Armor Piercing Rounds against infantry

[General_Petrovsky]

I'm nearing the end of a PBEM game and I have control of the victory flags and I'm basically defending my opponents last rush. I've had my Tiger tank punishing his infantry for a while, but now my Tiger is out of HE rounds and only has AP rounds left. The past few turns I've continued to tell the Tiger to target infantry and then it asks if he should use the Main Gun and I say yes and it shoots AP rounds which seem to be very ineffective. Is this one of the rare situations where I should say NO when it asks to use the Main Gun? Would this increase the machine gun fire? Or should I just keep on shooting the AP rounds anyway??

[busboy]

Well, an AP round is really just a solid piece of metal, so its not throwing shrapnel when it hits the ground, as it doesn't explode. The only way it'll hurt infantry is if it hits one directly.

To my knowlage, ceasing main gun fire does not increase co ax fire, tho someone else may proove me wrong. So, is there a reason to keep up your AP fire?

Yes. The psycological effect of an 88mm round smacking down near you and going 800 mps is going to unnerve his troops. You may not kill any of 'em with AP rounds, but unless they're elite fanatical troops, they're gonna think twice about following their general's orders and doing a frontal assault.

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busboy

CO, 99th Dragons

A Warbirds Squadron

'We will heat you up'

"It is well that war is so terrible, else we would grow too fond of it."

-Robert E. Lee

[IntelWeenie]

Not all AP rounds are solid. Many contained a bursting charge to increase post-penetration effectiveness.

IIRC, AP rounds have between 1/2 to 1/4 the effect of HE. If all you have is AP, I would say do not use the main gun unless you are short of MG ammo or if the range is over 200m.

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Cats aren't clean, they're covered with cat spit.

[109 Gustav]

Obviously, if you think there even might be a chance of encountering enemy tanks, save your HE rounds. Tank cannon and AT guns can only penetrate about half as much armor if they are forced to shoot HE at tanks.

As Intelweenie said 2 seconds before my post, AP rounds are not solid. Tungsten rounds, however, are a solid piece of metal, I believe fired from a sabot cartridge.

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No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. -Ender's Game

[This message has been edited by 109 Gustav (edited 11-01-2000).]

[General_Petrovsky]

Thanks for the insights comrades. One thing confused me what I read about my tank's machine gun ammo. I thought all tanks have unlimited maching gun ammo kind of like infantry and grenades. Is this true or is my Tiger going to run out of MG ammo too and just be a big useless hunk of metal by the last turn?

[Guest aaronb]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by General_Petrovsky:

is my Tiger going to run out of MG ammo too and just be a big useless hunk of metal by the last turn?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Tank MG ammo is limited. Your Tiger won't be completely useless - it is a decent spotting post if unbuttoned, and you can use it to run over guns and mortars if you feel completely safe from bazookas and rifle grenades.

[IntelWeenie]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I thought all tanks have unlimited maching gun ammo kind of like infantry and grenades.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

To see how much MG ammo your tank has left, bring up the unit information screen. The amount of ammo will be shown in parentheses after the type of MG.

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Cats aren't clean, they're covered with cat spit.

[This message has been edited by IntelWeenie (edited 11-02-2000).]

[Popper]

I would also like to emphasize that a Tiger also has that nifty "self defense mortar" thingee. I actually took out a bren gun carrier at knife range with one of them. I had to replay the turn 6 or 7 times to figure out what did it. It was pretty confusing because my main gun wasn't pointed at it when the BG carrier went up in a spectacular explosion.

[General_Petrovsky]

very educational comrades, thank you for your responses. I now know that all vehichles have a certain amount of MG ammo and where to find that data. The grenade launcher on german tanks is cool, I saw one of my panzers do it before, but as a general rule I don't like to bring my tanks too close to infantry. Well to let you know how I finished my PBEM game with that Tiger who ran out of HE shells vs just infantry. I stopped fireing AP rounds because they seemed ineffective and actually they were. So all the enemy had left was about 2 platoons of troops left firing at my beaten up troops holding the VL. With my heatless tiger behind my men I had him fire smoke in front of the enemies two platoons so they were unable to fire on my positions anymore. With only a turn or two left in the game my opponent got frustrated and charged his men through the smoke and tried to take the VL by storm. My men mowed them down with SMG fire and he was destroyed almost to the last man. I won a Axis Major Victory and my Tiger crew all got medals

[PeterNZer]

I just have to say that most AP fired in this game is, if i recall correctly, not HE-tipped. There was some discussion of this early on.

I believe the practice was somewhat common in the smaller English guns.. hmm.. but in general it was found that the lesser weight of the round resulted in lesser penetration at range, and the effect of the HE bit wasn't that great..

another reason I don't think there's HE in most AP rounds is that I've seen rounds stuck in sheets of metal and they were solid.

O, just asked a grog, and yeah, i'm right, some rounds were filled with a tiny bit of HE, called 'filler'.. there's a thread on it.

Anyway, this sheet of metal had about a half-dozen rounds through it. Some were clean holes in the metal, others were stuck half way through.

The destructive power of a solid AP round comes from the bits of metal that are torn off the inside of the tank's armor and then thrown around inside the vehicle.

If you've seen a shot piece of plate you'll figure that there's probably nearly as much shrapnel as you'd find in a handgrenade.

Hence, the negative effect of the lighter HE filled round slowing quicker and producing less penetration was i think generally figured to be not made up for its damaging potential..

hmm, I'd say do a search on 'filler' and see what they say there

PeterNZ

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"Someday... the whole world will know the wonder of my nipples."

[Bastables]

The Germans and USA use AP shell which contains small HE burst charges, which means to gain a kill one does not require a full penetration e.g. British report dealing with the knowledge that German AP ammunition were shells and not shot (solid projectile) ‘The German projectiles which have caused the greatest amount of damage to allied tanks have been the APHE type in 47mm, 50mm, 75mm and 88mm respectively. These projectiles need only attain a partial penetration and the explosive charge can complete the destruction of at least the tank crew. At close range the destructive effects is very great, where in many cases destruction of the tank is permeant.' (1998 Jentz)

The destructive effect of solid shot AP ammo relies on actually hitting people, ammo bins or engine with the caveat that the projectile or its fragments retains enough kinetic energy to do damage to these items. This included all forms of APCR ammo i.e. German Pzgr 40, USA APCR aka HVAP, and the best the British APDS that like the modern SABOT drops the surrounding casing in flight. The British preferred solid shot AP to the extent that all USA shipments of 75mm APHE for the Sherman were labouredly taken apart had their HE removed and the cavity filled in with a solid turning the AP shell into AP shot, so that all AP rounds fired by ‘British’ tanks used solid AP until the end of the war.

I'm sure that in the game German,USA and French forces use AP (HE charge) shells as the 'Commonwealth' forces Use AP shot (no HE)

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From the jshandorf

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Mr T's reply

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[This message has been edited by Bastables (edited 11-09-2000).]