Was british 95L22 really such killer?

[illo]

I have real trouble dealing with Cromwells and Churchills using this gun. :eek:

It seems deadly accurate and first hit mostly kills even Panther frontally.

Why brits in real life chose to take beating from germans with their mostly 75mm armed tanks, when they could have fought Panthers toe to toe with their 95L22armed CS tanks?

I set 1000 point battle where i bought only Panther Gs and Cromwell VIs. flat clear field distance about 500-700m.

I ran test 8 times. Every time Panthers snufft it.

usually 3-6 cromwells still alive.

95L22 seems to be awesome AT weapon.

[illo]

Oh..and i tested with regular crews.

[Michael Emrys]

Just for kicks, try it again at over 1,000 meters.

Michael

[Jack Carr]

My experiences have been the same with the British 95mm. The German heavy tanks are just no match for it. I can see the Firefly being effective because the muzzle velcoity was pretty good but the 95mm seems to fare just as well with a muzzle velocity that is less than the Allied short barrelled 75mm. Perhaps its the type of ammo used?

I have never read anything on this weapon system. Does anyone know a good source of info on it?

[Andreas]

No.

I suggest doing a search, this topic has been discussed at length, and ISTR that Jeff Heidmann dug some stuff out on it. Try my member number, I think I butted in as well. You may have to go to the archives.

[Andreas]

Jack, the best source of info is probably the Tankmuseum at Bovington, and its librarian David Fletcher, who wrote 'Mr. Churchill's Tank'.

The howitzer is an infantry support weapon. Two to a squadron of 19 Churchills or Cromwells (including the ARV). It was intended to be used primarily with smoke, and then HE, to enable the PBI to get to their objective. It sits in the tradition of the 3" howitzer in earlier infantry support tanks, e.g. the first versions of the Churchill. The US equivalent would be the 105mm armed Sherman, and an early war German version is the 75L24 armed Panzer IV, a mid-war version being the 75L24 armed Panzer IIIN, and the StuH42 with a 10,5cm howitzer.

[rexford]

Panther glacis resistance to HEAT equals 80mm divided by cosine (55 degrees), or 139.48mm vertical. Multiply by 0.85 quality and one is left with 119mm vertical.

Since 95mm HEAT penetrates 125mm vertical, 0.85 quality Panther glacis is defeated on most hits. A hit on 80mm plate at 55 degrees vertical and 20 degrees horizontal, with 0.85 quality, resists like 126mm vertical.

Since HEAT is fired at a fairly low velocity it will be coming down at an angle when it hits Panther glacis, which further decreases resistance to HEAT rounds.

The issues that may render the 95mm HEAT vs Panther glacis result ahistorical and somewhat unrealistic is that only a small percentage of Panther glacis were flawed, and the flaw was not in the resistance to HEAT but in the ability to take a high velocity impact from a large knietic energy round and not crack, flake or disk.

Many folks feel that the flaw factor that applies to armor piercing ammo should not apply to HEAT rounds, and that is my own opinion. And maybe 20% to 30% of Panthers had flawed glacis, not every one like CMBO appears to assume.

The same issue applies to T34 armor. Against 75mm APCBC, 45mm at 430 Brinell Hardness (very hard) loses 24% of resistance due to brittle behavior. Against 75mm HEAT, the 45mm at 430 Brinell Hardness armor gains about 10% in resistance since hard armor is more difficult to melt (hardness is ability of particles to hold together and resist pulling apart in absence of a sharp and large impact).

So armor can be poor against kinetic energy rounds and very good against HEAT penetration.

[ July 04, 2002, 02:30 PM: Message edited by: rexford ]

[Redwolf]

Last time the issue came up noone could come up with data which would doubt the penetration of this gun.

However, a British report stated that the hit probablity at 1000 yards would be 1/6th of that of a 6 pdr, without giving reasons.

The whole issue lead my to suggest to give SP guns and CS tanks an accuracy disadvantage when shooting at moving targets just because they are no trained (anti-)tank gunners. This also blends well with the missing wind in CMBO, which would affect the low-velocity round even more.

I have been a Cromwell 95mm fan for a good chunk of time, because in experiments it dispatches Panzer IV/70 nicely from the front. But I could never exploit the gun against competent human opponents and choose other stuff. On the other hand, I don't think the Panzer IV/70 is so dangerous anymore. The Churchill has no means to close the range, this is really getting into a luck issue. So in a word, the 95mm gun is attractive but I cannot find a big issue, neither in the realism department nor in the gameplay department.

[Andreas]

The realism problem is hit probability. Low muzzle-velocity howitzers are just not any good at delivering precision ammunition over any sort of distance in DF mode. HE is not such a problem, because even a near miss can still cause damage, and smoke is almost irrelevant.

