Tank Force 1943-1945, Thomas L. Jentz, 1996 Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two, Peter Chamberlain and Hilary Doyle, 1999

What are you aiming at? If hull, let's take a look. T-34 Mod 41, armour 45mm at 40 degrees, so approx 60mm of armor from a straight on shot. 75mm KwK 37 L/24 penetration value, depending on source, abot 54mm at 0 degree angle. Since 60mm of armor (45 at 40 degrees) is greater then 54mm, why would the shot do anything but bounce off? If you want to take out the angles, lets base everything on 30 degrees shall we? According to Jentz, the gun could penetrate 41mm at 100 meter at 30 degrees, so 43mm at 50 meters. Russian T34 mod 41 45mm without angle, still cannot penetrate unless exceedinly lucky. There was a reason the 75mm was given a longer barrel. Hmm realistic indeed. Rune

Fox, Then you are in for sa shock. Of course play has changed, it had to. Going from 3 person to represent a squad to having the men actually shown and move change the game. Tracking individual bullets change the way the game is played. Play CMSF like CMX1, and you will lose everytime. The game will move slower. At least, if you want your pixeltruppen to survive you will. Also with campaigns, each pixeltruppen's life means something, do cannonfodder like cmx1, and you will hurt in the next mission perhaps. Rune

yeah, it looks like a razorback P-47 to me. If anyone is keeping count. Rune

Penetration as a measure of vehicle-killing effect Using penetration tables takes account neither of behind-armour effect following penetration, nor of non-penetrating damage. In principle, penetrating shell with a bursting charge should have better behind-armour effect than solid shot, but whether this matters in calibres above about 50mm seems highly questionable. The British Army abandoned the APHE round designed for the 2-pounder when it was shown in firing trials to offer no advantages over plain AP shot. The Red Army, in the light of combat experience, modified the BR-240 APHE round of their 45mm anti-tank gun by replacing the bursting charge with solid metal, the result being designated BR-240SP (for sploshniy, сплошный, meaning “solid”). The most supremely futile attempt to improve behind-armour effectiveness must surely be the German inclusion of a small tear-gas pellet in the AP bullet for the PzB 39 anti-tank rifle (arguably not a violation of the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol because the weapon did not rely on gas for its primary effect). It should still be borne in mind that most of these figures indicate the thickness of armour the projectile will just penetrate. The greater the degree to which the armour is overmatched, presumably, the greater will be the damage potential of the penetrating projectile. Hollow-charge weapons are a special case, in that the projectile itself does not penetrate the armour, but rather the jet formed by its charge does. Hollow charge weapons of the WW2 epoch were reputed to have less-than-ideal behind-armour effects. As the Bovington “Fire and Movement” booklet points out, “If the projectile is not an appreciable overmatch for the target, however, the penetration can be small enough to do little damage”. As a general rule, it can be taken that warhead designs designed to achieve maximum penetration sacrifice a measure of behind-armour effect because of their narrower penetrators, being for example half the full calibre in the case of APDS shot, and in the extreme case of HEAT warheads the explosively-formed penetrator is very narrow indeed, meaning less material is projected into the penetrated AFV. Pemberton says, of APDS: “...where APCBC could penetrate, it did greater damage inside the tank and was less likely to pass straight through a lightly armoured target. In consequence both kinds of shot had to be retained in the service.” On the other hand, APHE rounds, by weakening the projectile, may sacrifice penetrative power for behind-armour effect. Whether the behind-armour débris resulting from a penetration inflicts lethal damage depends on who or what it strikes, and, obviously, the less densely the crew and ammunition are packed into the internal volume of the vehicle, the less likely they are to be struck. In the later part of the war, American tank design began to protect ammunition by the use of “wet stowage”, and British by the use of armoured ammunition bins and minimising the number of rounds carried above the turret-ring [ May 01, 2007, 01:18 PM: Message edited by: rune ]

