Why do tanks get better when the germans capture them

[Redwolf]

BFC also edited data in patches but forgot to edit the data for the same vehicle on the other side.

The Germans put better optics on the towed 76.2mm AT gun but not into tanks.

[ April 04, 2005, 11:19 AM: Message edited by: Redwolf ]

[SpitfireXI]

Since more tests are probably needed, has anyone tried using Russian captured tanks vs. Germans. Such as Russian crewed Panthers vs. German crewed Panthers. I do not think the Russian ever produced ammo for their captured Panthers and both had cupolas, so this test might have less variables. I am at work right now but will try this test when I get home, but would appreciate other doing the test as well.

[Sergei]

I recall the Russian Panther has worse ammo as well. It's a bit of a shame in the sense that even if they did produce ammo for the long 75, they must also have used captured shells, and also from a game POV it'd be nice to have perfectly similar weapon systems.

[DEY]

Posted by SpitfireXI:

Since more tests are probably needed, has anyone tried using Russian captured tanks vs. Germans

I did the stuggIII-F earlier today, one on one.

Run the test two times and both times the russian stug was killed and the german still in perfect working order, ready to rock.

I see the penetration values for all the russian tanks are weaker then the german.

(edited april-05)

Thats the penetration values for the russian captured german AFV's, by the way

[ April 05, 2005, 07:22 AM: Message edited by: DEY ]

[Corvidae]

Ok,, There are 2 identical T34s,

one russian, and one german,,

the russian tank crew is staisticly less likely to be familiar with motor vehicles, more likely to be poorly educated peasants, and have a greater tendency to look to authority figures for all decissions,,

the german crew is likely to be more familiar with motor vehicles, more likely to be educated, and more likely to show initiative, ,,,

These are cultural facts, and they will influence the outcome of a meeting between a russian T34 and a german T34, The germans are better trained in the first half of the war, And they are better led,, This is probably modeled into the game,, thats my take, i could be wrong,

[Kingfish]

the russian tank crew is staisticly less likely to be familiar with motor vehicles, more likely to be poorly educated peasants,

Which means nothing if both sides are given the same experience level. As far as CM is concerned a regular Russian tank crew is equal to a regular German tank crew. The equipment is certainly different, and will contribute to how each crew will function on a battlefield, but on a man vs man basis they are identical.

and have a greater tendency to look to authority figures for all decissions

Which again means nothing if we are looking at a tank vs tank engagement. It's not like Ivan is waiting for permission to fire in the tests outlined above.

[JasonC]

On the confusion over the slope and absolute figures, understand that the effective thickness is reduced by the quality rating. So a 45mm at 60 degree plate with 90% quality should resist as 40.5mm at 60. A gun with 40mm rated pen at the engagement range vs. 60 should get through about half the time, with a fair portion of partials. That is to be expected.

What is crazy is that the German round keeps 2/3rds of its flat penetration for the range, against 60 degree slope. That is just wrong. 60 doubles the effective thickness or better - check almost every other gun in the game.

So where does the higher German figure come from? If I had to guess, I would say a bad linear interpolation between the 76L42 figure and the 76L51 with German ammo figure.

All figures vs. 60 slope, 100, 500, 1000

German 76L51 58 55 51

German 76L42 50 48 45

Russian 76L42 40 37 34

About midway, the arithmetic average is 49-46-43.

And I find the 5/2 th root of the top line and the bottom line gives the first entry, the 1/3rd root gives the third, and you get the middle one if you average those two powers. So it is a sort of geometric mean interpolation.

More specifically,

58 / (58/40 ^ (2/5) ) = 50.

51 / (51/34 ^ (1/3) ) = 45.

55 / (55/37 ^ ((2/5 + 1/3) / 2) = 48.

To within rounding.

Probably because they had some "German 76mm" data and didn't know which gun it referred to, and "split" the confusion. The result still makes nonsense of the fall off in penetration with increasing angle, for the German 76L42. Which should behave like the Russian one - though the Russian one is probably undermodeled somewhat etc.

[Cthulhu Dreams]

Originally posted by Sergei:

I recall the Russian Panther has worse ammo as well. It's a bit of a shame in the sense that even if they did produce ammo for the long 75, they must also have used captured shells, and also from a game POV it'd be nice to have perfectly similar weapon systems.

