U.S. Thread - CM Cold War - BETA AAR - Battle of Dolbach Heights 1980

[John Kettler]

On 3/12/2021 at 5:57 AM, IMHO said:

Unfortunately due to the game settings these do not convert into kills  I.e. direct top hit to a tank from a 122 HE mortar would most likely end in KO though ingame it's no more than a mere one notch degradation of EITHER tracks or sighting  IMO there are few things that really kill the game outright as compared to RL and HE effect on armor tops the list (together with AGL fire in CMBS )

IMHO,
 

As it happens, we have a real world example of effects of a 120 mm mortar bomb. It's in the Bydax post on page 2. This thread is replete with pics of artillery damaged or destroyed AFVs, results of live fire, armor penetration studies and modeling, input from several BTDT FS types. The power of even old artillery to wreak havoc on APCs, IFVs, older tanks and even newer models is shocking. Paradoxically, the gee whiz capabilities of really modern tanks also make them more vulnerable to artillery fire than older less sophisticated tanks not having turret roofs festooned with wind sensors, GPS, SATCOM, BLUFOR tracker, an array of radio antennae, optoelectronics, Vehicle Protection Systems and more. I believe this thread is the single best CM Forum resource when it comes to Indirect Fires vs AFVs.
 

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

On 3/12/2021 at 7:23 AM, Megalon Jones said:

How do you rate HESH vs HEAT or Sabot in terms of penetrating Red Army tanks?  Ball park estimates are sufficient.

Megalon Jones,

The ammo types you listed all fly more slowly by far than HVAPFSDS and therefore have looping trajectories compared to the KE forming your baseline. In turn, this increases the likelihood of top hits. Would say that these days, HESH/HEP would be the lest penetrating--for multiple reasons. For starters, HESH/HEP, unless vs a very weak target, doesn't penetrate at all. that's not its kill mechanism. Instead, it creates massive spall on the far side of the armor plate struck. How massive? Pie plate size and, say, two inches thick! That piece of armor steel is now tearing through the fighting compartment, demolishing men and equipment throughout, not to mention wiring, hydraulaics and ammo. Have seen a classified pic from the 1967 War in which a T-55 took a turret rear hit from what I recall as 105 mm HESH/HEP. The spall pie plate cored out the large radio and kept going. There was no further coverage of the damage in detail, but that hit would've taken the TC apart and the gunner, too. For openers. But, to my knowledge, HESH/HEP has no such capability vs modern composite armor, because the layers of various materials grossly interfere with the detonation shockwave, preventing the all-important massive spalling. Armor arrays designed to defeat HVAPFSDS KE would not find HESH/HEP much of a challenge. Thus, the last Russian tank I would deem HESH/HEP effective against frontally would be the T-62, for everything after that, from the T-64 onward, has composite armor.

HEAT can be very effective, but how effective depends on a) the armor array struck, and the particulars of the HEAT shell used. For example, Russian HEAT is designed to take advantage of impact speed as well as the primary HEAT charge. Recall, too, that an obsolete 76.2 mm Russian HEAT round recovered during the Yom Kippur War was found to be able to frontally penetrate the Gen One Abrams. And while in Desert Storm Saddam's hardened steel KE harmlessly stuck to the sides of Abrams turrets like darts, 125 mm HEAT was no joke.

Summing up, in ascending effectiveness there is HESH/HEP, then HEAT, then KE, with pride of place going to the 120 and 125 mm gunned tanks. 

Regards,

John Kettler

[Bil Hardenberger]

@John Kettler as always appreciate your replies!  The analysis posts are of course most welcome. 

