ArgusEye

I might contact the man, even if only to see how he treats remarks like this. For some reason I assumed he was beyond contacting. Thank you for the suggestion. As to your list in your penultimate post: are those figures of 'runners' on the entire front?

Odd. I wonder what criteria they used. Who was doing the reporting? And not unimportant, when? My experiences are quite different. The T34/85 gun scope I played with was quite good.

From what I've been able to find, it was also doctrine for Stug crews to bail immediately upon getting hit with something that looked like it might be able to penetrate. The rationale seems to be that spotting, aiming and killing an opponent who has you ranged and in the crosshairs was going to take too long, and crews are worth more than a chance to keep the machine. I'm sure it wasn't any different for tanks. Add to this that the escapability of the IS2 had a very bad reputation with its crew due to stiff locking levers and ill-fitting hatches that tended to seize shut when shocked, and you can see why they would be quick to bail. PzKpfw 1, I do know of the works of mr. Jentz, but I could not hold back some disdain upon this translation work. He went out of his way to turn Randstellung into something else than "hull-down", for instance. When inferring meaning from foreign sources, it is important to stay as close as possible to the original, lest artefacts of translation creep into the statement. Another is the original expressing that one should switch to HE after the *first* hit, not the *first few*. If I came across as ignorant of mr. Jentz' work, I plead incapability to express myself in English. It isn't my mother tongue.

Left wing and right wing are crippled concepts, and have been since the late 19th century. National socialism isn't socialism with a nationalistic side dish. Socialism of those days was still the original Marxist concept (not the weird watered down socialist/social democrat hybrid debited today) of the lower classes [proletariat] standing up to and destroying the upper classes [bourgeoisie]. National socialism was about the same mechanism, but unlike in regular socialism, it wasn't class against class, but ethnicity against ethnicity. Thence *national* socialism. As for extreme right and extreme left, they are closer in their ideas to each other than to the center.

I find this (ab)use of statistics a bit odd. Statistically for small arms, one enemy casualty can be expected for every 7000 rounds expended. Try applying that to a real firefight. The main strength of the PzF wasn't so much that it wiped out entire armoured divisions, but: 1) It gave the troops a proven remedy for Panzerfieber. It was much easier for a MG crew to stick to their gun when enemy tanks were around if they would be able to fight their way out. 2) It was more portable than most of its ilk. It had a better effect than most of its ilk. This was a potent combination, despite its short range. 3) It gave enemy tankers something to think about. Early in the war, just barging through enemy lines was commonplace, especially if the tanker could know that the terrain had not been entered by prime movers depositing guns. The worst you could get was a close assault. After the PzF appeared, you had to keep away at least 45 meters from any cover that could hide a soldier, even at top speed. That denies a lot of terrain to the tank. 4) It was a beloved weapon for many purposes, and as such did great things for morale. You got shot at from a building down the street? Chuck a PzF, and if it didn't kill the enemy, at least they don't see you for the smoke so you can relocate. Need a hole in the fence/light wall/barbed wire/door? Faust it. Bunker? Faust it. MG nest? Faust it. Trench? Faust it. Don't trust that depression in the ground over there? Faust it. You might have limited ammo for most weapons, but the PzF gets replenished with some regularity. Oh, and it kills tanks.

Bear in mind that this is from a German tank corps newsletter, and might be a bit on the encouraging propagandistic side.

Where do you get this ridiculous twaddle? The air pulse from being displaced by a round coming into the tank is slightly *less* than outside of the tank (after armour it's slower) and it's rather sub-lethal even there. Cartwheeling doesn't happen at the scale typical for tanks, and as for vaporizing anything... I want some of what you're smoking. Flash fire kills by burns if it is not going high-order. That's one of the uncomfortable facts tankers have to live with. Thence the oft-heard memories of tankers screaming as they burn to death. The amount of heat from even a single 75mm propellant charge is enough to heat the entire inside of the tank to flesh searing levels, but the pressure doesn't build up because the propellant isn't properly enclosed. The deflagration speeds up when the pressure goes up, and it goes exponentially. If the pressure builds enough to kill the crew the chance becomes very slim that it will not explode to high order levels and just blows up the entire tank. The mechanism is illustrated clearly in this Syrian video: After colliding with a tank the round will have transferred all the shock it's going to transfer, and if it doesn't damage the tank, the tank is going to rock a little. The physical shock to the crew will typically be about similar to firing their own main gun. Detonating kilo's of TNT just outside will really give a nasty shockwave, which will -at least- knock the breath out of your lungs, blow sight blocks in, and stall the engine.