Yup, they all get worse. And stuff the germans capture gets better

we should test captured soviet stuff vs finnish stuff

Does that change at all?

[SpitfireXI]

Well I ran some tests last night with German Panther PZ VA's versus Russian Panzer VA's. Ran three tests and the Russian came out ahead each time. All crews were Vets open flat terrain. No orders were given, ten on each side facing each other 1000m away. All three battles lasted less than three minutes and by the end of the three minutes the Russians were the only ones to have any tanks in working/fighting order. The only strange thing that I noticed is that when comparing the stats of the Panther VA (early) the German ones had better pentration values against 60 degrees.

Against 60 degrees of armor GERMAN APCBC

100m 500m 1000m 2000m

62 61 61 53

Against 60 degrees of armor RUSSIAN APCBC

100m 500m 1000m 2000m

60 56 51 46

However, only Russian PZ-VA's had tungsten so that must have meant why Russian captured PZ'

s did better. Anyone have a guess why their are differences in penetraing values above and why the Russian Panzers are better equipped?

[DEY]

I did a test with four panthers a side.

Year set to 1944, regular experienced crews, map is 800 meters.

This first test set is with the russian tanks setup with NO TUNGSTEN.

Test one:

After 3 turns,

Germans: 2 killed, 2 perfect working order.

Russians: 3 killed, 1 backed off map.

Test two:

Battle ended after 2nd turn,

Germans: 2 backed off map, 1 immobilized, 1 perfect working order

Russians: All 4 dead.

I did notice that germans at this distance seemed to achive many more non-lethal penetrations, while the many of the russian on target shots were riochet glance hits, mostly all of any russian penetrations were lethal.

This next set of test is with the map set at 1040 meters.

Test one:

Battle ended after turn two,

Germans: 1 killed, 2 abandoned, 1 perfect working order.

Russians: 3 killed, 1 backed off map.

Test two:

After turn three,

Germans: 1 killed, 3 perfect working order

Russians: 3 killed, 1 backed off map.

I noticed in this test that a much higher percentage of german on target shots were riochet glance hits, it was pretty much about on par with the russian glance hits.

This last set of tests were done with the russian panthers setup with only TUNGSTEN ammo.

I left the map at the 1040 meter size.

Test one:

After turn three,

Germans: all 4 killed.

Russians: 1 abandoned, 3 in perfect working order.

Test two:

After turn three,

Germans: 1 killed, 1 backed off map, 2 in perfect working order.

Russians: 3 killed, 1 backed off map.

I noticed that the russian on target shots were every bit as many riochet glance hits as the regular AP ammo.

[DEY]

Here is my thoughts on the german captured russian AFV versus the same model russian original owned AFV.

It would appear to me that BFC has given a penetration credit to the germans to simulate the better quality german manufactured ammo, though this seems to be offset by given the germans a lower quality armor rating.

This better ammo credit seems to really come into play where the model 43 faces each other, where the german ammo seems to be able to achieve penetrations on the 70mm armor, but the russian ammo seems to have great difficulty to achieve this with the same gun.

(Below added in edit)

Actually after reading this post I see that I didn't explain myself very good. I forgot to mention the thicker 52mm turret side armor as well which I'm guessing is to be the biggest factor here as to why the german model T34-m43 can kill far easier then be killed by it's russian counterpart.

[ April 05, 2005, 12:13 PM: Message edited by: DEY ]

[MikeyD]

I just recalled BFC's explanation for the bad Russian stats at high angles. Russian shells were - in theory - being manufactured from steel that was MUCH too hard/brittle. As the angle increased the tendency of the round to shatter increased as well. This was said to have been a real problem through '42. Does this problem persist if you push the date up into '44? It probably does.

--

Its not just Russian/German tanks and tank guns that get the short end of the stick.

A pet peeve of mine is the Rheinmetall 37mm gun used by BOTH sides at the start of Barbarossa (Russia bought guns pre-war from the German factory as well as doing license manufacturing). The Russian 37mm gun takes a grotesque hit in penetration compared to the German gun. In reality the Russian 37mm probably should match the 45mm in penetration at least (I believe the Russians upped the bore to 45mm in order to fire a decent HE round), if not match the more powerful German gun. BFC has argued that the pre-43 problem with overly-hardened shot had migrated down from 76mm to 37mm rounds. documentation is scarce since Russian mention of their 37mm guns is practiically non-existant.

