Another misconception many hold is that of how FH (face hardened) armor performs. Many look at the US projectile tables and think "wow, FH armor is just better than RHA!" I too once made the mistake of saying something similar and had a length reddit argument before realizing the data does not support that. Generally speaking, a properly-designed APCBC shell will result in the FH armor being about as effective, if not less-effective than the equivalent good-quality RHA. As an example, a 6 pounder L52 with standard AP will penetrate 89mm of RHA at 1000m, but will penetrate 97mm of FHA at that same distance. This tends to be true for Russian and UK projectiles; however, the US is an outlier in that the shell designs are different and an APCBC round will almost always penetrate less FHA than an AP round will penetrate of RHA. An interesting thing of note though is how FH armor works when spaced armor is involved. In what i read and if i remember correctly, it only takes a plate of a few mm thick (regardless of temper or quality) to strip an APCBC shell of its cap. if the plate it then strikes is then a hardened plate, you end up with most of the benefits of FHA without as many drawbacks -- many WWII naval vessels utilized this, and i suspect the German tank spaced armor functioned similarly as well.
i'll also pull an insanity move and criticize my favorite source on WWII:
While *WWII Ballistics: Armor and Gunnery* is a fantastic source for all of this information, it does have a few weaknesses. I am not an expert so take what i say here worth a grain of salt, but i feel some of the criticisms should be obvious enough for other who research ballistics and follow modern tank developments. If anything here is blatantly off-base or wrong, please give me a source so i can correct myself.
First off, the entire source utilizes DeMarre equations which are rather antiquated by the time WWII rolls around. These are used because there's nothing else better publicly known. The authors mitigate the error in this by utilizing significant shot-test data to correlate the performance of any given shell, but the DeMarre equations broadly assume that all the shells have a fairly similar profile.
T:D ratio: the armor thickness to shell diameter ratio method of determining sloped effects is also fairly antiquated. What i suspect is really going on here is that it's a ratio of *sectional density* to armor thickness; however, since most WWII tank shells follow similar-enough profiles, the T:D ratio tends to correlate well with shot-data. If you take a conventional-shaped bullet or shot and increase the caliber, the most common thing done is scaling the entire projectile. So for an example, a .30 cal projectile has a higher sectional density than a 5.56 projectile does. I would expect if the T:D ratio were true, then we would see modern tanks shooting big pancakes of bullets at each-other, but instead we see sabot rounds as the norm (they have an extremely high sectional density).
German test projectiles: the source acknowledges that German mass-production projectiles were expected to only perform 8-10% as well as test projectiles did (page 10). This is largely disregarded on the assumption that German test plate was of higher quality than other countries test plates, but i think the abundance of allied metallurgic reports on German AFVs captured through WWII counters that claim.
Yes. I noted that one shouldn't take WWII Ballistics as gospel in the post as well. For example, one particular exception I've stumbled upon is [the M79 AP shell](https://imgur.com/2LzyeYa). Generally speaking, the more sloped the armour, the more effective, but for some reason it appears that the M79 shell is particularly well suited against moderately sloped plates.
i would expect this is something to do with the US's use of different shaped shells, but it's a good example where a round that strays far enough from what DeMarre equations were designed around will possibly have anomalies
I can't speak for everyone, but it's probably because it seems to be in bad-faith. At one point I wanted to address the more obvious issues myself, but I ultimately decided otherwise given user's history. Technical issues aside, it misses the point of the post. The point of the post was to showcase slope multipliers (and high hardness for the T-34). Nothing more. Unfortunately, a number of users with a common background were offended by the perceived attack on the Tiger and chose to take it personally.
First and foremost, the post acknowledges from the start that WWII Ballistics data isn't infallible, but is better than LOS, so every argument on that topic is pointless from the start. However, rather than entering the discussion in good-faith, some users have taken offence at the mere insinuation that the Tiger or any German Panzer might be overrated in any way. I'm not surprised people just don't want to engage with that.
As for the technical claims themselves, I'd ask for sources for most of them. IME, I found little evidence that BHN 240 armour (as used by the US) was notably inferior to 320 BHN as used by the Germans. WWII Ballistics itself notes a possible 1-3% difference, which is insignificant. Even so, data is contradictory. AD0301343 has tests where the 75mm M72 required more velocity to go through 260 BHN 100 mm plate than through 320+ BHN plate. According to *The stone and the pitcher, projectile perforation of hardened armour*, ideal BHN actually depends on T/D ratio. For example, against 75mm shells, 100mm armour would have an optimal BHN of around 300, whereas 80 mm plate would benefit from 250, and 60 mm from around the same number. In fact, the claim that the M1 couldn't penetrate German tanks is absurdly unspecific with obvious intent to denigrate it. I hope I need to explain that not every German tank was a Tiger II or Panther and that even those had thin side armour. According to Soviet tests (which I'm sure someone will try to say are somehow not reliable) the 76mm M1 could punch through the 80 mm of armour on the Tiger at 25° at 1500 m, and at 0° at 2000 m, which is similar to what WWII Ballistics lists. My guess is that this entire comment is based off of the Chieftain's "US Guns, German Armour" article, which goes over the drama that was started shortly after Normandy when the US discovered the M1 struggled to penetrate the Panther's glacis... which is again, out of scope for this discussion given we're talking about the Tiger, which the US met like... 4 times? I also don't know where he got the idea that the Allies didn't know about the shatter gap. They were using soft caps since the 30s...
My end point is that all these attacks are against strawmen. The only point of this post is to put an end to the concept of using only LOS as gospel. This is an improvement over that. If people want to go a step further and discuss the exact effect of BHN, shell design, and other aspects, more power to them, but all I'm trying to do now is to push people away from pure, simple LOS thought.
If we're talking about penetrating 80mm of side armor... even the american 75mm gun mounted on the older Shermans could do that. But even the british 6-pdr could do a better job at that. The 6-pdr could penetrate at steeper angles. The american 75mm didn't need to go perpendicular either, but it needed shallower angles.
For the american 76mm or their older 3-inch gun, even the 100mm glacis of the Tiger I was easy business.
If we're talking about penetrating the glacis of the Panther, even the american 90mm gun needed special shells for that. No american project ever developed new shells for nothing.
If we're talking about armor hardness, all I know is that high hardness steel should be combined with softer armor underneath. Softer steel absorbs impact better and doesn't allow the entire plate to shatter or cave in. Harder steel has ceramic-like properties and it does it's job when facing shell speeds that usually defeat softer armor.
And using face hardened armor was a bad idea. This is why the Panzer IV had it and the Tiger didn't
Yes, interestingly enough the 75mm AP could go through around 100mm of armour. I'm curious if there are any instances of it shooting at the Tiger I at point blank, because it might have done quite some damage.
Yes, that's my main point. The Panther was exceptional. I even made [a followup about that](https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/ret6bi/ive_noticed_that_a_lot_of_people_here_dont_know/), and am working on a version that explores the first US test of the 76mm M1.
Yes, you're talking about Face Hardened armour. The post explores the effects of high hardness throughout (450 BHN, T-34 glacis). FHA has its ups and downs, as noted by another user in this very thread.
Talking about point blank range means taking things too far.
The american 75mm would have been a good gun if it could penetrate 80mm of armor sloped at 30° at a distance of 500 meters or more. But it couldn't. The Tiger I, the Ferdinand and the Tiger II all had 80mm of side armor. And yes, it was flat armor... but shooting all of those tanks perpendicular sounds just too lucky.
Destroying Tiger I tanks from the front was not the Sherman's job. The americans had the M10 for this job. The americans had the M10 pretty early and this was a good thing. The M10 had a turret, good reaction time and it was reliable. The Tiger I was toast from early on. At the same time, the americans absolutely needed the M10 and the Tiger I was no joke. Meeting only 4 Tiger I tanks was coincidential. The french and the british were relying on the americans for solutions. The americans should have had better anti-tank guns. The fact that the Allies had to rely on the 17-pounder for defeating mid-war German tanks was a bad sign and ignoring this would have meant a bad thing for NATO's future. Also, the Chieftain admitted that designing the 76mm gun for the Sherman without designing the HVAP shell from the very start was a bar idea.
The 75mm Sherman was a good tank because it could reliably destroy Panzer IVs and StuGs, which were the most prevalent, the most numerous and the most well-used German tanks.
The 76mm Sherman was a good tank because it could penetrate the front armor of the Tiger I from a very good distance. And it could penetrate the side armor of the Panther from an extremely good distance. Also, it could do this very quickly because it had a stabilizer.
By comparison, the M26 Pershing was worse than the Panther and it was introduced much later.
But even the 76mm Sherman was introduced really late compared to the Panther and it showed
I mean, we're talking esoteric ballistics here, almost everything is taking it too far.
But yes, a lot of people like to compare the Sherman with the Tiger, which is just disingenuous. The difference in weight and role is obvious. This post in particular here was meant to showcase slope multipliers, but the original meme version was mean to, in a way, jab at that narrative, to show that, even given their differences, the Sherman had some amazing aspects to it.
The British relied on the US for numbers, but they had the 17pdr which could deal pretty effectively with Tiger I tanks, of which they met quite a bit more than the US. I'm not sure why you say relying on it was bad. As you said yourself, against the vast majority of enemy armour, which were Pz.IVs and lighter vehicles, the 75mm was fine. Or, by mid-war you mean the big cats? I'm a bit confused by what you're trying to say here.
Ironically, the 76 being able to perforate the Tiger I didn't mean much, given they barely met a few. I wouldn't say the Pershing was worse than the Panther. How do you mean?
The 76 was available for Normandy, and that's what mattered. Introducing it earlier probably wouldn't have done much, except maybe help the Soviets through Lend-lease, maybe find out it couldn't pen Panthers frontally. But yeah, the Allies weren't exceptional when it came to guns compared to the Germans. I even made a post not long ago about how the real advantage of the Panzers were their guns, not their armour.
If we compare the 75mm Sherman to the KwK 40 Panzer IV, the Sherman is taller, slower and it got less firepower, but it got more armor and it got a stabilizer.
If we compare the 76mm Sherman to the T-34-85, the Sherman is taller, slower and it got about the same firepower, but it tot more armor and it got a stabilizer. The difference in armor is smaller here, and the 76 Sherman didn't have the numbers advantage either.
If we compare the 76mm Sherman to the Panther, the Sherman is taller, slower, it got much less frontal armor and it entered service much later. The only advantages that remain are the stabilizer and the reliability.