Given the rather well-designed anti-chemical-warfare filter systems on the Tigers I and II this is rather surprising.

In the case of a 6kg round hitting a 30000kg tank at ~750 m/s, we can safely state that this energy loss to rocking the entire tank is going to be insignificant by five orders of magnitude. If we could get LaTeX on this forum I'd be happy to show my work, but I'm going to spare my fellow grogs my exhibitionism for now.

Not quite: the grooves were stress risers that would cause any breaks initiating in the rear of the projectile upon impact not to propagate into the nose (diverting into the grooves), shattering the entire projectile. This way the rear of the projectile might shatter (releasing the burster, rendering it useless), but at least the nose might still penetrate.

Optics? I find that very surprising. I used to collect WWII tank optics, and even the mid-war T34 optics were superior to even the post-war (1948) Sherman optics by some margin. Throughout the war the pecking order was German > Russian >> French > American > Brit > Italian in all significant ways.

That Jentz character needs to look at his translations. There are some details that irk me. The original text of the list from the NBdPzT goes: 1. Bereits beim Erscheinen der "Tiger" drehen die meisten "Josef Stalin" ab und versuchen sich den Feuerkampf zu entziehen. 2. Die "Josef Stalin" lassen sich in vielen Fällen nur auf einen Feuerkampf auf größere Entfernungen (über 2000 m) ein und auch nur dann, wenn sie selbst in Randstellung stehen. 3. Die feindlichen Besatzungen neigen dazu, sofort beim ersten Beschuß auszubooten. 4. Die Sowjets sind bestrebt, gerade den "Josef Stalin" auf keinen Fall in unsere Hände fallen zu lassen und versuchen mit allen Mitteln, den Panzer abzuschleppen oder zu sprengen. 5. Auch der "Josef Stalin" läßt sich abschießen, wenn auch ein Durchschuß frontail auf weitere Entfernungen nicht so ohne weiteres zu erzielen ist (eine andere "Tiger"-Abteilung meldet aus dem Osten, daß die "Josef Stalin" frontal nur auf Entfernung unter 500m vom "Tiger" durchslagen werden können). 6. Es ist anzustreben, den "Josef Stalin" in der Flanke bzw. im Rücken zu fassen und im zusammengefaßten Feuer zu vernichten. 7. Weiterhin darf der Feuerkampf gegen "Josef Stalin" nicht unter Zugstärke aufgenommen werden. Einsatz einzelner "Tiger" bedeutet ihren Verlust. 8. Es hat sich als zweckmäßig erwiesen, nach Erzielen des ersten Treffers den "Josef Stalin" durch Beschuß mit Sprenggranaten zu blenden. Which actually translates to: 1. Already at the first appearance of the "Tigers", most of the "Josef Stalins" turn away and try to extract themselves from the firefight. 2. The "Josef Stalins" allow a firefight in many cases only at longer distances (over 2000m), and also only when they themselves are in hull down positions. 3. The enemy crews are inclined to bail out immediately at the first shot being fired. 4. The Soviets strive that precisely the "Josef Stalin" in no event be allowed to fall in our hands, and try with all means to tow the tank away or to blow it up. 5. Also the "Josef Stalin" allows for itself to be shot off, even though frontal penetration at greater ranges is not achieved offhand (another "Tiger"-Abteilung reports from the East, that the "Josef Stalin" can only be penetrated frontally from ranges below 500m by the "Tiger"). 6. It is worth to strive to take the "Josef Stalin" in the flank or the back, and to destroy it in interlocking [cross]fire. 7. Furthermore is the firefight against "Josef Stalins" not to be allowed to be engaged in below Zug strength. Application of single "Tigers" means their loss. 8. It has proven effective to blind the "Josef Stalin" through bombardment with high explosive projectiles after the first hit. Details, I grant you, but one is a grog or one is not.

This is one of those things that memoirs are great for. Their descriptions of events like the tank getting destroyed are usually quite vivid.

Swedish volunteer fighting for the Finns, to be completely nitpicky about it.

The Panzerfaust was born from the idea that there should be a way to use a big charge like a Haftmine in a 'thrown' way like the Panzerwurfmine. Thirty meters is the range you would expect. Most PzF's were never launched at tanks. Even though they were a fine anti-tank weapon, they also did great things to even entrenched or walled off infantry, and their detonation left a street-filling cloud of black sooty smoke. Fragmentation sleeves were apparently produced for a short amount of time, until this was found counterproductive. To the dismay of the higher echelons, they were like oversized Stielgranaten to the troops, with added bonus of being able to kill tanks.

