Knocking out T34s in 1941

[JasonC]

Fair enough. In CMBB, you do not see these dramatic variations in protection as you circle the tank. You do see some composition of angle effects from side angle. But minor amounts of it have minor effects. You do see important effects with the turret type aka the T-34 model, but that is about it. The cast turret T-34s are better, liveably so IMO.

With the cast turret M1941 model the protection is remarkably uniform for all of the plates except the front hull (strong), and lower side hull (weak). 52 curved for the turret front, or at 30 degrees for the turret side and rear, or 45mm but at 40, 42, or 45 degrees for hull side and rear - all give very similar levels of protection. The only significantly weaker plate is the lower side hull, and the stronger one is the front hull, upper or lower.

With the 95% armor quality included, you expect penetrations of all of the vunerable plates of the tank (everything but front hull) at the following ranges with the following guns -

37L48 (Czech) or 75L24 - 300m

28mm squeeze bore - 400m

50L42 - 650m

105mm HE - 1000m

50L60 - 1200m

The range of possible penetration of the lower side hull is easily twice as far. The front hull won't be penetrated (88s will).

The weaker, earlier 1941 turrets (not cast), these ranges increase dramatically, for any turret hit - front, side or rear makes no appreciable difference.

28mm or 37L48 - 550m

50L42 or 75L24 - 1050m

50L60 or 105 HE - 1500+m

The cast turret is particularly valuable against Pz IVs and StuGs, and valuable against the thicker fronted Pz III H models, and later. The former go from being effective if they hit out to 1 km, to needing close range shots to reliably penetrate.

With the good IIIs, the range reduction is not as large. But an important range window opens up from 700-900m or so, where your 76mm still gets through their reinforced hull fronts (getting "partial" and spalling toward the upper end of that, though), and they don't get through your turret reliably with their replies (though some may, partially, at the low end of that window).

There isn't any such window with the worse turrets, against the best early IIIs. By the time they can't penetrate your turret front, you can't penetrate their hull front, and whoever gets turret hits first wins. (You do have a bit better behind armor effect, though - you outmatch their turret more, and the 76 is a bigger round).

The effect on the smaller calibers is less pronounced. At very close range the weaker 37s become ineffective rather than marginal, and the effective range of the better small guns declines a bit - most noticably the Czech 37s, which need to get pretty close against the cast turret model.

I hope this is a useful practical guide to using T-34s in CMBB, or tackling them. After all, they are what we have, however much I may squawk about the modeling of "curved" on the early turrets.

[rune]

Two quotes that stick out for the Russian opinion of the Sherman...

I want also to add that the Sherman's armor was tough. There were cases on our T-34 when a round struck and did not penetrate. But the crew was wounded because pieces of armor flew off the inside wall and struck the crewmen in the hands and eyes. This never happened on the Sherman.

For a long time after the war I sought an answer to one question. If a T-34 started burning, we tried to get as far away from it as possible, even though this was forbidden. The on-board ammunition exploded. For a brief period of time, perhaps six weeks, I fought on a T-34 around Smolensk. The commander of one of our companies was hit in his tank. The crew jumped out of the tank but were unable to run away from it because the Germans were pinning them down with machine gun fire. They lay there in the wheat field as the tank burned and blew up. By evening, when the battle had waned, we went to them. I found the company commander lying on the ground with a large piece of armor sticking out of his head. When a Sherman burned, the main gun ammunition did not explode. Why was this?

The armor comment sticks out for me...

Rune