AI T-34 tank tactics not bad!!!

[Mad Russian]

In the book "The Caucasus and the Oil: The German-Soviet War in the Caucasus 1942/1943" by Wilhelm Tieke we find that it is BFC that is right!!!

According to the book:

Oberfeldwebel Schellhorn, Headquarters Company antitank platoon leader from the 66th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, had destroyed numerous enemy tanks during his first year in Russia with his 3.7 anti-tank gun. The Russian

T-34 tanks had to be hit directly in the exhaust because the shells had no effect anywhere else.

So, BFC got it right! For you to kill a T-34 with the early war ATG's they have to hit them in the exhaust!! That is why the T-34's will often turn in a circle before the German lines and then attack.

They are giving you a chance to kill some of them without using the gamey tactics you have all tried before...namely trying to kill them from the front... :mad:

All kidding aside, it is interesting to me to note, that the Germans had apparently tried every concievable way to kill T-34's with the doorknocker. And they even found a way that worked, if you got a T-34 to cooperate and turn around. Imagine the level of expertise it would take to hit the exhaust.

Good Hunting.

[YankeeDog]

Yep, it's always kind of bothered me that it's actually not all that hard to kill kill early war t-34s with a shot through the front turret -- you just need to get down to sub-200m or so.

One would think this vunerability would have been mentioned somewhere in the historical record given the difficulty the Germans had in Knocking out T-34s with the weaponry available to them in 1941 & 1942. The flat area of the T-34 turret front is pretty small, but it can't be any harder to hit than the exhaust pipes.

Cheers,

YD

[MikeyD]

I've been of the opinion since CMBB came out that the game's small turret T34-76s simply aren't blind enough when buttoned. All those acoounts of T34 drivers crushing anti-tank guns - probably because the gunner was simply unable to locate them with his optics. The only way for a 37mm gun to get a point-blank shot through a T34 rear exhaust opening is if the tank were stumbling around the battlefield like a blind man.

[Panzer76]

You can partly blame how the game models the tank turret. There are no different sizes in the game engine. So, the small T34 turret is much easier to hit in CM than in RL.

This, of course, affects numerous tanks.

[stikkypixie]

Did it the account say at what distance the T34's were destroyed?

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by stikkypixie:

Did it the account say at what distance the T34's were destroyed?

No, I posted the entire text on it. Just a little gem laid in the text on passing by the author.

Good Hunting.

[DEY]

All kidding aside, it is interesting to me to note, that the Germans had apparently tried every concievable way to kill T-34's with the doorknocker. And they even found a way that worked, if you got a T-34 to cooperate and turn around. Imagine the level of expertise it would take to hit the exhaust

They did eventually find two other ways of killing T34's with that gun, one was to fire HC ammo outa it and secondly to put the gun on stuka's to fire into the top of the tanks.

[DEY]

I can't recall ever seeing this AFV before, it must not have been produced in any significant numbers

3,7cm PaK auf STZ 3 ® Komsomolets

There are several more strange German AFV's at this site.

Strange German AFV's

I also came across this site earlier today.

German AFV Field Reports

[Jack Carr]

I have this great video called, "Men Against Tanks". German training video. Pick it up if you can get a copy.

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by DEY:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />All kidding aside, it is interesting to me to note, that the Germans had apparently tried every concievable way to kill T-34's with the doorknocker. And they even found a way that worked, if you got a T-34 to cooperate and turn around. Imagine the level of expertise it would take to hit the exhaust

They did eventually find two other ways of killing T34's with that gun, one was to fire HC ammo outa it and secondly to put the gun on stuka's to fire into the top of the tanks. </font>

[DEY]

The HC ammo you are refering to...is that the rocket AT round that was fitted over the barrel

3.7 cm & 5 cm Stielgranate

A modification for the 3.7 cm PaK 35/36 and 5 cm PaK 38, using the 15 cm Igr. 39 Hl/A artillery shell H.C. warhead. The oversized warhead had a stick attached to it which could be inserted into the PaK barrel. A blank cartridge was used to fire the device. Tail fins stabilized the warhead in flight, but it was not a very accurate weapon beyond 200 meters range. If a hit was achieved, the device proved successful even against KV-1 heavy tanks.

