Amedeo

Very interesting Francesco! I eagerly look forward to the future additions and integrations. Unfortunately, AFAIK, it won't be possible to 'paint' those slogan on CMBB tanks because the BMP used for the turret sides are specularly used for both sides. Best regards, Amedeo P.S. There are however a few incorrect spellings in the slogans listed in the page. P.P.S. E, ad esser fiscali, c'è un errore anche nella tua 'signature'

While it's indeed true that a cyrillic "S" resembles a latin "C" (as in CCCP, that transliterated is SSSR), I think that no one ever claimed that the Soviets called a tank the KV-1C and I presume that the C designation stems from some German war intelligence designation, like those that tried to sort out variants of the T-34 and KV tanks by adding an alphabetical suffix to the tank name. Thus the 'German' designations like the T-34A, T-34B, T-34C etc. that were also used in some Western cold-war era sources) I think this firstly, because the Soviet themselves didn't use any official sub-type identifier. The different versions in post-war sources are indicated as 'obraztsa' or 'vypuska' (that is 'of model...' or ' of production run...') followed by a year. The fact that the C suffix could never be considered of Soviet origin is also proved by the fact that the actual Russian alphabetical order is rather A, B, V, G, D etc. So I presume that the KV-1C 'myth' was created around some German mis-identification. Regards, Amedeo [ October 26, 2002, 04:44 AM: Message edited by: Amedeo ]

Thanks Bas! BTW what is thus the DOI for the Panzergranate that those sources give? Bye Amedeo

(slightly OT, sorry!) Bastables, could you, please, tell me where to find some useful info about the 8,8cm FlaK use against tanks during the Spanish Civil war? In fact I found references regarding its use against Republican tank units, but I was unable to find out the DOI for the Panzergranate (not that a T-26 needs more than an HE round...). Thanks in advance, Amedeo [double edit for spelling :eek: ] [ October 24, 2002, 04:08 AM: Message edited by: Amedeo ]

Why would DAK receive only enough Pzgr 39 for carrying out firing tests? They received Pzgr 39 for wide issue while the Infantry Mk II still caused a great deal of fear. The field tests were to prove to DAK Panzer crews that the front 75/70mm armour basis was defeat able with the new ammunition at 200metres.

A quote from 'Soviet Infanrty tactics in WW2" by C. Sharp: "[speaking of the SMG squad] the 8-man unit had one overwhelming advantage: 8 men was the number that could ride onto the turret of a T-34 medium tank without obstructing the guns or sights" Maybe the turret had not the largest freedom of movement possible, but I presume that, during the attack, and working in cooperation with trained desantniki, the tank was more or less free to operate its weapons as usual. Probably the same was not true while carrying more people or hauling some infantry to the next stop. As a side note the old "East Front" game from TS prohibited fire from the tanks that were carrying riders. Regards, Amedeo

It may be interesting to quote a passage from one of S. Zaloga books on the KV heavy tank, it's regarding an engagement near Borisov in 1941: "[...] the T-34 was flanked and a carefully placed shot blew away a track link, disabling it. The crew leapt from the relative secutity of their armour, and were mowed down by MG fire. The KV-2 was repeadetly struck but not damaged by the German tank fire, but under the frightening pounding of the PzKpfw IV's rounds the crew panicked and bailed out only to suffer the same fate." In fact this is corroborated by General Eremenko comments: "Often our tanks went out of action due to hesitant and unsure conduct of the crews, rather than direct hits. For this reason we subsequently manned the KV tanks with hand-picked crews." Regards, Amedeo

John, my point was that I'd consider unfair to arbitrarly tweak the inputs only to come up with a preconceived result. I think: let's assume that the engine works, but let's also be sure to feed it all the correct input data. Maybe this would suffice. Regards, Amedeo

Yep. I was confusing myself over another 'hybrid' APC-APCBC designation, that is "K. Gr. rot Pz.". BTW at least in CMBB the short 75mm shouldn't be allowed to fire APCBC rounds but only this very particular (and less effective) round. Returning to the DAK 50mm guns issue, the information you have, states that APCBC rounds were available only for tests or were commonly issued to units for field use? Regards, Amedeo

But DAK had already received Pzgr 39 (APCBC for 5cm guns) by June 41 because they were using them in firing tests versus captured British tanks. I don't see how the units in Russia would have a lower priority. QB]</font>