Best, Bil

[Megalon Jones]

8 hours ago, John Kettler said:

Megalon Jones,

The ammo types you listed all fly more slowly by far than HVAPFSDS and therefore have looping trajectories compared to the KE forming your baseline. In turn, this increases the likelihood of top hits. Would say that these days, HESH/HEP would be the lest penetrating--for multiple reasons. For starters, HESH/HEP, unless vs a very weak target, doesn't penetrate at all. that's not its kill mechanism. Instead, it creates massive spall on the far side of the armor plate struck. How massive? Pie plate size and, say, two inches thick! That piece of armor steel is now tearing through the fighting compartment, demolishing men and equipment throughout, not to mention wiring, hydraulaics and ammo. Have seen a classified pic from the 1967 War in which a T-55 took a turret rear hit from what I recall as 105 mm HESH/HEP. The spall pie plate cored out the large radio and kept going. There was no further coverage of the damage in detail, but that hit would've taken the TC apart and the gunner, too. For openers. But, to my knowledge, HESH/HEP has no such capability vs modern composite armor, because the layers of various materials grossly interfere with the detonation shockwave, preventing the all-important massive spalling. Armor arrays designed to defeat HVAPFSDS KE would not find HESH/HEP much of a challenge. Thus, the last Russian tank I would deem HESH/HEP effective against frontally would be the T-62, for everything after that, from the T-64 onward, has composite armor.

HEAT can be very effective, but how effective depends on a) the armor array struck, and the particulars of the HEAT shell used. For example, Russian HEAT is designed to take advantage of impact speed as well as the primary HEAT charge. Recall, too, that an obsolete 76.2 mm Russian HEAT round recovered during the Yom Kippur War was found to be able to frontally penetrate the Gen One Abrams. And while in Desert Storm Saddam's hardened steel KE harmlessly stuck to the sides of Abrams turrets like darts, 125 mm HEAT was no joke.

Summing up, in ascending effectiveness there is HESH/HEP, then HEAT, then KE, with pride of place going to the 120 and 125 mm gunned tanks. 

Regards,

John Kettler

Very interesting!  Thanks!

[John Kettler]

On 9/19/2021 at 1:56 AM, John Kettler said:

akd,

These old friend graphs neatly reinforce the conclusions from both dueling models and historical experience. The first to shoot generally wins the duel--something like 80% Of course, it's really the first to shoot accurately! Some digging online will produce the original properly captioned SECRET level charts done by General Gorman in a CIA doc in which he compares weapon accuracy for US vs Russian. This was also the doc showing that at 1000 meters, it took 17 shots to get a hit on a fully exposed medium tank and that an M60A1 had a high probability with one shot and a near certainty with two shots.

Regards,

John Kettler

Oops! Meant to write, but didn't, that in World War II it took an average of 17 shots to hit a fully exposed medium tank at 1000 meters, vs 1-2 for an M60A1 circa 1977. Presume the firing tank was a 75 mm Sherman.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Artkin]

17 hours ago, dbsapp said:

They have mobile game called 9K11 for Android phones (maybe for Apple as well) that gives good example of how hard first Staggers were to operate. 

Yo this game was made by a sadist. The AT-3 too

[dbsapp]

6 hours ago, Artkin said:

Yo this game was made by a sadist. The AT-3 too

I completed it and killed abramses in the end! (they had to be hit to the sides to die). 

[IICptMillerII]

On 9/19/2021 at 11:39 PM, John Kettler said:

Recall, too, that an obsolete 76.2 mm Russian HEAT round recovered during the Yom Kippur War was found to be able to frontally penetrate the Gen One Abrams.

What was the designation for the HEAT round? And what is the source for this? It is worth pointing out that the Gen 1 Abrams had anywhere from 600-1500 RHAe equivalent protection against HEAT on its frontal aspect. Soviet 125mm HEAT shells from the mid to late 80s would have had an extremely difficult time penning the Gen 1 Abrams frontally, let alone a much smaller 76mm HEAT warhead. 

In fact, most contemporary sources have the PT-76 using the BK-350M HEAT round. A round from WW2, that had only ~280mm RHAe of penetration. And on the other end of the scale, the Soviet BK-21B, BK-29, and BK-31, which were all HEAT rounds for the Soviet 125mm gun, and fielded in the 80s, only top out at around 760mm RHAe of penetration. 

