76.2mm vs Tiger Side Armor

[rexford]

The interesting thing about the Tiger introduction is that Russian 76.2mm APBC ammo wasn't being designed for thick homogeneous armor at the time that Tiger made its appearance.

During late 1942 and early 1943, many of the rounds for 76.2mm guns were the BR-350A blunt headed APBC, which was a 1940 development according to Miles Krogfus' article on the Russian ARTKOM equation (AFV News), and the ammunition penetrated (662 m/s muzzle velocity):

BR-350A PENETRATION

Range......Homogeneous.......Face-Hardened

50m...........80mm.............83mm

100m..........77mm.............82mm

500m..........68mm.............75mm

1000m.........59mm.............66mm 1500m.........53mm.............59mm

Against PzKpfw III and IV, and StuG III, with 30mm or 50mm face-hardened front hull and turret armor, 76.2mm BR-350A was very capable and allowed Russian guns to open fire at 1500m or beyond and stand a great chance of penetrating German frontal armor.

According to information provided by John Waters, Russian 76.2mm field gun crews were advised to open fire on StuG III's at 1500m.

There have been posts on a variety of forums where claims were made that the main armor on Tiger (102mm and 82mm) was designed to be impervious to Russian 76.2mm hits at all ranges and angles.

If the German designers were using BR-350A performance as the key their design seems to have met expectations, since the 82mm and 102mm homogeneous armor was well beyond BR-350A performance.

Both BR-350A and the improved BR-350B were tested against Tiger armor during April 1943 tests according to Miles Krogfus, and neither could defeat the 82mm side armor "at an acceptable combat range".

BR-350B could penetrate 5% more than BR-350A, which meant that 82mm homogeneous plate could be defeated at about 60m on half the hits if the shot was made along the perpendicular from the armor surface (based on penetration estimates from U.S. tests with 122mm APBC).

BR-350A production ended during 1943.

Miles' article notes that during late 1943 a percentage of the BR-350B rounds were specially heat treated, and the penetration increase works out to be about 10%. The special BR-350B rounds would penetrate the following thicknesses of homogeneous armor (Tiger armor type):

50m, 92mm

100m, 89mm

250m, 84mm

500m, 79mm

750m, 73mm

During late 1943 the 76.2mm guns benefited from better BR-350B rounds and APCR ammo, which closed the penetration gap against Tiger side armor.

The early dominance of the battlefield by Tiger tanks can be related to armor plate that was thicker than the design performance of Russian 76.2mm ammo, and the use of unusually hard armor for 62mm, 82mm and 102mm plates which may have added some extra resistance.

When the 76.2mm APBC penetration is within a few millimeters of the Tiger side armor thickness, adding a few percentage points due to hard armor could make the difference between penetration and survival.

It should also be noted that the British firing tests against a Tiger in Africa found that one of the side plates was poor, which could allow an occasional penetration to occur, although the Brits found most Tiger armor to be good quality.

The occasional bad plate may explain some of the penetration ranges that are often noted as being inconsistent with other combat and test results.

[Bruceov]

Ive killed tigers firing at the flank with T34s

[Gaylord Focker]

Interesting post Rexford.

[rexford]

Originally posted by Bruceov:

Ive killed tigers firing at the flank with T34s

Those must have been the ones with bad plate.

Perhaps the penetration figures in CMBB need a little decreasing for T34 APBC prior to late '43.