Non-game Q: could a rifle grenade take out a tank?

[warspite]

Approximately how likely was a rifle grenade in the early-mid war to damage (field repairable) disable or destroy a Pz III, Pz IV, early Sherman or Stuart?

Would it have to be some exceptionally lucky shot (exhaust, driver's slit, right between road wheel and tracks) or would a more generic shot, like under the tank, be able to take the tank out?

[AC]

With a lucky shot, disable I guess.

I'm no specialist on the issue but I don't think rifle grenades had shape charges (HC) untill later in the war.

[...................................]

Ian Hogg in Tank Killers on page 260 has the following to say on rifle grenades:

"With the arrival of the shaped charge a number of rifle grenades appeared in the course of the Second World War. The British No.68 was the first, but there were many others in German and US service. There are very few records of these devices being used in action, and even then they appear to have been principally used to blow holes in pillboxes and buildings."

So it seems to me that AT rifle grenades weren't used much, and also that the Brits (and presumably by extension the Commonwealth) should also have them if they are to be included at all. Grogs?

[JonS]

There is an account in Balkoski Beyond the beachhead of a US serviceman firing a string of rifle grenades (8 IIRC) at a StuG in June or July 1944. All hit. The Stug took fright and buggered off. The story doesn't relate if any damage was caused, but it is concievable that sundry damage did occur to the systems in the vehicle, causing it to depart.

[dd77]

The grosse Gewehrpanzergranate ('42) could penetrate 70mm of armor and was widely used. Later developments and other models could penetrate even more.

[Aco4bn187inf]

One of Audie Murphy's achievements was the destruction of an immobilized tank by rifle grenade. There's a story in a history of the 101st of a soldier scoring a rifle grenade hit through the open top hatch of a german tank. The narrator wrote "we out-hollywooded Hollywood." Despite this, I don't think this was considered a very serious or dependable AT weapon.

[Michael Dorosh]

US rifle grenades had the same warhead as the 2.36 inch bazooka round, did they not?

[A.E.B]

Hi all

Interestingly, there appears to be a large difference between the theroretical and actual performance on the battlefield of HEAT/Hollow charge type warheads.

Basically, these rounds use a cone to concentrate a stream of molten metal and hot gases that blow through armour as a narrow jet.

But, when used on the battlefield, HEAT weapons routinely fail against vehicles whose armour they should be easily able to penetrate.

The best explanation for this I have ever heard was summed up as presentation + distance. Translated, a HEAT round is most effective when it is correctly presented to the target (orientation), and the detonation occurs the right distance from the surface to be penetrated.

This is why most modern HEAT warheads now have extended nose fuses: this is in an effort to have the warhead explode at the most effective distance.

Orientation is a biggy. All armour piercing weapons are affected by the angle at which they strike a target - even hand held weapons. A lot of HEAT rounds apparently fail if they strike at too great an angle - either the jet is partially deflected, or the shockwave from the explosion arrives first at the closest point and distrupts the jet with its reflection.

This is why magnetic mines were the first serious Antitank HEAT devices - by placing the mine directly on the target you were almost guaranteed that the detonation would occur with the best orientation and distance.

Translated, many accounts I have read of actual battle is full of complaints about defective and inadequate antitank HEAT weapons. But, upon looking at the stats, those weapons should have had no difficultly in affecting the target.

A Good case is Korea, where the 2.36 inch Bazooka failed against the T34/85. Many accounts mention the rounds bouncing off the tanks (in one case a round bounced down the commanders hatch). So, the angle meant that the Bazooka rounds often deflected away without exploding. But even in cases where angle shouldn't have been a problem (firing from roof tops during the battle of Seoul), the Bazooka still often failed to kill a T34/85.

The 1960s have many examples. The Egyptians found that their snapper and Saggar missiles often failed against Israeli tanks. In Vietnam, many vehicles survived impacts by 66mm LAWs and RPGs that, on paper at least, should have been deadly?

In Nam at least the issue of HEAT performance was looked at. In the battle of (forget the name - the SF camp overrun by NVA armour at the start of Tet up near the Laos/DMZ border region), the SF soldiers fired a number of LAWs at PT76 tanks. Only one tank was knocked out by LAWs, leading to the charge that the weapons were defective. A 106mm recoilless rifle had no trouble killing serveral other PT76s.

A LAW should be able to kill a PT76, which is a light amphibious recon tank. However, it was concluded that the LAWs were being fired in far from perfect conditions - by men in trenches against moving targets covered in objects that could cause a round to prematurely detonate or deflect.

The 106mm recoilless rifle had no problems, because its maximum penetration was massively above that needed to penetrate the armour of a PT76. So, with less than perfect conditions robbing HEAT rounds of a substantial proportion of their penetration, the 106mm RR succeeded where the LAWs failed as the 106RR had penetration to spare.

Another Vietnam example is a relative of mine who is alive because RPGs didn't achieve their theroretical penetration on the battlefield. My relation crewed an Australia Centurion that took part in the post Tet battles of 1968 in what is commonly known as the battle of Coral.

The Centurions role was to support infantry clearing dug in NVA/VC forces. This meant the Centurions drove through thick scrub and engaged bunkers and fighting positions at close range.

