20mm Flak and Kwk

[Aloicious]

How is the ammo fed into these guns? Belts or clips?

[Gaylord Focker]

I would imagine belts.....

[Aloicious]

Wouldn't it be more difficult to switch from a belt of HE to a belt of AP than to just drop a clip of HE and slap in a clicp of AP? Especially when an enemy tank shows itself? I'm of course speaking in terms of the Kwk. Im just having a difficult time imagining how the ammo would be loaded.

[Gaylord Focker]

I'm not postive of the facts myself, but i'm sure someone who is will be by shortly.....

[Cpl Carrot]

I always thought it was 5 round clips with a mix of AP, HE, and I.

But I'm bound to be wrong - its been one of those days

[ March 13, 2003, 12:58 AM: Message edited by: Cpl Carrot ]

[Bone_Vulture]

I'll say clips for the 20mm. What do you mean by "Kwk"?

[Aloicious]

Kampfwagenkanone and Flak is Fliegerabwehrkanone.

[Hub]

The 2cm FlaK 30/38 and Flakvierling were all magazine fed weapons.

[Andreas]

The 'modern' Rheinmetall twin 20mm uses belts. I an not sure about the old single-barrel 20mm, but I am sure the quad uses magazines, as does the KWK.

[Little_Black_Devil]

The 20mm Flak 30/38 both used 20 round magazines in the AAA role.

The 20mm KwK (as mounted in the PzII or some armoured cars for instance) - is essentially the same gun, but fitted for a tank, as its main armament. These guns too use a magazine, though due to space constraints in turrets, these guns only used 10 round magazines.

ALL 20mm armed guns, carried a load of both HE and AP (loaded in seperate magazines).

I have read some accounts however, which said that on occaision, some guns manually loaded their magazines, staggering AP and HE in them together.

While there was an APCR round for this series of guns, I'm not sure just how widely it was used and when precisely it was used.

There were a wide variety of HE rounds for this series of guns as well.

None of these 20mm guns was ever, or could ever be belt fed.

The principle difference between the Flak 30 and 38, was the 38 had a higher rate of fire.

Hope that helps

[Jeff Duquette]

I’m curious how the box clip ammo mix is modeled in the game? Moreover if a MkII is engaging a Soviet tank the HE rounds of the ammo mix would be less effective relative to the AP rounds…and vise versa when a MkII is engaging soft targets…the HE rounds of the box mix being more effective than AP.

[Bone_Vulture]

I wonder, what was the idea of mixing different ammo types? Was it to make the gun salvos efficient against both infantry and armor, without the need of changing from a certain ammo type mag to another?

[mchlstrt]

A bump 'cause now I'm wondering too.

strt

[offtaskagain]

The accuracy would be crap on a mixed clip. AP and HE have pretty different ballistic characteristics, which is why there are seperate settings on gunsights for the two. This wouldnt matter at point blank but any sort of ranged shooting it would be all over the field.

[Aloicious]

Now another question. Having rapid fire capability would obviously increase effectiveness against soft targets, mainly infantry. With such a small round, the HE charge would be rather miniscule. But I'm guessing theres going to be a trade off against armour. Does the rapid fire capability detract from the rounds effect against armour? Im betting that it would probably.

I ask because there's the 37mm Flak, which is an rapid fire weapon, and then theres the 37mm Kwk. Why not mount the Flak version in an AFV? Aside from the Ostwind. Or is it the Wirblewind that mounts the 37?

And yes, that did help thank you very much.

[Aloicious]

Oh, one more thing. Why didn't the Germans ever mount one of their heavy MG's on a pintle on the turrets of their AFVs? It seems like quite a useful addition to any combat vehicle. The Americans and the Russians utilised them enough. I would imagine theyd be great against thin skinned vehicles. And did the russians mount the Dshk on any other tanks aside from the IS's?

[flamingknives]

There are actually a few pictures of German tanks mounting AA MGs. IIRC, doctrine was not to use these in combat as it required the TC to be dangerously exposed.