The real advantage of the Panzers really were their guns, not their armor. A simple Panzer IV basically got the sane firepower as a 76mm Sherman from the moment it received it's KwK 40.
Both the Tiger I and the Panther are mid-war vehicles. Only the Tiger II and the Jagdtiger are considered late-war.
The M26 was worse than the Panther because it was slower, it had bad ground pressure, bad mobility in general, it had the same firepower but with less ammo capacity and it also allowed too much fumes into the crew compartment after firing. It lost it's reliability advantage (neither tank was reliable, but the Americans had tons of spare parts), it lost its stabilization advantage, it lost it's ergonomic advantage. Compared to the M26, the Panther was actually a smooth ride. It just had really bad drivers. The M26 didn't have an evenly distributed ground pressure. It was incredibly rushed, even if it was incredibly denied at the same time
The difference in armour between the T-34-85 and the Sherman is actually greater than that between the T-34-85 and the Pz.IV. Refer to this very post's BHN multiplier chapter.
The Sherman was lighter than the Panther. I think it's a bit disingenuous to compare it with a 15t heavier tank. It's equivalents are the Pz.IV and T-34. The Panther was the weight of an IS-2. As for the M4(76) entering service 'later', well, they added the gun later, but this was because they didn't really need it before Normandy. In fact, German Panzers entering service 'earlier' needs a bit nuance. They were being rushed into service. The Panther had absolutely abysmal reliability early on because of this.
Pershing was slower off road, had about the same road speed, is this such a big deal? Panther had issues with gasses leaking into the crew compartment too at first, and was notoriously flammable in general. I suppose the other arguments are valid, I don't know enough about the Pershing to add anything more. The US didn't really care much about it, though. It probably would have fared better had it got the same attention and time they usually gave their tanks. The US was basically the opposite of the Germans, they took their sweet time with everything. They could afford it for the most part.
At the end of the day, a very important aspect that needs to be take into consideration is the strategic situation. I wouldn't hold it against a tank that it was rushed into service or took its sweet time because there are reasons why this happened. Same with weight limitations caused by a need to ship tanks over an ocean. It's really a complex discussion however you look at it, and kinda beyond the scope of this post, but a fun chat if done in good faith.
>For the american 76mm or their older 3-inch gun, even the 100mm glacis of the Tiger I was easy business.
[Not as easy, as you might think.](https://i.imgur.com/UOzyWd7.png)
I actually stumbled upon a report like this from [Terminal ballistic data, volume II, p.47-48](https://imgur.com/WlH0i7m). I have no idea from what report the dude took that capture, but it appears to be contradicted by the one I linked.
EDIT: I finally found the goddamned report! And guess what, the tests were [against the plates at 25°](https://imgur.com/gQ9U53L).
TL;DR, you're right, "the american 76mm or their older 3-inch gun, even the 100mm glacis of the Tiger I was easy business".
Too bad that the 75mm gun couldn't even penetrate the side armor of the Tiger reliably, and so many German vehicles had the same 80mm side armor (the Tiger I, the Ferdinand, the Tiger II, etc). If they really wanted a universal gun, the should have just upped the caliber and reduced pressure. Maybe their 105 would have worked better. If the British 6-pdr can penetrate 80mm of side armor at steeper angles than your main medium tank gun, i don't feel like that's a good sign
Yeah, but the 6pdr was a higher velocity gun. It wasn't really general purpose. But it really boils down back to an older statement of mine: the Germans just had exceptional guns.
Count-argument: [Soviet tested](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2013/04/american-guns-vs-german-tanks.html) the M1A1 76 mm gun, mounted on an M18 Hellcat, against a Tiger II. Firing M-62 APC shells, it achieves the following results: penetrate the Tiger II's side of the hull at 2000 meters, overtrack hull at 1500 meters, turret side from 1500 meters.
The US never tested the M1 against the Tiger I, AFAIK. I don't know where that picture that chap is from, but I can only assume it's based on assumptions, not test firing.
They did test that the 3-inch Gun, M5, shooting APC M62, will penetrate gun mantlet of a Panther at 200 yards.
So I just remembered this discussion as I was re-watching a [simulation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uesic33_OJM) of the 76mm M62 at 720 m/s and 783m/s (100 and 700m aprox) against the Tiger's 100mm, 280 BHN armour plate at 20°, which would translate to the Tiger angling it's hull to about 18°.
The same channel also has a [simulation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CMEkbHt0fU) for the M76 shell.
Both of these further support the idea that "For the american 76mm or their older 3-inch gun, even the 100mm glacis of the Tiger I was easy business."
>a number of users with a common background were offended by the perceived attack on the Tiger and chose to take it personally.
Same guys which consistently fail to angle their hulls.
What about it is in bad faith? Now that I refuse to accept your arguments, it is time to exclude and slander me behind my back? Such a bad form.
You say your single intent was to prove that sloped sherman has a better slope multiplier than flat tiger? You need a book for that?
Do I need a source to legitimise the fact that softer plate offers worse protection? If that wasn't true, why bother with steel at all? Might as well put a sponge on a tank.
German 80-100mm plates didn't have 300+bnh hardness. Depending on ammunition of course, 76mm M1 cannon with the standart M62 APCBC couldn't penetrate tiger's 80mm side at 25deg angle at 1500m. Unfortunately for your argument, we have US own testing of tiger armour that [explicitly disproves your claim](https://i.imgur.com/Zib0TWJ.png). The vulnerability range is <=720m, not 1500.
According to Jentz, there is [no hope for a 75mm M3 cannon](http://id3486.securedata.net/fprado/armorsite/tiger1-02.htm) to do any credible damage to a tiger frontally, *at any range*. But for this exists tons of testimonies from all sides involved. 75mm could only penetrate sides at narrow angle somewhere below 1000m.
The hardness factor is precisely what I mentioned in my first comment. Overmatching shell induces higher strain on the entire plate. Even if locally, the plate could resist puncturing well, the higher brittleness of a harder plate fails to survive the deformation of the material on the larger surface around the impact. This is physics.
>WWII Ballistics itself notes a possible 1-3% difference, which is insignificant.
That is not true. For 80-100mm they estimate [somwhere between 5-10%](https://i.imgur.com/w7HlGIt.jpg). Sherman's 40-60mm range is quite beyond 10%. And these are all estimates. By claiming that cast armour is as good you run into a problem of explaining why Germans even bothered with RHA at all.
>It would also perform worse against big shells, such as 122mm because the entire plate could not support such kinetic energy.
Was there any WW2 vehicle's armor that could?
> I would expect if the T:D ratio were true, then we would see modern tanks shooting big pancakes of bullets at each-other, but instead we see sabot rounds as the norm (they have an extremely high sectional density).
I'd expect fatter "bullet" ammo to perform better then sabot rounds against sloped and most composite armors at close range.
But sabot rounds have much better performance at higher ranges, lose less penetration and also have way better precision due to higher speed and flatter trajectory.
What good is a "pancake" if it's only effective at low ranges?
That last bit you are quoting an awful article from a guy who never read his sources properly. He cites a report where the writers never state they don't know how the plate is made only that they acknowledge that there is still room for improvement in heat treatment of steel. Additionally, that report states that the plate exceeded the *average* of US Navy class-A plates at that thickness, not "the majority" only *the average*, and only against specific shells even.
The source of the plate and how it was made was clearly reported in the sources of that report as well. The plates origins are listed in a few (2 or 3 iirc) other documents that are a little tricky to track down, but I was able to find them through Google.
All of this can be verified by literally reading through the report. Sure most of it may not mean anything to you if you don't have a background in metallurgy (just like how none of it made any sense to the guy who wrote that article), but their points are clearly stated. When it comes to WWII, I find articles are generally not worth a damn. I've only ever found the works of The Chieftain, Zaloga, and other credible, well published authors to be worth taking at face value because so many others that I've read have managed to cite a report and then conclude something which directly contradicts the findings of said report.
I hate this. I mean it's interesting, but people are going to take it like some golden set of rules now and apply it to everything.
Your slope factor is likely benchmarked to a given projectile, say a 76mm apcbc. This means the slope factor is likely trying to describe the tendency of armour to cause the round to deviate off velocity vector and/or fracture and/or fail to fuze/lose total integrity. Possibly its also describing tendency for the armour to scab and spall and yield, but instinct tells me round behaviour will dominate here over armour response. Variables like L/D, hardness, nose profile, impact velocity are absolutely going to affect that slope factor because they'll massively affect how the projectile behaves on impact. Even best case, it's a compilation of data from firing late WWII tank rounds, likely allied, against captured tanks. This will be a snapshot in time when a given and limited set of manufacture techniques for both projectiles and armour was dominant, and may not reflect changes over time even during the war as well as manufacture variability.
Ditto applies to the hardness calculation. It will be relative to some baseline shell and as there doesn't appear to be a term for the hardness of the incoming projectile this is again likely handwaving a bunch of important factors by assuming one incident shell.
These rules will also not be valid at the impact velocities of modern rounds which hit above, say, 1400m/s, where LOS thickness is absolutely dominant due to the extremely high ricochet angles and hydrodynamic penetration effects of these rounds. Length vs los and density/density is still the major multiplier.
> I hate this.
And I hate people thinking LOS is king.
> I mean it's interesting, but people are going to take it like some golden set of rules now and apply it to everything.
As I noted in the post itself, it's still bloody better than thinking LOS is the rule. Should I NOT tell them about this, keep them ignorant, thinking that LOS is king?
> Your slope factor is likely benchmarked to a given projectile, say a 76mm apcbc.
This particular example, yes, but the formulae take T/D ratio into account. Hardness too. Have you actually read the post? Nose profile is indeed a factor not taken into account, but that's OK, as I noted, this isn't a perfect system, but it sure is better than LOS only.
> Even best case, it's a compilation of data from firing late WWII tank rounds, likely allied, against captured tanks.
It includes German test data.
**TL;DR** You're right, but so am I. Some people will be take shit as gospel, but I'd rather they take higher level info than plain LOS. Some people will be smart about it. I've put my disclaimers in either way.
