Stug bug ?

[c3k]

Welcome. Welcome to the machine...

[Mord]

but i also noticed one other thing, my "in game" Stug had a veteran crew, they fired an AP round first to empty the chamber then immeadiately started using HE, whereas the regular crew in the test Stug fired numerous AP rounds to no effect until they wised up and started using HE..........all hail the accurate nuances of CMBN !!!.........my new motto is now "test before type"

That is why CM is the KING! Very interesting discovery.

Mord.

[hoolaman]

What i discovered is that the Priest is a bloody fortress at 1100 meters when it comes to AP hits, to penetrate it you need to hit the superstructure otherwise AP is useless, but it's really difficult to get a superstructure hit, i got one out of god knows how many rounds fired, all the AP rounds that made contact either hit the lower / upper front hull or the weapon mount which proved to be impervious to penetration and just caused ricochets with no damage to any of the sub systems, however once HE was used the sub systems took a battering and the vehicle tried to reverse out of LOS,

Sounds more like a priest bug than a stug bug. The light armour should take up at least half of the visual area.

[Michael Emrys]

Sounds more like a priest bug than a stug bug. The light armour should take up at least half of the visual area.

Particularly as it is the upper part of the vehicle that is lightly armored. The heavier stuff is mostly below the mid-level, which means that it would more likely be covered or obscured and not shot at.

Michael

[Redwolf]

Sounds more like a priest bug than a stug bug. The light armour should take up at least half of the visual area.

No it's the physics engine.

The much heavier lower part attracts the round. Gravity.

[Michael Emrys]

The much heavier lower part attracts the round. Gravity.

I see. Is this perchance related to the way that more complex engines seem to be made of more fragile parts? And that those always seem to be located in the most inaccessible regions of the vehicle? I sense a universal constant lurking somewhere in the background.

Michael

[MikeyD]

Remember the CM:BN game engine was first tuned-up while building CMSF. In that title there a lot of modern tanks with a limited ammo loadout. Players would cry in horror when their tank wasted a precious KE round on a distant BDRM. So I believe the protocol is to use HE when HE is *expected* to do the trick. Lets not forget a fired AP round could've not hit anything vital on penetration too, the Priest might've still been able to back away. C'est la guerre.

[DavidFields]

Remember the CM:BN game engine was first tuned-up while building CMSF. In that title there a lot of modern tanks with a limited ammo loadout. Players would cry in horror when their tank wasted a precious KE round on a distant BDRM. So I believe the protocol is to use HE when HE is *expected* to do the trick. Lets not forget a fired AP round could've not hit anything vital on penetration too, the Priest might've still been able to back away. C'est la guerre.

My bugaboo: CMSF logic filtering into CMBN (though I expect it to filter out as more modules appeared).

My guess, grogs can correct, is that it would have been standard to load AP when firing at an armored target in WW2, if they had it, regardless of the sometimes cleverness of loading HE instead in certain circumstances.

No?

[hoolaman]

It seems reasonable that if AP is ineffective the crew might try a HE round. The experience crew gets the idea quicker according to the tests mentioned earlier in the thread.

The problem, to my mind, is that the only place these hits should be bouncing from is the lower hull/transmission cover area. The "pulpit" on a priest should not bounce 75mm AP. The vehicle should not even really have anything tagged "upper hull" AFAICT, it should be like a Sherman in the lower hull and a very lightly armoured superstructure bolted on top.

[YankeeDog]

My bugaboo: CMSF logic filtering into CMBN (though I expect it to filter out as more modules appeared).

My guess, grogs can correct, is that it would have been standard to load AP when firing at an armored target in WW2, if they had it, regardless of the sometimes cleverness of loading HE instead in certain circumstances.

No?

Depends on what you mean by "Armored Target"... if it's something with at least 2" of armor, then almost certainly yes; AP is the way to go and as far as I can tell this was almost always what was fired. But from what I've read, it wouldn't be at all unusual for a German Stug Crew firing at a American Halftrack or Armored Car or even Stuart to decide to use HE. I've certainly read of crews doing this -- either AP or HE will penetrate the light armor easily, but the HE shell is more likely to cause at least some damage on a near miss.

With Allied crews, it sometimes seems they resorted to HE for completely the opposite reason -- I've read numerous accounts of 75mm Sherman crews firing HE at German big cats, on the theory that since their AP couldn't penetrate the armor, it was better to fire HE in hopes of rattling the crew and perhaps causing damage to external systems.

This long range shot at a Priest is an interesting case... If I read the math correctly, at such a long range, even the AP shell has very little chance of penetrating the lower hull. But either AP or HE will easily penetrate the thinly armored superstructure. And since the HE is more likely to cause at least some damage on a near miss or non-penetrating hit to the lower hull, it has the advantage and is the way to go.

Whether your typical WWII Stug crew would be aware of this nuance is another question entirely. I'd venture to guess that relatively few Stug crews ever faced an M7 Priest in combat, so it probably wasn't an enemy vehicle they were very familiar with. It would be interesting to look up whether the M7 Priest was even part of the enemy vehicle recognition training for German AFV crews, and, if so, what they were told about its armor and how to fight it...

[Michael Emrys]

My guess, grogs can correct, is that it would have been standard to load AP when firing at an armored target in WW2, if they had it, regardless of the sometimes cleverness of loading HE instead in certain circumstances.

No?

The thing is, unless they had reason to believe that they were imminently likely to be encountering armor, they would have had HE up the spout. Over all, they were much more likely to encounter a soft target—such as infantry or AT guns—on the battlefield and need to engage them quickly and effectively. The coax helps, but there is nothing like hurling a chunk of HE for starting off an engagement right. And if they did suddenly come upon armor, the quickest way to unload the HE is to fire it, and it just might do some good. Even if it causes no physical damage, it can rattle the crew and let them know that more is on the way.

Michael

[Kanonier Reichmann]

What I don't understand is why the tests at the mentioned range showed numerous lower hull & upper hull hits but no superstructure hits. Surely there would be about as much chance of hitting the superstructure as the upper hull and any hit, whether it be AP or HE should be pretty nasty I would have thought.

To me, it sounds like a bug from what I'm reading.

Regards

KR

[Redwolf]

What I don't understand is why the tests at the mentioned range showed numerous lower hull & upper hull hits but no superstructure hits. Surely there would be about as much chance of hitting the superstructure as the upper hull and any hit, whether it be AP or HE should be pretty nasty I would have thought.

To me, it sounds like a bug from what I'm reading.

It's an old topic. Is the 3D model used to determine which part of the vehicle got hit?

[c3k]

My understanding is that the round is tracked to the exact point of impact. That determines which part got hit. The text descriptor may be inexact.

What are the thickness, slope, and gross metallurgical properties of Priest superstructure armor?

[Redwolf]

What are the thickness, slope, and gross metallurgical properties of Priest superstructure armor?

One notch better than a weather tarp. Maybe half of a notch.

The question is why isn't it hit. As has been pointed out it covers large parts of the upper surface. And as has also been pointed out the lower parts of an AFV are less likely to be hit simply due to terrain coverage (real of just optical).

[akd]

The question is why isn't it hit.

Only god knows how many times it wasn't hit, so why are trying to draw conclusions?