Mr. Tittles

The chin has the turret front behind it as well as that material between the turret and the mantlet. This appears to be armor also. There is a very slim chance of a shot getting under the chin but would still hit the turret front armor (110mm).

The chin mantlet would be much more vulnerable than the rounded mantlet, since the effective thickness of the chin is slightly over 100mm on most areas. Once we have the tapered thicknesses over the rounded mantlet we can compare effective thicknesses over the chin area. The chin is actually sloped somewhat. But even more important, it covers an area that is already armored. That is the area under the mantlet which is part of the turret front.

Another Hull Down shortcoming is the difficultly in guaging range to a small target like a turret. At longer ranges, the scatter of the gun may actually be greater than the height of the turret making adjustments useless efforts.

If the underlying material is an extension of the turret front armor (110mm), it would add a rather large amount to the resistance of the lower mantlet area and make it almost inpenetratable. What do all of you think? The turret front armor 110mm appears to be a separate plate. This curved piece (trunnion carrier?) may be a casting of different thickness but it does seem to underlap the mantlet. Also the gun mounting cradle also backs up the mantlet. The gunners sight must poke through this cradle as does the coax MG. Anyone have interior pics of this area?

panther.fsnet.co.uk/3dpanthercutaway.jpg another panther cutaway view

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Quarters/4635/tanks/panther/panther_inside.htm Look at number 6, the gun cradle. It appears to run across the back of the mantlet also. While probably not armor itself, it does seem to give even more 'behind-mantlet' mass. The gun cradle appears to be a rectangular shape and perhaps that is what the slots behind the mantlet are for. If you look at the cross sectional drawings, there are two slots that appear to run the length of the mantlet on its back side. [ September 13, 2004, 11:34 AM: Message edited by: Mr. Tittles ]

This drawing shows the turret front on a later panther G. Compare this to the cut out drawings and it seems the mantlet wraps around the outer edges (thats the white part of the cross sectional drawings that redwolf posted). Note that the mantlet overlaps a seemingly curved area also (on the very right). Is this piece a cast item (I would assume)? The front turret armor plate sits behind this still. I have seen pics of the turret with the gun removed. There is a rectangular opening in the turret front that this assembly would fit in. Are the trunnions for the gun mounted in this piece and the mantlet/gun system held in place by a further piece of metal that is bolted to the drillings in the mantlet piece? I am begining to suspect that the 100mm mantlet vulnerability may only be a small strip along the turret frontal facing and may not even extend very far at all along the mantlet face. [ September 13, 2004, 09:28 AM: Message edited by: Mr. Tittles ]

I would assume that the cut by the sight drillings could be taken as a 100mm thickness. The manlet mounting area appears to be certainly thicker.

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Quarters/4635/tanks/panther/panther_inside.htm This website gives an idea of the additional overlapping areas that the manlet and turret front offer. Note the strip of turret armor beneath the lower curved mantlet appears to have two layers of thick material also. This is the turret ring area. It would appear to be stronger than the side vertical 110mm armor that is connected to the turret sides. [ September 13, 2004, 08:21 AM: Message edited by: Mr. Tittles ]

Note that the drawing on the left seems to show that the mantlet is thicker than the one on the right. This is similar to the Tiger I mantlet which is also thicker in some regions. I believe the drawing on the left shows the area near the outer edges of the manlet and the drawing on the right shows the area towards the center near the gun. The supposed 100mm mantlet 'vertical' vulnerability would then be a very small region indeed.

http://www.5ad.org/units/81st.html Destroying Panthers It was a German Mark V Panther and as soon as the crew saw the lighted road-block, they opened fire with its cannon. Lieutenant Coakley's tank returned fire but the rounds just bounced off the big German tank, which kept plunging ahead and firing at the same time. Its fire, however, was very inaccurate and the road block was not hit. A last desperate shot by Lieutenant Coakley's tank, fired at a range of less than five yards, hit the gun mantle on the German tank, ricocheted down through the top and set it on fire. The German driver, unable to control his tank, rammed it into the road-block. The German tank was destroyed, one of its crew was killed, two wounded, another taken prisoner, but the last one got away. None of the "C" Company men was hurt. When the scene was surveyed the next morning the only damage found on Lieutenant Coakley's Sherman was a jammed turret which had been hit by the gun barrel of the Panther tank, although the latter had pushed it back several feet and had burned right in front of it all night. Later in the day five more tanks tried to get by the road-blocks of "B" Company. The Germans were feeling the pinch of the pocket they had been caught in. This time the enemy moved out in the open country with most of the firing at a range of over 1,500 yards. After the fighting had raged for an hour, all but one of the German tanks were beaten back into the pocket. This one, a Mark V had received a direct hit in the suspension system but had kept on going until put out of commission by a 75mm APC from Lieutenant McNab's platoon. As in the case of the Panther destroyed the night before, the shell had hit the gun mantle and ricocheted into the top of the tank. When the German tank was searched after the battle it was found to be from the 2nd SS Panzer Division. Three of the infantry men with the road-block were wounded by machine gun fire, the only loss in "B" Company.

From that website..... You seem to be misinformed on the nature of the mantlet. It is a superior mantlet. It virtually eliminates the lower edge effect with armor up to 215mm thick. You also are missing the geometry of the situation. The driver isn't at the hatch. His body extends down toward below the hatch to almost the floor. So a round needs to only deflect at 95° from the normal.