Reloading had to be done by a courageous crew member walking around the gun shield, and exposing himself to enemy fire while he inserted another stick grenade into the muzzle. In effect, this was a one-shot ambush weapon, very difficult to conceal after it had fired. Hungarian Nimrod AA/AT vehicles fired these rounds from their 37 mm Bofors gun.

Also I found this out about the Hungarian Nimrod.

Main armament of 40.M Nimrod self-propelled armoured autocannon. The vehicle was an Hungarian modification of the Swedish Landsverk L-62 (LVKV 40 Anti) which had many basic parts in common with the shorter L-60 light tank. The Nimrod was taken into the Honvedseg (Hungarian Army) as a tank-destroyer, but it proved inadequate against Soviet T-34 tanks. The situation improved when new 43.M ammunition was introduced or when 42.M Kerngranate hollow-charge rounds were fired from the vehicle. Kerngranate was a 15 cm Igr. 39 Hl/A artillery shell H.C. warhead mounted on a fin-stabilized tube. The round had to be inserted into the barrel manually, from the front, and it was fired with a blank cartridge very much like a rifle grenade.

It appears that the germans didn't make Heat shells for guns in any smaller calibre then 75mm or any larger then 105mm for that matter.

Though I have seen claims by allied pilots, russian I think, that they had heat ammo for their planes cannons.

[MikeyD]

When the T34 was designed the German 37mm gun wasn't exactly an unknown commodity to them. The Russians even had license production facilities for the Rheinmetall 37mm gun before the war (and I still don't know why the early-war Russian 37mm gun performs so much worse than the German 37mm in the game). If the T34 HAD turned out vulnerable to the 37mm gun it would've been cause for investigations - indictments - firing squads(!) under charges of gross neglegence!

[DEY]

and I still don't know why the early-war Russian 37mm gun performs so much worse than the German 37mm in the game).

I doubt if this is the reason for the above statement but I'm begining to wonder if the germans weren't somewhat more efficient in the development of munitions propellant then other countries. I would think that a longer barreled gun would only be part of the equation of a gun's penetration abilities.

[MikeyD]

Yeh, I believe that was the rational. Russian 37mm solid shot would theoretically have been made too brittle (a common problem with 45mm shot) and would be more likely to shatter. My opposing (and losing) opinion in the debate was that the Russian 37mm should've at least matched 45mm penetration (still below German 37mm stats) and not been left with those wimpy girlie-man penetration figures. A lot (and I mean a LOT) of the reason why the 37mm guns stuck around so long in German service was the huge stockpiles of Russian-made 37mm guns that had been captured for reuse during Barbarossa.

[Leopard_2]

It's not only the propellant, but the metal quality churned out by Krupp, Rheinmetall and others, at least up until mid-war when ressource shortage made quality drop.

[ladoga]

Originally posted by DEY:

[QB]and secondly to put the gun on stuka's to fire into the top of the tanks.

Afaik Ju 87G-1 used modified 3.7 cm L.89 FlaK 43 (as BK 3,7cm) and PzGr. 40 tungsten carbide ammunition. Muzzle velocity was 1140m/s.

Some penetration figures:

156 mm / 0 m / 90dgr

140 mm / 100 m / 90dgr

70 mm / 100 m / 30dgr

No need to shoot at turret tops with that.

[ December 08, 2004, 03:37 AM: Message edited by: ladoga ]

[Joachim]

It was DEY's post that opened my eyes! The Nimrod was a FlaK - and that was exactly how the 3,7cm PaK worked vs the T34! The exhausts were not hit from behind but from the front, firing the gun at an extreme angle - just like a mortar. When falling almost vertical, the small round hit the exhausts from above, rolled down and exploded inside the motor. The secondary explosion there finished the tank.

Of course it took skilled gunners to achieve this.

Gruß

Joachim

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by DEY:

It appears that the germans didn't make Heat shells for guns in any smaller calibre then 75mm or any larger then 105mm for that matter.

