Turret angle

[Georgie]

A tank can shoot straight up and straight down without the gun being able to depress or elevate to those angles. Can the tank also shoot in a different direction than what the tank gun is pointing without changing the turret position?

[BadgerDog]

I'm confused ... :confused:

I'm not sure what you mean by shoot straight up or straight down?

If I recall (might be wrong), the gun on the Sherman M4 I trained on had maximum elevations of about -10° to +25°...

Regards,

Doug

[A Canadian Cat]

A tank can shoot straight up and straight down without the gun being able to depress or elevate to those angles. Can the tank also shoot in a different direction than what the tank gun is pointing without changing the turret position?

No. But you might see a shot get fired before the turret finishes its moment. That is just an animation synchronization issue. It has been reported but most people have never seen it - it happens rarely.

[A Canadian Cat]

I'm confused ... :confused:

I'm not sure what you mean by shoot straight up or straight down?

Yeah its a limitation - that has been discussed many times and flared up again recently complete with nastiness in the forum discussion.

[slysniper]

A tank can shoot straight up and straight down without the gun being able to depress or elevate to those angles. Can the tank also shoot in a different direction than what the tank gun is pointing without changing the turret position?

sad but true, but the game does not presently prevent how much elevation the main gun can fire at. So there is times where the tank can and will fire when it would be impossible in real life.

Thankfully, this is not a common issue, but I can see it becoming more of one as time goes on.

No one would like seeing a tank fire on your infantry on the 4th or 5th floor when they are direcly below you next to the building. but it is possible presently.

[slysniper]

No. But you might see a shot get fired before the turret finishes its moment. That is just an animation synchronization issue. It has been reported but most people have never seen it - it happens rarely.

Well, I must not be most people, because I have seen it at least a 1/2 dozen times.

Tank turret is rotating into place to fire on enemy unit, but before the turret reaches the target, it fires, but magic, the bullet is on the correct course.

Not only is it a sync. problem. There is the aspect that in general,even when the game functions correctly. there is no delay in the shot once the turret is rotated. Most shots are almost instant from when the turet stops. You would think there should be time in there to adjust elevation for the gun before the shot. It all goes back to how quickly the tank is able to aim when adquiring a new target. in general, seems to fast. And I know i am not the only one that has mentioned it.

[A Canadian Cat]

I was speaking about the shooting out of sync with the turret. I am pretty sure I read a post from someone from BF saying that it was a quirk of the animation. Clearly you see it lots I guess what I should have said was that only a few people seem to be effected by it. The lucky few of course

I was not making any comment on the speed of firing or target acquisition.

[Georgie]

I'm confused ... :confused:

I'm not sure what you mean by shoot straight up or straight down?

If I recall (might be wrong), the gun on the Sherman M4 I trained on had maximum elevations of about -10° to +25°...

Regards,

Doug

I'm not sure if the "gun" on the pixel Sherman is limited in its elevation travel and the shell just curves as it exits the barrel or if the gun actually exceeds the real life travel limits.

[BadgerDog]

I'm not sure if the "gun" on the pixel Sherman is limited in its elevation travel and the shell just curves as it exits the barrel or if the gun actually exceeds the real life travel limits.

Thanks ..

I think I understood your question from the other answers here as well....

Yes, there's a LOT this software doesn't do in relation to a real M4 (or other tanks), but it is just an enjoyable game, so I've come not to expect a real life simulator.

I don't think the processing power is available yet on the desktop to accomplish that kind of complexity, but I do think the BFC programming staff do a remarkable job with the technology we do have available.

Just my opinion ...

Regards,

Doug

[Childress]

Thankfully, this is not a common issue, but I can see it becoming more of one as time goes on.

Like the Battle of Arnhem?

I agree it doesn't come up too much. Yet. One promising development for city fighting is that infantry is now firing from recessed positions within buildings.

[Georgie]

Thanks ..

I think I understood your question from the other answers here as well....

Yes, there's a LOT this software doesn't do in relation to a real M4 (or other tanks), but it is just an enjoyable game, so I've come not to expect a real life simulator.

I don't think the processing power is available yet on the desktop to accomplish that kind of complexity, but I do think the BFC programming staff do a remarkable job with the technology we do have available.

Just my opinion ...

Regards,

Doug

I agree. And as usual it will only get better. The forum keeps the pressure up and BF responds as best as is reasonably possible. I've seen the CM1 games evolve and CM2 is doing the same thing. The reason that I asked the question is to determine whether or not the old " out run the turret" tactic will work, say between a Stuart and a PZ IV with the Stuart circling the IV.

