Accuracy of Jagdtigers

[Danny Chung]

Hi everybody

Thanks to all the guys who contributed their views to my earlier topic "Kill rate of SP guns". The views given certainly raised my understanding of SP guns.

I'm reading another book, details as follows:

Panzer Aces

by Franz Kurowski

Ballantine Books

First American Edition: February 2002

In one chapter about Albert Ernst, the book records the actions of a few Jagdtigers in the Ruhr pocket knocking out tanks "...from a range of four kilometres".

When I read this, I thought that can't be correct.

I was under the impression that most tank against tank engagements happened at less than 1000 metres.

Still amazing accuracy!

Can anyone confirm this?

[WWB]

That is not unheard of, but it is beyond the simulation capabilities of CMBO.

The 128mm gun has enough reach to take out armored targets at 4km. But they are a bit hard to hit, unless the range is known precisely beforehand. While you can help out with a TRP, you cannot get the kind of pre-ranging the Germans were known to use from prepared positions in CMBO.

WWB

[PJungnitsch]

They did have SF 14Z commanders scissors periscopes as standard for rangefinding, which would have helped.

Typically, these binoculars provided spectacular views of terrestrial objects, greatly magnifying the perception of depth in a scene as well as the appearance of modeled relief. They were also used as rangefinders in both wars.

The gunners sight were graduated for that distance as well.

The range scales were adjustable from 0-8000 meters for the Spr.Gr., and 0-4000 meters for the Pz.Gr.43 ammo.

Still, 4 km is a long way away.

[ February 04, 2002, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: Paul Jungnitsch ]

[aka_tom_w]

I think I recall that the last time this came up the upper range of visibility in ideal daylight conditions was increased in one of the later patches to 3km (3000 m).

This means that an 88 mm or 128 mm main weapon in a tank with an Elite Crew "might" have a slim chance of spotting and hitting a non-hull down stationary target (like a big allied tank like a Sherm) at 3000 m that's not the 4000 m cited above but is about the best that CMBO can do I think.

if you are REALLY curious just set up a test firing range in CMBO in the map editor and test if for your self. To the best of my knowledge no unit in CMBO has the ability to spot beyond 3000 m BUT I could be wrong on this one.

Any comments?

-tom w

[Ari Maenpaa]

Jagdtiger's gunsight offered 10x magnification. Correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK that's the best zoom in any WW2-era tank. Also a 70 ton steel body offers a very stable base for accurate shooting.

Janusz Ledwoch's "Jagdtiger" also reports JTs destroying several Shermans at 4000m range. At least some of those Shermans were part of a MOVING convoy.

Ari

[JasonC]

4 km is beyond the effective range of a TOW wire guided missle. It is farther than M-1 Abrams rated effective range - also using a 120mm gun, firing from a stable 70 ton platform. With the minor little additions of a laser rangefinder and an on board ballistics computer. Probably occasional hits have been obtained by M-1s at that range, but the idea that just having a decent sight is going to do it is pretty silly.

The pointing is relatively easy - half-mil accuracy will give a pointing-based error of only 2m at that range, as small as a tank. That is still good - 1 mil is more common - but perfectly doable. Much bigger problems include having the range off, any kind of wind, and the ordinary dispersion of shells produced by the gun's ballistics, around the spot pointed at.

It seems to me a more likely explanation is that the Jagdtigers may have been firing more or less as artillery at that range. If a zug of them tossed in half their HE loads if would be a reasonably effective fire mission. And 128mm HE could knock out some Allied tanks, especially if any got side hits. If they were in fact throwing AP, then they had to just plain get lucky.

[gredeker]

Originally posted by Ari Maenpaa:

Janusz Ledwoch's "Jagdtiger" also reports JTs destroying several Shermans at 4000m range. At least some of those Shermans were part of a MOVING convoy.

This makes far more sense to me if the JT was shooting at a convoy and happened to get some hits. It especially makes sense if the geometry was such that the JT was in line with a straight stretch of road, so that any range errors would still likely fall on the stretch of road (and have a higher chance of striking a vehicle on that road).

Something like:

XX> <4000m> -----------------

(^JT@ slightly

higher elev.)

Edited because my schematic didn't work quite right...

[ February 04, 2002, 12:39 PM: Message edited by: redeker ]

[jshandorf]

Originally posted by JasonC:

4 km is beyond the effective range of a TOW wire guided missle. It is farther than M-1 Abrams rated effective range - also using a 120mm gun, firing from a stable 70 ton platform.