In a particularly violent action against a bunker complex, my relations Centurion was hit by enough RPGs that all of the external storage bins and other fittings were blown off or wrecked (after one blast infantry using the tank for cover were sprayed with beer and mint tooth paste).

Not one RPG penetrated any of the Centurions - mines claimed a few - during the entire deployment in Vietnam, not even side or rear hits.

The result of these battlefield experiences was the complete redesign of modern HEAT weapons. Apart from the extended nose fuses, many HEAT rounds now detonate without even impacting on the target, detonating by proximity fuses.

So, the secret with HEAT weapons is (a) have as much over penetration as possible (ie a large warhead), ( make the HEAT warhead hit at the best possible angle to the target surface. Low velocity HEAT rounds are easily deflected by objects on the target, or even by foliage or other obstacles encountered on the flight to the target. Rockets and rounds with tails can become unstable in flight - a HEAT round that hits side on will still explode but have no penatrative effect.

Regards

A.E.B

[JonS]

Good post.

As an aside, the Aussie Gunners did a fantastic job at Coral.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by JonS:

Good post.

As an aside, the Aussie Gunners did a fantastic job at Coral.

Pray Tell, Jon, have Aussie or Kiwi Gunners ever done a bad job, in your estimation?

[MikeyD]

"Not one RPG penetrated any of the Centurions". I'm reminded of an old article ('Military Modeler mag?) showing photos of aging abandoned Israeli Centurions and Pattons in Egypt. The author stated that of the Centurions he inspected none had been penetrated by RPGs but all of the Pattons had been. So it seems there's more to the topic of penetration than the weapons themselves. I read somewhere the U.S. military credits about half of all U.S. combat deaths in Iraq to RPGs. A suprisingly high percentage, considering.

WWII rifle grenades were pretty cumbersome to operate. A soldier's rifle had to be unloaded and a blank cartridge inserted (you wouldn't want to fire a live round through a grenade two feet from your head!). Still, we've all learned from playing the game that even minimal infantry AT weaponry is a lot better than none at all.

[Splinty]

"I read somewhere the U.S. military credits about half of all U.S. combat deaths in Iraq to RPGs. A suprisingly high percentage, considering."

True, but keep in mind that most of those casualties were riding in soft-skinned HMMVWs and trucks.

[warspite]

So consensus is "no, there's no f'in way a rifle grenade will knock out a tank", unless some freak of nature occurs.

[MikeyD]

Weeeelllll.... punching a 7 inch deep hole in armored steel is still punching a 7 inch deep hole in armored steel. All you have to do is make sure the round lands squarely against a vital spot and doesn't glance off a corner. In manuals for weapons like that there's usually a diagram showing where that pesky PzIII's fuel tanks are located.

[Ted]

I played a scenario as US Airborne in Italy.

I was being overrun at night by MkIV’s and knocked one out with a rifle grenade hitting it in the side turret.

Changed the whole attitude of the German attack.

[Guest Mike]

There's no particular reason why a RG can't KO a tank.

Like all other marginal AT weapons (ATR's, German 37's vs T34's, etc) it needs the right circumstances - which are not "freaks of nature".

[Guest Mike]

Bugger - another double post - sorry

[ July 07, 2004, 07:48 PM: Message edited by: Mike ]

[willbell]

There's no particular reason why a RG can't KO a tank.

Like all other marginal AT weapons (ATR's, German 37's vs T34's, etc) it needs the right circumstances - which are not "freaks of nature".

[JonS]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by JonS:

Good post.

As an aside, the Aussie Gunners did a fantastic job at Coral.

Pray Tell, Jon, have Aussie or Kiwi Gunners ever done a bad job, in your estimation? </font>

[JonS]

In a semi-penitent effort to drag this topic back on track ...

From Against the panzers by Vannoy and Karamales, page 15:

The Americans also had an antitank rifle grenade, but it was not widely used because it was too cumbersome.

This book is a series of eight indepth studies of battles in which US infantry had to face German armour in NWE without tank support of their own. That passage doesn't say that they were ineffective, but I suspect that a rather large degree of cumbersomeness would have been tolerated if they were.

I suspect that were you to troll through the book throughly you might well come across refences to use of the A-Tk rifle grenade in action, but it doesn't show up in the index, and I'm not inclined to do it myself

On the other hand (to the 'too-cumbersome' comment above), in Normandy one of the more noticeable equipment deficiencies was the rifle grenade lauchers, which kept getting lost in the bocage. If they were getting lost, but were ineffective and unwanted I suspect that they wouldn't have shown up as such a notable deficiency. Of course, they may well have been particular use in Normandy firing HE rather than A-Tk rounds. Reference to the shortage of the launchers can be found in United States Army logistics : the Normandy Campaign, 1944 by Steve Waddell.

Regards

JonS

[Joachim]

Might just as well be a noticeable deficiency cause everybody lost them to get rid of the most unneccessary piece of equipment.

Gruß

Joachim

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Originally posted by A.E.B:

(after one blast infantry using the tank for cover were sprayed with beer and mint tooth paste).

