How Much Field Of Vision Do Tank Gunners Have?

[Col Deadmarsh]

I'm playing a game where my schreck was in a two story building and fired a shot at a buttoned up tank around 120m away. The round bounced off the tank, but the schreck team, which was 45-60 degrees off to the side of the tank was immediately spotted by the buttoned up tank crew and were fired upon.

Does this seem realistic? Do tank gunners have that wide of field of vision?

[MikeyD]

Its really hard to say because this was heavily massaged for v2.12 and people may not have had enough play experience yet to quantify the results. Buttoned tank crews are less likely to spot in infantry than they used to, that's all I know. That fact that your guys managed to get off their shot before being spotted sounds like an improvement over earlier gameplay.

About tankers 'field of vision, that's all under the hood and completely obscure. I recall during Beta testing buttoned Tiger I was having unusual difficulty spotting the enemy. It turned out the (invisible) TC was accidentally placed facing sideways in the cupola so his optics weren't in front of him. In other words there's more going on under the hood than any of us can guess.

[altipueri]

Just go and look through your own front door's letter box.

[YankeeDog]

Yeah, in general spotting from inside a buttoned WWII era tank ain't great. I've heard it described as cutting a few 1" x 6" slits in the sides of a metal garbage can, throwing said can over your head, and then trying to drive down the street.

It varies from tank to tank (and even model to model), but in general the tank gunner's field of view is quite narrow. However, it wouldn't usually be the gunner who spotted a new off-bearing threat like that -- the Tc generally has the best view to the sides and rear when buttoned and would be most likely to see a new threat in these areas. Tank crews train very hard to efficiently pass information to the gunner when a threat is spotted, so the gunner would start slewing the turret towards the new threat very shortly after the Tc spotted it.

As to how likely a tank crew would be to spot the threat you describe, hard to say. On the one hand, as mentioned, view from inside a buttoned tank sucks. On the other hand, the Panzershreck has a large firing signature. It produces a good sized puff of smoke, a flash, and the rocket leaves a nice little smoke trail pointing back at the launcher. A position in a second floor window is also going to be easier for the tank crew to specify than, say, a position somewhere along a bocage line. In general, fighting positions in buildings offer great concealment until someone opens fire, at which point they become very obvious.

So overall, it doesn't surprise me all that much that the tank spotted the Shreck after only one shot. I wouldn't expect this to happen all of the time, but I would expect it to happen at least some of the time.

[Artofwar]

Ok let me get something for clarification I had done a custom scenario with one German Mark IV tanks and I tried to sneak up on the tank with my bazooka guys from the woods tank in the open. Unfortunatelly, my guys shot at the tank with their rifles and killed the commander lol then the tank drives off and is facing AWAY from me but I could not sneak up real close to it without it driving off so the tank can see behind itself ????? Also, I should have done a shooting ark a small one so my scouts would not shoot at the tank.

Then later the tank even drove off when it was on the other side of a building and I was sneaking up on it with the building between us. But it seems to make a difference if I used move order vs hunt order vs a faster order but with hunt order they sometimes freeze and don't move.

[altipueri]

Sounds like real life AAR.