A question about tank shells...

[Bradley Dick]

Do tank shells cause casualties just by passing near soldiers? I had two misses cause a casualty for infantry and later a tank commander during the same turn.

[Lanzfeld]

Yeah if you look close you can see the shells actually are headshots.

[womble]

The 57mm seems particularly good at being a very large sniper rifle, IME.

[Vark]

Historically, near misses could cause hatch covers to slam shut on unfortunate crews, with obvious results!

[Bradley Dick]

I went and watched my replay a few times and here's what I noticed:

1. The tank commander was most likely killed by a direct hit that probably tore him in half but failed to detonate the shell.

2. The infantry squad was missed by a large margin and the shell impacted far behind them. The only thing I can figure is that the shell most have thrown fragments very far away at the perfect angle. My incapacitated trooper is very unlucky.

[womble]

I went and watched my replay a few times and here's what I noticed:

1. The tank commander was most likely killed by a direct hit that probably tore him in half but failed to detonate the shell.

I had an MG42 gunner in a barn killed like that. The 57mm culprit exited the barn and treeburst way further back, killing/wounding another trooper another 25m on.

2. The infantry squad was missed by a large margin and the shell impacted far behind them. The only thing I can figure is that the shell most have thrown fragments very far away at the perfect angle. My incapacitated trooper is very unlucky.

I've had 57mm fragments kill/wound at over 40m. And one 57mm ricochet came down in a team of Pioneers, kill/wounding three and slightly grazing a 4th. Out of 6. I've seen 81mm mortar shells do less damage on a direct hit on a team. I've seem them do more, too...

[Amizaur]

I've had 57mm fragments kill/wound at over 40m. And one 57mm ricochet came down in a team of Pioneers, kill/wounding three and slightly grazing a 4th. Out of 6. I've seen 81mm mortar shells do less damage on a direct hit on a team. I've seem them do more, too...

I'm not sure it's correct that an APHE shell hitting dirt causes infantry casulaties.

Yes, there is a charge of 30-100g of high explosive inside APHE shell. But it is fused with either time or acceleration/deceleration fuse rather that impact one.

After hitting ground, it it doesn't bounce, it would probably bury itself deep in the ground, before detonating. It would either travel at least one meter before it detonates, or the fuse would set it off, when the deceleration ends (this is how German APHE fuses worked) so again, it would bury as deep as it possibly can.

If that is the case, then the effect of detonation would be partially/fully absorbed by the ground, also the few shell fragments that would be produced - if they manage to get out back to the air, they would lost most of energy.

[womble]

I'm not sure it's correct that an APHE shell hitting dirt causes infantry casulaties.

I can't say I disagree with that very much. The ricochet that killed 3 had looped almost vertically up in the air and took 2-4s to come to earth. I would have thought the bursting fuse would have activated far sooner than that. I think it should be possible to cause a few casualties, but with the 57mm AP's performance against infantry targets that I've seen, there wouldn't have been any burning need to swap AP for HE shells with the Brits...

[Pak40]

Amizaur, I've never heard of a APHE shell. Where are you getting your information? In any case, I'm quite sure these shells are not in CMBN.

I have seen a shell ricochet off of a tank and impact near two soldiers and actually kill them.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

APHE is AP ammo with a small burster charge inside. The theory was that it would do more damage once it penetrated.

[shocker28]

What determines what is being fired would be a better question. Because from what I know the Germans had HE AP and HEAT rounds from what I understand. HEAT = APHE? Regardless of my little and possibly incorrect information as far as munitions, if a tank is aiming at a soft Target such as infantry would the ai automatically switch to and fire HE rounds instead of armor piercing? It would only make sense.

[Ryujin]

HEAT = Shaped charge detonating on impact, "liquifying" (it's a bit more complex than that) some metal. The metal does the penetrating, the charge is just there to make the jet of metal. However, it'd likely have a bigger change and more anti personal utility both from charge size and a fuse that's more likely to detonate before the shell goes too far into the ground.

Tanks/AT guns do fire HE if they have it. However if they run out or don't carry HE (like the 57mm mentioned a lot in this thread), they will fire all manner of anti-armor rounds at infantry.