Autocannon have a larger breech assembly and weight than a comparable AT piece, so the choice would be between the autocannon and a larger AT gun.

Scout vehicles were (I think) fitted with these weapons as they offer a better first shot hit chance which is useful when the vehicle is shooting and scooting.

[Bone_Vulture]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

Autocannon have a larger breech assembly and weight than a comparable AT piece, so the choice would be between the autocannon and a larger AT gun.

Also you can fit your mech with heat sinks to improve the... Wait a sec, wrong game.

[Splinty]

Originally posted by Aloicious:

Why not mount the Flak version in an AFV? Aside from the Ostwind. Or is it the Wirblewind that mounts the 37?

And yes, that did help thank you very much. [/QB]

Although not relevant to CMBB the Germans did mount the 37mm Flak on the Mobelwagen. However only about 250 of these vehicles were manufactured and saw combat in the West.

[ March 14, 2003, 09:55 AM: Message edited by: Splinty ]

[flamingknives]

The Mobelwagen is a PzIV chassis with a flak gun on top, with sides that fall down so as to give an unrestricted field of fire isn't it?. Unfortunately that design point works in both directions.

[Little_Black_Devil]

I'm at work at the moment, but when I get home later I'll see if I can't upload a few scanned images I have, which illustrate a cross section of the 20mm Flak30 and Flak38 breech blocks.

I'll also see what more additional info I can dig up with reference to the 20mm guns and the 37mm Flak as well.

I would suggest to those that have it, that Ian V. Hogg's book "German Artillery of World War Two" contains a good deal of information on both the 20mm and 37mm guns.

Unfortunately, for the moment, I can't recall the specific reason(s) why some crews loaded their magazines with a mixed load of HE and AP; however I don't think this was "common practice".

Within the scope of the game, the German 20mm weapons appear to fire off an entire 10 round magazine everytime they fire. I think (but will have to verify), that the 20mm Flak guns in the game also fire at the same rate - which makes me wonder if the larger 20 round magazines have been taken into account (in so far as the speed of ammunition consumption is concerned). Something to look into perhaps.

I have noticed however, that the respective loadouts for the respective 20mm armed vehicles are accurate.

In terms of rate of fire, and penetration, even though the Flak38/Flakvierling38 fires at a faster rate, it doesn't actually fire the projectiles any faster. As a result, its penetration stats are identical to those of its predecessor the Flak30. The only differece the auto-cannon makes, is that prolonged bursts on automatic, like any other automatic weapon tend to lose accuracy because the gun is bouncing around from recoil. 2 Round bursts are accurate, but anything sustained past that pulls the gun up and to the right. This can be compensated for on the fly, and I would hazzard to say that within 500m its a non-issue. Past that, as has been mentioned above, the rounds will begin to disperse too much, making any attempts to compensate for recoil difficult to say the least.

Later

[Hub]

Maybe the mixed ammunition would have worked better against the heavily armoured IL-2 Shturmovik, etc? Like somebody mentioned- the HE filler can't have been much, so mixing in AP rounds might make sense. The different projectile trajectories wouldn't matter as much, as I'd expect you'd want to throw up as large a kill zone as quickly as possible for the aircraft to fly through. Just guessing here...

[Little_Black_Devil]

I still have not had time to check where I read/saw the bit about mixed ammunition, but in the meantime,

here are some pics illustrating a cross section of the gun and its feed arrangements.

Gun Cross Section;

and the feed arrangements;

Both of these images are from a scanned document I have concerning captured German Weapons,

pressed into British service. It was published by the British War Office in December 1942.

[Screamineagle Bob]

To reply to your querry about heavy MG's mounted on German AFV's..perhaps the word Heavy has alot to do with it..not just the ammo but the weight of the wepon itself. Pintels were not strong enough to take the recoil of heavier MGs (Just a thought)

[Ynori Erup]

Holy huge illustration... doesn't even fit on my screen... Turns my thoughts to the divine...