I'm intrigued by the IS2's standing around intact with a single penetration and a dead crew. It doesn't ring a bell about any particular weapon. If the burster charge were the reason, there should be splinters and chunks all about the place. The only thing that springs to mind (and is obviously NOT applicable) is a stern warning to German tankers not to use captured Soviet petrol heaters due to monoxide poisoning cases killing all guys in a tank. Unless they started to fire these stoves at high velocity, I don't think we should assume this to be the cause. As to the use of 122 HE against tanks, this is quite obvious. Even though the HE round was too soft to actually penetrate, it gives a huge impact to the armour, and especially late war when the German armour quality dropped, this would cause spalling and broken seams. You can call it unintentional HESH if you will. Also bear in mind that by late war, the Pz IV was still around in great numbers, and it was no longer the reliable workhorse it was in the early years. The upgunning and expediences of industry had turned it into an overloaded deathtrap constantly hovering on the edge of breaking down. A good near miss from a large round could tip, break, or seize up plenty of overstressed components.

I'm nowhere near as informed as the people you mention. I'm just a physics researcher being bored in the university library, and my next project doesn't start until we can find funding. My knowledge is by no means broad, but I have a slew of technical books, journals and papers around, so a few days of rifling through yellowing papers yields the above. The Gercke papers should be well known. The Brits made comprehensive commented translations. In the thirties Germany was still more or less adhering to the Versailles treaty, and they were not allowed to do any weapons research that might be remotely modern. Tank warfare and submarine warfare were therefore studied in joint projects with the Soviets. Of course, neither the Soviets nor the Germans were entirely forthcoming in providing their full know-how, but some similarities in ammunition production can be seen. The main effort seems to have been by Krupp. I have not found anything substantial from other arms manufacturers, but I didn't spend time looking. In submarines, the similarities were much more palpable. Detonation velocity is not all that relevant in this discussion. Not only because the velocity drops significantly due to the plasticizer added, but also because it isn't a big factor in fragment velocity. Hot gas volume generation is what counts there.

Being right on one point says nothing about being right on another. I try to judge all arguments on their own merits. Things that smell of conspiracy theories -I don't know if that is what you refer to- get extra scepticism, but outright dismissal due to a distrusted source is bad logic. If you are critical of military received wisdom, on the other hand, I cannot but agree. My brief forays into military ""science"" have left me rather disillusioned. As for unarmored ammunition storage getting ignited: I must stress the difference between cased and uncased ammunition and -more importantly- propellant. I also make a big distinction between the action of the charge and its secondary effect of fragmenting the projectile. First: to ignite the propellant in a cased round one needs either shock or temperature to exceed the limits for either the enclosed propellant or the squib that is meant to start it off [the primer]. The former is encased in brass, which needs quite some pressure to deform, and therefore protects the propellant quite well against shock waves. I haven't quantified what would be necessary for the shell to deform significantly, but I think you will agree that for the crew, pressures sufficient to deform a casing will be lethal enough to think ammo cook-off a distinctly unimportant issue. The primer is usually exposed (except in some electrically-fired rounds), but needs significant temperatures and pressures as well. This can be achieved by the burster charge if it detonates very close by, but is not too likely. The warhead, I think you will agree, has an even higher resistance to sympathetic ignition. However, if the propellant is bagged or in open casings, then the story becomes quite different. Shockwaves are still very iffy, but heat from the flash of detonation can set off such charges if they are not shielded. Unfortunately [depending on which side of the armour you are] the shielding is done in large part by the projectile body itself, which contains much of the heat of the initial detonation. If we take into account how the burster charge bursts the projectile into multi-gramme chunks of jagged hard steel, moving faster than a rifle bullet, then one can easily see that one of these piercing a cartridge would set off the propellant, even by shock alone. If the propellant is of sufficient quantity to heat the round next to it to its propellants flash-point, then we obtain a chain reaction which will quickly consume the tank. My understatement in my earlier post was meant to be facetious. Sixty grammes of hexogen gives an overpressure in an enclosed space that is likely to kill, and certain to stun. As for the original question: I apologize for not responding earlier, but I needed to look some stuff up. The BR-350 family and the BR365 were based on joint Soviet-German ammunition development in the early 30's. The Germans then made one step further after they found that their Pz Gr rot. did not function to specification against armoured targets. According to the Gercke papers, the Pz Gr rot turned out to fuze unreliably and if it did, would be fine against crew but not too effective against machine parts. The former due to the fuze, but the latter due to the burster charge pulverizing the projectile too finely. The new family of PzGr 39 projectiles, in use throughout the war, had a smaller burster charge which was more likely to kill machine parts, rip fuel tanks, spill over into more of the fighting compartment, and to ignite ammunition stores. The new fuze was designed after significant amounts of research on the origins of the failings. The research led the Germans in the opposite direction of Allied conclusions. The Germans miniaturized their detonators' mechanical parts, where the Allies tried sizing them up to make them more robust. Robustness was not the problem, however; the problem was ductile seizing of the mechanism under shear loads. In fact the Russians and the Germans used very similar mechanisms, but the Germans had gone one step further in basic research. As for the Americans, I have yet to look up their fuse designs and development, but that seems a fine job for somebody else until I can find time. The T34 was quite likely to blow up, but 90% seems quite excessive. I have no hard figures, but I found a Brit reference [rather, someone referencing a Brit reference] that it took 2.5 penetrations on average to brew up a T34. I have no clue how seriously that should be taken though. The reason for the T34's vulnerability seems to lie less with German projectiles and more with its safety engineering. Where the PzIII was basically a bunch of escape hatches on tracks, the safety philosophy behind the T34 could be summarized as 'go die for the Rodina, comrade'. Very little thought of crew survivability on penetration is evident in the design.