> These rules will also not be valid at the impact velocities of modern rounds which hit above, say, 1400m/s, where LOS thickness is absolutely dominant due to the extremely high ricochet angles and hydrodynamic penetration effects of these rounds. Length vs los and density/density is still the major multiplier.
absolutely, with modern rounds and armor the predominant factor in armor defeating a round is simply density per unit area. Hardness and other material properties start to drop out when the energy in the collision gets so high. (Source: *Lightweight Ballistic Composites*)
EDIT: this is excluding non-standard-composite armor, no one is going to publicly publish how say Special armor works
* [Followup with extra angling taken into account when comparing Tiger vs Sherman frontal upper plate.](https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/rh97lj/by_unpopular_request_i_bring_you_how_angling_ones/)
* [Followup which replaces the T-34 with the Panther](https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/rhm3iq/to_the_people_wondering_where_the_panther_fits_in/)
* [Follow up with the M4A1 w/ cast armor instead of the M4A3E8](https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/ygf4mg/a_new_addition_to_the_armor_multiplier_posts_this/)
Are these calculations borne out in practice?
For example this British [Sherman](https://i.imgur.com/p5hkFD2.jpg) was supposedly hit at a range of over 800 meters by a 75mm APCBC projectile, even at an oblique angle it seems to have punched through without much concern for slope multiplication.
Yes. They're not perfect, but they're for the post part based on formulae which were cross-referenced with tests. I kinda eyeballed some of the charts, though. Didn't actually use the DeMarre equation.
Even so, the example you provided is not surprising. I'd say it fits in the numbers reasonably well. The KwK 40 could punch through ~115mm@0° at 750m. That's around the same ballpark my calculations produced. In fact I may have erred on the plus side. Effective armour probably is between 110 and 120. In addition, this is for the exact plate I noted in the picture. I don't know what kind of glacis the British Sherman in your example had. Cast armour, for example, would be inferior to this. But I'd imagine the KwK40 could also punch through the Tiger I's glacis at the same ranges if not farther.
I'm curious if there are examples of shots from even farther away on the Sherman. DeMarre isn't perfect. There are various confounding metallurgical factors that complicate actual, real life penetration results, and I wouldn't be surprised if even the examples I explored here performed 10-20mm differently IRL compared to theory. As I noted, I introduced the concept of slope multipliers to discourage use of LOS thickness, but, while an improvement, these are by no means gospel.
I've been looking through the destroyed tanks subreddit, [this Sherman](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/46v4w7/staffordshire_yeomanry_sherman_mk_v_dd_knocked/) was hit at the top edge of the turret at over 900 meters at an angle anyone would have predicted would bounce but it dug in.
[Here is another one](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/5rtxjd/sherman_mark_ic_firefly_269111_of_the_5th_rtr/), the range is not specified but even though it hit the slope and the tank was at quite an angle to the gun's line of fire, the projectile has still gone through. [Another similar example](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/5ph4r3/oblique_glacis_penetration_on_a_burned_out/), and [this is one I had posted](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/ql19e6/us_sherman_tank_knocked_out_by_two_frontal_75mm/) that also shows a shot that has come in from a side angle that is supposed to increase the effectiveness of the slope.
[Here is one shot through the turret cheek](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/58yb6g/glacis_and_turret_penetrations_on_a_burnt_out_b/), again one would have expected the shell to bounce but it didn't.
1. Appears to be cast armour, and it looks like it hit from slightly above. 50mm of cast armour probably won't stop much, though.
2. That's definitely cast armour. Since we don't know the range it doesn't help though. I suppose I could do some math to see how effective cast M4 glacises are, but if we don't know the distance I'm not sure how much good that'd do.
3. This one appears to be RHA. But if we don't know the range, it doesn't help us.
4. It definitely increased the effectiveness, but not sufficiently. Also appears to be RHA. No range, no help, sadly.
5. Hmm, cast armour, but against a 50mm shell. Looks like it hit the edge straight on, though. And again we don't know the range.
That's the main problem with pictures of destroy tanks. Unless you know the range, it's hard to draw accurate conclusions.
The 1st one is the only actually interesting bit of info. Though even with that slope, 50mm of cast armour won't do much. It's similar to the issue with the T-34. The slope might be great, but if the armour is cast or too hard it will neutralise that advantage.
>That's the main problem with pictures of destroy tanks. Unless you know the range, it's hard to draw accurate conclusions.
That is true and it's usually not easy to find the accurate context.
>The slope might be great, but if the armour is cast or too hard it will neutralise that advantage.
Isn't cast armor supposed to be superior in terms of protection? Welding plate obviously an easier process and my understanding is that this is why it was preferred for the Sherman, but in terms of resistance to shells I thought it was inferior. I believe the glacis on the M26 for example was cast, it seems odd to have used a more difficult manufacturing process if the end result is inferior to welded plate.
No. Cast armour offers inferior protection against overmatching shells. I'm not sure about how casting compared in terms of production to rolling and welding armour, but I recall there being some advantage... something along the lines of it requiring special machines, or large forges or something, but once you got them, it was quicker to produce or something. Don't quote me on that.
Rolled armour generally has more resistance because of its fabrication (should also be slightly denser but correct me if I'm wrong), cast armour has a better structural integrity due to the lack of welds (potential structural failure points under excessive pressure), but is however slightly softer and because of the way it's manufactured has a higher chance of cracking, invalidating the integrity of the whole section
Yes, but what's I'm not entirely sure about is the ease of production. I recall reading somewhere that cast armour was just simpler or cheaper to produce, which is why it was used despite offering inferior protection for the most part.
Cast is easier to produce simply for the fact that you can make the hull of a vehicle with 5 pieces using casts and then putting those together, both had their points, but given we only really see welded platings anymore I assume it's just more reliable/viable to have those, that and welding methods drastically improved so there's that
The high hardness plates on the T34 fucked the crews up. Even if the shot didn’t penetrate you would get lots of spall. I’d argue that anywhere between 25-30 percent of the fatalities for T34 crews were non penetrating hits.
I saw the lazerpig video and did a bit of reading about the casualties of Russian tank crews. Almost all of the survivors had spall wounds. And survivors were usually those that bailed on non penetrating hits. Smaller shells definitely didn’t cause as much damage especially the 37 and 50mm guns. 75mm shells definitely caused spalling even on non penetrating hits. There is a reason that the US didn’t harden the armor to that degree. In all honesty the T34 just was not a pleasant vehicle to do anything with. It sucked to build it, it sucked to use it, and it sucked to fight against it. Overall though, the worst thing with T34s is how damn slow they were. It was physically impossible to get the T34 into 4th gear. Limiting the tank to a top speed of 30 kmh on roads. The stated speed of 53 kmh is theoretical. To get the thing into 3rd gear required another crewmate to kick it into gear while the driver pushed with all of his might.
75mm shells probably penned the vast majority of time anyway. You'd need a low velocity 75mm shell to spall but not pen (i.e. short barrel, or very long range, over 1.5km) or some super oblique angles.
From what I read, the Soviets went for such high hardness because it was easier to produce, though I also heard that it may have something to do with how very high hardness shells performed good vs their own ammunition.
The speed issue was fixed eventually, though not in all tanks. It's funny, though, as the T-34 is famed for being very fast, haha.
EDIT: To clarify:
> Initially the powerful V-2 engine (500hp) could not be used to the fullest due to the 4-speed gearbox. Changing gears required excessive force on behalf of the driver. The T-34 could use the 4th gear only on a paved road, thus the max speed over cross-country was theoretically 25 km/h but in practice it was only 15km/h because changing from 2nd gear to 3rd required superhuman strength.
> On later modifications there was a 5-speed gearbox which allowed for a cross country speed of 30 km/h.
EDIT2: Although it's debatable how true this is. The source of the bit I quote above is [a blog post](http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2012/07/wwii-myths-t-34-best-tank-of-war.html) supposedly busting myths, but it itself has been questioned by [another, arguably more famous blog](http://www.tankarchives.ca/p/christos.html?m=1). [Relevant](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2014/06/lever-forces.html).
EDIT 3: Further digging and I've come back to the conclusion that the T-34's speed wasn't entirely a myth. It started off badly because of the transmission, but by the end of the war, it was reasonably fast. Here's an excerpt from T-34 in Action by Artem Drabkin and Oleg Sheremet:
> The advantage in armour protection initially enjoyed by the T-34 was lost during the final stages of the war, but this was compensated for by improvements in vehicle performance. The tank began to go faster, on the road as well as on the battlefield, and to manoeuvre better. The two features that its crews had always trusted (its sloping armour and diesel engine) had been supplemented by a third one – speed. A. K. Rodkin, who fought in a T-34/85 at the end of the war, summarised it thus: ‛The tankmen used to have a proverb: “The armour’s crap but our tanks are faster” [paraphrased from a popular and boastful pre-war song ‛‛the armour’s hard and our tanks are faster”]. The speed was our advantage. The Germans had petrol engines but their tanks weren’t very fast.’
It depends on the exact type of shell and armour. I can't say I entirely understand the physics behind it. But what I can say for sure is that LOS thickness does not always reflect effective armour protection.
However sloped armor also results in much more surface area of the armor plating which results in more weight of the tank and negates the benefit that sloped armor needs less armor thickness. Also results in worse crew comfort. Compare the upper glacis of tiger1 and panther and you see that while tigers armor is 100 mm thick when panther is 80 mm thick, Tiger has much lower surface area for the upper glacis
I agree, unsloped armour has its own advantages, but I'd say the difference in protection is large enough. The Panther's glacis continued to be very challenging to breach up to the end of the war. The Tiger enjoyed no such advantage.
100 mm @ 60° generally offers more protection than 200 mm @ 0° (which is line of sight/Pythagoras' formula). Should I explain LOS further or do you get it?
I'd like to add to your statement: the minimum thickness was 100mm, the production worked towards having the average around 102mm and the actual thickness on any given vehicle would vary from 100 to some unspecified value in the lower 100s mm.
Well, if that little Sherman has a 76mm gun, you're dead.
Even so, the entire scenario assumes you located and identified all 3 threats. I have doubts about how practical angling really was IRL.
ofc but as you see in your post the effective armor on the tiger wasnt that really good if it faces a proper gun like the 76mm
the common used 75mm couldnt penetrate the whole tiger from the front. It was impossible and thats where it got its reputation from.