Mmmmmmmmmm.....beer and mint toothpaste

GAHHHhhhhhhhhhhnnnnn.........

Regards

Homer

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by A.E.B:

In the battle of (forget the name - the SF camp overrun by NVA armour at the start of Tet up near the Laos/DMZ border region)

From recollections of the SSI Vietnam game, that would have been Ben Het?

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by A.E.B:

Interestingly, there appears to be a large difference between the theroretical and actual performance on the battlefield of HEAT/Hollow charge type warheads.

I thought the theory was pretty well understood by now. The point with HEAT rounds is that while they generally have excellent penetrative power, their behind-armour effect was not always up to much. Certainly it was not good in WW2, the amount of behind-armour debris generated being much smaller than a penetration by AP. Nowadays a single warhead can be designed to have one part of the penetrator stretching as it forms (like a classic HEAT jet) and a second contracting to form a slug (like an explosively-formed penetator slug), so that the two penetrators act as "driller" and "cleaner". This suggests to me that the theory is, now, quite well understood.

Originally posted by A.E.B:

But, when used on the battlefield, HEAT weapons routinely fail against vehicles whose armour they should be easily able to penetrate.

The failures are not necessarily shortfalls in penetration performance. They may be due to lack of behind-armour effect, as mentioned before. HEAT rounds by their nature require a point initiating, base detonating fuze, which is not the easiest thing in the world to design, and so a high proportion of fuze failures would not be surprising. I have a PRO document citing a 25% rate of fuze failure with PIAT; and I seem to recall a story of a British soldier in Zimbabwe srrviving an RPG round coming through the windscreen of his Land Rover because the round failed to detonate.

Originally posted by A.E.B:

The 1960s have many examples. The Egyptians found that their snapper and Saggar missiles often failed against Israeli tanks.

I've heard it said that only 20% of Arab ATGW shots in the Yom Kippur war were effective, but understood that to be due to misses rather than hits failing. What evidence have you that Sagger failed to penetrate Israeli tanks if it hit?

Originally posted by A.E.B:

A LAW should be able to kill a PT76, which is a light amphibious recon tank. However, it was concluded that the LAWs were being fired in far from perfect conditions - by men in trenches against moving targets covered in objects that could cause a round to prematurely detonate or deflect.

The 106mm recoilless rifle had no problems, because its maximum penetration was massively above that needed to penetrate the armour of a PT76.

This sounds like Lang Vei -- not a statistically significant test, in that only two PT-76s were knocked out, IIRC. I doubt that any real difference in performance was due to a difference in simple penetration overmatch. First, although I have no good sources to hand, I believe the penetration performance of the 106mm RR is about half that of the 66mm M-72 LAW (http://www.mst2-vietnam.info/Stoner_ordnance_notes/stonerhtml/RECOILLESS_RIFLE.htm gives the 106mm six inches of penetration, Jane's Infantry Weapons for 1975 fives the M-72 twelve).

Second, optimising a HEAT warhead for penetration typically means sacrificing behind-armour effect. The 106mm, less well-optimised for penetration, may therefore have had very much more behind-armour effect than the 66mm. Third, I don't know what natures were available at Lang Vei, but there was a HEP (American for HESH) roudn available for the 106mm, which would prbably have done a much better job than HEAT on a PT-76. Fourth, the PT-76 is such a thin-walled spam-can that both weapons clearly have more penetration overmatch than you could shake a stick at. However, as it is a swimming tank, it has high internal volume, which means lots of internal space in which HEAT penetators might miss anything vital once they had punched through the thin armour.

Originally posted by A.E.B:

Apart from the extended nose fuses, many HEAT rounds now detonate without even impacting on the target, detonating by proximity fuses.

First I've heard of that. Could you tell me what HEAT rounds have proximity fuzes, please?

All the best,

John.

[JonS]

Originally posted by Joachim:

Might just as well be a noticeable deficiency cause everybody lost them to get rid of the most unneccessary piece of equipment.

Right. I considered that, and it still might be a viable explanation, except that the units were putting in demands on the logistics sytem to have them replaced. If they didn't want them, I don't think that they would have been putting in the demands, even if they were deficient.

OTOH, Normandy was the first experience of battle for the majority of the US Army, so it's possible the units there were playing things by the book - and if the book said that Pte Snooks should be carrying a grenade launcher then, dammit, get Pte Snooks a grenade launcher! Later in the campaign they may have been discarded and not replaced (in a reverse of what happened with the extra BARs at squad level. It would be interesting to see the differences between say the 1st and 82nd Divs on the one hand, and the 29th and the 101st on the other in this respect.

Oh, that reminds me. Somewhere on this interweb thingy is "LESSONS LEARNED IN COMBAT, NOVEMBER 7-8, 1942-SEPTEMBER 1944 by Headquarters, 34th Infantry Division (September 1944)". this fairly sizeable pdf goes into a fair amount of detail about all aspects of the division, and may well have comments on the grenade launcher. You can get a copy of it here: http://www.34infdiv.org/history/34div/LessonsLearned.pdf (link is straight to the pdf dl)

Regards

JonS

[ July 12, 2004, 06:37 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]