[Georgie]

I set up a little test, which I shuda done in the first place, between a Tiger 1 and a M5. To my surprise not only did the M5 out run the Tigers turret but it caused the Tigers crew to abandon ship effectively knocking out the Tiger. Gotta love it. The US tanks suffered too long in CMBO at the hands of the Wehrmacht.

[BadgerDog]

I set up a little test, which I shuda done in the first place, between a Tiger 1 and a M5. To my surprise not only did the M5 out run the Tigers turret but it caused the Tigers crew to abandon ship effectively knocking out the Tiger. Gotta love it. The US tanks suffered too long in CMBO at the hands of the Wehrmacht.

That makes sense..

I stand to be corrected, but I believe the Tiger only had manual traverse, whereas I know from experience, the M4 turret rotated 360 degrees in 17 seconds ...

Regards,

Doug

[YankeeDog]

I set up a little test, which I shuda done in the first place, between a Tiger 1 and a M5. To my surprise not only did the M5 out run the Tigers turret but it caused the Tigers crew to abandon ship effectively knocking out the Tiger. Gotta love it. The US tanks suffered too long in CMBO at the hands of the Wehrmacht.

That trick worked in CMBO, too. I used to play "Spin the Tiger Turret" in CMBO all the time...

[Vark]

The Tiger had an electric taverse but it could be KO'd by non-penetrating hits, the manual crank back up was one revolution per half degree of traverse, so gunners had to have strong wrists! Guess the Germans believed their more sophisticated steering system would make up for the difference in traverse rates.

[Vark]

Correction the Tiger had a hydraulic traverse powered by the engine allowing 6 degrees a second traverse at maximum rate.

[BadgerDog]

Correction the Tiger had a hydraulic traverse powered by the engine allowing 6 degrees a second traverse at maximum rate.

I could crank the manual traverse wheel in an M4 faster than that ...

A little slower at times if we had been into the wine we stored in the "ready bins" ...

Regards,

Doug

[Vark]

This was a good illustration of how one fact presented differently can dramatically affect first impressions. Six degrees a second, seems slow but ok, but if you say one minute for a full traverse then your impression is goddam slow, more accurately, nearly four times slower than an M4.

The commander, using his own wheel. could help the gunner manually traverse the turret, which at 720 revolutions for a full 360 degree traverse brings back images of the film Memphis Belle when they are hand cranking the under-carriage!

Wonder if power traverse is a damageable system in CMBN?

[dieseltaylor]

Speed of traverse does get me slightly riled as the speed for 360 surely is totally irrelevant to actual combat. I may be a trifle under-read on WW2 tank engagements but I have great trouble wondering when you would ever in battle turn your turet 360 degrees. Surely you choose to turn the turret right and left taking the shortest turn to target. And 6 degrees in a second should be more than adequate.

My car can beat a London bus 0-60mph but is it relevant meausre? Accelerating from 0-5mph may be far more relevant to London traffic and in that arena I suspect not much difference. Similarly with tank rotation.

A couple more things. AFAIR the Sherman manual says you overshoot the target and come back manually to get rid of some technical looseness in the traverse. Also bear in mind the Tiger can swivel in its own length 3.44m to present an angled target so turret and hull movement together surely have to be a consideration?

Also the Tiger has higher power to weight and lower ground pressure so is more agile and perhaps less reliant on the traverse.

[BadgerDog]

From an old post I made here almost 9 years ago ...

Here's a great anecdotal story about being a Sherman gunner from an old friend, Harry Cluff (Deceased), 1st Hussars (6th Cdn Armored Regt). I diarized this discussion from a conversation I had with him in 1965, when I was just learning to be a young Sherman (M4A2E8) crew commander.

He was driving along a road in France shortly after June 11th, 1944 (the Black Day of the 1st Hussars), where they lost most of the Regiment to an SS Panzer division counter attack, therefore he had no wingman. It was a narrow, barely two lane type thing and all of a sudden, a Tiger (he says...hmmm... I wonder about that ID) pulled across in front of them broadside at about 600 yards. His Crew Commander hollered "shot action" (meaning load AP), "shell action" was HE and screamed into the intercom "no traverse - 600 Tank- front" (meaning select the tank target at 600 yards to your front). The Loader/Op shoved an AP round up the breach and hollered "loaded". Gunner Harry bore sighted (it filled the sighting scope) with a response "600 Tank - ON !! (meaning he was ready). At this point, the Panzer begin to traverse its turret around 90 degrees towards them. The CC yelled "Fire" and Gunner Harry yelled back "Firing Now" (don't want the Loader/Op to lose his hand behind breach, so the gunner always indicates he's firing) and he hammered his foot down on the electrical solenoid switch for the master weapon. He said the round hit mid turret on the Panzer and angled off straight up in the air. The CC repeated the fire order drill once again. A second round deflected straight up in the air also. The Panzer continued what appeared to be a manual slow traverse. A third Sherman AP round was let loose and this one hit near rear deck, deflecting into the woods, but still no damage and the Panzer's turret was almost on them. So, Gunner Harry's CC hollered, that's enough for us and told them to "bail". Gunner Harry went out through the CC's cupola, following the CC as they dove off the Sherman and ran into the woods, falling into the grass. He said that maybe 15 seconds later there was a bang and when he lifted his head out of the grass, his Sherman was "brewing up". They ran through the woods and walked back to squadron HQ where they were issued a new Sherman that had come off the boats from England. They never got into trouble for ditching that tank, but he did say he was some "p*&&%$" because he lost all his kit in the tank they abandoned, including his brandy snifter.