OK, as promised, the definition of different types of shells. Nothing new for the old grog, other then maybe a refreasher, but help to the newer player. Anti-tank ammunition natures It is a common Gunner saying that the weapon of the artillery is not the gun, but the shell. Armour penetration performance cannot be attributed simply to a type of gun, but rather to the combination of gun and ammunition. In British usage, this may be “shot” rather than “shell”. “Shot” is the term used to refer to solid projectiles, and “shell” to those containing a bursting charge of explosive. Improvements in ammunition can produce spectacular changes in the penetrative performance of a gun, and unfortunately many sources quote a penetration figure for a gun without identifying the ammunition nature used. The basic ammunition natures used during WW2 were as follows: AP (Armour Piercing) AP is plain steel shot, the simplest form of anti-tank projectile. This nature was favoured by the British in the early part of the war. APHE (Armour Piercing High Explosive) APHE was preferred by other nations. It contained a small bursting charge intended to increase the damage caused after penetration, at the expense of an increased chance of the projectile shattering on striking armour. Note that projectile shatter does not necessarily mean a “plate win”; DEFE 15/1107 records “shattered penetrations”, where armour is pierced by large splinters of the projectile. APC (Armour Piercing Capped) This is fitted with a piercing cap, to improve performance against face-hardened plate and at high angles of impact by “seating” the nose of the shot firmly at the beginning of penetration, and spreading stresses on the projectile nose to the shoulders so as to prevent the projectile from shattering. APCBC (Armour Piercing Capped Ballistic Capped) In addition to the piercing cap, this has a ballistic cap or windshield fitted to reduce air resistance by making the projectile a more streamlined shape. This has no effect on the mechanics of penetration, but permits the projectile to retain greater velocity (and hence penetrating power) down range. APCR (Armour Piercing Composite Rigid) There is a limit to the velocity at which steel projectiles can be flung against armour plate without shattering. At higher velocities, harder materials are needed, such as tungsten carbide. Unfortunately, this is so dense that a full-calibre projectile would require a prohibitively large charge to achieve any worthwhile velocity. The answer is to use a hard penetrating tungsten carbide core, typically half the calibre of the projectile, surrounded by a lightweight steel body. The composite projectile, being lighter than a standard one, can be fired at higher velocity, although, being lighter, it loses velocity more quickly. There is, therefore, typically a cross-over range beyond which APCR performs less well than standard ammunition. APCNR (Armour Piercing Composite Non-Rigid) Another approach to designing ammunition with a hard tungsten carbide core is that used in “squeeze-bore” guns. Just as in APCR, there is a hard penetrating core surrounded by a lightweight steel body. However, with APCNR the relatively soft body is swaged down to a smaller emergent calibre by the decreasing diameter of the tapered bore. A total of seven “squeeze-bore” weapons were designed during WW2, of which five saw service. In Germany, Dr Gerlich designed the 2.8/2cm SPzB 41, 4.2/3cm lePaK 41 (PJK 41) and 7.5/5.5cm PaK 41, and Dr Grotsch’s 7.5/5.5cm PaK 44 did not see service. The Polish Dr Janaček, working in the UK, developed a “squeeze-bore” adapter that could be fitted to the 2-pounder and US 37mm anti-tank guns. This was known as the “Littlejohn” adapter, an Anglicization of his name. A Littlejohn adapter for the 6-pounder was designed, but never fielded. APDS (Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot) Ultimately the best way of incorporating a hard core was found to be to sheath it in a lightweight surround, or “sabot” (French for “clog”), which fell off when the projectile left the barrel. This created a hazard for accompanying personnel near the line of fire, who might be struck by sabot petals after discarding. APDS does not require a special tapered barrel like APCNR, and does not lose velocity with