A.E.B

JasonC wrote JasonC. With respect the pictures I provided were intended to support my first post in this thread by demonstrating how T34s were KOed in 1941, not just as part of the cast turret effectiveness debate. The information in the captions is basically the information that was provided with the pictures, hence the lack of specifics. Agreed, there are only two pictures that relate to your issue regarding the mis-modeling of the deflection effectiveness of the 1940 model T34 cast turret. The only information that I have regarding that photo is that it was a 1940 model T34 used as a ordinance test subject on a German firing range and that it was engaged by rounds up to 50mm. No mention of range or angle of fire, though the scuff mark on the side turret vision port suggests at least one front on hit - though this could have occurred on the battlefield! However.... When considering the deflective capability of curved or slopped armour, you must also compare the stickiness of that armour. WWII AFV armour was face-hardened, meaning that a hard but brittle outer layer of steel covered a softer but flexible core. The small pocks marks often see on WWII tanks are made by shells that have broken off part of the hard outer facing but which failed to reach the inner core. The large crater holes are made by shells that have reached the inner core and have displaced some of the steel to form the raised crater rim. I have never seen a real 1940 model T34 - I don't know if any still exist. I have see a T55 with a round cast turret. That turret was a rough as a pineapple! I don't know how good Russian casting techniques were in 1940, but a rough surface on armour tends to catch the point of an AP round, making more likely to penetrate through to the softer core steel. Also, the turret of a 1940 model T34 is shaped like a narrow horseshoe, with the gun at the curved end and the turret rear being the flat. If you fire at such a turret from directly front on you not only have to hit a small target area, but any shell that misses the gun mantel will hit the heavily curved and sloped turret side. Even with sticky armour, most shells will deflect away. I have a picture of a T34B with a scuff along the entire turret side made by an 88mm AP that demonstrates this (it wasn't so lucky when the second round arrived, however). So this sort of proves part of JasonC's point! :eek: However, turn that turret 15 degrees right or left to the the incoming shell and the turret's elongated shape starts to work against it by presenting the attacker with a much larger target. It also reduces the effective curvature of the armour. In such cases the income shell will gain more purchase on the armour and will have a greater chance of penetrating it. Turn the turret to 30 degrees and the effect is more pronounced. Again I cannot claim full knowledge here, as I don't have an actual 1940 model T34 to fire shells at! Yet again I am willing to be proven wrong. Regards A.E.B [ February 02, 2003, 10:56 PM: Message edited by: A.E.B ]

Hi all Sorry to gate crash. I have posted a link to a online photo album that contains 14 pictures of 1939 to 1941 model T34s, their weak spots, and actual knocked out T34s on the battlefield. To see them go to the link in the Knocking out T34s in 1941 thread. Regards A.E.B

Hi all While I realise that there are two other threads discussing the T34 vs low calibre German guns issue, I started this thread because the STUGGED UP AGAIN thread was originally a question about Stugs not using HC ammo on KVs. The thread was hijacked by the T34 crowd, so I have started a subject specific thread. While I have great respect for JasonC, Andreas, Rexford and the other grogs who know far more about ballistics, armour hardness and penetration tables than I do, I believe that they are missing the point. Small calibre German shells - even 37mm - could and did KO T34s in 1941. :eek: If anyone has the book by James Lucas call BATTLE GROUP!, published by Arms & Armour, turn to page 81. This page describes an incident during the seige of Cholm. The seige of Cholm was a 105 day encirclement battle that lasted from Dec41 to May42. An ad-hoc force called Battle Group Scherer held this strategic village up near Tula . They initially had no ATGs until a 37mm Pak was discovered that had been abandon due to damage. This 37mm Pak managed to kill two T34s and drive off another one with four shots from close range. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is Fourteen thousand words worth of pictures. I apologise that these were not linked to my first post, but Epson has decided not to release Windows XP drivers for my GT-9500 scanner, so I had to use a friend's scanner. I scanned these images of 1939-1941 model T34s and placed them into a online photo album. For those who wish to view them the link is http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view If this link doesn't take you straight to the album, type aebutterfield in the Visit Album box on the left hand side of the webpage and then hit go. I was planning to post several images directly into this post, but I couldn't get to work. :confused: These pictures highlight the weak spots on the different models of T34. There are also pictures of KOed and destroyed T34s with closeups of what destroyed them. Again, I am quite willing to be proven wrong. Till then enjoy! Regards A.E.B [ February 02, 2003, 12:02 PM: Message edited by: A.E.B ]