Gentlemen, In my humble opinion the point is: since CMBB has not a set of values hard coded into the game to handle penetration but, correctly, models the results with some mathematical equations that take into account things like terminal velocity, angle of impact, calibre, type of round, thickness of armour plate, hardness, HE filler size, projectile quality etc. etc. the point is simply to see whether there is the possibility that some of the input values that are feed into this 'number crunching' machine are to be revised. It's not simply a matter simply of saying that Jentz quote those figures but Hogg states that etc. etc. (while this is quite interesting and may help in 'debugging', if fact I myself posted a lot of data of this kind), after all this is not some other game in which you can simply edit the penetration value of the so and so gun. What I want you to note is that perhaps there are some data that was not taken into account for some weapon systems: namely the presence of larger HE fillers in 37mm and 50mm AP rounds and the unavailability of APC projectiles for the short 50mm in 1941. And possibly there's also the issue regarding the poor quality of 37mm AP rounds. Please consider that all those factors (type of round, e.g. AP, APC etc., size of HE filler, quality of the metal) are already taken into account by the engine for those weapon system for wich sufficient information was available. Thus before intoducing subjective variables and multipliers I think that it would be essential to risolve first those issues. Regards to all, Amedeo Probably this alone would

And don't forget to switch Finland to the Allies side in 1944 or the Axis will risk to win the war Amedeo

So Rexford, what are your 'practical' suggestions to BFC? That is, what variables already built in the game engine should be 'activated' to obtain more realistic results? If I got it right: - assume substandard manufacture for 37mm rounds - assume large HE burster penetration penalities for almost all German AP/APC rounds early in the war BTW what about the availability of APC rounds for the short 50mm and APCBC rounds for the short 75mm in 1941? Regards, Amedeo

I've seen the same hole in pictures of (apparently)functioning T-34 obr.1940 tanks, so it was a port made in the factory, not a result of combat activities. Regards, Amedeo

Someone has any idea about what could have caused these turret penetration on a T-34 model 1940? Bye Amedeo

Foxbat, I might agree with you about the scarce effectiveness of the round, however, although the webpage I was referring to was about tank guns, I was wondering on its issue to AT gun units (something similar to what the US Army did, IIRC, with its 37mm ATGs). Regards, Amedeo

Browsing through Glantz's book 'Stumbling Colossus: the Red Army on the eve of World War' I found the following interesting quote (the autor is describing some observations from Maj. Gen. Morgunov, Chief of Southwestern front Armored Forces: "Curiously enough, even at this stage of war, he noted that KV and T-34 tank armor needed to be augmented for defense against German antitank guns". Could anyone provide the text of this report? I've found Morgunov's report dated 15 and 17 July 1941 but this one should have been written on July 13. BTW I found a website that has the complete report from the 10 TD commander I was quoting earlier, you can read it here (unfortunately it's in Russian). It's interesting to note that he says that the hull armour is penetrated by 37mm rounds at 300-400m (so it was not a translation error, he's talking about the hull not the turret), while the vertical side armour plates are penetrated also by 20mm rounds. Regards, Amedeo P.S. Rune, thanks for sharing with us your uncle's answers.

There's a bug in the Italian OOB that names the Pioneer Company as a Cavalry Company (the units are correct however, only the name is wrong). BTW speaking of Italian cavalry, the terms Battalion and Company used in the game should be substituted respectively with Squadron Group (Gruppo Squadroni) and Squadron (Squadrone). Terms such as Battalion (Battaglione) and Company (Compagnia) were not used in the cavalry. Amedeo

You can see a picture of this round here . Why is it not in the game? There was no sufficent evidence on its combat use? Bye Amedeo

You're absolutely right. In fact the reason of my first post was to start a discussion that could attract also other people that would have provided data and historical accounts to prove or disprove the relevance of the "narrow turret front" (despite the sensational thread name that was choosen only to attract the grogs' attention ) Anyway it's obvious that currently, in the game, the major vulnerability issue for early T-34s against German guns in the turret front, and the majority of tanks knocked out by antitank fire dies exactly for one or more front turret penetration. I found that in historical reports (at least the few ones that are available to me) the particular vulnerability of front turret in never mentioned. On the other hand instances of penetrations through the lower hull side or the driver's hatch were noted. In fact the soviet report I quoted complains against 37mm penetrations in the sloped hull! Anyway I'm the first one to recognize that furter research is necessary, anyway my first guess was that a "narrow turret" effect could be modelled (in game terms) reducing the hit on the turret front to 1/3 and let the remaining 2/3 hits, strike on the turret side armor with a compound angle increased of, say, 30°. Regards, Amedeo P.S. Any other data regarding the APC DOI for 50mm guns? Hogg says that the first gun to have APC round was the long 50mm.

