Destroying armour with HE

[Praxis]

I was playing an axis attack against the British with a 150mm Inf gun in tow. The attack bogged down on the edge of a town. I pushed my two tanks forward to wipe out the British armour, which consisted of 5 Crusader tanks.

Needless to say this rash descision ended with two dead German tanks. However it did enable me to bring my 150mm piece into action.

The Inf gun missed with its HC ammo and I ordered it to fire HE at the nearest tank which was 270-290m away.

Based on line of sight, the gun had NO chance of a kill.

I actuality what happended is that the gun engaged the tank and immobilised it. The second round saw the tank abandoned. The same occured for all of the other tanks. In one case the HE destroyed the tank on the first shot.

So heres the question:

Obviously the blast of a large calibre HE capable gun is able to destroy a tank? (Is this correct?) If this is the case, what size does the gun have to be to achieve this result? Will a 75mm or 105mm achieve the same result? Has anybody else had this experience?

Or is the destruction of the tank a morale effect of have a big shell blasted against the side of the tank?

I know i'd be pretty annoyed and shocked to have 5 to 10kg of HE go off next to my head.

Any thoughts?

[Sergei]

You can see the penetration value of HE shells in the gun stats. Surely a 150mm gun is capable of damaging a Cruiser, but not a Churchill. If it does penetrate, you can expect the tank to blow up because of the caliber. Big nearby explosions can also rattle the crew so much that they may panic, but this usually happens with heavy artillery barrages only