John Kettler has taken the very defensible position of historical sources, and rightly so: he is correct. Whatever one may think of the tests performed during and before the war, they are the only ones providing real data that is not extrapolation on some modern assumption. Any statements that those ignorant Brits were too stupid to see they were wrong, and trying to twist the resultant reports to fit a presupposition to this effect are just red herrings. As an aside, propellant became the leading cause of brew-ups only after calibers became larger, so their early worries about fuel tank protection being significant were quite well-placed. The main reason that burster charges were used in '40s penetrators was not the 'howitzer principle' of the shot aiming to deliver a bomb into the target, but rather a desire to make the penetration, and any leftover kinetic energy, count. An AP projectile entering a tank would generate spalling, but this would contain only a very small fraction (2% seems typical) of the energy the projectile itself retained. This means that on the whole, the projectile would kill anything in its actual path very, very, extremely dead, but it would not harm anything it didn't actually hit, and stood a good chance of lodging or exiting, stopping its rampage. The burster charge was supposed to break up the projectile into a large collection of big splinters moving at the same speed, but in a quickly spreading cone, killing many things dead enough. Now I must say that being in a tank with 60 grams of Hexogen exulting in fiery noise does not appeal to me at all, but it's unlikely to kill the tank on its own. It's not even likely to ignite cased ammunition. However, the crew will not be very alert for a while, and their fighting spirit is likely to be dampened quite a bit. The burster is not necessary in modern long rod penetrators, because they usually disintegrate under stress anyway, and are -as JK already stated- often pyrophoric. Modern velocities and modern armour pose quite different demands than that of the 40's. Plasticizing long rods do not omit the burster charge because it was bad in the 40's, but because they don't need it and it wouldn't fit.

CMx1 is more abstracted. It doesn't track individual soldiers. This is not less realistic, it is less detailed. CMx2 tracks individual soldiers and bullets, but its soldiers neither act fully realistic, nor can they be micromanaged to do so. There are, after all, limits to programming and computer power. For me this gives a choice between abstracted and quite well balanced, or very detailed with quite some bizarre behaviour. I just prefer the first.

There could be any number of reasons to shoot like that. If you see some light cover you suspect of harbouring enemy, hosing it down from a blind angle will rattle them or better; you don't need to do that with total precision. It may even be suppressive fire, spraying that all over the place may work even better than a set of precise bursts on a certain pinpoint target. But given the steady camera and the relaxed demeanor of the shooter, I suspect running a test belt through a MG that has just been repaired, a bit behind the lines.

That sounds very impressive indeed!

Try 250 chest x-rays for a quick shoe fitting, a fussy child could typically get to 1500 chest x-rays. Radiation burns were not unheard of in shoe salesmen. These things were insanity.

I can only do PBEM, and I'm not available in the weekends, but I'm game!

Using the data from this thread and Wiki, plugging it into my ballistics program, I get a minimum charge, 73 degree elevation range of 470 meters.