[ April 05, 2005, 10:24 AM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[Soddball]

My encyclopedia of German tanks for WW2 (technical editor Jentz whose name I've seen crop up here innumerable times) says that the 76.2mm guns captured by the Germans used only German 75mm ammo - which I assume is why their penetration values are higher in the game.

[SpitfireXI]

I forgot to mention that in the tests that I ran, quite a few of the Russian PZ-VA's did not fire a single Tungsten round the entire game but yet the Russians still came out ahead.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Sorry Andreas, that has nothing to do with it. Test it. Button one side and not the other if you like. Rotate turrets. The 76mm from a German-driven T-34 simply penetrates the turret front of a Russian driven T-34, and a 76mm from a Russian-driven T-34 does not penetrate the turret front of the German-driven T-34, at the same range.

Jason, I specifically stated that the cupola would affect the acquisition of the target, i.e. deal with 'A' and 'B' of the laundry list. I did not comment on the penetration because I did not look at it.

Soddball - the reboring was only done on the towed 76.2 divisional gun (probably not on all of them either), not the tank ones, AFAIK.

[MikeyD]

About Jentz's comment, there's currently a discussion on another board about the Germans firing 75mm from 76.2mm 'myth'. Most mention of captured Russian 76.2mm refers to the Russian F22 field gun that got converted into the 7.62cm PAK 36® antitank gun after Barbarossa (the gun's in CMAK). The breech was milled to accept the standard German 75mm casing, but this was mated to a 76.2mm shell.

No firing 75mm rounds down a 76.2mm barrel! I've never heard of this breech milling practice being done on captured German tank guns.

[Andreas]

Well, Senger & Etterlin in 'Die deutschen Geschuetze" makes the claim about the enlargement of the firing chamber, but he lists it as 7,62cm gun. I have no idea how reliable he is or what that means.

[JasonC]

Soddball - L51 is not L42. Nobody can possibly excuse such a mistake; it is like giving a StuG IIIB in 1941 Panther penetration numbers because they are both "German 75mm".

[Bigduke6]

This is a long post so if you are pressed for time skip it.

I will try and write an essay on the Soviet 76.2mm AP shell, and then compare that to the CMBB Soviet 76.2mm AP shell.

My sourcing is primarily Russian-language info on the Russian Military Zone, and also Krogfus, Miles: World War II AP. The Russian Military Zone in this case cites official Red Army weapons data used during the war. When in doubt I have gone with the Russian-language version.

The first thing we need to remember when thinking about the Soviet 76.2mm round is that, like most WW2 munitions, there were several versions.

The round the Red Army started the war with, the BR-350A APBC (Armor Piercing Ballistic Cap), was generally effective but experienced shatter problems against thicker German face-hardened armor. Also the fuse was poor-quality, so an unknown but nevertheless worrying percentage of the rounds were duds. This is not to say the shell never penetrated what it hit, but this is to say the round shattered/broke up/failed more often than the Soviets wanted.

Quick note - when I say “shell” or “round” here, I am talking only about the part that flies down range.

The logical solution was to improve the fuses and strengthen the body of the shell. Soviet engineers came out with an improved version of the round incorporating these two improvements, unoriginally called the BR-350B. This shell began entering service in Spring 1942.

(For fun contrast this speedy response to a battlefield problem with, say, the U.S. organizational response to, and unwillingness even to acknowledge, crappy torpedoes for more than two years. Not bad for a bunch of Soviet bureaucrats supposedly unable to think on their own, never mind creatively, and whose scientific and engineering abilities were supposedly hobbled by Communist propaganda. Of course, to be fair, a torpedo is a lot more complicated than an AP shell.)

The weight of the improved AP round (and so most of its ballistic properties) remained the same, although the engineers reduced the length of the round slightly. Also, being engineers, they reshaped the HE compartment slightly, hopefully to improve performance.

As you can see in the tables below, the Soviets figured these improvements bought them between 5 and 10 per cent better performance, primarily on the side of “guaranteed penetration”; i.e., getting the round doing what it was supposed to do in most cases.

