Is Panther that invincible?

[alwaysfish]

I am playing a pbem match, and on several occasions i observed that it is really hard for Russian T-34-85s to penetrate Panther armor. In the video you will see how T-34-85 hits Panther four times at a range of 400m, but never penetrates Panther's hull. I don't know much about armor penetration, so i thought maybe somebody will provide good insight, if Panther is really that hard to penetrate at such short range. 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2016 by alwaysfish

[JoMac]

Yeap, and it's difficult to penetrate the Upper Hull with the 85mm Gun...However, if you were to hit the Turret or Lower Hull, at that range, then you have a better chance of a penetration. 

Joe

[kevinkin]

That looked like a lot of high die rolls to me. In actual game play, use the T-34s speed to sprint and get a side shot. In the scheme of things, perfectly squared off gun duels are pretty rare. 

Kevin

[Childress]

The odd thing about this vid is why the Panther took 40 seconds to fire back.

[Michael Emrys]

17 minutes ago, Childress said:

The odd thing about this vid is why the Panther took 40 seconds to fire back.

Shock? That's been talked about lately.

Michael

[alwaysfish]

19 minutes ago, Childress said:

The odd thing about this vid is why the Panther took 40 seconds to fire back.

Well, i see several things. First, the Russian tank was hull down, only turret visible. Second, the Panther was buttoned, so I suppose visibility was somewhat limited. Plus, there were trees in the middle of the LOS (only trunks are visible in the video), so that could have hindered the visibility. And, like Michael said, shock maybe?

[Ivanov]

Well, it took my Tiger I five shots to penetrate the front armor of IS-2 ( but from a greater distance ). If I'm not mistaken, Panther front armor is really thick but if you managed to outflank it, a shoot from the side would probably disable it immediately. Manouver is much more potent on battlefield than mere caliber of your main gun

[Childress]

Ah, those cursed tree trunks. A deceptive element that inhibits getting the 'big picture' on a CM map.

[DLaurier]

You had a bad day.
I've seen panthers taken out by those little 45 mm pop guns.
I've seen panthers shake off 155 mm rounds like raindrops.
it depends

[womble]

Remember that every polygon has its own armour rating, for thickness and quality, and that penetration is calculated from the precise angle and velocity at which the particular kind of projectile hits a given polygon of the vehicle. The Panther's glacis plate is extremely difficult to penetrate, being well sloped, but its other frontal armour isn't as good, and like any medium tank, its side and rear armour is vulnerable to even relatively light AT.

It's also worth remembering that tankers aim for the centre of the visible area. At close range, a gun like the 85mm is going to hit within a few cm of where it's aimed, which will, in the Panther's case, from this angle, be the Upper Front Hull. Which the 85mm isn't likely to penetrate. At longer ranges, you'll get more "scatter" onto thinner plates. So it's not so much luck as a game limitation (the gunner not being able to directly aim for plates he can penetrate at a given range) biting you in the butt.

[alwaysfish]

Thank you guys for all your input.

[shift8]

On 5/30/2016 at 9:40 AM, Michael Emrys said:

Shock? That's been talked about lately.

Michael

[shift8]

On 5/30/2016 at 5:43 AM, alwaysfish said:

I am playing a pbem match, and on several occasions i observed that it is really hard for Russian T-34-85s to penetrate Panther armor. In the video you will see how T-34-85 hits Panther four times at a range of 400m, but never penetrates Panther's hull. I don't know much about armor penetration, so i thought maybe somebody will provide good insight, if Panther is really that hard to penetrate at such short range. 

 

 

I will answer your question on the Panthers armor as in depth as I possibly can. I know this is late but others may find this interesting as well. 

The short asnwer: hell yes. The Panthers Upper front hull especially, the Panther is a beast from the front. It is immune to fire from the Russian 85mm gun, and even the American 90mm gun, and its OWN 75mm gun: even at point blank range. 

