AP granates to lethal ?

[gunnergoz]

YD:

This is from waaay back on this forum:

Jeff Duquette Jeff Duquette is offline

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Join Date: Sep 2000

Posts: 1,390

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I just got this from Richard Anderson of TDI (co-Author of "Hitler's Last Gamble" as well as numerous periodicals and articles on artillery). Originally rplying to my question at "OnWar" Forum.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=30517&page=4

So it seems that before the war was over, the US produced about a 1:6 ratio of 57mm HE to AP. But, as you say, it also appears that in the Normandy timeframe, what 57mm HE US troops had on hand was given them by the British. Just how much is a good question, to which I have not been able to find an answer.

[womble]

Slightly off topic:

I haven´t had the time to play the game extensively yet, perhaps 5 or 6 missions, but based on this, it seems every AP fired from a tank on another tank results in a penetration and KO.

Maybe you're just doing it right as the Americans, and sneaking off flank shots at Panthers... though in the game I'm mopping up in now, the first flank shot I got penetrated and didn't kill, though it did make kitty sad enough to run away... The second one went into the turret side and brewed 'er up... But that was a 76mm from less than 300m.

Or maybe you're just doing it wrong and getting murderised by taking on long 75s at range from the front

Or vice versa on either of those. There's a broad range of hit chances and potential effects. The first occasion I saw AP rounds hit a tank was a 75mm Pak in the 'intro' mission, Road to Berlin, and that gun beaned three rounds off the armour of the Sherman before it got an HE round in the face.

[MikeyD]

I recall one combat anecdote, got from where I can't recall, of a U.S. 57mm gun crew crossing paths with a Brit 6 pounder column. The Brits were desperate for AP but had mostly HE, the G.I.s had nothing but AP and wanted to get their hands on HE. The account has that gun crew tasked to knock out a German sniper in a church steeple. They loaded their bootleg HE and to their surprise - and horror - completely knocked down the steeple! They feared their CO might court martial them for bartering U.S. Army equipment away to foreigners!

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Perhaps the problem seen by the OP has more to do with the way the game models high explosive and its effects when impacting on an 8m x 8m action square. From my understanding the lethality of HE is abstractly reduced due to the way the game forces relatively high densities of troops within the 8m x 8m grid. perhaps when a relatively accurate gun such as the 57mm uses its AP rounds it can fire them at quite highly compacted soft targets within the confines of an 8 x 8 grid and almost not miss?

In other words, there's no way to abstractly reduce the effectivenes of a solid shot not killing a person should it hit and the chances to hit are probably too high due to the way the game design forces a large number of troops to be constricted to an 8 x 8 grid.

Regards

KR

[gunnergoz]

Sniping at individuals with AP is a bit weird, but plausible. My 37mm peashooter armed AFV's seem to love doing it and inevitably knock down whomever they are aiming for, saving their HE for groups or crawling targets. But killing more than one enemy with an AP round (unless the two men were standing one in front of the other) just seems inappropriate, assuming that is what is happening. Needs more data before I believe its a real problem, though...with all due respect to the OP.

[womble]

...the game design forces a large number of troops to be constricted to an 8 x 8 grid.

I was thinking about this the other day, and actually, with one team per grid, while not attempting to orient themselves in any particular way, and a team of 4, you can maintain 4m separations between troopers, which isn't much reduced from 'doctrine', which recommended about 5m, IIRC. It does get a bit crowded when the team is 5 and they all huddle along the same linear obstacle, though, or if, for whatever reason, the teams of a squad all end up in the same action point.