As far as AP causing casualties, I could see it happening even if it buried a bit (all it takes is one tiny metal fragment to hit something vital), but it should be pretty unpredictable. In my limited AP vs infantry experience, it does feel a bit too consistent for something burying into the ground.

[Doug Williams]

Do tank shells cause casualties just by passing near soldiers? I had two misses cause a casualty for infantry and later a tank commander during the same turn.

I have also seen this happen in the game. In a recent game I noticed an 88mm shell pass near an infantryman and he instantly became a casualty. I don't believe the shell ever impacted anything on the map, but continued off map, so he was not killed by the explosion. Sorry, I don't remember if it was an AP or an HE round, but I do remember thinking to myself, that it was an odd occurrence.

[womble]

I have also seen this happen in the game. In a recent game I noticed an 88mm shell pass near an infantryman and he instantly became a casualty. I don't believe the shell ever impacted anything on the map, but continued off map, so he was not killed by the explosion. Sorry, I don't remember if it was an AP or an HE round, but I do remember thinking to myself, that it was an odd occurrence.

It's not odd, really. Happens all the time: trooper killed by direct impact of an AP round that then either doesn't explode at all or explodes further downrange. I think if the game is going to model "overpenetration" then it should model bursting charges and their fuses rather better. What you gain from having one pTrooper's bodily particles not be tough enough to terminate the trajectory of a high velocity 6lb piece of metal you lose by having further ballistic and shellburst anomalies down range.

[Doug Williams]

In the occurrence that I witnessed, the shell did not appear to strike the infantryman. It looked to me like it simply passed near him and he fell over dead. I watched it several times to be sure he was not killed by small arms fire, but I could not see any evidence that anything besides the tank round passing near him caused him to become a casualty. Unfortunately, I did not save the turn.

[womble]

In the occurrence that I witnessed, the shell did not appear to strike the infantryman. It looked to me like it simply passed near him and he fell over dead. I watched it several times to be sure he was not killed by small arms fire, but I could not see any evidence that anything besides the tank round passing near him caused him to become a casualty. Unfortunately, I did not save the turn.

Ah, now that would be odd... It's possible, perhaps, that what you saw was the result of WeGo turn replays not always precisely graphically matching the actuality, though I thought that was more on the scale of a vehicle hit not necessarily showing the impact on the precise plate of armour all the time. Was the shell track very far from your poor pTruppen? Did it at least cross the same action square?

[Sublime]

Its been said quite often the WeGo graphic arent exactly accurate.

Also the shells flying over troops has been discussed with a PBEM opponent of mine. Im sure we're just imagining to not kill the experience, but in real life sonic compression of a round travelling over or near someone often will kill them. Just like concussion from rounds landing nearby can cause internal bleeding and all sorts of other bad things..

[Doug Williams]

I suppose it could have just been a graphics anomaly. The game engine may well have calculated that the shell struck the infantryman, but the graphics only showed it passing near him.

[Bradley Dick]

Just like concussion from rounds landing nearby can cause internal bleeding and all sorts of other bad things..

Internal organs can burst from sufficient yield high explosive concussions. There's also an effect that basically switches off your nervous system like a light switch. Artillery is nasty stuff.

Apparently, the near miss was an artifact of the WEGO system replay and not some magically lucky shrapnel or death by passing shell. That seems plausible to me.

[Amizaur]

APHE is AP ammo with a small burster charge inside. The theory was that it would do more damage once it penetrated.

The theory and - with a good fuse - the practice.

I wrote "APHE" thinking about whole family of Armor Piercing shells with High Explosive bursting charge (that is supposed to detonate inside the penetrated vehicle). The types being used in CMBN would be probably rather APCBC-HE (or APCBC-HE-T - the "T" mens "tracer") but it's a longer name to write .

British would probably use pure APCBC (removing high explosive from their shells and replacing it with sand, IIRC because of problems with reliability of the fuses), but it didn't hurt the performance of 17pd gun - the 17pd APBC shell had lots of kinetic energy, and purely kinetic effects of penetration were usually more than enough to knock-out German tanks (often causing katastrophic kills like internal explosions of fuel/ammo).

I'm not sure about US AP ammo, if they used HE burst charges or not - AFAIK they did, but with some problems with fuse reliability.