 

The T-34-85 firing its standard APBC ammo has a max penetration at 100m of 139mm. 85mm/85mm (panther armor) gives us a Thickness to Diameter ratio of 1.0. This gives us a slope multiplier of 2.1. A slope multiplier is a number that is multiplied by the base armor thickness to give us effective LOS thickness when over-match and the effects of sloping the armor are taken into account. This includes energy loss from the shell impact at the associated slope, not just the geometric LOS thickness. This is important because most people assume you can simply take the geometric thickness, but this is not true(LOS thickness here would be 148mm). Anyhow, this gives us a effective armor thickness at 55 degree's of 168mm. Meaning that a T-34 is nearly 30mm short of being able to penetrate at point blank range even with a perfectly straight shot. If there is any side angle the problem is even worse. 

 

Additionally, that value of 168mm is only true for a 85mm APBC round. The Panther has different effective armor values for different guns. I will give one example to demonstrate this. I will use American 90mm M82 APCBC and 76mm HVAP as examples. 90mm APCBC over matches the 85mm armor slightly with a T/D ratio of .94. This means it will incur a slope multiplier of 2.5~. Notice this is higher than the soviet APBC, because APCBC is more affected by slope. This give the Panther 212mm of effective armor vs the American 90mm gun. At 100m M-82 penetrates 169mm of RHA, making it ineffective. 76mm HVAP under-matches the 85mm armor, at 1.11 T/D. APCR rounds incur significant slope penalties, and with that T/D ratio the slope effect is 3.3, giving the Panther 280mm of armor vs 76mm HVAP. 76mm HVAP penetrates at most 239mm. 

Edited June 21, 2016 by shift8

[A Canadian Cat]

Nice explanation @shift8.  Everyone with a Panther will be driving around cocky after that Buuuuuuuut don't forget the relative heights of the vehicles matter in game.  Which means that if a Panther is in a slightly higher level than the shooter (which it actually looks like in the screen shot) the Panther is in an even better position in terms of its frontal armour.  But if it at a lower level than the shooter the angle will be less and things start to change.  The game actually takes into account the path that AP rounds is actually on when it hits.

[Michael Emrys]

45 minutes ago, IanL said:

Which means that if a Panther is in a slightly higher level than the shooter (which it actually looks like in the screen shot) the Panther is in an even better position in terms of its frontal armour.

But wouldn't that mean that there was a slightly higher chance of hitting the lower frontal armor, which if memory serves is a bit thinner?

Michael

[A Canadian Cat]

Oh yes that can be true depending on the terrain.  So Panther drivers want to be higher and at least partial hull down to put some dirt and rocks between your enemy and your more fragile lower front hull armour.

[slysniper]

The in game ballistics really does a fine job of being pretty accurate.

With that being said. If the Panther has a little hgt. advantage as mentioned. That is when they get really tough.

I have seen them take 15-20 hits in situations like that from 85MM rounds.

Now reverse that roll and  put them in a poor position where they do not increase the slope of the armor  but decrease it and I have seen the first shot from a 85 take them out.

The point I am trying to make, use every advantage that is available for you to help your armor. generally pays off in the game.

 

When ever they do make a cm3 engine. Maybe we can start talking about getting tanks that have the ability to aim at different portions of the enemy tank.

It sure would be nice to see the gunners aim for the weak portion of the enemy tank. Or maybe allow the player to select a aim point, like hull, turret, tracks, main gun or whatever seems logical.

 

[shift8]

15 minutes ago, slysniper said:

The in game ballistics really does a fine job of being pretty accurate.

With that being said. If the Panther has a little hgt. advantage as mentioned. That is when they get really tough.

I have seen them take 15-20 hits in situations like that from 85MM rounds.

Now reverse that roll and  put them in a poor position where they do not increase the slope of the armor  but decrease it and I have seen the first shot from a 85 take them out.

The point I am trying to make, use every advantage that is available for you to help your armor. generally pays off in the game.

 

When ever they do make a cm3 engine. Maybe we can start talking about getting tanks that have the ability to aim at different portions of the enemy tank.

It sure would be nice to see the gunners aim for the weak portion of the enemy tank. Or maybe allow the player to select a aim point, like hull, turret, tracks, main gun or whatever seems logical.