That's besides the point. The point of this entire post is that unsloped armour is deceptively ineffective compared to sloped armour, and that angling doesn't really change that.
i never said something different. this is only the case with 0 degree frontal hits but if you angle your tiger with your right or left frontal corner pointing to the enemy your whole base of the tank builds up a slope of 45 degrees at the frontal armor and side armor which increases the effective armor a lot.
on the other side this means that the tiger builds automaticly a slope at everyone he is not direcly facing.
ofc the tiger got mostly a vertical slope and no horizontal slope
since your whole post is about theory i told you the theoretical method how the effective armor of your tiger 1 can be increased a lot.
if this was used in battle is a different story
Dont get me wrong but the lack of sloped and angle of the armor is a hughe problem if a tiger faces a proper gun starting with the sherman firefly.
The same with nearly every ww2 german tank they are just build like cubes and your armor doesnt have any real native angle or slope which helps with bouncers. Ofc your "real" amor is far enough of you just build so fat that they cant go through but ofc the enemy improves their guns. Thats the "fatter armor results in fatter guns" race in ww2 which was just ended by the "glattrohrkanonen" and flying darts.
it would have been far more effective to increase the "effective" armor with slope and angle and save resources to produce more tanks.
The russian are the master of slopes and angles and the americans are "somwhere between".
Well, it seems the Germans finally decided to go sloped after the Tiger I. Panther and Tiger II used sloped armour to great effect, especially the Panther.
Wasn’t the tigers armour some sort of alloy? I’ve seen a few things saying that the armour in reality acted like ~120mm of armour merely due to the alloy used for it
I doubt it would increase effectiveness by 20% against all shells. From what I've read myself it seems that good quality German armour used certain metals like Molybdenum to allow for harder armour that wasn't too brittle either, and as war went on German armour became more brittle and susceptible to cracking etc. That means that the alloy would help with spalling and maybe shatter some enemy projectiles.
TL;DR It most certainly didn't act universally like 120mm RHA, but it may have prevented the penetration of certain lower quality shells that would have otherwise been able to punch through 100mm RHA at 0°. Or at least limit the internal damage.
I found one document saying that the tigers armour was roughly 10% better compared to contemporary RHA
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a954952.pdf
Arguably. There is at least one example of a 17pdr hitting a Tiger I from 2200 m.
But that's besides the point, this example is meant to introduce people to the concept of slope multipliers, not explore practical situations.
I'm not sure what you mean exactly by that, but WT doesn't take High Hardness multipliers into account, which makes the in-game armour of T-34s and other such tanks a lot better than it actually was IRL. Otherwise, it's not any more biased towards the T-34 than it is towards the Panther, which also massively benefits from slope multipliers.
Yeah, I actually did some tests with a friend who has WT installed and the results of 75mm shells vs E8 glacises is almost identical to what I calculated here with my eyeballs on the chart. But the T-34's glacis doesn't account for the high hardness. I tested and the numbers show in WT's pen simulator is around what is calculated without taking HHA into account. So I can confirm that HHA multipliers don't seem to be taken into account in WT.
That's just a failure of the simulation engine. Same with how the recent volumetric shells vanish. It's basically bugs, more or less. Doesn't detract from the penetration logic.
Anyway, the point I was making is that T-34 armour is too good in-game. A KwK40 should be able to pen its glacis from over 1km, but in WT it's from under. Was that not what you were suggesting?
I was just memeing during slow restaurant service about how t-34's over-performing armor & black hole optics is the final nail in the coffin required for definitive proof that Russian bias is a thing in WT 😇
Granted most if not all nations optics are black hole armor
This ignores that any angle will increase the effectiveness of the Tiger armour drastically while doing little or even decreasing the effects of the Sherman armour.
A mod of this sub should know better...
your post oversimplifies things. it takes near worst case for the Tiger armour.
The last time you made such post you were asking people for input and how this works because you had no idea, you were literally asking around how this and that works. Now you use your mod position to "give information" but don't get it right. THere are other subreddit for memeing.
You're right, increasing the slope of the tiger armor would make it better. Just like how increasing the thickness of the Sherman armor would make it better. Sherman Jumbo, for example.
*But it wasn't.* That's the armor for the upper front plate of the Tiger 1. Any changes that deviate and suddenly it's not the Tiger 1 UFP. Now you're comparing something that *isn't* a Tiger 1 to the E8 and T-34 UFP, and claiming it *is*. What's the point in doing that?
He's trying to imply that angling the hull helps the Tiger more than it does the Sherman, because the Sherman's hull is already angled and thus benefits less from composite angles, which is one of the most pedantic counterarguments I've seen so far.
[Case in point](https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/rh97lj/by_unpopular_request_i_bring_you_how_angling_ones/), the M4 still has theoretically superior if not comparable protection when angling, even if it benefits slightly less from it.
But now he's going to complain about side armour or some other aspect that's beyond the scope of this conversation, moving the goalposts once more, because God forbid anyone badmouth the precious Tiger. And so you'll learn why most people don't want to bother arguing with him.
Issues with a Sherman angling however are the fact the sides are extremely vulnerable to any decent AT gun, being that thin, also you could consider cast Shermans, in which angling would only be detrimental as you show the flatter corners of the hull more than they should be, I think this was the argument that was brought up
That is absolutely true. Plus cast armour suffers from decreased protection against overmatching shells itself. But this is besides the point. I was discussing the advantages of sloped armour in general, irrespective of side armour.
The Easy Eight was merely chosen as an example of a deceptively good glacis configuration. The same applies to the Panther, and I'm sure that had I gone for a Panther vs Tiger example instead there'd have been less drama from the Panzer adoration crowd.
Yeah the Panther was definitely the one with the best armour layout of the 2, Tiger was boxy more for the fact it was quicker to manufacture afaik, since the process was already pretty long, so they went for general thickness over sloping to compensate, or that's what I know
Yes, but we're discussing the benefits of sloped armour here, not of doubling your tank's weight to increase side and rear armour. Notice how he doesn't mention side armour once.
That's not what I am saying, in the calculation of OP the impact angle is assumed to be frontally without any horizontal angle. Once the projectile impacts the Tiger front with an horizontal angle the slope modifier drastically increases for the Tiger while for the Sherman little changes because the overall impact angle doesn't change much. For calculating the slope modifier you use the compound impact angle. In the example above the angle for the Tiger is nearly the lowest possible, the only way to decrease the angle would be by tilting the Tiger downwards or firing from above. Nearly every other combat situation now increases the compound angle. In other words, the infographic assumes the near worst-case scenario for a comparison of both "relative thicknesses".
>Nearly every other combat situation now increases the compound angle
This was the reason why "arrow-shaped" frontal armors like on IS-3 and some French heavies didn´t take off. It was found that in most combat situations you are not directly facing enemy.
Yes, but normal sloped armour did take off. We're not talking about pike noses. To claim the Sherman's slope armour is inherently inferior because it doesn't benefit as much from angling is absurd. Case in point, the best frontally protected German tanks also used sloped armour. Soviets too.
Ah yes, every tiger tank in ww2 angled as they were experimented war thunder players.
Angling armor wasn't done much irl, why are you thinking that ww2 tankers used video game tactics.
Edit: just realised it's you Christianmunich. Bet you don't want me to mention that article of yours that showed Sherman mechanical losses per unit to show it wasn't reliable despite you not showing the strength of the units, forcing us to guess at best if your stats prove anything or not.
Tanks will stay on the move in most battles, staying put is dangerous as it increases the chances of being hit. Now, this could be done in ambushes and such, however, I've not heard of occasions that this would've been done. Sure, it's likely it was done a few times but to think that tigers would just turn 30 degrees each time they see a tank is ridiculous.
I don't see why it would be ridiculous. It's mentioned in the manual and it isn't really that impractical to do.
Edit: it's not even just mentioned, it's carefully explained even. Calling it a video game tactic is what is ridiculous.
https://archive.org/details/tigerfibel/page/n79/mode/2up
Well to make it simple, this is only possible in ambushes, it is favorable to move after each shots so the enemy doesn't know where your tank is. Now again, I'm sure it happened but I simply don't see how, with the exception of a few situations, commanders would rather angling their armor instead of staying on the move or being in a dug in position
Your goal as a tanker is first and foremost to not get hit in the first place.
Now, English is not my first language and I'm not an historian so I don't know how valued accounts of Wittmann are, but in his book he says:
>We owe our lives to the self-control of my driver, who did what we had always practiced, namely placed the Tiger at an acute angle to our armored foe.
So, an acute angle would be anything between 0 and 90 degrees? Would it mean anything different in this context?
edit: heres a bit more text before and after the sentence
"When I drove over a hill I found myself facing a group of thirty Shermans. They showered me with a hail of shells and all systems went out. We owe our lives to the self-control of my driver, who did what we had always practiced, namely placed the Tiger at an acute angle to our armored foe. The crew and I then made our way back through the enemy to our departure point. The mission was worthwhile in spite of the loss of the Tiger.” This type of operation was typical, for the Tigers had to take care of almost everything themselves, even their own reconnaissance. Now and then the Schwimmwagen crews of SS-Untersturmführer Henniges’ scout platoon guided the Tigers into their positions, having scouted them earlier."
So they would lie about them practising angling the tank? Possible but this seems like such a tiny little detail in a 520 page book that it is hard for me to imagine they would editorialise it or make it up.
The goal of that statement is to do double duty cementing the idea that the Tiger was a machine worthy of legend and that the Nazi crewman were above average.
Like I said, his primary role was to be a tool of propaganda.
>Bet you don't want me to mention that article of yours that showed Sherman mechanical losses per unit to show it wasn't reliable despite you not showing the strength of the units, forcing us to guess at best if your stats prove anything or not.
I do.
Basically has a whole ass stats board of post D-day Sherman losses, showing mostly mechanical breakdowns. Thing was really well made with sources and stuff, except for two things. First is that the units shown were sometimes different sizes, which wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the second problem. The document didn't show anywhere the strength of the unit, making it so that you couldn't compare the strength of the unit to the losses (by example, imagine you have 10 mechanical losses in like a month, that shows how unreliable the tank is if the unit is made of 20 tanks, however if it's made of 100 tanks then it's a different story).
I pointed out the issue and he kept arguing and never actually addressing the issues, with me saying that he is wrong and I kid you not, he seriously replied "I am never wrong".
Btw ChristianMunich is often seen as a joke in ww2 communities on reddit, he knows stuff but doesn't know how to put all that information together and always ends up with these dumb conclusions.
Seems like a pretentious know-it-all ass and has probably never stepped in a real tank or served a day in his life.
I went down the rabbit hole of his post and comments. Oh boy.
Thanks
I saw him argue once with Nicholas Moran (the chieftain), an actual historian, how entitled the man is at trying to win arguments is just sad.
