Russian tanks suck?

[Michael Emrys]

I would further point out that a drained fuel tank is in many ways more dangerous than a full one. Since vapors ignite far more readily than do liquids (see carburetors and fuel injectors), a so-called drained tank is a matter of great concern if hit.

Very true of gasoline, but I think a bit less so with diesel fuel. I don't know though if the difference is enough to weigh in this argument.

Michael

[Duckman]

This certainly ensured there was no density of defending ATGs that could possibly stop the whole armored force, but it multiplied the effective impact of every mine and every obstacle in that narrow sector to an absurd degree.

Not to mention making a fantastic target for artillery, which the Russians had ample time to preregister...

[JasonC]

The whole gas thing is utter hoakum.

There are a few cases of M-60s in Jordanian service in the 6 day war, forced to withdraw (not KOed) because of external fuel tank fires - set off by shell fire, not MGs. Nearest it gets...

[Melchior]

Supposedly the Germans were also strapping drums of fuel to the backs of tanks in Normandy as well. I can't imagine that continued very long with all the strafing and bombing from Allied aircraft. It's probably why the gun cam footage from P47s seems to show Tigers "exploding" from .50cal fire. Course' the claims of CAS vs. the reality of CAS is another whole chapter.

Fact is rolling stock was always in short supply. We're dealing with armies of millions of men so soon after an era when the car was still owned by rich minorities. It's awful tempting to strap all those extra supplies to the top of a tank when the only alternative is for men to carry it all on foot.

[JasonC]

CaptHawkeye - armor formations have many times as many trucks as they have tanks. They don't need their tanks as mere automotive lift. They do get farther forward into combat areas more readily, which is why they carry infantrymen, and tools used by the tankers themselves, and the like. But the logistic thruput to support the tanks in combat comes from a thousands of truck for a hundred or so tanks, not the other way around.

[Hessian deserter]

WELL I guess,the question now becomes,did BFC program these fuel tanks to be full or empty? Then there would "BEANO" more argument.

[sburke]

WELL I guess,the question now becomes,did BFC program these fuel tanks to be full or empty? Then there would "BEANO" more argument.

oh gawd RUSTY!!!!

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

Disagree. While I think it's safe to say that 7.62 mm MG fire into diesel fuel tanks is likely to cause leaks, and that's about all (see, for example, MythBusters live fire with .30 cal. tracer vs Cadillac whose standard tank was filled with gasoline), matters change considerably when talking about HEI and API hits from 12.7 mm projectiles and up. Modern Raufoss 7.62 mm NATO HEI IS capable of igniting diesel fuel, as is the equivalent 5.56 HEI bullet.

Moon, grog tech discussion. Please don't smite me!

http://www.smammo.com/7-62nato-308win/

http://www.smammo.com/5-56nato-223rem/

Here is a very good and groggy thread which gets into the minutiae of US incendiary mixtures. IM-11(US WW II fill for .50 BMG) is listed for both incendiary and API bullets - 50% Mg/Al (50/50) 50%

Barium nitrate.

Taken from http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=14308 Poster was The WiZard is In posted on 14-8-2010 at 10:55

Said poster appears to be an explosives grog, as seen here.

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=28901#pid318550

I'm no chemist or physicist, but I'm sure someone like ArgusEye could run some quick calculations and tell us whether IM-11 and similar burn hot enough to ignite diesel fuel. My expectation would be in the affirmative. To get the ball rolling, here's a flashpoint table for various fuels, including diesel, which is > 62 degrees C

http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Ignition_of_Fuels

And what sort of flame temperature does Mg alone generate?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium

"Flame temperatures of magnesium and magnesium alloys can reach 3,100 °C (3,370 K; 5,610 °F)"

I'd say WW II API and HEI in the 12.7 mm and up range ARE credible threats to external fuel tanks containing diesel or diesel vapors.

Regards,

John Kettler

[76mm]

And yet, I've read lots of accounts of east front action (both sides) and don't recall ever reading anything about fuel barrels being targeted, or exploding, other than in air attacks...

[JasonC]

JK - what 76mm said. I've read every AAR I can get my hands on of WWII combat for over 30 years, and I have never once encountered any actual tactical account of MGs taking out full tanks by lighting them on fire, just by aiming at fuel areas. I've seen manuals telling ATR gunners to aim low at fuel cell areas on German tanks, especially types too thick to penetrate the turret (preferred target if the gun can penetrate). I've heard a few non specific remarks from German sides targeted about fuel leaks (not fires) caused that way - but unspecific about whether the hits were from full ATGs (like 45mm), rather than ATRs. The only targeted side accounts of trouble from such light caliber AT rounds talk about vision and sight hits blinding tanks, or very occasionally gun damage from actual hits along the gun tube, and lots of them. All as hail fire by non penetrating AT, not the results of MG fire.