 

Tanks already do aim for weak points. Higher experience crews have higher chances to do this etc. Im not sure it would be a good idea to allow the player to do this directly, since at most normal tank battle ranges (including the 400m example above) it is simply too far away for a human to have much effect on shell placement. Aim center mass etc. 

Also just to add to your story on hits: I once lets an entire company of shermans 75mm's pound a Panther in game at 100m. They ran out of ammunition trying to penetrate the Panthers.

 

CMx2's ballistics system for the tanks has no equal in gaming. In fact, I dont know of a single other game that is as accurate as CMx2 when it comes to ww2 armor penetration. Most other games dont even take into account slope multipliers, but instead just erroneously calculate geometric slope LOS (world of tanks etc). The armor system in CMx2 is truly a masterpiece, and is the only 99% accurate AP system out there that I know of other than steel beasts. 

Edited June 21, 2016 by shift8

[akd]

39 minutes ago, shift8 said:

Tanks already do aim for weak points. Higher experience crews have higher chances to do this etc.

 

No, they do not.  TacAI aims for center of visible mass.

[MikeyD]

'Invincible' is a relative term. Lets not forget Russia's got many more 122mm guns than Germany has Panthers on the eastern front, and by the end of the war you're going to see SU-100s rolling around too. The Russian 85mm gun is closer to the US 76mm than to any of the genuine monster AT guns out there like 88 KwK L/71.

Awhile ago I wanted to 'visualize' the armor numbers we read so often so I did a side-by-side comparison of Panther armor to Sherman 47 degree armor.

 

[shift8]

1 hour ago, MikeyD said:

'Invincible' is a relative term. Lets not forget Russia's got many more 122mm guns than Germany has Panthers on the eastern front, and by the end of the war you're going to see SU-100s rolling around too. The Russian 85mm gun is closer to the US 76mm than to any of the genuine monster AT guns out there like 88 KwK L/71.

Awhile ago I wanted to 'visualize' the armor numbers we read so often so I did a side-by-side comparison of Panther armor to Sherman 47 degree armor.

 

Yes those other guns did exist, and the 100mm in particular was capable of killing the Panther. However I was under the impression we were talking about the 85mm gun. I included the others just as a comparison reference. Generally, the Panther was a difficult tank to knock out from the front. The Is2 also has a bit of a harder time with the Panther than vice versa. The Panther can pen the turret, LFH, and upper half of the UFP on the Is2 at long range. The 122m gun can pen only the LFP and turret/mantlet at long range, and the glacis at 600m. That makes the Is2 plenty effective vs the Panther in general, but still quite well protected in a sense. 

Edited June 21, 2016 by shift8

[womble]

And the Panther's flanks are meat even for pop-guns. Not the smallest kind, but 47mm will penetrate out to a good distance.

[shift8]

11 minutes ago, womble said:

And the Panther's flanks are meat even for pop-guns. Not the smallest kind, but 47mm will penetrate out to a good distance.

Depends on the Panther, the section of side armor, and type of projectile. For example, the 75mm M3 M61 has a hard time with the Upper side hull of a Panther G, but not the A. But in general, the Panther is vulnerable on the side. 

[Vanir Ausf B]

2 hours ago, shift8 said:

The 122m gun can pen only the LFP and turret/mantlet at long range, and the glacis at 600m. 

For pointy-nosed uncapped AP. Ballistic capped, blunt-nosed AP will penetrate the glacis out to at least 1500, and that is the ammo IS-2s are given in Red Thunder (in reality there was a lot of uncapped AP still in use during the Bagration time frame but the CM2 engine does not allow different AP types within the same vehicle model so the Soviets catch a break).

Edited June 21, 2016 by Vanir Ausf B

[shift8]

10 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

For uncapped AP. Ballistic capped AP will penetrate the glacis out to at least 1500, and that is the ammo IS-2s are given in Red Thunder (in reality there was a lot of uncapped AP still in use during the Bagration time frame but the CM2 engine does not allow different AP types within the same vehicle model so the Soviets get a break).

Yep. Also rechecking the slope multipliers for AP it would be a similar story. I keep forgetting there is corrected data for that.