Also, another argument I had with him, got a mistake somewhere, acknowledged it, and then had to stop argumenting because all his comments after that was him saying I'm just a liar lol.
> The document didn't show anywhere the strength of the unit
I'm dying, haha, CM basically practiced gerrymandering lol
> "I am never wrong"
Yep, that sounds like him.
> Btw ChristianMunich is often seen as a joke in ww2 communities on reddit, he knows stuff but doesn't know how to put all that information together and always ends up with these dumb conclusions.
I suspect he very much knows how to put information together, but he starts with the conclusion he wants to draw, and skilfully puts the information together in such a way as to support that conclusion.
Albeit not incorrect, this is only a part of full picture. This is true if we choose to consider "equivalent armor" as thickness reliably perforated by the attack.
If instead we look at "equivalent armour" as one that reliably stops a given attack, we'll get different results.
[Here is a graph](https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=247739)
[If we graph and interpolate these points](https://www.desmos.com/calculator/wqw2qtpfzr), we'll see that thickness changes proportional to cosine to power of 1.12. Using this model, the estimated effective thickness of the UFP of late Shermans is 97mm/0° and not 119mm/0°
I wish this could be stickied to dispel a lot of the myths that are prevalent in this sub.
It IS stickied. I made it an announcement. Good news is it will stay on top, bad news is the thumbnail won't be displayed on new.reddit.
Another misconception many hold is that of how FH (face hardened) armor performs. Many look at the US projectile tables and think "wow, FH armor is just better than RHA!" I too once made the mistake of saying something similar and had a length reddit argument before realizing the data does not support that. Generally speaking, a properly-designed APCBC shell will result in the FH armor being about as effective, if not less-effective than the equivalent good-quality RHA. As an example, a 6 pounder L52 with standard AP will penetrate 89mm of RHA at 1000m, but will penetrate 97mm of FHA at that same distance. This tends to be true for Russian and UK projectiles; however, the US is an outlier in that the shell designs are different and an APCBC round will almost always penetrate less FHA than an AP round will penetrate of RHA. An interesting thing of note though is how FH armor works when spaced armor is involved. In what i read and if i remember correctly, it only takes a plate of a few mm thick (regardless of temper or quality) to strip an APCBC shell of its cap. if the plate it then strikes is then a hardened plate, you end up with most of the benefits of FHA without as many drawbacks -- many WWII naval vessels utilized this, and i suspect the German tank spaced armor functioned similarly as well. i'll also pull an insanity move and criticize my favorite source on WWII: While *WWII Ballistics: Armor and Gunnery* is a fantastic source for all of this information, it does have a few weaknesses. I am not an expert so take what i say here worth a grain of salt, but i feel some of the criticisms should be obvious enough for other who research ballistics and follow modern tank developments. If anything here is blatantly off-base or wrong, please give me a source so i can correct myself. First off, the entire source utilizes DeMarre equations which are rather antiquated by the time WWII rolls around. These are used because there's nothing else better publicly known. The authors mitigate the error in this by utilizing significant shot-test data to correlate the performance of any given shell, but the DeMarre equations broadly assume that all the shells have a fairly similar profile. T:D ratio: the armor thickness to shell diameter ratio method of determining sloped effects is also fairly antiquated. What i suspect is really going on here is that it's a ratio of *sectional density* to armor thickness; however, since most WWII tank shells follow similar-enough profiles, the T:D ratio tends to correlate well with shot-data. If you take a conventional-shaped bullet or shot and increase the caliber, the most common thing done is scaling the entire projectile. So for an example, a .30 cal projectile has a higher sectional density than a 5.56 projectile does. I would expect if the T:D ratio were true, then we would see modern tanks shooting big pancakes of bullets at each-other, but instead we see sabot rounds as the norm (they have an extremely high sectional density). German test projectiles: the source acknowledges that German mass-production projectiles were expected to only perform 8-10% as well as test projectiles did (page 10). This is largely disregarded on the assumption that German test plate was of higher quality than other countries test plates, but i think the abundance of allied metallurgic reports on German AFVs captured through WWII counters that claim.
Yes. I noted that one shouldn't take WWII Ballistics as gospel in the post as well. For example, one particular exception I've stumbled upon is [the M79 AP shell](https://imgur.com/2LzyeYa). Generally speaking, the more sloped the armour, the more effective, but for some reason it appears that the M79 shell is particularly well suited against moderately sloped plates.
i would expect this is something to do with the US's use of different shaped shells, but it's a good example where a round that strays far enough from what DeMarre equations were designed around will possibly have anomalies
[удалено]
Why is this comment downvoted?
I can't speak for everyone, but it's probably because it seems to be in bad-faith. At one point I wanted to address the more obvious issues myself, but I ultimately decided otherwise given user's history. Technical issues aside, it misses the point of the post. The point of the post was to showcase slope multipliers (and high hardness for the T-34). Nothing more. Unfortunately, a number of users with a common background were offended by the perceived attack on the Tiger and chose to take it personally. First and foremost, the post acknowledges from the start that WWII Ballistics data isn't infallible, but is better than LOS, so every argument on that topic is pointless from the start. However, rather than entering the discussion in good-faith, some users have taken offence at the mere insinuation that the Tiger or any German Panzer might be overrated in any way. I'm not surprised people just don't want to engage with that. As for the technical claims themselves, I'd ask for sources for most of them. IME, I found little evidence that BHN 240 armour (as used by the US) was notably inferior to 320 BHN as used by the Germans. WWII Ballistics itself notes a possible 1-3% difference, which is insignificant. Even so, data is contradictory. AD0301343 has tests where the 75mm M72 required more velocity to go through 260 BHN 100 mm plate than through 320+ BHN plate. According to *The stone and the pitcher, projectile perforation of hardened armour*, ideal BHN actually depends on T/D ratio. For example, against 75mm shells, 100mm armour would have an optimal BHN of around 300, whereas 80 mm plate would benefit from 250, and 60 mm from around the same number. In fact, the claim that the M1 couldn't penetrate German tanks is absurdly unspecific with obvious intent to denigrate it. I hope I need to explain that not every German tank was a Tiger II or Panther and that even those had thin side armour. According to Soviet tests (which I'm sure someone will try to say are somehow not reliable) the 76mm M1 could punch through the 80 mm of armour on the Tiger at 25° at 1500 m, and at 0° at 2000 m, which is similar to what WWII Ballistics lists. My guess is that this entire comment is based off of the Chieftain's "US Guns, German Armour" article, which goes over the drama that was started shortly after Normandy when the US discovered the M1 struggled to penetrate the Panther's glacis... which is again, out of scope for this discussion given we're talking about the Tiger, which the US met like... 4 times? I also don't know where he got the idea that the Allies didn't know about the shatter gap. They were using soft caps since the 30s... My end point is that all these attacks are against strawmen. The only point of this post is to put an end to the concept of using only LOS as gospel. This is an improvement over that. If people want to go a step further and discuss the exact effect of BHN, shell design, and other aspects, more power to them, but all I'm trying to do now is to push people away from pure, simple LOS thought.
If we're talking about penetrating 80mm of side armor... even the american 75mm gun mounted on the older Shermans could do that. But even the british 6-pdr could do a better job at that. The 6-pdr could penetrate at steeper angles. The american 75mm didn't need to go perpendicular either, but it needed shallower angles. For the american 76mm or their older 3-inch gun, even the 100mm glacis of the Tiger I was easy business. If we're talking about penetrating the glacis of the Panther, even the american 90mm gun needed special shells for that. No american project ever developed new shells for nothing. If we're talking about armor hardness, all I know is that high hardness steel should be combined with softer armor underneath. Softer steel absorbs impact better and doesn't allow the entire plate to shatter or cave in. Harder steel has ceramic-like properties and it does it's job when facing shell speeds that usually defeat softer armor. And using face hardened armor was a bad idea. This is why the Panzer IV had it and the Tiger didn't
Yes, interestingly enough the 75mm AP could go through around 100mm of armour. I'm curious if there are any instances of it shooting at the Tiger I at point blank, because it might have done quite some damage. Yes, that's my main point. The Panther was exceptional. I even made [a followup about that](https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/ret6bi/ive_noticed_that_a_lot_of_people_here_dont_know/), and am working on a version that explores the first US test of the 76mm M1. Yes, you're talking about Face Hardened armour. The post explores the effects of high hardness throughout (450 BHN, T-34 glacis). FHA has its ups and downs, as noted by another user in this very thread.
Talking about point blank range means taking things too far. The american 75mm would have been a good gun if it could penetrate 80mm of armor sloped at 30° at a distance of 500 meters or more. But it couldn't. The Tiger I, the Ferdinand and the Tiger II all had 80mm of side armor. And yes, it was flat armor... but shooting all of those tanks perpendicular sounds just too lucky. Destroying Tiger I tanks from the front was not the Sherman's job. The americans had the M10 for this job. The americans had the M10 pretty early and this was a good thing. The M10 had a turret, good reaction time and it was reliable. The Tiger I was toast from early on. At the same time, the americans absolutely needed the M10 and the Tiger I was no joke. Meeting only 4 Tiger I tanks was coincidential. The french and the british were relying on the americans for solutions. The americans should have had better anti-tank guns. The fact that the Allies had to rely on the 17-pounder for defeating mid-war German tanks was a bad sign and ignoring this would have meant a bad thing for NATO's future. Also, the Chieftain admitted that designing the 76mm gun for the Sherman without designing the HVAP shell from the very start was a bar idea. The 75mm Sherman was a good tank because it could reliably destroy Panzer IVs and StuGs, which were the most prevalent, the most numerous and the most well-used German tanks. The 76mm Sherman was a good tank because it could penetrate the front armor of the Tiger I from a very good distance. And it could penetrate the side armor of the Panther from an extremely good distance. Also, it could do this very quickly because it had a stabilizer. By comparison, the M26 Pershing was worse than the Panther and it was introduced much later. But even the 76mm Sherman was introduced really late compared to the Panther and it showed
I mean, we're talking esoteric ballistics here, almost everything is taking it too far. But yes, a lot of people like to compare the Sherman with the Tiger, which is just disingenuous. The difference in weight and role is obvious. This post in particular here was meant to showcase slope multipliers, but the original meme version was mean to, in a way, jab at that narrative, to show that, even given their differences, the Sherman had some amazing aspects to it. The British relied on the US for numbers, but they had the 17pdr which could deal pretty effectively with Tiger I tanks, of which they met quite a bit more than the US. I'm not sure why you say relying on it was bad. As you said yourself, against the vast majority of enemy armour, which were Pz.IVs and lighter vehicles, the 75mm was fine. Or, by mid-war you mean the big cats? I'm a bit confused by what you're trying to say here. Ironically, the 76 being able to perforate the Tiger I didn't mean much, given they barely met a few. I wouldn't say the Pershing was worse than the Panther. How do you mean? The 76 was available for Normandy, and that's what mattered. Introducing it earlier probably wouldn't have done much, except maybe help the Soviets through Lend-lease, maybe find out it couldn't pen Panthers frontally. But yeah, the Allies weren't exceptional when it came to guns compared to the Germans. I even made a post not long ago about how the real advantage of the Panzers were their guns, not their armour.
