Tanks wasting AP on dead target

[Sergei]

Originally posted by BadgerDog:

As a gunner, I would see through my reticule sighting telescope, the 76mm round going down range and approach the target. If I obtained a solid hit, their might (or might not be) a slight puff of smoke. If I didn't lose eye focus and managed to keep my eye on the round as it impacted, I would sometimes see a deflection (ricochet), but not always. Our SOP for engaging enemy armor was to keep firing until the CC (Crew Commander) hollered "cease fire", the enemy tank stopped firing itself, or was obviously knocked out. Unless obvious from massive destruction, the knocked out evidence (often told to us by old WWII and Korean Sherman veteran gunners) would be seeing a crew bailing out (they always said to count them) or flame and smoke emanating from the hit vehicle.

I know, it's very difficult to tell if the round actually hits the target, because at that range, even through a sight or binoculars, it is difficult to tell what the distance of the shell is. You just see it going up and then going down. You can tell if it goes too much to left or right, but it's harder to tell if it hit or fell behind the target.

What kind of SOP did you have for engaging soft targets? Shoot until you see pieces of guts and limbs flying in the air?

[SgtMuhammed]

Nice post JonS.

One thing to take into account though is that there is no mention of what I will call "single shot brew ups." Often hits that will knock out the tank would also rupture hydrolic and fuel lines or expose powder from the ammo. With it being SOP to continue hitting the target till it is "really dead" it is not surprising that so many brew up.

I am of the opinion that subsequent hits were probably responsible for more brew ups than were first hits.

[Seanachai]

Originally posted by Jim Boggs:

I had a similar experience, but on a different level. I was firing a 20mm gun at a Russian position and at the 20 second mark the Russians surrendered. My 20mm kept pumping rounds into them for the remainder of the turn even though they had surrendered.

Has anybody else had this happen?

We can only assume that your troops, having suffered the degradations of your command, felt it was kinder to kill the enemy than have them live with the humiliation of being captured by a commander like yourself.

[BlackVoid]

Thanks for the great statistics!

I never said, I don't like the death clock, it a good feature. And yes, the penetration info you get is too detailed, that is the reason you know a kill before your crew does.

Those stats however, support my point: vehicles should burn more often in the game. CMBB's hardware requirement is not so high, so it should not be a performance issue for most players. Others can always switch off smoke.

[BlackVoid]

Also in a scenario I played yesterday, one of my Pz4s fired the last 4 of its AP rounds into a dead tank, when other threats were still around.

It happened at night at a range of 150m with a regular crew. Of course this is the result of the TacAi not 'knowing' about the other threats.

Also this may be realistic, I don't know.

[JonS]

Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

One thing to take into account though is that there is no mention of what I will call "single shot brew ups." Often hits that will knock out the tank would also rupture hydraulic and fuel lines or expose powder from the ammo. With it being SOP to continue hitting the target till it is "really dead" it is not surprising that so many brew up.

I am of the opinion that subsequent hits were probably responsible for more brew-ups than were first hits.

I agree. I think that there is no mention of 'single-hit-brew-ups' because, well, because they are kind of hard to observe dispassionately Those reports were put together by scientists roaming around investigating wrecks after the battle(s).

One thing that occurs to me: the data on the German wrecks could be skewed as the recoverable wrecks (i.e., those that hadn't burnt) had in fact been recovered, leaving a higher proportion of burnt:non-burnt for the English scientists to investigate.

Also, there is in fact evidence of 'single-penetration-brew-ups.' The average penetrations for the Sherman (1.89) and a Pz IV (1.5) indicate that at least a proportion of the wrecks investigated had burnt after suffering only a single penetration.

Finally, the high number of hits and penetrations on the Panther (4.0 and 3.24) and Tiger (5.25 and 3.25) could be evidence of the Allied tankers continuing to pump rounds into the hulls until they burnt, to be sure of a kill, to prevent recovery, and perhaps simply for target practice (Tout, for example, comments on the limited opportunities for firing tank main-armament in training in England, and in the confined beachhead in Normandy). This, of course, would further skew the results as shown on the previous table towards a higher 'brew-up' rate.

With respect to this practice of 'shoot till destruction', I came across an interesting message in the 5th NZ Inf Bde war diary and message logs for April 1943 while truffling around yesterday. At this stage of the war 2(NZ)Div, and the rest of 8th Army, were well into southern Tunisia, and the 1st Army were closing in on Tunis from the west, so the jig was very nearly up for PAA. Anyway, the message stated that 'captured German tanks were no longer to be routinely destroyed, as they were needed for investigation', which indicates to me that the Allies were destroying everything they came across to prevent it falling back into enemy hands - even though this was by now (i.e., then, April '43) extremely unlikely, and the boffins wanted some toys to play with. I would not be surprised if a similar instruction may have been in force in NWE, but quickly went out the window given the nature of the fighting in Normandy.

Regards

JonS

[Other Means]

there was a program on last night which i didn't get to watch fully. however i flicked to it as one old British tanker was telling that he'd had 4 shermans shot out from under him and how the sergeant had had 15.

he also said the unlucky ones were the ones that were wounded & couldn't get out of the tank as these burned to death.

this would seem to support the non catastrophic fire theory. they would burn, often, but not straight away.

[PzKpfw 1]

One of the main reasons Shermans burned out, was crews were carrying up to 50 rounds of spare ammunition, on the turret floor.

The US Army Ordance board investigated & found the main cause of the fires was 'ignition of the ammunition propelant'. 60 - 80% of Shermans penetrated by German APCBC, or Panzerfaust/Panzershrek SC rounds burned.

After the adoption of Wet stowage the % of Shermans burning out on penetration fell to 10 - 15%.

The Panther also tended to burn out due to ignition of ammunition on petration, as did the Tiger II on penetrations of the turret, Ie, s.H.Pz. Abt 501, removed all ammunition from the turet stowage racks of its Tiger II after several Tiger II were lost to turret penetrations, igniteing the turret rack ammunition.

Regards, John Waters

[ April 23, 2003, 10:40 AM: Message edited by: PzKpfw 1 ]

[Sgt Joch]

regarding brew ups, I'm currently reading "Alamein" by John Latimer. The book states that german tanks rarely brewed up which made it hard for british gunners to determine when a german tank had been knocked out, whereas Shermans were called "Ronsons" for their propensity to burn when hit.

Also remember that within the CMBB time frame of 20-60 minutes, many tanks might be knocked out by relatively minor damage. A large proportion of tanks which were knocked out in a battle were capable of being recovered, repaired and put back into action fairly quickly.

Again in the book "Alamain", in the battle for 'outpost Snipe', british ATG's apparently knocked out 70 german/italian AFV's in a one day battle. The german/italians quickly recovered 20-30 of those vehicles after the battle.

[JonS]

Originally posted by PzKpfw 1:

One of the main reasons Shermans burned out, was crews were carrying up to 50 rounds of spare ammunition, on the turret floor.

John,

that is supported in the report I referenced on the previous page. To wit, the 1st Coldstream Guards experienced a significantly lower brew-rate simply by having all armour in the armoured bins, and not carrying any extra ammo. This was with the early Shermans in Normandy (i.e., without wet storage). Relevant section of report is reproduced in my previous post.

Regards

JonS