There isn't a single report of a tank taken out by MG fire causing a fuel fire, including 50 cal HMG fire, in all of the Congressional Medal of Honor citations for the entire war, all fronts. There is a case of the bad ass who got a full kill on a full tank with just his Thompson submachinegun, but he did it by whacking the crew-exposed driver while the tank was in motion and crossing a bridge. He induced a crash by killing the driver at an opportune moment, and the tank crashed off the bridge it was crossing and fell into the river below, for a full kill.

That is how rare a bad ass heroic action can be and make the dispatches. But no tanks set on fire by MGs appear, from one end of the war to the other. My verdict - it did not happen.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

While I wish I had your AAR files to go with your encyclopedic library covering the most astounding and obscure things, you missed my point. I said that the HMG 42 was not capable of wreaking the havoc described; that it would take a .50 BMG or larger, in my estimation, to accomplish such a thing. Do you have any accounts at all from the Russians regarding what happened if external tanks were hit?

76mm,

If MG fire was involved, what made it work from the air while equivalent caliber ground weaponry didn't? Would say weight of fire per unit time. Nor does it hurt that, relatively speaking, the presented area of the fuel tank/s is much greater from above than is generally available for ground engagements.

JasonC and 76mm,

Just got through E-mailing the Archive Awareness guy about the external fuel tank vulnerability/lack thereof to MG fire. Believe he's our best chance of finding out things from the Russian military-technical side. On another Forum, I saw a tiny tantalizing excerpt from a Red Army study on the causes of combat fuel fires on T-34s, but it amounted to a paragraph from a very specialized tech study.

Regards,

John Kettler

[DMS]

I am having issues with this game since release. When i play as the soviets my tanks cant spot anything i have to loose 4-5 t34s to take out 1 pzIV. is this a bug with russian tank spotting? Or are they supposed to be this awful. When i play as Germans i have no problems with my tanks spotting. Or problems with my tanks in any other Cm2 game.. If this is a bug will it be patched with the first patch? thanks guys

BFC tried to simulate poor spotting abilities of T-34-76, but did it too much. The commander-gunner had 360 degrees periscope with magnification, the tank was not absolutely blind like in the game. Late war tanks had MK-4 periscope, that was superior to that the Germans had. Buttoned up soviet tank with MK-4 periscope would be better spotting then german.

I have no problem with soviet tanks, (with exception to T-34-76) but I usually open hatches, send infantry (or bail out crew when don't have inf) to recon and share data about contacts.

[Sailor Malan2]

Btw, talk about the flammability of full tanks is misguided. Liquid fuel (diesel espaecially but also petrol or gasoline to the colonials ) is MUCH less flammable than vapour. A nearly empty tank is your problem in terms of bang for buck.

[Michael Emrys]

If MG fire was involved, what made it work from the air while equivalent caliber ground weaponry didn't?

One thing occurs to me. I don't know about the Soviet air force, but Western air forces routinely included API in their ammo loadout and I don't think it was that common for ground based MGs that were not dedicated AA weapons.

In any event, As Jason and 76mm inform us, tank losses through igniting fuel tanks seldom if ever turn up in AARs, so the matter is largely moot.

Michael

[John Kettler]

I just heard back from the guy who has the Archive Awareness site, and to whom we owe our thanks.

This is a link to a study that was done on T-34 fuel tank vulnerability to various threats. It addresses the internal fuel tank vulnerability issue against a range of Russian and German threats, to include the Panzerschreck. Though the study is for internal tanks rather than external ones, there are useful things to be learned about tank survivability from reading it.

http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2013/07/gas-tanks-fires-and-explosions.html

He did have this to say on the subject of external tanks.

"As for fuel tanks, if they were not dismounted before battle, they were drained. Fuel is heavy, and dragging around four external tanks is unnecessary in combat. Even if one tank was full of vapours and exploded from a HEAT charge, it would not destroy the tank, as the force of the explosion would largely vent outwards."