It is worth noting that if the round in the field performed as the Soviet tables predicted, then all German armor until Tiger II, but certainly including Stuermgeschuetz, would have been vulnerable to the Soviet 76.2mm gun at medium and short ranges – just like the historical case.

This being the Soviet Union, both the BR-350A and the BR-350B round were in use at the same time, for years. Waste not want not. The pre-war BR-350A ceased production in 1943. The improved BR-350B continued in production until some fuzzy point in 1944.

The Soviets did not stop there. In 1944 the Red Army put into service the BR-350R, which was an Armor Piercing Composite Rigid (APCR) round, or as we gamers usually call it, tungsten. It is worth noting that standard load of BR-350R for a T-34/76 was 5 shells. Try and get that from the quick battle generator.

Also there was a conventional AP round that continued the improvements begun by the BR-350B. This was called the BR-354B. It had yet another improved fuse, the shell bottom received a slight taper (probably to strengthen it), and there was slightly less explosive. On the other hand the explosive was a new incendiary composition. I don’t have numbers on this round.

Performance:

The muzzle velocity for all the shells is consistent throughout the sources - 680mps.

When it comes to armor penetration, it is worth bearing in mind how the Soviets looked at armor penetration, and how those views differed from West and Central Europeans’.

For starters, instead of rating simply penetrate/not penetrate, the Soviets in their tables for the 76.2mm frequequently used the terms “Beginning Penetration” and “Guaranteed Penetration”.

BP = “Beginning Penetration”; i.e., 20 per cent of shells tested penetrated this thickness

GP = “Guaranteed Penetration”; i.e. 80 per cent of shells tested penetrated this thickness.

By comparison, as far as I know, the German standard for simple penetration was 50 per cent of tested shells. I could be wrong, one of you panzer grogs pls let me know.

Second, the quality of the steel armor the Soviets were testing the rounds on, obviously, also had a bearing on the results. Since ipso facto they were using Soviet not German steel, comparing the penetration numbers from both sides head to head –and this is precisely what CMBB does – is a bit dangerous. Apples and oranges, potentially.

The Soviets in their tests used homogeneous steel (rolled steel) with a Brinnel Hardness listed at 250 to 350. The Germans I believe used a slightly lower number in their tests, if I remember right 250 to 280. Again panzer grogs pls correct me if necessary.

In any case, once again we see the possibility of a small skewing of the Russian penetration numbers downward, as the Russians apparently used slightly harder metal to test their AP rounds against than the Germans. How much is any one’s guess.

And of course in the field, the types of armor varied as well. As a general thing the Germans used rolled homogeneous steel for their tanks, while the Soviets wherever possible used cast steel for their tanks. CMBB reflects this of course; that’s the crummy Soviet 95 and 90 per cent armor.

However, “Soviet cast armour was at least as hard as, or even harder than, that of an equivalent thickness of rolled homogenous armour (RHA).” (That’s a quote from Krogfus, apparently). I don’t know if CMBB takes this into account, and if so, how.

A final problem in just taking Soviet penetration numbers and cramming them into the CMBB engine is that the the Soviets in some cases extrapolated some penetration numbers mathematically, instead of actually doing the experienments. Even worse, it's not always clear when the data came from computations, and when it came from tests.

The bottom line is there are a several fudge factors out there preventing a neat translation of any historical data on the Soviet 76.2mm AP round into an accurate replication of the round's actual battlefield performance by the game engine.

To recapitulate, among them are:

1. The Soviets fielded different rounds, with differing performance, simultaneously.

2. The problem with the early rounds wasn’t they couldn’t penetrate at all, it was that they frequently failed, but sometimes worked. Erratic, not consistently bad performance.

3. The Soviet appear to have defined armor penetration a bit more pessimistically than their opponents.

4. The Soviets apparently used slightly harder armor in their penetration tests than their opponents.

5. Soviet and German tank armor often was significantly different in manufacture, and perhaps slightly different in hardness.

On the RL battlefield tankers are pretty unanimous that the upshot of all this was very varied AP round performance. Cases of practical vulnerability or invulnerability were exceptions, and often rare.