range as fast as APCR, so the advantages of the approach made it the one that was eventually adopted universally, but during WW2 it was used only by the British and Germans. British APDS designs, due to Coppock and Permutter, used a half-calibre tungsten carbide penetrator, and at least in their early incarnations suffered from accuracy problems due to poor shot seating, but provided fearsome penetrative performance. The Germans used a kind of APDS in some field artillery equipments, but the penetrator was nothing special, being merely the armour-piercing shell of the next-smallest calibre gun provided with sabots. Post-war developments have led to APFSDS, Armour-Piercing Fin-Stabilised Discarding Sabot, typically fired from smoothbore guns, but no projectiles of this kind were fielded during WW2. HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) This is a shaped charge creating a penetrating jet. The other ammunition natures described so far rely on the kinetic energy of the projectile, and hence in part on their striking velocity, to punch through armour. The penetrator of a HEAT warhead, on the other hand, is formed by the detonation of the warhead, so that its penetrating power does not depend on its striking velocity. HEAT warheads exploit the Monroe effect, also known as the von Neumann effect, which was originally observed when the inscribed lettering on blocks of explosive detonated against steel plate produced mirror-writing inscriptions on the plate. A hollow cone in the warhead is lined with copper or similar material, and when the warhead is detonated the liner is very rapidly crushed to form a long, thin penetrator moving at very high velocity. This penetrator is not fully formed until some distance is reached, and as the penetrator tends to stretch as is it produced it dissipates at some greater distance. Achieving the right stand-off distance is therefore criticial to the performance of HEAT warheads, and it is this that spaced armour such as Schürzen can frustrate. Post-war developments have led to shaped charges capable of producing penetrators that do not elongate in flight, but these are generally referred to not as HEAT but as EFP (explosively-formed penetrator) or SFF (self-forging fragment) warheads, and none saw service in WW2. While HEAT offers excellent penetrating power in quite small, low-velocity warheads, the penetrator is very narrow, typically about the width of a pencil, and so tends to produce relatively little behind-armour débris (BAD). HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) While no HESH ammunition saw service during WW2, it was developed at Fort Halstead by Dr Burney, originally under the name “Wallbuster”, as it was intended for the demolition of concrete fortifications. Like HEAT, HESH does not depend on the striking velocity of the projectile for its effect. It works using the Hopkinson effect, whereby the detonation of a blob of plastic explosive on one surface of an armour plate sets up shock waves in the plate that knock fragments (known as “spall”) off the other surface. It is therefore not necessary for HESH to penetrate armour in order to cause severe damage inside a target vehicle; typically the only external mark of an attack against thick plate is shallow dishing. It is therefore the diametric opposite of HEAT in that it produces little or no penetration but large amounts of behind-armour débris. These designators correspond closely with late-war British and American ammunition designations, although the Americans usually referred to APCR as HVAP (High Velocity Armour Piercing). In Russian service, APCR was designated podkaliberniy (подкалиберный) and HEAT as kumulativniy (кумулативный), and neither APCNR nor APDS were used. In German service, the standard armour-piercing projectile in calibres of 5cm and above was the Panzergranate 39, an armour-piercing shell with both piercing and ballistic caps. This should properly be designated APCBCHE, and often is in contemporary British documents, but is now often referred to simply as APCBC. Panzergranate 40 is the German designation for APCR, Panzergranate 41 for APCNR, and Hohlladung (meaning “hollow charge” and abbreviated Hl) for HEAT. In Italian service, HEAT was known as Effeto Pronto. Again, thanks to John D. Salt. Rune