The Germans as an "AP" ammo used almost exclusively APCBC-HE projectiles with HE charges and sophiscated acceleration/deceleration fuses, that were designed (and usually did) to detonate the shell as soon as it passed trough the penetrated armor (fuse was armed after launch, by centrifugal forces, activated when it striked the hard armor and finally triggered when it left the penetrated plate on the other side - just when the extreme deceleration of the penetration proces has ended). The minimum thickness of the plate required to trigger the fuse was IIRC in order of 15-30mm.

The only drawback of this fuse was that it was prone to malfunction if used against highly sloped armor - the extreme side acceleration and forces during penetration of a highly sloped armor plate could cause some internal elements of the fuse to jam and not detonate it. The shell then worked like an ordinary APCBC.

(Maybe this is the reason that - according to some tanker's reports - a Russian T-34 tank was hard to set on fire if penetrated frontally (by Tiger's KwK36) but burned very easily when penetrated from the side.)

On the other hand, even if the German APHE fuse was manufactured with low quality materials by slave workers, and sometimes didn't work properly - the excess of energy of German 88mm or long 75mm guns was so big, similar (or in case of long 88s - much greater) to that of Brithish 17pd gun, that - again - purely kinetic effects of penetration should be most often more than enough for causing a casualties and a knock-out.

A working (and probably they usually worked fine) fuse and correctly detonating HE burster could only further increase the nasty effects - by it's detonation causing additionaly a flash/flame and an overpressure spike in the inside of the tank, fragmenting the shell case causing more splinters, filling the inside with black smoke ect.

But the burst charge was usually very small. From few grams (of high-performance HE like RDX) in smal-callibre shells, to 20-50g in typical APCBC-HE of 75-90mm calibre, to 100g or more in 122mm shells or some early-war low-velocity 75-88mm shells.

Such small charge worked well in a confined space of a tank - detonation of 20...50g of RDX (so like 30-80g of TNT) in a thick metal casing was definitely unhealthy for the crew in a closed space, especially when the shell detonated usually not more than a meter from someones body.

But in an open the effect would be reduced, the overpressure being like from very small grenade, and the burst causing usually only few large slow fragments of the shell's case. If the shell buried in the ground, the effect would be reduced even more.

[Pak40]

APHE is AP ammo with a small burster charge inside. The theory was that it would do more damage once it penetrated.

Yea, but that's just called AP ammo, it's never called APHE.

[Pak40]

I'm not sure about US AP ammo, if they used HE burst charges or not - AFAIK they did, but with some problems with fuse reliability.

Yes, most rounds had a small bursting charge but they did use some solid shot rounds too.

[womble]

Yea, but that's just called AP ammo, it's never called APHE.

Never? That's a big statement. I've encountered APHE used to differentiate between solid shot (like the Brits used in their 6lber) and the shells with their bursting charge that the Americans used in their articles of the same design. They're not differentiated in the game display, but AIUI, the differing characteristics are intended to be modelled. It's just that most units used one type or the other, so in the game there's no need to distinguish.

[c3k]

For the newbs...

AP is solid shot. A bullet shaped hunk of metal.

APHE is a bullet shaped hunk of metal...with an explosive in it. (Read Amizeur's post.) It is meant to significantly increase the "behind armor" effects of a penetration. And they worked very well. (Being a hollowed out "bullet", it is properly called "shell", rather than "shot" which refers to a solid mass.)

The extra letters, such as APBC, means "Armor Piercing, Ballistic Capped". I suggest a deep internet search. Suffice it to say, there were many reasons to continually improve the design of the projectiles.

HEAT is "High Explosive, Anti Tank". It penetrates armor solely due to the CHEMICAL power of a specially shaped explosive charge. Whereas the "AP" type of rounds, in all their iterations, depend on kinetic energy (velocity primarily), HEAT is totally different.

APHE =/= HEAT

The above is VERY basic. Do some searching...

Ken

[Michael Emrys]

The extra letters, such as APBC, means "Armor Piercing, Ballistic Capped".

Well, there was APC (Armor Piercing Capped) which meant that a softer, blunter cap was put on the nose of the round to keep it from sliding off of sloped armor without penetrating. This was quickly followed by APCBC (Armor Piercing Capped Ballistic Capped) which added a thin aerodynamic windshield over the nose of an AP Capped round so that it would retain more of its velocity on the way to the target.

Michael