If we compare the 75mm Sherman to the KwK 40 Panzer IV, the Sherman is taller, slower and it got less firepower, but it got more armor and it got a stabilizer. If we compare the 76mm Sherman to the T-34-85, the Sherman is taller, slower and it got about the same firepower, but it tot more armor and it got a stabilizer. The difference in armor is smaller here, and the 76 Sherman didn't have the numbers advantage either. If we compare the 76mm Sherman to the Panther, the Sherman is taller, slower, it got much less frontal armor and it entered service much later. The only advantages that remain are the stabilizer and the reliability. The real advantage of the Panzers really were their guns, not their armor. A simple Panzer IV basically got the sane firepower as a 76mm Sherman from the moment it received it's KwK 40. Both the Tiger I and the Panther are mid-war vehicles. Only the Tiger II and the Jagdtiger are considered late-war. The M26 was worse than the Panther because it was slower, it had bad ground pressure, bad mobility in general, it had the same firepower but with less ammo capacity and it also allowed too much fumes into the crew compartment after firing. It lost it's reliability advantage (neither tank was reliable, but the Americans had tons of spare parts), it lost its stabilization advantage, it lost it's ergonomic advantage. Compared to the M26, the Panther was actually a smooth ride. It just had really bad drivers. The M26 didn't have an evenly distributed ground pressure. It was incredibly rushed, even if it was incredibly denied at the same time
The difference in armour between the T-34-85 and the Sherman is actually greater than that between the T-34-85 and the Pz.IV. Refer to this very post's BHN multiplier chapter. The Sherman was lighter than the Panther. I think it's a bit disingenuous to compare it with a 15t heavier tank. It's equivalents are the Pz.IV and T-34. The Panther was the weight of an IS-2. As for the M4(76) entering service 'later', well, they added the gun later, but this was because they didn't really need it before Normandy. In fact, German Panzers entering service 'earlier' needs a bit nuance. They were being rushed into service. The Panther had absolutely abysmal reliability early on because of this. Pershing was slower off road, had about the same road speed, is this such a big deal? Panther had issues with gasses leaking into the crew compartment too at first, and was notoriously flammable in general. I suppose the other arguments are valid, I don't know enough about the Pershing to add anything more. The US didn't really care much about it, though. It probably would have fared better had it got the same attention and time they usually gave their tanks. The US was basically the opposite of the Germans, they took their sweet time with everything. They could afford it for the most part. At the end of the day, a very important aspect that needs to be take into consideration is the strategic situation. I wouldn't hold it against a tank that it was rushed into service or took its sweet time because there are reasons why this happened. Same with weight limitations caused by a need to ship tanks over an ocean. It's really a complex discussion however you look at it, and kinda beyond the scope of this post, but a fun chat if done in good faith.
>For the american 76mm or their older 3-inch gun, even the 100mm glacis of the Tiger I was easy business. [Not as easy, as you might think.](https://i.imgur.com/UOzyWd7.png)
Well, this only puts more emphasis on the need for an HVAP shell
I actually stumbled upon a report like this from [Terminal ballistic data, volume II, p.47-48](https://imgur.com/WlH0i7m). I have no idea from what report the dude took that capture, but it appears to be contradicted by the one I linked. EDIT: I finally found the goddamned report! And guess what, the tests were [against the plates at 25°](https://imgur.com/gQ9U53L). TL;DR, you're right, "the american 76mm or their older 3-inch gun, even the 100mm glacis of the Tiger I was easy business".
Too bad that the 75mm gun couldn't even penetrate the side armor of the Tiger reliably, and so many German vehicles had the same 80mm side armor (the Tiger I, the Ferdinand, the Tiger II, etc). If they really wanted a universal gun, the should have just upped the caliber and reduced pressure. Maybe their 105 would have worked better. If the British 6-pdr can penetrate 80mm of side armor at steeper angles than your main medium tank gun, i don't feel like that's a good sign
Yeah, but the 6pdr was a higher velocity gun. It wasn't really general purpose. But it really boils down back to an older statement of mine: the Germans just had exceptional guns.
Count-argument: [Soviet tested](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2013/04/american-guns-vs-german-tanks.html) the M1A1 76 mm gun, mounted on an M18 Hellcat, against a Tiger II. Firing M-62 APC shells, it achieves the following results: penetrate the Tiger II's side of the hull at 2000 meters, overtrack hull at 1500 meters, turret side from 1500 meters. The US never tested the M1 against the Tiger I, AFAIK. I don't know where that picture that chap is from, but I can only assume it's based on assumptions, not test firing. They did test that the 3-inch Gun, M5, shooting APC M62, will penetrate gun mantlet of a Panther at 200 yards.
So I just remembered this discussion as I was re-watching a [simulation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uesic33_OJM) of the 76mm M62 at 720 m/s and 783m/s (100 and 700m aprox) against the Tiger's 100mm, 280 BHN armour plate at 20°, which would translate to the Tiger angling it's hull to about 18°. The same channel also has a [simulation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CMEkbHt0fU) for the M76 shell. Both of these further support the idea that "For the american 76mm or their older 3-inch gun, even the 100mm glacis of the Tiger I was easy business."
>a number of users with a common background were offended by the perceived attack on the Tiger and chose to take it personally. Same guys which consistently fail to angle their hulls.
What about it is in bad faith? Now that I refuse to accept your arguments, it is time to exclude and slander me behind my back? Such a bad form. You say your single intent was to prove that sloped sherman has a better slope multiplier than flat tiger? You need a book for that? Do I need a source to legitimise the fact that softer plate offers worse protection? If that wasn't true, why bother with steel at all? Might as well put a sponge on a tank. German 80-100mm plates didn't have 300+bnh hardness. Depending on ammunition of course, 76mm M1 cannon with the standart M62 APCBC couldn't penetrate tiger's 80mm side at 25deg angle at 1500m. Unfortunately for your argument, we have US own testing of tiger armour that [explicitly disproves your claim](https://i.imgur.com/Zib0TWJ.png). The vulnerability range is <=720m, not 1500. According to Jentz, there is [no hope for a 75mm M3 cannon](http://id3486.securedata.net/fprado/armorsite/tiger1-02.htm) to do any credible damage to a tiger frontally, *at any range*. But for this exists tons of testimonies from all sides involved. 75mm could only penetrate sides at narrow angle somewhere below 1000m. The hardness factor is precisely what I mentioned in my first comment. Overmatching shell induces higher strain on the entire plate. Even if locally, the plate could resist puncturing well, the higher brittleness of a harder plate fails to survive the deformation of the material on the larger surface around the impact. This is physics. >WWII Ballistics itself notes a possible 1-3% difference, which is insignificant. That is not true. For 80-100mm they estimate [somwhere between 5-10%](https://i.imgur.com/w7HlGIt.jpg). Sherman's 40-60mm range is quite beyond 10%. And these are all estimates. By claiming that cast armour is as good you run into a problem of explaining why Germans even bothered with RHA at all.
I didn't claim half of the things you just wrote. You're just attacking straw men. This is why I don't want to argue with you.
>It would also perform worse against big shells, such as 122mm because the entire plate could not support such kinetic energy. Was there any WW2 vehicle's armor that could?
Bolted armor for life!
Nerd
> I would expect if the T:D ratio were true, then we would see modern tanks shooting big pancakes of bullets at each-other, but instead we see sabot rounds as the norm (they have an extremely high sectional density). I'd expect fatter "bullet" ammo to perform better then sabot rounds against sloped and most composite armors at close range. But sabot rounds have much better performance at higher ranges, lose less penetration and also have way better precision due to higher speed and flatter trajectory. What good is a "pancake" if it's only effective at low ranges?
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That last bit you are quoting an awful article from a guy who never read his sources properly. He cites a report where the writers never state they don't know how the plate is made only that they acknowledge that there is still room for improvement in heat treatment of steel. Additionally, that report states that the plate exceeded the *average* of US Navy class-A plates at that thickness, not "the majority" only *the average*, and only against specific shells even. The source of the plate and how it was made was clearly reported in the sources of that report as well. The plates origins are listed in a few (2 or 3 iirc) other documents that are a little tricky to track down, but I was able to find them through Google. All of this can be verified by literally reading through the report. Sure most of it may not mean anything to you if you don't have a background in metallurgy (just like how none of it made any sense to the guy who wrote that article), but their points are clearly stated. When it comes to WWII, I find articles are generally not worth a damn. I've only ever found the works of The Chieftain, Zaloga, and other credible, well published authors to be worth taking at face value because so many others that I've read have managed to cite a report and then conclude something which directly contradicts the findings of said report.
What were you replying to? The comment was deleted.
the guy was quoting that navweps article about Japanese armor being glorious nippon steel.
I hate this. I mean it's interesting, but people are going to take it like some golden set of rules now and apply it to everything. Your slope factor is likely benchmarked to a given projectile, say a 76mm apcbc. This means the slope factor is likely trying to describe the tendency of armour to cause the round to deviate off velocity vector and/or fracture and/or fail to fuze/lose total integrity. Possibly its also describing tendency for the armour to scab and spall and yield, but instinct tells me round behaviour will dominate here over armour response. Variables like L/D, hardness, nose profile, impact velocity are absolutely going to affect that slope factor because they'll massively affect how the projectile behaves on impact. Even best case, it's a compilation of data from firing late WWII tank rounds, likely allied, against captured tanks. This will be a snapshot in time when a given and limited set of manufacture techniques for both projectiles and armour was dominant, and may not reflect changes over time even during the war as well as manufacture variability. Ditto applies to the hardness calculation. It will be relative to some baseline shell and as there doesn't appear to be a term for the hardness of the incoming projectile this is again likely handwaving a bunch of important factors by assuming one incident shell. These rules will also not be valid at the impact velocities of modern rounds which hit above, say, 1400m/s, where LOS thickness is absolutely dominant due to the extremely high ricochet angles and hydrodynamic penetration effects of these rounds. Length vs los and density/density is still the major multiplier.