[rexford]

The 95mm HEAT round should not penetrate the Panther glacis since the armor quality factor does not apply.

Some wargames have required HEAT rounds to overpenetrate a target by a certain amount to do anything major, so marginal HEAT penetrations might be less lethal and damaging.

[M Hofbauer]

maybe we shoulöd also keep in mind that the British commanders and especially the tank crews of 95mm-armed support tanks didn't know back then that an opinion exists that the 80mm @ 55° front glacis of the Panther, which translates into a geometrical effective thickness of 140mm, could maybe be rated at 85% quality which means that it has an effective thickness of 119mm which means that their main gun which might be rated at 125mm armor penetration for their shaped charge ammo could just penetrate the Panther front if they hit it and all those paper thesis assumptions are true...

in other words, these people had a support tank with a low-Vo support gun, and were facing dreadful german tank-killer tanks. It would seem to me they never ever intended to go toe-to-toe with german tanks.

In reality, I don't think a bunch of 95mm-equipped Cromwells were regularly setting out to go hunting for big cats...

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by redwolf:

[snips]

However, a British report stated that the hit probablity at 1000 yards would be 1/6th of that of a 6 pdr, without giving reasons.

PRO document WO 185/178, "Tank armament versus armour", says, and I quote:

"... the characteristics of the weapon greatly reduce the chances of direct hits with all types of projectile - at a range of 1,000 yards, the chances are about one-third those of the 6 pdr and at longer ranges the falling-off increases rapidly. For effective anti-tank engagement the maximum opening range of the 95mm is say 600/700 yards, preferably less."

I'd be interested to know which report says it's one-sixth; I suspect this may be a misremembering of the above report.

All the best,

John.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

That is very interesting John. As the report says, the optimum engagement distance for the 95mm howitzer is "600 to 700" yards which just so happens to equate to the distance that many CMBO battles seem to occur over. Therefore, perhaps the 95mm howitzer really was an effective tank killer at these ranges (or less) but once you get around the 1,000 metre mark or greater it should become pretty much useless unless extremely lucky.

Has anyone conducted tests with the 95mm howitzer at ranges greater than 1,000 metres against (say) Panthers? I bet I know which tank is going to come out on top (especially if using Cromwell CS tanks for the test bed).

Regards

Jim R.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

PRO document WO 185/178, "Tank armament versus armour", says, and I quote:

"... the characteristics of the weapon greatly reduce the chances of direct hits with all types of projectile - at a range of 1,000 yards, the chances are about one-third those of the 6 pdr and at longer ranges the falling-off increases rapidly. For effective anti-tank engagement the maximum opening range of the 95mm is say 600/700 yards, preferably less."

I'd be interested to know which report says it's one-sixth; I suspect this may be a misremembering of the above report.

Ups. It is. 1/6th is even way off when thinking over it without remembering.

Sorry for that, guys. The question of whether and how to model that in CMBO is still open, though, the hit probablity in CMBO is more like 2/3 - 3/4 instead of 1/3.

[Brian]

This has been discussed before. Some factors which should be considered and which are not, in the game are:

Trajectory;

Windage;

Angle of strike;

The role of the weapon;

The nature of CMBO combat.

The 95mm CS was a low velocity weapon. Therefore its utilises a high trajectory, much higher than is actually dipicted in the game. High trajectory, low velocity weapons are notoriously harder to judge ranges for, that flat trajectory, high velocity weapons. Therefore, the accuracy of a vehicle utilising this weapon will be quite a lot lower, purely because prediction of range become a great deal more crucial than for medium or high velocity weapons.

Because of this low velocity and high trajectory, this sort of weapon is a great deal more affected by windage as well, particularly at longer ranges. CMBO does not, in the present model, include windage within its calculations.

When considering the penetration of HEAT rounds, the angle at which the round strikes becomes crucial. A medium to high-velocity round will tend to strike much more square on than does a low velocity round. Therefore, actually angling the armour becomes a disadvantage, compared to not-angling. Any penetration will more than likely also be highly variable, depending upon range, because the trajectory will determine the strike angle against the defending plate.

The 95mm CS tank was a support tank. Its role was to provide smoke and direct HE support. Effectively, it was a turreted assault gun. It was not utilised to hunt tanks. Any effort to use it for such a role would come up considerable resistance from both its crews and superiors who would feel that it was being misused. It was meant to destroy enemy strongpoints and eliminate enemy AT guns. Effectively, it was a hangover from the early war period when tanks did not fire HE.

The nature of CMBO's combat model is too much IMO emphasis upon close ranges. This is very artificial. The 95mm's disadvantages are not as obvious as its advantages and thus, CMBO creates a very artificial tactical environment for it.

[ July 06, 2002, 10:55 AM: Message edited by: Brian ]