Panther Shot Trap Still Not Trapping

[JasonC]

Redwolf - no, he means the degree to which the Panther mantlet itself can be penetrated by the US 76mm without APCR, as a measure of the modeled resistance of the mantlet. Not talking about deflections into the hull, just hitting the mantlet solid on the nose and going right through it. At close range, the US 76mm readily does so.

[Bastables]

Ordinarily yeah, sure. But you have to remember that this is the Germans being talked about, and what's more it's specifically the Nazi Germans. They will happily over-engineer anything that comes their way, and common sense had bugger all to do with any decision made between 1936 and 1945.

Your "reasonableness" test in those circumstances gets perverted into something like 'can I make more money by producing a dozen different camouflage patterns, even though the two we already have work fine?' or 'can I enrich myself by selling these rations - intended for these slaves working on this key weapon system - on the black market?' Or 'welp, the Western Allies have never fielded a magnetic mine, but lets keep applying this zimmerit anyway!' Or 'my airforce is disintegrating around me, but I believe my time would be better spent running this train all around Europe seizing art.' Or 'clearly we're losing the strategic air war, so how about we take six months to turn this superlative air-superiority fighter into a mediocre ground attack aircraft?'

Yeah, Nazi Germany. Speilburgers Panther book has a insightful letter correspondence between waPruf6 ( the Development office in charge of tanks) and MAN where MAN is cribbing for payment for building of a number of Panther prototypes in 43. wapruf6 OIC rages that they they've already been paid for evry unit and no more RM will be forthcoming. This is a state involved in losing war and the industrial types are tellingly all about grabbing as much money as possible.

This is not illogical from MAN's point of view due to the rorting inherent in the Nazi system: Lets look at how OKW CO Keitel while the 6th Armee was trapped in Stalingrad still found time to draw up maps to include "state land" into his personal estates and lobbied Lammers for the land grab. Or how the Konto 5 run by Lammers slush fund was used to pay off senior Nazi officers to stay quiet or merely loyal.

Note General Heinz Guderian stopped criticizing Operation Zitadelle after he was given a tax free gift of 937 hectares of Polish estates. Nazi Germany is only reasonable from a certain rorting perspective.

This is the same state and military that had begun to embark on executing soldiers and civilians for defeatism, NAZI germany is not a model of reasonable thinking. As JonS outlines the Nazi state and it's army were bug**** insane if the metric is "reasonable outcomes," unless reasonable outcomes is about rorting (corruption).

Citing Max Weber: logical inputs lead to illogical outcomes. Looking at the Panther which should be reasonable, one can see the odd design choices of interleaved road wheels for high speed cross country becasue wapruf6 OIC was fanatical of the idea of interleaved torsion bars to minimise pourposing over terrain. Cool now you have a Tank with armour and gun ment to outrange enemy tanks but because it's so good at moving fast troops begin to do coy level charges (panzer elan and german doctrine of counter attacks) into enemy positions: Normandy/Lorrain has a couple of incidences of panther coy's/battalions being side gangbanged in the midist of infantry positions, and allied tank units. There are pictures of coys of destroyed Panthers in the east with Zis3 holes in the side.

On reasonableness concerning the Panther Mantel, note in Jentz Panther book that the main issue with the mantelet in zittedle is that strikes would damage/destroy the sights which were mounted in the mantlet and would therefore suffer shock damage. This was never actually fixed. There was a stopgap with the change to monocular sights that could swap out the damage sight, and by 1945 there was paper designs for a turret with a periscope sight ala post war sights (look at the M1 or Leo2 sight box's on the turret roof compare with the Panther ausf F turret). Three years is an odd time frame to fix a problem that had been evident on German tanks sights vulnerability since 1941, admittedly prior to the Tiger and the Panther any hit to a PIV's turret/mantel would penetrate so sights breaking were the least of concerns.

[Redwolf]

Redwolf - no, he means the degree to which the Panther mantlet itself can be penetrated by the US 76mm without APCR, as a measure of the modeled resistance of the mantlet. Not talking about deflections into the hull, just hitting the mantlet solid on the nose and going right through it. At close range, the US 76mm readily does so.

Yes, I got that. I was wondering what kind of extra weakness was put into the CMx1 model. It had the "shot trap" rating (which means a 3% chance of reducing armor by 50% or 70% or something).

There was a material deficiency rating. Some CMBB Panthers have "occasional flaws in upper hull armor" and some have "frequent flaws in upper hull armor" but I am not aware of any hidden further special rating of the Panther in CMBB.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I thought that the vulnerability given in CMx1 *was* the shot trap?