He was also kind enough to provide something on the closed hatch business I've repeatedly brought up. This is from the 1945 combat experience of the 1st Belorussian Front. Note carefully that last sentence in the paragraph.

http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2014/05/soviet-tank-tactics-1945.html

"Special attention should be paid to massed machinegun fire. The distance between vehicles moving through the city should be such that every vehicle must be able to protect the one in front of it from being hit with grenades, incendiary bottles, and "Faust" rounds from the upper floors. This distance is about 75-100 meters. Tanks and SPGs should never move in a line. If one tank moves on the right side of the street, it must aim at the houses on the left side, and the next tank should move on the left side, aiming at the right houses. All hatches of tanks and SPGs should be closed."

I have previously presented references as far back as Kursk attesting fighting buttoned was officially required, and that doing otherwise was a punishable offense (Clark's Kursk book). In the tanker memoirs on IRemember.ru, there was a tanker who talked about how a 'faust hit on a buttoned up tank would kill the crew, but if the hatch was left ajar (in defiance of combat regs), then in the event of a 'faust hit, the blast and heat (very short duration events) which would otherwise have wiped out the crew now had at least a partial outlet, allowing the crew to a good chance to survive.

Regards,

John Kettler

[tankski]

I deeply enjoy using the T-34-76 because it is so hard to use them effectively. I just had the bulk of a reg destroyed by about 17 Pz IVG lates in a Quick "Kursk." Yes, they fought blind buttoned up and RT beautifully models their helplessness. The problem the Red Army had was the terrible Sov optical glass for the turret top panoramic telescope and the gun sight. The glass was cloudy and distorted. The crystal clear sights in WWII Sov tank sims are a fantasy. The Sov radios were bad. One of the biggest reasons the Red Army tankers liked the Sherman was its comparatively excellent radio which allowed them to use more sophisticated tactics.

I overran the forward-deployed Pz IVs at great cost. The surviving ones were far back where they had formed a hedgehog around a house. There were maybe eight. I did not know this until after the Quick had ended when you can survey the battlefield. What I really admired about RT was that the T-34-76s could not spot them, apparently, not even their muzzle flashes and gun smoke. The German hedgehog was about 1000 meters away from my (approx 14) surviving T-34s. The Germans were completely invisible using Iron. I sent out probes with small packets or single T-34s. They were getting knocked out and I could not find the shooters.

This highlighted the Sov problem in 1943. Tiger Is, Panthers, and even Pz IVGs could knock out the T-34 at long range. The photos from Kursk of one or two Tigers advancing alone on the empty steppe surrounded by distant columns of smoke from destroyed Sov vehicles tell the whole story.

I find using accurately modeled Sov equipment to be a huge challenge. Even using good tactics you still face almost impossible challenges in the T-34-76. This is history at its best.

[womble]

The Germans were completely invisible using Iron.

Just to note that they'd be equally invisible using any of the other difficulty settings, as spotting enemies is entirely unaffected by that system, beyond the potential lack of "?" sharing (but if no one could see them anyway, that's not a factor here).

[DMS]

I deeply enjoy using the T-34-76 because it is so hard to use them effectively. I just had the bulk of a reg destroyed by about 17 Pz IVG lates in a Quick "Kursk." Yes, they fought blind buttoned up and RT beautifully models their helplessness. The problem the Red Army had was the terrible Sov optical glass for the turret top panoramic telescope and the gun sight. The glass was cloudy and distorted. The crystal clear sights in WWII Sov tank sims are a fantasy. The Sov radios were bad. One of the biggest reasons the Red Army tankers liked the Sherman was its comparatively excellent radio which allowed them to use more sophisticated tactics.

I overran the forward-deployed Pz IVs at great cost. The surviving ones were far back where they had formed a hedgehog around a house. There were maybe eight. I did not know this until after the Quick had ended when you can survey the battlefield. What I really admired about RT was that the T-34-76s could not spot them, apparently, not even their muzzle flashes and gun smoke. The German hedgehog was about 1000 meters away from my (approx 14) surviving T-34s. The Germans were completely invisible using Iron. I sent out probes with small packets or single T-34s. They were getting knocked out and I could not find the shooters.

This highlighted the Sov problem in 1943. Tiger Is, Panthers, and even Pz IVGs could knock out the T-34 at long range. The photos from Kursk of one or two Tigers advancing alone on the empty steppe surrounded by distant columns of smoke from destroyed Sov vehicles tell the whole story.

I find using accurately modeled Sov equipment to be a huge challenge. Even using good tactics you still face almost impossible challenges in the T-34-76. This is history at its best.

This is... Wrong. One of the myths of WW2 history. The problems with optics were during several monthes, when plants were evacuated.