[John Kettler]

On 2/26/2021 at 6:27 AM, Bil Hardenberger said:

HEAT warhead damage on an M-113... the game has it pretty much spot on:

 

B-40 rocket from RPG-2? If not, what and where?

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

On 2/28/2021 at 3:13 PM, BletchleyGeek said:

Cheers for the overview picture, I was confused by the nap of the earth shots. 

I can see you are going to play the man, not the ball. Let's see if that man is too fast to let himself be injured.

 

 

"The target is always the mind of the enemy commander."

I trust the above quote but can't find the author.

Regards,

John Kettler

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, John Kettler said:

"The target is always the mind of the enemy commander."

If your enemy leaves no head to sever, cut out his heart.

[John Kettler]

On 9/21/2021 at 3:50 PM, IICptMillerII said:

What was the designation for the HEAT round? And what is the source for this? It is worth pointing out that the Gen 1 Abrams had anywhere from 600-1500 RHAe equivalent protection against HEAT on its frontal aspect. Soviet 125mm HEAT shells from the mid to late 80s would have had an extremely difficult time penning the Gen 1 Abrams frontally, let alone a much smaller 76mm HEAT warhead. 

In fact, most contemporary sources have the PT-76 using the BK-350M HEAT round. A round from WW2, that had only ~280mm RHAe of penetration. And on the other end of the scale, the Soviet BK-21B, BK-29, and BK-31, which were all HEAT rounds for the Soviet 125mm gun, and fielded in the 80s, only top out at around 760mm RHAe of penetration. 

Gave the source before. It was the CIA's world class (possibly world's best) HEAT SME, Dr. Joseph Backofen, speaking at The Soviet Threat Technology Conference (U) in 1985 at CIA HQ. The conference was no notes and classified SECRET?NOFORN/WNINTEL/RD. Decoding, SECRET?NO FOREGN NATIONALS/ WARNING INTELLIGENCE SOURCES AND METHODS/RESTRICTED DATA. The last is a nuclear weapon clearance for things like weapon yields, payload weights, number of warheads, CEP, missile guidance, etc. 

The Conference covered not only every category of Soviet and Warsaw Pact weaponry for air, land, sea and space, but of what we knew was in the pipeline as well, Soviet and Warsaw Pact espionage successes against the US, how the Soviets established intelligence collection and technology acquisition requirements and more. Also discussed were various incidents involving Soviet use of various types of lasers in-country, at sea and in Afghanistan--everything from harassment to hard kill, even rapid clearance of fields of fire! 

This was the CIA spilling its guts because, institutionally, it was terrified. Contrast that with this: In my entire 11+ years as a Soviet Threat Analyst, I NEVER saw a single CIA document. Yet at that Conference and several more in succeeding years, the CIA had its SMEs systematically brief us comprehensively on, well, everything--at our clearance level, that is.--for long grueling days on end. 

Part and parcel of the Conference was the flat out terrifying rundown we got on Soviet ground warfare, especially the whole armor-antiarmor situation. And Dr. Backofen's dazzling and horrifying discussion of Soviet HEAT capabilities, engineering, advanced explosives and more was a key part of that overall portion of the conference. I don't recall that the GRAU number was given for the HEAT shell in question, but I do distinctly recall that it was a shell specifically developed to defeat the canceled T95 MBT. The T95 entered development in 1955, a process that went through 1959, after which the tank was canceled in favor of the M48.. If you look at the T95 Wiki, it specifically refers to its having siliceous core armor. Having read the declassification document for the Abrams, it specifically said the terming "siliceous core armor" was no longer a special program only term. Thus, the T95 design had siliceous core armor (steel/glass/steel sandwich armor array), and so did the original Abrams. Clearly, the GRU, KGB or both found out what the T95 armor scheme was, and the Soviet HEAT design bureaus were tasked to design a HEAT shell to defeat it. That particular problem was gone by the time the shell entered service, but the Americans kept the same basic armor scheme in the many ways revolutionary Abrams, thus inherited the exact same vulnerability the T95 would've had. Unless the Soviets had advance word before the T95 started development, this means the HEAT shell in question started development in the mid-50s. This rules out a GPW period HEAT shell as the threat. This HEAT shell was apparently declared obsolete in the late 1960s, and only obsolete antitank shells were permitted to be exported, to protect Soviet weapon secrets. the Israelis recovered some of these these during the Yom Kippur War but didn't let us know until 1984 when it finally handed some over for analysis and testing. THAT was where the real nightmare began!