Yes, that is my point. I view the ability of US 76mm APCBC to penetrate the mantlet in the game out to at least 800 meters to sort-of make up for the lack of ricochet penetrations, similar to how it did in the CMx1 games. In fact it probably over-compensates, to the extent that if BFC ever did up the ricochet probability they would need to seriously think about also increasing the effects of shatter gap, lest the Panther become much too vulnerable frontally compared to reality.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Yes, I got that. I was wondering what kind of extra weakness was put into the CMx1 model.

It was an increased chance of "weak point penetration" on hits to the front turret.

[Redwolf]

It was an increased chance of "weak point penetration" on hits to the front turret.

Yes I mean in addition to that, which IIRC is the result of the "shot trap" rating.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I don't know what you mean by "in addition to that". There is nothing in addition to that.

Here, I dug up an old explanation. It seems Charles didn't think shot trap penetrations were so vanishingly rare.

CM models the early Panthers' shot trap and displays it as a "weak point" when penetrated. But it says "turret" rather than "upper deck", even though what's really happening is the shell bounces downward off the lower mantlet and then penetrates the thin upper deck armor.

All tanks have 'weak points' (even a King Tiger) that affect about 1% of hits. This value is not affected by armor quality. The shot trap affects a considerably larger number of hits (from the front). The underside of the Panther mantlet (i.e. shot trap) is a large enough area that hits there are infrequent but not rare.

Charles

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=172749&postcount=36

[John Kettler]

Bastables,

A grog fest of a post, from which I learned many new things and a new word, too. Frankly, I thought "rorting" must've been some bizarre typo, having never seen anything like it before.

Speaking of rorting, I read some time ago that the reason the U.S. has official histories of WW II, none done for WW I, was to avoid the highly public and deeply embarrassing series of revelations of systematic war profiteering following WW I.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Redwolf]

I don't know what you mean by "in addition to that". There is nothing in addition to that.

That is what I was saying before you butchered my quote

CMx1 only had one property value for the shot trap, not two.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I wasn't aware I had said there were two.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Man, I wish I had come across that Charles quote much earlier in this discussion...

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Man, I wish I had come across that Charles quote much earlier in this discussion...

Well, without Charles's input at this point in time it doesn't appear to be much help. Either he's completely changed his view on the Panther shot trap achilles heel from some 13 years ago, as clearly demonstrated by the infinitesimal remote chance of achieving such a means to penetrate a Panther in CMx2, or it's a bug. Either way, we're no more the wiser without such input.

Regards

KR

[Vanir Ausf B]

We know from what Steve has said that Charles declared everything right and proper after getting a ricochet penetration on the first shot of a test, an extraordinarily unlikely event. So it is entirely possible that he simply doesn't know how rare it is in the game.

There is something wacky about hits on weak points in general, not just the Panther shot trap. Hull machine gun ports are hit extremely rarely or not at all while the main cannon gets hit too often. I'm going to do another thread about that soon. It will probably go nowhere like this one but we'll see.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

There is something wacky about hits on weak points in general, not just the Panther shot trap. Hull machine gun ports are hit extremely rarely or not at all while the main cannon gets hit too often. I'm going to do another thread about that soon. It will probably go nowhere like this one but we'll see.

I would suggest that the reason for this is that the hull MG port is located towards the side of the hull while the game always simulates an opposing gunner firing at centre of mass, meaning the gun gets hit a lot while the MG port gets hit very rarely. It would be an interesting test once a Grant becomes available (possibly via the East Front?) whether the 75mm main gun suffers from gun hits anywhere near as much as a normal tank with its gun in the central turret.

Regards

KR

[Vanir Ausf B]

The hull machine gun port is somewhat off-center, granted, but not by much. It is closer to the center than the side. But I will test at 1000 meters or more so there is significant dispersion.

[akd]

The hull machine gun port is somewhat off-center, granted, but not by much. It is closer to the center than the side. But I will test at 1000 meters or more so there is significant dispersion.

I would push that further if you want significant lateral dispersion.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I could go 1500 or so. Average engagement ranges in the ETO were in the 700-900 meter range so you're getting into rarefied air at that point.

[lordxenu]

If it is any help Bryan Perrets book on the Panther states that the Improved British 75mm ammunition for the m3 could either reliably penetrate the Panthers front turret at 500m or got ricochets.

Stephen Ashley Hart's book states that the turret used on late war anthers did not solve the problem of the ricochet and it was still very apparent.

Also look at http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt34/german-tiger-pzkw-6.html

Ignoring the effect of the 75mm and 6 pounder ammunition as the charges were not mentioned, it does state quite clearly 2 75mm projectiles ricochet'd and penetrated the roof of the tank.

http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt_panther/index.html

The Panther in theory should be more vulnerable.

http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt09/vulnerable-parts-pzkw-6-tiger.html