Regarding the long range gunnery issue here are some interesting quotes: 1) From Hasso von Manteuffel memoirs about the first encounter of his division's (GD) TIger tanks against the new IS-2, May 1944 Romania: "Not having seen this type before our Tigers opened fire from 3000m and the crews noted that the 88mm rounds ricocheted aff the armour! [...] Some Tigers crept up to within 1800m where they succeded in knowking out two Stalins [...] This encounter was shocking, as previously our 88mm gun had destroyed Russian tanks with direct hit at maximum ranges without difficulty." NOTE: according to the official instructions regarding the use of the 8,8cm Kw.K. 36 on the Tiger, the firing range for the PzGr.39 was considered 2000m, 2500m in favourable circumstances, and 3000m when platoon fire was possible. 2) From the September 1944 issue of the 'Nachrichtenblatt der Panzertruppen': "In many cases the Iosif Stalin tanks let themselves engage in a firefight only at long ranges, over 2000m" 3) From a report by the 4. Panzerdivision (October 1941): "Russian tanks usually form in an half circle, open fire with their 76.2mm guns on our tanks at a range of 1000m and deliver enormous penetrating energy with high accuracy [...] the accuracy and penetrating ability of the Russian 76.2mm tank gun are high" Thus it seems that for veteran troops armed with late war, long barrelled tank guns it was not so uncommon to open fire at ranges in excess of 2000m and score hits. And even for the eralier part of the was tank combat at 1000m was more the rule than the exception. So in this sector it seems that CMBB is in accord with empirical evidence. Regards. Amedeo

Slapdragon, from what Rexford said it seems that one could obtain results more in line with anectodal evidence just plugging in more accurate data. Just for example: if we account for the large HE filler on 37mm AP, and give the short 50mm AP rounds instead of APBC rounds, whithout changing the current model but simply feeding it more appropriate data (maybe also the poorer manufacture of the rounds may be an issue here, but the model is already able to handle even this, as it does for eraly war 45mm rounds). If we also feed in the 'narrow turret concept' (my pet suggestion in this thread) we'll end up with reasonable results without having to transform the comprehensive physic model of the game in a series of tabular data or ad hoc modifiers. At this point we can start thinking to knock BFC door with a reasonable suggestion for the 1.02 patch Regards, Amedeo

Just tried some unsophisticated tests with the game to find out whether there's a match between the game results and the 400m figure given in that German report (July '42) as the maximum distance for front turret penetration (with the long 50mm gun). I setup a lone PaK 38 with a T-34 straight ahead slowly advancing. The 1942 production version of the T-34 is more or less easily penetrated at 500m or so. The early 1943 model of the tank (that is available during July 1942, despite its denomination), is impervious to any kind of fire from the 5,0cm L/60 up to 400m and less. In fact while trying to determine the minimum distance at which a frontal penetration could be scored by having the tank advancing against the ATG (without firing, although it was impossible to avoid some sort of return MG fire) I had the tank crush the gun under its tracks without being penetrated! Thus, assuming that the German report really was referring to this variant, the behaviour of the long 50mm gun vs. the T-34 seems to be consistent with some of the anecdotical evidence. The issues about the 37mm and the short 50mm are still to be clearly solved. Regards, Amedeo

This nice mod inspired me a 'dark humor' joke... Scene: two captured German, Hans and Paul, 'WG' troopers are being interrogated by an NKVD officer. Hans: "see, it wasn't us that did the massacres, we're not SS we're Waffengrenadiere!" Officer "Really? so what is this then!" (he shouts while grabbing Hans from his collar tabs) Hans "Doh'!" Paul "Told ya it wasn't a good idea to use the MODded jackets!" Sorry I couldn't resist Amedeo

Some more food for thought (although I presume that many of you already know these reports). 1) Excerpts from the notes of the acting commander of the soviet 10th Tank Division (August 1941): "[regarding the T-34] hull armour is penetrated at 300 to 400m by 37mm antitank round. Side armour is penetrated by 20mm antitank round [...] with a direct hit by a shell the driver's front hatch collapses [...] the vehicles treads are weak - any round takes them off" 2)Excerpts from the combat reports of the 4. Panzerdivision (October 1941): "Our 5,0cm KwK tank guns can achieve penetration only at vulnerable locations under very specially favorable conditions at very close ranges, under 50m" (Probably the same report Grisha was referring to) 3)Excerpts from a report of the 33. Panzeregiment (July 1942): "Penetration ability of the long 5,0cm KwK L/60 firing PzGr.38 against T-34 Hull side: penetrates at up to 500m Superstucture and Turret Side: penetrates at up to 400m Turret front: penetrates at up to 400m Hull front: not effective, in some cases the driver's hatch was knocked off" If we take the first excerpt we see that the Soviet officer says that 37mm AP rounds are able to penetrate what I presume is side upper hull armour (45mm#40°) at 300-400m (critical hits on the hull front are ruled out since the driver's hatch is addressed separately. Likewise he's not referring to lower side protection, that is said being penetrated even by 20mm rounds). Those statement are consistent with CMBB models but the fact that he doesn't make any reference to turret penetration is, IMHO, indicative that in fact front turret hits in the vulnerable location were indeed very rare. What do you think? Amedeo [ October 20, 2002, 12:39 PM: Message edited by: Amedeo ]