Still with me? Great, now for the actual Soviet numbers. This is what the Soviets were telling the troops the 76.2mm AP round would do:

BR-350A (Pre-war)

BR-350A attacking a 30 degree slope/angle

100 m – BP 86mm GP 69mm

300m – BP 79mm GP 63mm

500m – BP 70mm GP 59mm

1000m – BP 63mm GP 50mm

1500m – BP 52mm GP 43mm

BR-350A attacking 0 degree/flat slope/angle

100 m – BP 89mm GP 80mm

300m – BP 84mm GP 76mm

500m – BP 78mm GP 70mm

1000m – BP 73mm GP 63mm

1500m – BP 65mm GP 58mm

BR-350B (In service by Spring-Summer 1942)

BR-350B attacking a 30 degree slope/angle

100 m – BP 89mm GP 74mm

300m – BP 82mm GP 69mm

500m – BP 76mm GP 62mm

1000m – BP 71mm GP 55mm

1500m – BP 55mm GP 48mm

BR-350B attacking 0 degree/flat slope/angle

100 m – BP 94mm GP 86mm

300m – BP 90mm GP 81mm

500m – BP 84mm GP 75mm

1000m – BP 78mm GP 68mm

1500m – BP 69mm GP 62mm

BR-350R (Tungsten) (1944 sometime)

The Soviets for reasons known best to them decided Beginning Penetration numbers were unnecessary for the Tungsten round. Thus all numbers are for guaranteed penetration (per Soviet standard).

BR-350R attacking a 30 degree slope/angle

100 m – GP 92mm

300m – GP 84mm

500m – GP 77mm

1000m – None

1500m – None

BR-350R attacking 0 degree/flat slope/angle

100 m – GP 102mm

300m – GP 98mm

500m – GP 92mm

1000m – None

1500m – None

Again, there also was an improved 76.2mm standard AP round that came out in 1944, but I can’t find numbers for that. Logically, it would have been better than the 1942 round.

How does CMBB depict all this?

I would say “mysteriously”. I’ll spare you the actual numbers as you can look them up, and limit myself to listing the differences between CMBB numbers and the Soviet numbers for the 76.2mm AP round as fired out of the L/42 cannon.

1. The CMBB Soviet 76.2mm AP round is most dangerous to Germans in 1941. Its penetration ability actually gets worse in 1942, and then improves slightly in 1943. To put it mildly, this is in disagreement with the Soviet data.

2. There is no performance difference between 1943 through 1945, although an improved round went into service in 1944.

3. The CMBB penetration numbers are, for this weapon, consistently lower than the Soviet penetration numbers. The degree of underrating appears to vary between 5 and 10 per cent.

4. CMBB overpowers the Soviet tungsten round at point blank if the strike is zero degrees. On the other hand rates its effectiveness at about half of what the Soviets thought it was, if the round was fired at medium ranges or against sloped armor.

[DEY]

I've been doing some more tests with the T34's because frankly something about the model-43 bothered me.

I've found in my tests that the model 41,42 and the 85mm gun model-44 seemed to be more or less an even match.

But there does appear to be something very whacked with the 76.2mm gun model-43.

It appears far to hard for the russian model to kill the german one.

From what I can see is that even for the german made ammo it's rare to achieve a partial penetration let along a full penetration on the turret, so frankly the only real way that either russian or german model can kill the other is from hull penetrations.

For some strange goofy reason the russian T34-m43 seems to have a mega hard job to penetrate even the hull of the german model, but with the same gun and same ammo can penetrate the earlier models hulls with the same armor thickness and slope, and that even with the german model-42 having a 90% armor quality rating.

Though I did have the russians come out ahead on one of about a dozen tests, but that only adds to the confusion

I found that the Tungsten ammo on either side being fired on this tank from 800 or 1040 meters is far less effective then regular AP.

Something is for sure not right here.

[ April 06, 2005, 07:18 AM: Message edited by: DEY ]

[Soddball]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Soddball - L51 is not L42. Nobody can possibly excuse such a mistake; it is like giving a StuG IIIB in 1941 Panther penetration numbers because they are both "German 75mm".

Terribly sorry I don't meet your exacting standards Jason. I was recalling a momentarily glimpsed sentence in a book I've thumbed through once.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Well, Senger & Etterlin in 'Die deutschen Geschuetze" makes the claim about the enlargement of the firing chamber, but he lists it as 7,62cm gun. I have no idea how reliable he is or what that means.

Same projectile, more propellant.

Of course that means faster shell and more recoil or muzzle brake.