OK, I have played the saved game over 40 times now, and still have not seen anything but the one shot bounce off. The 88mm and the 75mm make holes in the Shermans easily. I head from both Elvis and Elmar, and they are seeing the same thing, ie. no problem other then the odds against the poor Tiger. I'll post one more thing in here, about the different types of ammo before I go off to working on CMSF. Rune

Even added another tester to look things over. I still have NOT seen any bizarre behavior. 6 tanks shooting at the side of a Tiger, or an immobilized Panhter. I still manage to kill 1-3 tanks before losing them. Have NOT see anything but the one bounce, and have seen both the 75mm and 88m go through the Shermans, and the poor M10. Rune

Jaguar, I have played the saved game 4 times, and will play some more yet. I also have one of the beta testers testing it. There is nothing out of the ordinary int he scenario. Each time i destroyed 1-2 Shermans before havinbg the Tiger destroyed. Why would the tiger be killed? Tiger Armor: Armor Data for the Tiger I. Front Side Rear Gun Mantlet 120 mm @ 0° Turret 80 mm @ 0° Turret 80 mm @ 0° Turret 100 mm @ 10° Superstructure 80 mm @ 0° Hull 80 mm @ 0° Superstructure 100 mm @ 9° Hull 60 mm @ 0° Hull 100 mm @ 25° Source: JENTZ, Thomas L.; Germany's TIGER Tanks - Tiger I and II: Combat Tactics; ISBN 0-7643-0225-6 You have 5 Shermans with the advanced 76mm gun, and an M10 fighting a lone Tiger. They are also coming in from the side before the Tiger rotates. Range of the battle is 800 meters. Lets look at the Sherman's gun. 76mm_M1A1 76mm_M93_(APDS) APDS 246.8 239 208 175 147 124 104 88 Exact match to Bird & Livingston So at 1000 meters the penetration value is 175mm. Lets look at regular AP ammo. 76mm_M1A1 76mm_M62_(AP) APC 127.3 125 116 106 97 89 81 74 Exact match to Bird & Livingston So 106mm at 1000 meters. So for both types of ammo, any hit other then the mantlet will penetrate the Tiger's armor. Also according to Jentz, the M1A1 76mm could penetrate the Tiger's: Front turret 700 meters Side turret 1800 meters Hull 3200 meters rear turret 1800 meters Each time i played, the Tiger was penetrated in the side. I had one 88mm bounce off the Sherman's manlet, the rest destroyed the Shermans. jentz had this to say about the 88 and the Sherman. mantlet 200 meters Source : JENTZ, Thomas L.; Germany's TIGER Tanks - Tiger I and II: Combat Tactics; ISBN 0-7643-0225-6 I will continue to test to see if any shots bounce off the Sherman. Rune

No. The values are hard coded and are accurate. See the other thread. Rune

Jaguar, Send me the save game. Rune

Dude, Same thing, toss me an email and I will send it to you. Rune

Tripps, Yep, misunderstood you. Again, I'll see if Moon can have one of the devs from 1C answer it. I am guessing they went with the reports from each country. Some are 0 degree angle, some against different types of armour, etc. It is why the first thing I checked was the values, and I asked John to review so I had a peer review. [Not that in any way I know as much as John, I'll still swear some of the penetration stuff is black magic.] So we basically put all the figures to the same standard. 30 degree plate, different ammos, and range in meters. Add in plate type, and we had the real comparable numbers. If you would like, I can send you the documentation, drop me an email if you would like. I should cut and paste his definition of ammo types, good reading for those who do NOT know the differences, and a good brush up for the old grogs. Rune

No Tripps, read what I said, the internal calculations are correct. The enclyopedia I did not work on. It could be against 0 angle plate, or just posted by the testing of that country, not taking into effect the differences in the definition of penetration, or the type of armour plate fired against. I do not know. Maybe someone from 1C can answer that. The encylopedia is nothing more then a table listed for that vehicle, the same way the values in CMX1 when you hit enter were just a listing, not the formula that was used in that game. Dude, exactly. Using HE instead of ap rounds? Is something hull down? What are the ranges and how was that determined? What part of the tank was hit? ETc Etc Etc. Since you did not have issues, and the game uses the same tables, draw your own conclusions. Rune

