Tungsten rounds - thats about it!

[PzKpfw 1]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ben Galanti:

John,

This isn't totally on topic, but I wanted to clear up a couple of things about some of the CM armour penetrations.

Now 4 weak spot hits in a row is just really bad luck, since it's random. But the real thing I wanted to mention (since this has also come up in the 'Interesting facts about the Tiger' thread) is that I don't think CM models Mantlet hits specifically. The value you see for front turret in the info box is all the armor that is there. I always assumed that number was larger then the historical 'front turret' number to account for mantlets, but I'm not much of a tank grog, so I never bothered to check. I don't recall ever seeing a mantlet hit, so I suspect that all of CMs turret fronts are modeled simply as a slab of steel at that listed angle and thickness. I could be mistaken on this, but Idon't ever recall seeing mention here that mantlets are specifically modeled. I suspect the difficulty is that in real life, the thickness varied from point to point on the front of the turret. This is supposed to be accounted for with the 'weak spots' though.

I'm sorry if you knew all of this already, just from that post it looked like you might have a couple of misconceptions.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi Ben I No I understand, and thx for the info.

My imprerssion of it being the small flat areas of the Panther TF was because thats all that is exposed on the real Panther turret is the the small flat corner surfaces on the turret face, the rest of the TF covered by the mantlet.

I couldn't make another assumption because 1) I had no other info on the armor model excepth the 1950 British report formula had been used for Pen formula & 2) I couldn't picture the mantlet not being modeled, as the coax & sight were protected by it.

If the mantlet is not modeled then we have the same situation of under protection as the Tiger E mantlet/TF thread over again, as 76mm APCBC could not defeat the Panther's mantlet above 100ms, but could defeat the TF over 700ms.

This is also true with the T-34-85 we will have in CM2, as the Soviet 85mm BR-365 AP-T could not defeat the mantlet at any range, but could defeat the TF at 500ms.

Regards, John Waters

-------------

"Go for the eyes Boo, go for the eyes"!!.

[This message has been edited by PzKpfw 1 (edited 08-18-2000).]

[Ben Galanti]

Bastables,

I didn't realize that each vehicle has a specific chance of a week point hit. I thought it was an overall small random percentage.

John,

It very well may be the same as the Tiger issue. I'm not much of a tank grog (yet, but I'm learning ) so I don't know if the numbers in the info box are correct. Perhaps the 'front turret'' number for the Panther should in fact be the Mantlet thickness, and not the historical thickness of the turret front itself (again, it may be already, I don't know the numbers). Another issue is that the Panther's Mantlet is rounded, and I don't think CM can currently correctly handle that (it needs a single armor slope). Maybe the Pantehr also needs to have 'strong points' like the Tiger?

I'll leave it up to those more knowledgable then I what the correct value for the Panther turrent front should be... But I think currently all CM sees when it calculates a hit at any point in the front of the turret (not just the 'turret front' area, but also the mantlet) is 100mm of armor at 10 degrees.

Ben

[Mikester]

I'll throw in my 2 cents here for whatever it's worth.

In general, I'd have to say that I agree that allied tanks that have tungsten rounds don't seem to use them as often as one would expect. I base this on what I've seen happen in the game. I understand the firing the first shot or 2, especially at longer ranges, as AP rounds to bracket the target. But it seems a wee bit too often that you see a sherman go up say against a Panther and it is bouncing shells (ap) off the sucker to no avail. So the guy pretty much is "target-on" and should now be firing tungsten to take the sucker out and yet they still seem to fire only AP. I've seen at least one or two occasions thus far where the sherman then died with a number of tungsten rounds still sitting there. This doesn't seem to make much sense.

**** Gold Demo VoT spoiler *****

I also had a sherman 105 in the gold demo VoT scenario come up against the Panther at quite close range (something like 150-200 m). The 105 shoots off an HE round and hits, but it does nothing. The Panther fires, but misses, probably in part because it had to rotate it's turret. I believe the 105 never got another shot off as the Panther crew did a better job in reloading and then turned the 105 into a flaming wreck. My point here is that the 105 at that close of a range has a pretty high probability of scoring a hit on the first shot without need for bracketing the target, so why not fire one of his hollow charge rounds???? I'm pretty certain the HC round would have had a much better chance to damage/destroy the Panther vs the HE round, no? With a pretty high probabliliy to hit on first shot against a far superior foe does it make sense to not use your best ammo to get a kill vs. getting clocked yourself? Something tells me that in real life the 105 commander would have called for HC round to be loaded ASAP in this situation. I know I sure as hell would have and then would have told the driver to slam that sucker in reverse and get the heck out of Dodge back into some cover somewhere.

Mikester out.

[This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 08-18-2000).]