200 meters off is nothing! In one of the senarios that comes on the CD, I had a spotter call in German 158mm rockets. The target point was 550 meters away down a clear road, no smoke or dust or anything. From a Tab level 1 zoom you could see the exact point. 9 minutes latter the rockets arrived and landed across a 1km x 2km area, with the majority landing on my own forces that were 1.8km away. :eek: Now that is what I call inaccurate!!! :mad: Regards A.E.B

There are no civillians because this game is a battalion level combat simulator. Any civilian caught in the middle of a battle is going to flee or take shelter. Therefore any civilian deaths are likely to be accidental and unobserved. Of course it could be argued that Partisan units actually are civilians, as both the Germans and the Russians treated partisans as armed non-combatants whose treatment was not subject to the rules of war. As for the deliberate killing of civilians, why would anyone want to simulate that. Were the German "Special Kommandos" or the NKVD killers heroes! :confused: It must be remembered that there are still many people living around the world today who suffered terribly as civilians in WWII - whether it was the populations of Warsaw, London, Nanking, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden or Tokyo. Millions of defenseless men, women and children were butchered in the name of racial or ideological supremacy, or were starved or worked to death by their occupiers. Lets not insult them by turning their suffering into a game! :mad: Regards A.E.B

1. Flares for night fighting. Hearing infantry sounds in your barbed wire? Send up a flare and let the funtimes begin. 2. Vehicles with camoflaguing foliage added. 3. The abilty to see at tab behing aircraft when they cross the battlefield. Regards A.E.B [ January 31, 2003, 10:31 AM: Message edited by: A.E.B ]

Is it just me or does anyone else here find it strange that the Swedes are so keen to replay a war that their fore-fathers had the sense to stay-the-heck out of? A.E.B

Rex_Bellator wrote That would depend on how many shells were hitting that T34 and where. There was a wargame released around 1980 called Tractics that was the equivalent of CM:BO & BB played on a sand table with HO scale models. That game quickly taught you that all AFVs had weak points. Remember that the T34s armour is (I think) 45mm thick at 45 degrees. Fire down on that tank and you reduce the effectiveness of the armour. Hit the driver's hatch, hull MG port, plate welds, turret ring, Cast turret shot trap or gun mantle weak points and you are not even facing 45mm of armour. So a L60 37mm AP round will bounce off the front of a T34, just not every time. And remember that damage comes in many forms. T26s and BTs were reported to have fallen apart under sustained 20mm cannon fire. A tank can take mechanical damage even from a round that doesn't penetrate it. And my final point is that in June 1941 the Russians had maybe 20,000 tanks. By December they had only a few hundred left. While huge numbers were abandoned without facing enemy action, someone or something killed many thousands of Russian tanks. CM:BB is a game, not reality. How much fun would it be to be a German playing in 1941 if the forces that were realistically available to them were incapable of fighting T34s. T34s were routinely knocked out by inferior German AFVs using superior tactics and cooperation, but the game may choose to recognise this fact in the gun penetrations, as it is impossible to handicap a Russian human player to the extend that the 1941 Russian tanker actually was. I am willing to be proven wrong, and I will know more once I have had more time to play the game. Regards A.E.B [ January 30, 2003, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: A.E.B ]

