Can MG fire cause a HT to explode?

[Pvt. Ryan]

A Tiger was firing at a HT with its machine gun and the HT suddenly burst into flames. I had several other Tigers nearby, and none of them, including the one shooting at the HT, was reloading its gun after the explosion, so I know none of my tanks fired a round. There was no friendly infantry in the area, so it wasn't a faust or schrek. I realize that in the real world the HT's fuel tank may have been hit, but is it possilble for MG fire to cause a HT to explode?

[Freyland]

In a word, yes.

Jonathan

[Raze]

Definitely possible. Most allied vehicles used gasoline, which as you hopefully know, doesn't like sparks or flames. The kind of sparks that you get when shoot machine guns into HTs.

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"The art of fighting without fighting..."

[Pvt. Ryan]

Thanks for the replies. I had never seen it happen in CM before, so it surprised me.

[John Kelly]

That is interesting. However, on a documentary titled "Deadly Weapons" a demonstration was performed to show that hollywood fabricates many of the things we accept as fact. Such as a car exploding into flames after receiving gun fire. To show this as a falsehood, the host set up a gas tank full of fuel and fired an assortment of ordinance. Even a .50 caliber machinegun with tracer ammo was unable to ignite the tank. Finally, the host lit the tank with a match...just so the audience could see the pyro display. It's an interesting question...I don't know the answer. John

[This message has been edited by John Kelly (edited 12-23-2000).]

[David Aitken]

The Hollywoodism that always sticks in my mind is the Visible Grenade Explosion. They couldn't possibly present people being killed for an indeterminate reason, so instead of having smokeless explosions from fragmentation grenades, they throw in a big plume like a smoke grenade so you know what happened.

The bottom line is, action movies are pure fantasy, and a war movie should not be used as a historical reference.

David

[Wojorider]

Its not a full gas tank that is dangerous, its one that is fairly empty. It is the vapors from the gasoline that are so exposive.

[Dogface]

7.92mm AP + Tracer in the engine comparment coud start a fire. at least a fuel leak i would think that could be ignighted by the tracers.. a long shot but hey sounds like yours was too.

[This message has been edited by Dogface (edited 12-24-2000).]

[Guest grunto]

once i had a 37mm sdkfz7 kill not 1 but 2 cromwells by dashing out into a field and knocking them out at close range.

after that the halftrack was trying to move back into cover when a pistol shot from one of the knocked out vehicle crews - on second 59 no less - sent that halftrack up in flames.

ow

andy

[Bertram]

I think this is a case where the game takes some liberties, and follows Hollywood, just to show us something happened .

In a recent game my men blew up a jeep, just by shooting at it (SMG team, 1 round of ammo spend). The explosion was very spectaculair, a fireball bigger than the jeep. Not very likely to say the least.

Bertram

[David Aitken]

If we have evidence that this is unrealistic, I'm sure BTS would want to take that into account. However, it's not like they have specified that pistol fire can cause a catastrophic explosion in a halftrack – it's just that the parameters they've programmed into the game have led to such occurrences.

David

[Check6]

What's really great is the scene in Saving Private Ryan when a hand grenade flings big pieces of concrete ten feet in every direction.