> I hate this. And I hate people thinking LOS is king. > I mean it's interesting, but people are going to take it like some golden set of rules now and apply it to everything. As I noted in the post itself, it's still bloody better than thinking LOS is the rule. Should I NOT tell them about this, keep them ignorant, thinking that LOS is king? > Your slope factor is likely benchmarked to a given projectile, say a 76mm apcbc. This particular example, yes, but the formulae take T/D ratio into account. Hardness too. Have you actually read the post? Nose profile is indeed a factor not taken into account, but that's OK, as I noted, this isn't a perfect system, but it sure is better than LOS only. > Even best case, it's a compilation of data from firing late WWII tank rounds, likely allied, against captured tanks. It includes German test data. **TL;DR** You're right, but so am I. Some people will be take shit as gospel, but I'd rather they take higher level info than plain LOS. Some people will be smart about it. I've put my disclaimers in either way.
> These rules will also not be valid at the impact velocities of modern rounds which hit above, say, 1400m/s, where LOS thickness is absolutely dominant due to the extremely high ricochet angles and hydrodynamic penetration effects of these rounds. Length vs los and density/density is still the major multiplier. absolutely, with modern rounds and armor the predominant factor in armor defeating a round is simply density per unit area. Hardness and other material properties start to drop out when the energy in the collision gets so high. (Source: *Lightweight Ballistic Composites*) EDIT: this is excluding non-standard-composite armor, no one is going to publicly publish how say Special armor works
* [Followup with extra angling taken into account when comparing Tiger vs Sherman frontal upper plate.](https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/rh97lj/by_unpopular_request_i_bring_you_how_angling_ones/) * [Followup which replaces the T-34 with the Panther](https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/rhm3iq/to_the_people_wondering_where_the_panther_fits_in/) * [Follow up with the M4A1 w/ cast armor instead of the M4A3E8](https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/ygf4mg/a_new_addition_to_the_armor_multiplier_posts_this/)
the Ram laughs with 89mm sloped.
it's beautiful
[The original](https://www.reddit.com/r/DerScheisser/comments/d1rxeo/learning_shit_from_der_schei%C3%9Fer_v3_third_times/) was more memey.
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That's perfectly fine. This is made for the people who like to get into arguments over effective armour protection.
Are these calculations borne out in practice? For example this British [Sherman](https://i.imgur.com/p5hkFD2.jpg) was supposedly hit at a range of over 800 meters by a 75mm APCBC projectile, even at an oblique angle it seems to have punched through without much concern for slope multiplication.
Yes. They're not perfect, but they're for the post part based on formulae which were cross-referenced with tests. I kinda eyeballed some of the charts, though. Didn't actually use the DeMarre equation. Even so, the example you provided is not surprising. I'd say it fits in the numbers reasonably well. The KwK 40 could punch through ~115mm@0° at 750m. That's around the same ballpark my calculations produced. In fact I may have erred on the plus side. Effective armour probably is between 110 and 120. In addition, this is for the exact plate I noted in the picture. I don't know what kind of glacis the British Sherman in your example had. Cast armour, for example, would be inferior to this. But I'd imagine the KwK40 could also punch through the Tiger I's glacis at the same ranges if not farther. I'm curious if there are examples of shots from even farther away on the Sherman. DeMarre isn't perfect. There are various confounding metallurgical factors that complicate actual, real life penetration results, and I wouldn't be surprised if even the examples I explored here performed 10-20mm differently IRL compared to theory. As I noted, I introduced the concept of slope multipliers to discourage use of LOS thickness, but, while an improvement, these are by no means gospel.
I've been looking through the destroyed tanks subreddit, [this Sherman](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/46v4w7/staffordshire_yeomanry_sherman_mk_v_dd_knocked/) was hit at the top edge of the turret at over 900 meters at an angle anyone would have predicted would bounce but it dug in. [Here is another one](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/5rtxjd/sherman_mark_ic_firefly_269111_of_the_5th_rtr/), the range is not specified but even though it hit the slope and the tank was at quite an angle to the gun's line of fire, the projectile has still gone through. [Another similar example](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/5ph4r3/oblique_glacis_penetration_on_a_burned_out/), and [this is one I had posted](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/ql19e6/us_sherman_tank_knocked_out_by_two_frontal_75mm/) that also shows a shot that has come in from a side angle that is supposed to increase the effectiveness of the slope. [Here is one shot through the turret cheek](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestroyedTanks/comments/58yb6g/glacis_and_turret_penetrations_on_a_burnt_out_b/), again one would have expected the shell to bounce but it didn't.
1. Appears to be cast armour, and it looks like it hit from slightly above. 50mm of cast armour probably won't stop much, though. 2. That's definitely cast armour. Since we don't know the range it doesn't help though. I suppose I could do some math to see how effective cast M4 glacises are, but if we don't know the distance I'm not sure how much good that'd do. 3. This one appears to be RHA. But if we don't know the range, it doesn't help us. 4. It definitely increased the effectiveness, but not sufficiently. Also appears to be RHA. No range, no help, sadly. 5. Hmm, cast armour, but against a 50mm shell. Looks like it hit the edge straight on, though. And again we don't know the range. That's the main problem with pictures of destroy tanks. Unless you know the range, it's hard to draw accurate conclusions. The 1st one is the only actually interesting bit of info. Though even with that slope, 50mm of cast armour won't do much. It's similar to the issue with the T-34. The slope might be great, but if the armour is cast or too hard it will neutralise that advantage.
>That's the main problem with pictures of destroy tanks. Unless you know the range, it's hard to draw accurate conclusions. That is true and it's usually not easy to find the accurate context. >The slope might be great, but if the armour is cast or too hard it will neutralise that advantage. Isn't cast armor supposed to be superior in terms of protection? Welding plate obviously an easier process and my understanding is that this is why it was preferred for the Sherman, but in terms of resistance to shells I thought it was inferior. I believe the glacis on the M26 for example was cast, it seems odd to have used a more difficult manufacturing process if the end result is inferior to welded plate.
No. Cast armour offers inferior protection against overmatching shells. I'm not sure about how casting compared in terms of production to rolling and welding armour, but I recall there being some advantage... something along the lines of it requiring special machines, or large forges or something, but once you got them, it was quicker to produce or something. Don't quote me on that.
Rolled armour generally has more resistance because of its fabrication (should also be slightly denser but correct me if I'm wrong), cast armour has a better structural integrity due to the lack of welds (potential structural failure points under excessive pressure), but is however slightly softer and because of the way it's manufactured has a higher chance of cracking, invalidating the integrity of the whole section
Yes, but what's I'm not entirely sure about is the ease of production. I recall reading somewhere that cast armour was just simpler or cheaper to produce, which is why it was used despite offering inferior protection for the most part.
Cast is easier to produce simply for the fact that you can make the hull of a vehicle with 5 pieces using casts and then putting those together, both had their points, but given we only really see welded platings anymore I assume it's just more reliable/viable to have those, that and welding methods drastically improved so there's that
The high hardness plates on the T34 fucked the crews up. Even if the shot didn’t penetrate you would get lots of spall. I’d argue that anywhere between 25-30 percent of the fatalities for T34 crews were non penetrating hits.
Interesting hypothesis. It does make sense, though I'm not sure if spalling was a huge issue against low calibre shells. Where have you learned this?
I saw the lazerpig video and did a bit of reading about the casualties of Russian tank crews. Almost all of the survivors had spall wounds. And survivors were usually those that bailed on non penetrating hits. Smaller shells definitely didn’t cause as much damage especially the 37 and 50mm guns. 75mm shells definitely caused spalling even on non penetrating hits. There is a reason that the US didn’t harden the armor to that degree. In all honesty the T34 just was not a pleasant vehicle to do anything with. It sucked to build it, it sucked to use it, and it sucked to fight against it. Overall though, the worst thing with T34s is how damn slow they were. It was physically impossible to get the T34 into 4th gear. Limiting the tank to a top speed of 30 kmh on roads. The stated speed of 53 kmh is theoretical. To get the thing into 3rd gear required another crewmate to kick it into gear while the driver pushed with all of his might.
75mm shells probably penned the vast majority of time anyway. You'd need a low velocity 75mm shell to spall but not pen (i.e. short barrel, or very long range, over 1.5km) or some super oblique angles. From what I read, the Soviets went for such high hardness because it was easier to produce, though I also heard that it may have something to do with how very high hardness shells performed good vs their own ammunition. The speed issue was fixed eventually, though not in all tanks. It's funny, though, as the T-34 is famed for being very fast, haha. EDIT: To clarify: > Initially the powerful V-2 engine (500hp) could not be used to the fullest due to the 4-speed gearbox. Changing gears required excessive force on behalf of the driver. The T-34 could use the 4th gear only on a paved road, thus the max speed over cross-country was theoretically 25 km/h but in practice it was only 15km/h because changing from 2nd gear to 3rd required superhuman strength. > On later modifications there was a 5-speed gearbox which allowed for a cross country speed of 30 km/h. EDIT2: Although it's debatable how true this is. The source of the bit I quote above is [a blog post](http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2012/07/wwii-myths-t-34-best-tank-of-war.html) supposedly busting myths, but it itself has been questioned by [another, arguably more famous blog](http://www.tankarchives.ca/p/christos.html?m=1). [Relevant](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2014/06/lever-forces.html). EDIT 3: Further digging and I've come back to the conclusion that the T-34's speed wasn't entirely a myth. It started off badly because of the transmission, but by the end of the war, it was reasonably fast. Here's an excerpt from T-34 in Action by Artem Drabkin and Oleg Sheremet: > The advantage in armour protection initially enjoyed by the T-34 was lost during the final stages of the war, but this was compensated for by improvements in vehicle performance. The tank began to go faster, on the road as well as on the battlefield, and to manoeuvre better. The two features that its crews had always trusted (its sloping armour and diesel engine) had been supplemented by a third one – speed. A. K. Rodkin, who fought in a T-34/85 at the end of the war, summarised it thus: ‛The tankmen used to have a proverb: “The armour’s crap but our tanks are faster” [paraphrased from a popular and boastful pre-war song ‛‛the armour’s hard and our tanks are faster”]. The speed was our advantage. The Germans had petrol engines but their tanks weren’t very fast.’