Sorry in advance. I know that this issue has been brought up on a number of occasions, but newbies like me don't necessarily have the time to check through 240+ pages of threads. It is obvious that the question "how come I can KO T34s in 1941 so easily....I thought that they were invulnerable..." will just keep occurring every time a suitable thread is started. I have just finished looking through all my books on the Eastern Front with the aim of designing a couple of senarios. This is my observations on this matter. The T34 was not invulnerable because: * Due to a lack of spare parts and fuel, few were battle ready at the start of Barbarossa. * The crews were very poorly trained. * The early T34s had design faults: a shot trap around the mantle, a vulnerable plate covering the exhaust system and the cast turret tended to deflect rounds downwards into the hull deck. * Early T34s were badly made. Even later T34s had gaps in the welding, plates that weren't correctly fitted, poorly rolled and hardened armour, etc. * Many of the early T34s had a short (L28?) 76mm gun. These T34s were the HQ tanks of companies of BTs or T26s. This short gun was ineffective at tank killing. * Early T34s had a two man turret that overworked the commander. This, coupled with a large turret hatch, greatly reduced the situational awareness of the commander. * Most T34s in 1941 lacked radios and couldn't coordinate their actions with other tanks or infantry easily. * Russian tanks in July 1941 were scattered in penny packets as infantry support, and were usually outnumbered by the Germans at the point of attack. * The T34s superior maneuverability in mud and snow wasn't as noticable in the summer of 1941. * Due to rapid German advances and the interdiction by aircraft that cut Russian supply lines, many T34s were lost due to lack of fuel and ammunition. For the above reasons the Germans were initially slow to notice the presence of T34s, KV Is and KV IIs except for a few well reported incidents. Many Germans probably couldn't tell the difference between a T28, a T34, a T35 or a KV in June/July 1941 anyway. How the Germans killed T34s with the L60 37mm or the L40 50mm or L24 75mm gun is interesting. I have a number of pictures of KOed T34s taken in 1941. None of these T34s showed the catastrophic damage (turrets blown off for instant) that is seen in T34s killed by later German high velocity guns. Most of the KOed T34s in the pictures had their turrets facing towards the rear of the tank. This suggests to me that the T34s were out maneuvered by the Germans on the battlefield. Another picture shows a T34 disabled by a large bomb crater, and another shows two T34s that have driven at speed into a swamp. Again the turrets face rearward, and it appears that the tanks bogged and were then abandoned. Given the lack of burning or other catastrophic damage shown in the photos, I theorise that most T34s were abandoned by their crews after sustaining lesser damage. The Germans began to notice the T34 once the weather, supply problems and attrition robbed them of the initative. It is then that the T34 running across the snow towards immobilised Germans is frequently reported. This was coupled with the Siberian units arriving on the central front with (I believe) a good number of T34s and KVs. Then the Germans took notice! Ultimately it was the quantity of T34s produced, not the quality of each tank that determined the armour war on the eastern front. The T34 was rough and ready, which was perfect for the war in the East. This post isn't meant to be a definitive answer on this issue. War is too random to summarise down to a few bullet points. Some T34s died hard in 1941, but the great majority were simply out maneuvered by better trained and often more numerous Germans, or they were simply abandoned by their crews. A.E.B [ January 30, 2003, 10:29 AM: Message edited by: A.E.B ]

Gentleman I run a program call PestPatrol on my PC. This program has detected something it calls Reverse Trojan 2.0 b1, both on the CM:BB CD and in file CMBB_v101_patch.exe. Removing or quarantining this Trojan stopped the game from installing correctly. I am assuming that this particular piece of code is part of the game's copy protection. Given that software piracy robs developers of not only their intellectual property (aka blood, sweat and tears), but also robs them of the financial resources to develop new products, such copy protection is perfectly acceptable. But I am curious? Regards A.E.B PS - if this thread is giving away trade secrets DELETE IT!

Seanachai Please don't be so quick to judge. Cameras of the 1920s to 1940s era were not standardised models like we have today. There were many different apertures and film sizes. I have personally seen a Lecia tourist camera - dating from the early 1930s - that could take 120 small (1.5 inch by about .8 inch) pictures. This practice of large film / small pictures was due to the difficulties that many photographers had in obtaining new film in the days before the 24 hour photo booth! Without knowing more about the particular camera involved, it is impossible to say whether MasterGoodale's grandfather's story holds water. But I am willing to give the benefit of doubt. The other point of doubt is whether the original photographs that were rephotographed were actually taken by the camera's owner. There were huge numbers of pictures of Hilter, Goering and other Nazi notables, as well as of parades and other events, circulated by the propaganda ministry and German media, so the photos could be from a quite common source. This could also explain why some of the photos appear to be close ups. As for the story of how MaterGoodale's grandfather came across the camera? I remember the particular scene from the excellent "Band of Brothers" series where the soldier steals Hitler's personal photo albums from the Eagle's Nest. That event actually happen, and that soldier managed to smuggle the albums back to the USA. Truth is often stranger than fiction. Soldiers loot, and hungry Germans in 1945/46 could easily of traded a camera for food or cigarettes, so the camera may not have just been lying around waiting to be picked up. If we get to see the pictures, then we'll be better placed to make judgements. Regards A.E.B

MasterGoodale There is no reason for anyone to doubt your Grandfather's story. The explaination is simple. In 1945 it was a bad time to be a Nazi. There were many people - both allied soldiers and victims of the Nazi regime - who would happily take retribution on anyone who appeared to be a Nazi. This would make carrying around developed photographs of Hitler and other Nazi notables very dangerous indeed. So what your Grandfather found was photographs of photographs. Lacking any other method of quick, safe duplication, the owner of the photographs probably laid them out and took pictures of them. Hence the wide range of dates and subject matter on the one film. The Camera's owner then probably lost the camera while trying to flee from Munich. Solving the mystery of who originally owned the camera could be as facinating as identifying the subject matter of the photos themselves. I hope this helped. A.E.B [ January 26, 2003, 11:32 PM: Message edited by: A.E.B ]