Regards,

Doug

[dieseltaylor]

Great story. Thanks very much for reposting it now. Is there a Canadian archive for battle memoirs?

[c3k]

Well, 3 rounds bouncing off at 600 meters would tend to lend a bit of strength to his ID of the tank as being a Tiger.

Turret traverse: the Germans used hydraulics for the big cats. The Panther's hydraulic pump was driven by the engine. It had 2 output levels. The pump output was based on engine rpm. At high output the turret would traverse as fast as the Sherman's. (Forgive me for not digging out my references to quote the number of degrees/sec.) The driver's duties would include keeping the engine revved for high output while in combat.

The gunner, as in all tanks, had a fine adjustment wheel to be used after the hydraulic traverse had gotten the gun close to the target.

The manual turret traverse linkage would only be used when the hydraulics were not operational.

The Tiger had a very similar setup to the Panther.

(The whole hand-cranking myth is similar to the myth of the tactical drawback the Garand's en-bloc magazine ejection creates. Every friggin' movie now has the poor GI firing his last round, "ping", then the damn kraut kills our blue-eyed Iowa farmboy. Or, better yet, the street smart GI, always from Brooklyn, stalking the boche, purposely drops his spare magazine, "ping", and then kills the German who, smiling, thinks the GI is out of ammo. I'd like to know how many times this situation occurred. You'd have to be close enough to one another to hear a small piece of sheetmetal go "ping". There'd have to be silence at that moment. You can't have been deafened by firing your rifle just a few seconds ago. Anyone even remotely familiar with firing full size ammo without hearing protection knows that you won't be able to discern the "ping". Hollywood does not make good history. Hmmm, I seem to've gone on a rant. Carry on. )

Ken

[Lanzfeld]

Ken,

Can you recommend a book or two about these big cat systems? You know the technical angle I am looking for. A "systems" book if you will. I would like to start a collection.

Also, My Uncle was fighting the Japanese on Okinawa and Siapan. Real close stuff. He did confirm to me that, on more than one occasion, a Jap would come out of the jungle with a suicide charge only after the 8th round ping. Of course it was very close quarters there with the jungle.

[dieseltaylor]

I have these two which are very detailed

Haynes/The Tank Museum

Tiger Tank Panzerkamfwagen VI Tiger I Ausf. E {Sdkfz 181}

Workshop Manual

Tiger Tanks by Michael Green

more info here

http://www.alanhamby.com/tigerlinks.shtml

[BadgerDog]

(The whole hand-cranking myth is similar to the myth of the tactical drawback the Garand's en-bloc magazine ejection creates. Every friggin' movie now has the poor GI firing his last round, "ping", then the damn kraut kills our blue-eyed Iowa farmboy. Or, better yet, the street smart GI, always from Brooklyn, stalking the boche, purposely drops his spare magazine, "ping", and then kills the German who, smiling, thinks the GI is out of ammo. I'd like to know how many times this situation occurred. You'd have to be close enough to one another to hear a small piece of sheetmetal go "ping". There'd have to be silence at that moment. You can't have been deafened by firing your rifle just a few seconds ago. Anyone even remotely familiar with firing full size ammo without hearing protection knows that you won't be able to discern the "ping". Hollywood does not make good history. Hmmm, I seem to've gone on a rant. Carry on. )

Ken

Hi Ken ..

Off-topic and I don't really want to mix threads, but ...

I've read the same Internet legends and gossip. I don't know about it being myth, but I collect and own Garands, shooting them regularly at our local range. With some testing we did last summer, everyone could clearly hear the sounds of the garand ping out to at least 50 yards, even with everyone firing at once. We couldn't test further distances because of safety issues, but suffice to say, it is noticeable. Perhaps it's due to the very high pitched distinctive sound it makes, I don't know... but I could hear it, even with ear defenders on.

Regards,

Doug