In CMBB HEAT shells are modeled for 150mm calibre also.

[DEY]

Originally posted by Panzer76:

In CMBB HEAT shells are modeled for 150mm calibre also

Your right Panzer76, sorry about that I was thinking about the hungarians as I was writing that stuff and I wanted to comment on how dissappointed I was that there isn't any HC ammo for the Turan2 tank in the game ,though offically there doesn't seem to be any of this ammo type issued for the 75mm guns. It would've added so much to the game to be able to have it for those AFV's even if it wasn't recorded as being used. There is no way you can convince me that the hungarians didn't wheel and deal with german units to get some of that ammo.

As far as I can see even for the gremans that this type of ammo was only issued to artillery units for self defence, it wasn't considered as an offensive type of ammo.

I also read accounts of Romanian armor units having HC ammo in their Pz4's in 1944, killing JS2 tanks.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

You don't need HC ammo when pitting Pz IV's against IS2's in the game. Just shoot at their frontal aspect & you'll achieve a turret penetration on the IS in no time using standard ammo. :eek:

Regards

Jim R.

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by Kanonier Reichmann:

You don't need HC ammo when pitting Pz IV's against IS2's in the game. Just shoot at their frontal aspect & you'll achieve a turret penetration on the IS in no time using standard ammo. :eek:

Regards

Jim R.

I take it the JS2's aren't firing back?! If they are your PzIV probably won't live long enough to achieve the penetration unless it happens on a first round hit... :mad:

Good Hunting.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

The trouble with the IS2's is their painfully slow firing rate which almost disadvantages them in a one on one fight. Put it this way, it's not unusual for an IS2 to retreat behind cover with the computer AI deciding things are not in their favour when facing a PzIV rather than the other way around.

Regards

Jim R.

[stikkypixie]

That's why you have to use them in pair, or more.

[DEY]

Originally posted by Kanonier Reichmann:

The trouble with the IS2's is their painfully slow firing rate which almost disadvantages them in a one on one fight. Put it this way, it's not unusual for an IS2 to retreat behind cover with the computer AI deciding things are not in their favour when facing a PzIV rather than the other way around.

This is a case where people are always confusing what really happen with what happens in the game. The game makes a fair effort to simulate things but in this case, not so good.

There is a problem with Allied armor cowardice in cmbb. Like PC stated above there is no way in hell a Mark4 had even a slim chance of winning a slug fest with a JS2 tank in the later period of the war, when AP ammo was issued to those AFV's.

The only chance would be a one shot kill that say, HC ammo could give, if the conditions were right.

And I would think that unoffically the Pz4 crews would get hold of that ammo somehow.

[YankeeDog]

I'll avoid the whole speculations of realism vs. unrealism of the IS2 vs. PzIV debate. I've never had any trouble taking out PzIVs with IS2s. I do tend to use them at least in pairs, or shoot and scoot, though. Another good tip is to put the IS2 in a good, hull-down, reverse slope position, on high ground if possible. The effective additional armor slope added to the IS2's turret armor by a reverse slope position makes it dramatically harder to penetrate -- it will often bounce the Panther's 75mm/L70 when fighting at a decent range in this type of position, and rarely has any trouble with 75mm/L48 rounds.

I'm really skeptical about HEAT ammo for the PzIV, at least for the various PzIV(lang) configurations. I've never read of HEAT ammo for the 75mm/L48 ever being produced in any significant quantity. In any event, even if it was, I really doubt it would confer any advantage over AP when fired from the 75mm/L48 gun.

The centripital force caused by the rapid spin rate of a high velocity shell actually interferes with the plasma jet formation in HEAT ammo. As such, an HC shell fired from a 75mm/L48 would actually have poorer penetration performance than the same HC shell fired from, say, a 75mm/24, because the spin rate is higher.

This is one reason why some modern tanks, such as the M1 Abrahms, use smoothbore guns -- no spin to the shell = much higher HEAT ammo performance.

If the Romanians were still driving PzIV(kurz) late-war, HEAT ammo would, of course, make more sense.

Regards,

YD