Big guns and sloping armour

[Europa]

When a gun has transport class 10, like the american 90 mm AA and german 128 mm AT there is no vehicle in the game that can tow them. How were they moved? Is it just a or two vehicle that are left out? Why aren't they in the game? I understand that the setup times for those guns probably were high.

Another thing I wonder about is the armour sloping effects. When looking at the stats for the 128 mm at penetration falls very rapid between 30 deg. slope and 60 deg. slope. To me that seems to be out of proportion. Are the numbers correct? I belive they are, but why do they behave that way?

Thx

[Bone_Vulture]

Originally posted by Europa:

How were they moved? Is it just a or two vehicle that are left out? Why aren't they in the game? I understand that the setup times for those guns probably were high.

I hink the guns were hauled with the same heavy transports like the rest of the big guns (like the German halftrack tow vehicle, can't remember the designation). The gun mounting is a bít half-assed in CM, anyway.

Originally posted by Europa:

Another thing I wonder about is the armour sloping effects. When looking at the stats for the 128 mm at penetration falls very rapid between 30 deg. slope and 60 deg. slope. To me that seems to be out of proportion. Are the numbers correct? I belive they are, but why do they behave that way?

Compare the penetration to any other German heavy gun, like the 88/L71 ot 75/L70. You'll notice the same proportions.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Bone_Vulture:

I hink the guns were hauled with the same heavy transports like the rest of the big guns (like the German halftrack tow vehicle, can't remember the designation).

Sd.Kz. 7?

Michael

[NCOIC]

The vechicles in the game can tow them, just not within the time-frame of a normal CM battle. Atleast, I believe thats the answer to the first part of your question.

[Europa]

Sounds right to me. Thx to all of you.

[Omi]

These guns were just too big to be unlimbered in a 25 to 45 minutes time frame.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Omi:

These guns were just too big to be unlimbered in a 25 to 45 minutes time frame.

Uh, except the can be towed, unlimered and set up within a CM battle

The trick is that they can only be hooked up to the gun tractor in the setup turn.

[Omi]

Hmmm...no. You can't hook a 128mm to a gun tractor, even in the setup phase.

[Redwolf]

Oh, the 128? OK then.

As for armor sloping and less penetration.

People often start out assuming that an angled armor plate offers more resistence like as if you draw a line through the armor as if it was moving along it original like of flight.

But it projectile is not point-shaped, it has a form, and it hits the plate with different parts first, deforms and gets pushed away. So it goes through the armor at a different path that it was flying before the hit, and the path is at an even higher angle, hence you have less chance to penetrate.

Early WW2 rounds were awful in this respect. Later they used caps which were very hard and formed to hold on to the first edge digging into the armor. But that is still far away from the original path, just not as bad as uncapped rounds. Also bad is tungsteen ammunition with surrounding other material whihc is not disgarded, e.g. HVAP.

Only todays kinetic energy penetrators follow the original flight path pretty precisely. This is an effect both of their small diameter, the almost point-like impact point and special forming to resist the tendency to follow the armor angle to the outside.

The situation is different for HEAT rounds which have a fuse. The fuse is in front and touches the armor. This touch is not strong enough to bring the round off its original path. By the time the main round hits the armor the penetration stream is supposed to be in effect which is unimpressed by the form of the object and follows the original path. However, there is a number of other problems with HEAT warheads, namely that impact at very high angle can trigger the fuse to late so that the round just smashes on the armor. And that hitting anything before the main armor sets off the fuse, this can be done deliberately by skirts or accidentially by hitting handles or equipment stored outside the tank. There are also high percentages of bad fuses which just don't work at all.