Hope this gives you some idea what a big deal the Conference was and how staggering the disclosures were. This was where I learned of the dizzying array of Soviet laser guided munitions, where I learned of Soviet multi-mode sensor fuzed submunitions, of MRL fired antitank drones that had drone flight leaders (talked to the other missiles and dynamically assigned them targets) automatically replaced if shot down, thermobaric weapons and more. Simply put, the very high leverage combat weapon types the West counted on to stop the Soviet tank horde the Red Army already had or would have shortly, along with capabilities we didn't have. Their lead in armor protection was so great that only the Hellfire and Maverick were judged capable of a kill frontally. Everything else, from LAW through Dragon through TOW was obsolete from the front. that included the much vaunted 105 mm DU round. We, though, were highly vulnerable. 

The sources were as official as it gets, and the Conference was held under the aegis of the prestigious AIAA (American Institute of Aviation and Astronautics.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

On 9/22/2021 at 6:40 PM, The_Capt said:

If your enemy leaves no head to sever, cut out his heart.

Can't recall the source of my quote and never saw yours before. Did you read it or create it? Great quote either way.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Sources can be quite important. 

[The_Capt]

58 minutes ago, John Kettler said:

Can't recall the source of my quote and never saw yours before. Did you read it or create it? Great quote either way.

Regards,

John Kettler

Warhammer 40k, not sure if they stole it from someone else.

[John Kettler]

On 3/15/2021 at 5:34 PM, Badger73 said:

The M60A1 & M60A2 had a stereoscopic rangefinder which uses two eyepieces and relies on the tank commander to spin a range wheel until the two images merge into a single picture.  When you had a sharp single image, it gave you the range to the target in meters and mechanically adjusted the gunner's sights to that range.  The TC then gave the fire command (in this case 1,500 meters) as, "Range one five hundred meters.  Fire!".

To save time and insure first round fired, veteran tank commanders and their gunners would pre-set the rangefinder to a "battlesight" range; either 1200 or 1600 meters depending on SOP.  As soon as the gunner "Identified" the target in his sights, the TC fire command would be an immediate, "Battlesight, fire!".  The gunner would check for "Burst on Target", re-aim to the point of impact and fire again until TC declared, "Target destroyed."

Badger73,

Given what I've seen of typical LOS ranges for Western Europe (700-800 meters), am surprised that the battlesight settings  were enormously longer (1200 and 1500 meters) by comparison. Wouldn't such settings generally guarantee an over on the all-important first shot?

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

On 3/21/2021 at 7:03 PM, akd said:

 

Astounding! Had NO idea a turtle could move that fast. Bil's tanks would have to be going at least twice as fast to be in remotely the same relative speed bracket.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Marwek77 aka Red Reporter]

Hi all,

 

where to download Dollbach Heights scenario? Plese let me know. Thx.

[The_Capt]

7 minutes ago, Marwek77 aka Red Reporter said:

Hi all,

 

where to download Dollbach Heights scenario? Plese let me know. Thx.

I posted it here: 

Enjoy but be forewarned it is a two-player only scenario, no AI built in.  The map is the exact same one from the US campaign.

[Marwek77 aka Red Reporter]

On 11/12/2021 at 7:33 PM, The_Capt said:

I posted it here: 

Enjoy but be forewarned it is a two-player only scenario, no AI built in.  The map is the exact same one from the US campaign.

Thank you, we will play H2H with my friend.