Operation Desert Storm was the first conflict to see the extensive use of DU munitions and armor. The new DU rounds gave coalition forces a marked operational advantage. Unit histories from the Gulf War contain many anecdotes attesting to the effectiveness of DU "silver bullets," as they were called by US tankers. One armor brigade commander described looking on in "amazement" as his soldiers—who in training had never fired at targets beyond 2,400 meters (1.5 miles)—routinely scored first-shot kills on targets out to 3,000 meters (1.9 miles) and beyond. Scales, Robert H. Jr., Certain Victory: The US Army in the Gulf War, Simon & Schuster, Pocket Books, 1992, p. 293.

I wouldn't say 4,000 meters is the absolute limit.

Jeff

[Ari Maenpaa]

Good point to compare that incident to the limitations of modern equipment. Surely 4km couldn't been a routine gunning range even for JTs. And the conclusion about a possible HE volley sounds also plausible.

IIRC those JTs were positioned on a high hill and fired down to a nearby valley, but I'll try to remember to recheck the circumstances. It's probably the same extraordinary incident mentioned in different books.

Ari

[MikeyD]

I recall a Challenger tank in the gulf war getting a first round kill on a tank at similar ranges. I believe it's considered a record.

One explanation of the JagdTiger kill, if you look through the game's binoculars at max zoom you'll see distances foreshortened. That means a column of Shermans heading in your direction from 4000m would look like a series of stacked dominos. In these circumstances the gunner could guesstimate the range for the center of the column and have some chance that the flat trajectory of the big shell would land somewhere between the first and last vehicle in the column. I have read reports of German gunners being amazed to see a column of tanks approaching as though in a parade, their big air recognition stars making perfect aiming points.

[gredeker]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

One explanation of the JagdTiger kill, if you look through the game's binoculars at max zoom you'll see distances foreshortened. That means a column of Shermans heading in your direction from 4000m would look like a series of stacked dominos. In these circumstances the gunner could guesstimate the range for the center of the column and have some chance that the flat trajectory of the big shell would land somewhere between the first and last vehicle in the column. I have read reports of German gunners being amazed to see a column of tanks approaching as though in a parade, their big air recognition stars making perfect aiming points.

That's what I was trying to say above with my piddly diagram, but you said it much more eloquently.

[Ari Maenpaa]

Well, I decided to "stretch" a bit and dug into my "library" for Ledwoch's book. This is a straight citation, so everybody can make their own conclusions:

The company's combat vehicles (4 Jagdtigers, 4 StuG III and 3 PzKpfw IV) took position on the Bismarck Hill, from where they sighted a large American armoured unit coming from the south. From semi hull-down positions, the eleven vehicles opened fire simultaneously. The two leading Shermans were destroyed by the first volley. Trucks burned, while others exploded. Jagdtigers shelled the furthest tanks destroying some of them at a distance of 4000 metres!

The Americans lost 50 combat vehicles including 11 tanks. Then, aircraft appeared over the battlefield...

The date of the battle was 9th of April 1945 and the company was the 1st of 512th Abteilung.

Maybe there are other versions of the same battle or maybe something similar happened elsewhere. Ledwoch only briefly mentions some other incidents, where JTs destroyed allied armor from long range. Hauptmann Albert Ernst, for instance, destroyed several tanks from distances of over 2000 metres on March 10.

Additional information would be welcome.

Ari

[Silvio Manuel]

Heh heh heh...

I had done some light research on JT's at the Achtung Panzer site, which stated that "The maximum range of the gun was 22410 meters." I had assumed that it would still be effective in the AT role at that range...guess not, only HE would be used b/c AP wouldn't be accurate enough at a fraction of that range.

[PJungnitsch]

No idea what range this was about, but while on the subject of Jagdtiger stories, here's one from George Forty.

As a very young officer, newly commissioned in the summer of 1948, I remember vividly being taken to visit the battlefields in the Ardennes area and coming across what seemed to be an entire regiment of Sherman tanks which had been completely annihilated. There were Shermans lying in heaps everywhere one looked, turrets blown off, hulls ripped apart, most had clearly been brewed up -not for nothing was the Sherman known as the 'Tommy Cooker'. They had been advancing with the grain of the country and clearly been taken by surprise from a flank. The follow-up echelon had then turned right-handed towards their tormentor, but had found little cover along their new line of advance. The author of all this carnage was one single Jagdtiger, whose immense bulk still occupied a perfect fire position in a farmyard at the top of a commanding hill feature. The Jagdtiger itself had been burnt out, either by air attack, or perhaps by its own crew when they ran out of ammunition. The memory of the scene has remained with me for nearly 40 years, a perfect example of a tank destroyer doing its deadly work.