German AT fire was leveled at the bottom of the target. So this must be taken into account. I know sights had level bubbles but there must be a way to rectify the height difference. It clearly makes a difference. My simple example of two firers at 0,5m and 2m firing level (0 degrees) clearly demonstrates that it does make a difference.

A few sources mention them.

Heres what German binocs probably looked like.

The Panther lower hull is a small area and the transmission sits directly behind it. A very real danger is cresting a hill too much and exposing this area. It would reduce the slope of the armor to incoming rounds considerably. http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Quarters/4635/tanks/panther/panther_inside.htm [ September 11, 2004, 01:25 PM: Message edited by: Mr. Tittles ]

The Panther turret has weak and strong areas. The actual turret that is vertical and interlocked with the side armor is rather weak at 110mm. This is a small but real part of the turret. The infamous lower mantlet is a well known weak spot because of ricochet possibility into the driver/radio-op area. The dead on strikes to the curved mantlet is only 100mm cast according to some sources. But the Mantlet does overlap the actual turret front in some areas. The best proteced area would be the upper part of the curved manlet. Not only must a projectile penetrate this curved armor, there is some additional armor behind it. The later G chin mantlet would also have the effect of both the mantlet and turret armor overlapping on the bottom curve of the Panther. Tests with the US 90mm gun w/M77 AP round showed the mantlet to be tougher than the vertical turret front. Just where the Mantlet was struck would be interesting.

The Churchill trials reveal alot more than you referred to in your last posts, and you might wish to study the results more closely along with my analysis of the data. And I certainly would IF you could provide the methodology and other details. I would tend to want that before analysis begins. Its funny how you can poo-poo 5 shots from a Tiger tank that the British achieved, or downplay the firing of 10 rounds at a target (10 rounds WAS the german procedure by the way), but feel that this very strange Churchill shoot is a basis for German gun analysis. Its a very strange way to report results if nothing else. 3 best guns? 2 worst guns? Why bot just present the data? Do you have any other info on this shoot? There is a limit to how good one can make a weapon system using bore sighting, good crews, etc., and the best explanation for the three Churchills is better than average guns. And one would then expect less than average performance from below average guns. So when a majority of tested items do better than expected, you feel the assumption is that they are outliers?

Rheinmetall-Borsig. Dusseldorf Muller stated that the accuracy required of tank guns was laid down by the Heereswaffenamt, but neither he nor Zimmer could state from memory what the requirements were. The design department of Rheinmetall-Borsig was moved in 1943 from Dusseldorf to Leipzig, and due to air attack there, it was subsequently moved again to the suburbs of Leipzig. Ludwig, Hermann and Banck of this department may have some details on this matter of accuracy. All were possibly at Dillenburg, near Wetzlar. (Braun of Unterluss thought that Hermann and Banck were at Heidenheim). Muller did not know the required tolerances between bore and shot. He considered that there was no gun to gun variation in jump (i.e. for a given design) provided the propellant charge was standard. Droop was disregarded, because tank guns were considered to be too short and stiff for droop to be important. Here again we see a source stating that for a given design, there was little variation in jump. Notice the stipulation on propellent charge (like I said, the ammo had more variation than the gun potentially). The spec comes from Heereswaffenamt and they would stipulate a testing procedure to accept manufactured weapons. It would be good to get these procedures.

I am speaking about the state of newly manufactured equipment. The Krupp, Essen (personnel evacuated to Kettwig) source states as much also. If you have ever been involved in the manufacture of precision equipment, then you would know that the equipment must meet a specification and does so through proof testing. The Churchill test may have mixed aged equipment and experience of gunners and levels of zeroing of equipment. You do not have the methodology on that test do you? I would take it as anectodal at best then.

I think the game models something like 'track-down'.

"Actually I just read that German manufacturing of the guns led to very similar performance between guns of the same type. There would not be such a wide performance between guns of the same type as you claim." Michael did not claim anything, he quoted official statistics. If the data suggests that the Flak gun had a wider dispersion than the tank gun, there may well have been some good reasons that we are either not aware of or don't realize the importance. Not sure what you are talking about. My point is that one 75mmL48 is very much similar to another 75mmL48. I am not making any comment about Michaels data. I am not saying a Tiger 88mm is like anything but a Tiger 88mm in performance. Its in rebuttal to your claim about such a wide difference in performance in guns of the same exact type.

Krupp, Essen (personnel evacuated to Kettwig) Dr. Dihrberg said that specification required that 50 per cent of shots should fall within a 50 cm. square on a vertical target at 1000 metres range. Dispersion was checked for tank guns, with 10 round groups, at ranges varying from 500 to 3000 metres. Jump varies slightly from gun to gun, but for range table purposes the results from a single gun are taken, since the variation is very slight. Droop is considered a constant for all guns to a given design.

Actually I just read that German manufacturing of the guns led to very similar performance between guns of the same type. There would not be such a wide performance between guns of the same type as you claim. They had strict QC. There would be wear with use of course but I wonder haw many guns ever fired even 500 rounds. The ammo was probably more prone to variations than the guns. German propellent was also unique. I read of a US tanker who was looking for things to burn to keep warm. He worked a AP round out of a 88mm and was surprised that the gunpowder was similar to uncooked spagetti. It would take off like a bottle rocket when lit on one end. Perhaps the German powder was easier to match the ammunition? As far as 100% dispersion, I would be happy just to see a 10 round shot group. I would want to see the real data instead of the 50% data. [ September 10, 2004, 04:56 PM: Message edited by: Mr. Tittles ]