Late war scopes were not inferior to German one. Zoom near equal. x4 for JS-2, x5 for Tiger, if I am not mistaken.

Blindness of T-34-76 seems to be overestimated. They should have narrow field of view, but they should see targets where gun sight is directed.

[tankski]

Thanks for the clarification, DMS. I read as many WWII Red Army memoirs as I can find in English because so much technical information on Red Army equipment available in the West is unreliable. I found from using a Russian made tank sim that a 76mm gun T-34 in a good stationary position with a good view of the opposition could do quite a bit of damage. Trying to keep situational awareness and quick shooting on the move was very hard, but a well-positioned 76 hull down could be very effective. On the move to battle, I try to keep my commanders outside as long as possible.

[MikeyD]

...T-34 fuel tank vulnerability to various threats.

I recall reading a paper some years back about vulnerability testing of T72 external fuel tanks by Hungary, I believe. If memory serves they blew one external tank clean off using a Carl Gustav but no resulting fire. An external fuel tank full of petrol would've gone off like a bomb but Soviet diesel oil is another matter entirely. You'd be lucky to get it burning at all hitting it with AP. Shermans earned the name (or were given the name in post-war literature) of 'Ronson' after the cigarette lighter, but really were no more prone to catastrophic fires than PzIV or Panther. The thing about Panther is you first had to penetrate it and that was the hard part.

[JasonC]

Not this crap again...

Fires in early Shermans (and lots of other types, for that matter) were not due to fuel at all. They were due to ammo. Apparently there is simply some mental monkey brain level association between fire and fuel that no amount of factual information can penetrate.

A medium tank carries 50 to 100 rounds of large caliber ammuntion, every one of them containing a large propellent charge of rapid burning gunpowder. The inside of a medium tank is an powder shed. Just as improperly designed British battlecruisers in WWI flat blew up as soon as a single heavy shell penetrated to their vitals, because their magazines had not been properly compartmentalized to contain a cordite flash fire, medium tanks that are penetrated by million joule plus heavy antitank ammunition are very likely to see some of that propellent set off. And some of it burning will ignite the rest, unless all of it is stowed and laid out extremely carefully. If you think gas is flamable, try gunpowder - it will reset your scale and frame of reference (if you live through it).

In fact, a tank duel basically consists in the stored chemical energy of powder propellant inside one tank trying to light and set off the stored chemical energy in the powder propellent in the other, with the gun just a light match used to transfer some of that energy across the intervening kilometer or so of open air, in kinetic energy form.

Fuel has flat nothing to do with any of it. Never has.

As soon as Shermans were redesigned with wet stowage of seperated ammunition, stored slightly more sensibly than in a ring around the whole turret, the above average rate of brew ups of the type, disappeared. They didn't touch the fuel system. They didn't need to - it was never involved in the first place.

[JasonC]

On optics, DMS is right. I love the folks who go on about the supposedly crappy Russian optical glass compared to the great German Zeiss stuff. They don't seem to know that all the Russian state optics factories were designed and built in the early 1930s by --- the Zeiss corporation. (Just as all the tank factories that set the production records during the war were designed, also in the 1930s, by US auto industry engineers from Detroit...)

[DMS]

Thanks for the clarification, DMS. I read as many WWII Red Army memoirs as I can find in English because so much technical information on Red Army equipment available in the West is unreliable. I found from using a Russian made tank sim that a 76mm gun T-34 in a good stationary position with a good view of the opposition could do quite a bit of damage. Trying to keep situational awareness and quick shooting on the move was very hard, but a well-positioned 76 hull down could be very effective. On the move to battle, I try to keep my commanders outside as long as possible.

It seems that I know that sim. I remember comfortable moving with nice view before contact with TC out of a hatch and fast moving parts of trees, houses, ground in telescopic sight being inside the tank. "Steel fury". It's bad that commander's turret in Pz. IV wasn't modeled properly, to see the difference. In next game, about T-62, they modelled commander's turret well.

On optics, DMS is right. I love the folks who go on about the supposedly crappy Russian optical glass compared to the great German Zeiss stuff. They don't seem to know that all the Russian state optics factories were designed and built in the early 1930s by --- the Zeiss corporation. (Just as all the tank factories that set the production records during the war were designed, also in the 1930s, by US auto industry engineers from Detroit...)

+ licensed Polish-English MK-IV periscopes, mounted in all late war tanks. That were better then just holes in the armor, in my opinion.