OK, I got permission from John D Salt to post some of his article. I will not print out the whole thing, since it is hundreds of pages long. Again, many thanks to John for going over the numbers and giving permission for the article. The introductions for example: Introduction Aim of this document This document, which I hope will prove useful to WW2 wargamers, gives penetration performance details of WW2 anti-tank weapons. The origins of the document lie in the author’s irritation with the perpetual recurrence of similar questions concerning the penetration capability of various WW2 weapons arising on internet discussion groups such as soc.history.war.world-war-ii. It is unlikely that all argument on the matter will be eliminated, but this document provides, I believe, the most complete coverage of documentary evidence of WW2 armour penetration performance available anywhere. Organisation of the document The organisation of the document was completely revised at the end of 2004. Previously, sources had been summarised in alphabetical order of author’s name. They are now organised by country, and within country by weapon, so that all sources giving detail on any single weapon are in the same place. For each weapon, a table is given with rows for different sources and columns for increasing range bands. All ranges are now given in metres, rather than the old method of using the units in the original source, whether metres, yards or (rarely) feet. I have made precise conversions using 0.9144 metres to the yard and then rounded to the nearest whole metre. In some cases where (typically due to successive conversions) sources give a range within three metres of each other, I have given these as being at the same range, so as not to proliferate columns beyond necessity. As well as the new format, the introductory remarks have been considerably expanded. Penetration criteria To be useful, armour penetration figures should specify not only the gun, range and penetration achieved, but also the ammunition nature and model fired, the angle of impact, the type of armour attacked and the penetration criterion used. Very few sources provide all this information. I believe that the usual British penetration proof criterion early in the war was to have the complete projectile length pass through the target plate on 80% of proof shots fired. Later, some tables give the “critical thickness” of armour, that is, the one for which a shot win and a plate win are equally likely. British firing trials from mid-war (1943) or earlier acknowledged three differently-defined critical velocities for projectiles: The C/D Limit is the average of four or more velocities half of which give a “D” (cracked bulge) or worse damage and half of which give a “C” (bulge) or less damage. The Ballistic Limit is the average of four or more velocities, half of which give “E”s (flaking from rear of plate, crack sufficient to see daylight or projectile visible behind plate) or worse damage and half “D”s (cracked bulge) or less damage. The W/R Limit is the average of four or more velocities, half of which give “W”s (penetration with projectile clean through) and half “R”s (penetration with projectile not clean through) or less damage. The Russians used two penetration criteria, the “Army” criterion requiring complete perforation of the plate, and the more demanding “Naval” criterion requiring the complete projectile to pass through. The customary angle of impact when quoting penetration performance is 30º from the vertical, but some American weapons are quoted for 20º. German practice was (and current NATO practice is) to measure angles from the horizontal, so where 60º is stated, it is usually safe to assume that 30º from the vertical is intended. In action, unless firing from exactly right-angles to the target vehicle, there will be an additional angular component depending on the target tank’s facing. A table for rough conversions from sloped armour to an equivalent thickness of vertical plate is taken from WO 185/118; it will be seen that well-sloped armour seems to be more effective than would be indicated by a simple cosine calculation. The accompanying text says “It is considered, however, that the facts are too complex to be represented even approximately by any single armour basis curve, and, as illustrated in figures I to V, the armour basis curve varies widely according to the type of projectile and plate attacked.” “...in the case of the 6pdr the armour basis curve is wrong by 7% and in the case of the 2pdr wrong by 28%.” Curves for projectiles of different calibres are given in Niklas Zetterling’s “Normandy 1944”. The table below shows some of these numbers. Source Calibre 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 WO 185/118 Any 0.99 0.94 0.80 0.66 0.53 0.40 -- Zetterling 2000 37mm 0.99 0.90 0.75 0.57 0.41 0.30 0.22 Zetterling 2000 50mm 0.99 0.92 0.79 0.63 0.47 0.35 0.26 Zetterling 2000 75mm 0.99 0.93 0.82 0.66 0.51 0.39 0.29 Zetterling 2000 88mm 0.99 0.93 0.83 0.67 0.52 0.40 0.31 Zetterling 2000 128mm 0.99 0.94 0.84 0.69 0.55 0.43 0.32

Question for matt, i was more then busy enough with other duties, and yes, I think you now know who I mean. He went through the numbers. Only question not sure on is the shatter gap, but I would assume so since the numbers match at range. Rune

Hof, The "cryptic style" is from an article I was given, and would make more sense if I could post the entire article. I will NOT do so until I have the author's permission. Someone from your area and you have met [i think]. I'll drop him a line and see if I can get permission to post or send to people. Drop me an email. I didn't work on the encyclopedia, so I can't answer that. Rune

Oh yeah, all is based on 30 degree plate. It is traditional to quote penetration against rolled homogenous armour of machineable quality (RHA or MQ). Performance against face-hardened plate, especially for smaller weapons firing uncapped rounds, can differ greatly. As a rule, it is expected that capped rounds will perform better than uncapped against face-hardened armour. It seems that there is a certain velocity band which face-hardened plate protects against best, and for projectiles arriving outside this velocity band, face-hardened plate is less effective than the same thickness of homogenous armour. Armour hardness may vary considerably. During WW2 it was often measured using the Brinell hardness scale. 50 Brinell points corresponds to 10 tons per square inch (WO 185/171, “Armour plate experiments”); 1 Brinell point corresponds by my calculations to 0.315 Kg/sq. mm, or to put it another way 1 Kg/sq. mm is equivalent to 3.17 Brinell points. Full credit to John D Salt, who reviewed the internal numbers used in the game. Oh yeah, the internal figures match Bird and Livingston within 1 mm. Rune