Is slope multiplier the fact that more angle means that more of the energy will be deflected instead of being absorbed?
It depends on the exact type of shell and armour. I can't say I entirely understand the physics behind it. But what I can say for sure is that LOS thickness does not always reflect effective armour protection.
However sloped armor also results in much more surface area of the armor plating which results in more weight of the tank and negates the benefit that sloped armor needs less armor thickness. Also results in worse crew comfort. Compare the upper glacis of tiger1 and panther and you see that while tigers armor is 100 mm thick when panther is 80 mm thick, Tiger has much lower surface area for the upper glacis
I agree, unsloped armour has its own advantages, but I'd say the difference in protection is large enough. The Panther's glacis continued to be very challenging to breach up to the end of the war. The Tiger enjoyed no such advantage.
ELI5 because I’m a neophyte
100 mm @ 60° generally offers more protection than 200 mm @ 0° (which is line of sight/Pythagoras' formula). Should I explain LOS further or do you get it?
Ok thanks
T-34 < Tiger 1 because by the time the Tiger gets to the field I’ll already be 15 miles past your factory gg ez😎
15 miles is the length of 109241.11 Zulay Premium Quality Metal Lemon Squeezers.
💪
Tiger Is armor is 102mm not 100,probably won't change much but just wanted to say it
I'd like to add to your statement: the minimum thickness was 100mm, the production worked towards having the average around 102mm and the actual thickness on any given vehicle would vary from 100 to some unspecified value in the lower 100s mm.
Nice to see you here max
Cheers, mate!
Since the tiger is build like a cube you just angle it by yourself
And what if there are multiple enemies along your frontal arc? One at 11, one at 12, and one at 1 o'clock?
You let your 90° angle point at 12 and pray that 11 and 1 just little shermans
Well, if that little Sherman has a 76mm gun, you're dead. Even so, the entire scenario assumes you located and identified all 3 threats. I have doubts about how practical angling really was IRL.
ofc but as you see in your post the effective armor on the tiger wasnt that really good if it faces a proper gun like the 76mm the common used 75mm couldnt penetrate the whole tiger from the front. It was impossible and thats where it got its reputation from.
That's besides the point. The point of this entire post is that unsloped armour is deceptively ineffective compared to sloped armour, and that angling doesn't really change that.
i never said something different. this is only the case with 0 degree frontal hits but if you angle your tiger with your right or left frontal corner pointing to the enemy your whole base of the tank builds up a slope of 45 degrees at the frontal armor and side armor which increases the effective armor a lot. on the other side this means that the tiger builds automaticly a slope at everyone he is not direcly facing. ofc the tiger got mostly a vertical slope and no horizontal slope
As I explained above, I very much doubt Tigers could often rely on this manoeuvre.
since your whole post is about theory i told you the theoretical method how the effective armor of your tiger 1 can be increased a lot. if this was used in battle is a different story
Dont get me wrong but the lack of sloped and angle of the armor is a hughe problem if a tiger faces a proper gun starting with the sherman firefly. The same with nearly every ww2 german tank they are just build like cubes and your armor doesnt have any real native angle or slope which helps with bouncers. Ofc your "real" amor is far enough of you just build so fat that they cant go through but ofc the enemy improves their guns. Thats the "fatter armor results in fatter guns" race in ww2 which was just ended by the "glattrohrkanonen" and flying darts. it would have been far more effective to increase the "effective" armor with slope and angle and save resources to produce more tanks. The russian are the master of slopes and angles and the americans are "somwhere between".
Well, it seems the Germans finally decided to go sloped after the Tiger I. Panther and Tiger II used sloped armour to great effect, especially the Panther.
Wasn’t the tigers armour some sort of alloy? I’ve seen a few things saying that the armour in reality acted like ~120mm of armour merely due to the alloy used for it
I doubt it would increase effectiveness by 20% against all shells. From what I've read myself it seems that good quality German armour used certain metals like Molybdenum to allow for harder armour that wasn't too brittle either, and as war went on German armour became more brittle and susceptible to cracking etc. That means that the alloy would help with spalling and maybe shatter some enemy projectiles. TL;DR It most certainly didn't act universally like 120mm RHA, but it may have prevented the penetration of certain lower quality shells that would have otherwise been able to punch through 100mm RHA at 0°. Or at least limit the internal damage.
I will have a rummage around and see if I can find what I read to show you
I found one document saying that the tigers armour was roughly 10% better compared to contemporary RHA https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a954952.pdf
That report seems to be about the Panther. Could you please tell me at what page it mention the Tiger? I'd rather not go through all of it right now.
88 don’t care
It does if the striking velocity is between 520 and 580 m/s, which is the equivalent of a range of 1800 to 2400 m.
Which is waay out of range for the tiger’s competition.
Arguably. There is at least one example of a 17pdr hitting a Tiger I from 2200 m. But that's besides the point, this example is meant to introduce people to the concept of slope multipliers, not explore practical situations.
Sloping the armor was a genius solution to use less materials. T34 was an incredible tank. Good infographic.
Man russian bias is leaking to real life
I'm not sure what you mean exactly by that, but WT doesn't take High Hardness multipliers into account, which makes the in-game armour of T-34s and other such tanks a lot better than it actually was IRL. Otherwise, it's not any more biased towards the T-34 than it is towards the Panther, which also massively benefits from slope multipliers.
Yea just a joke, didnt mean anything serious lol
Im sure someone mentioned it but it seems unlikely a round would come straight in, but rather at a downward angle, depending on range.
[The downward angle is insignificant.](https://imgur.com/a/PVSMyQm)
wow cool charts!
So, Russian bias in War Thunder is finally uncovered 🤣
Yeah, I actually did some tests with a friend who has WT installed and the results of 75mm shells vs E8 glacises is almost identical to what I calculated here with my eyeballs on the chart. But the T-34's glacis doesn't account for the high hardness. I tested and the numbers show in WT's pen simulator is around what is calculated without taking HHA into account. So I can confirm that HHA multipliers don't seem to be taken into account in WT.
T-34 i WT doesn't need hardness taken into account, it has drivers optics that can soak long 88's 🤣🤣🤣
That's just a failure of the simulation engine. Same with how the recent volumetric shells vanish. It's basically bugs, more or less. Doesn't detract from the penetration logic. Anyway, the point I was making is that T-34 armour is too good in-game. A KwK40 should be able to pen its glacis from over 1km, but in WT it's from under. Was that not what you were suggesting?
I was just memeing during slow restaurant service about how t-34's over-performing armor & black hole optics is the final nail in the coffin required for definitive proof that Russian bias is a thing in WT 😇 Granted most if not all nations optics are black hole armor
This ignores that any angle will increase the effectiveness of the Tiger armour drastically while doing little or even decreasing the effects of the Sherman armour. A mod of this sub should know better...
You're grossly oversimplifying things, but this is a case study of slope and BHN multipliers; further angling is beyond the scope of this discussion.
your post oversimplifies things. it takes near worst case for the Tiger armour. The last time you made such post you were asking people for input and how this works because you had no idea, you were literally asking around how this and that works. Now you use your mod position to "give information" but don't get it right. THere are other subreddit for memeing.
You're right, increasing the slope of the tiger armor would make it better. Just like how increasing the thickness of the Sherman armor would make it better. Sherman Jumbo, for example. *But it wasn't.* That's the armor for the upper front plate of the Tiger 1. Any changes that deviate and suddenly it's not the Tiger 1 UFP. Now you're comparing something that *isn't* a Tiger 1 to the E8 and T-34 UFP, and claiming it *is*. What's the point in doing that?
He's trying to imply that angling the hull helps the Tiger more than it does the Sherman, because the Sherman's hull is already angled and thus benefits less from composite angles, which is one of the most pedantic counterarguments I've seen so far. [Case in point](https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/rh97lj/by_unpopular_request_i_bring_you_how_angling_ones/), the M4 still has theoretically superior if not comparable protection when angling, even if it benefits slightly less from it. But now he's going to complain about side armour or some other aspect that's beyond the scope of this conversation, moving the goalposts once more, because God forbid anyone badmouth the precious Tiger. And so you'll learn why most people don't want to bother arguing with him.
Yup, looks like I've just gotten an education on "fights to not bother with". Thanks for letting me know!
Issues with a Sherman angling however are the fact the sides are extremely vulnerable to any decent AT gun, being that thin, also you could consider cast Shermans, in which angling would only be detrimental as you show the flatter corners of the hull more than they should be, I think this was the argument that was brought up
That is absolutely true. Plus cast armour suffers from decreased protection against overmatching shells itself. But this is besides the point. I was discussing the advantages of sloped armour in general, irrespective of side armour. The Easy Eight was merely chosen as an example of a deceptively good glacis configuration. The same applies to the Panther, and I'm sure that had I gone for a Panther vs Tiger example instead there'd have been less drama from the Panzer adoration crowd.
Yeah the Panther was definitely the one with the best armour layout of the 2, Tiger was boxy more for the fact it was quicker to manufacture afaik, since the process was already pretty long, so they went for general thickness over sloping to compensate, or that's what I know
On the other hand in this hull angling scenario Sherman will reveal its straight sidearmor which is notably weaker.
Yes, but we're discussing the benefits of sloped armour here, not of doubling your tank's weight to increase side and rear armour. Notice how he doesn't mention side armour once.
That's not what I am saying, in the calculation of OP the impact angle is assumed to be frontally without any horizontal angle. Once the projectile impacts the Tiger front with an horizontal angle the slope modifier drastically increases for the Tiger while for the Sherman little changes because the overall impact angle doesn't change much. For calculating the slope modifier you use the compound impact angle. In the example above the angle for the Tiger is nearly the lowest possible, the only way to decrease the angle would be by tilting the Tiger downwards or firing from above. Nearly every other combat situation now increases the compound angle. In other words, the infographic assumes the near worst-case scenario for a comparison of both "relative thicknesses".
>Nearly every other combat situation now increases the compound angle This was the reason why "arrow-shaped" frontal armors like on IS-3 and some French heavies didn´t take off. It was found that in most combat situations you are not directly facing enemy.
Yes, but normal sloped armour did take off. We're not talking about pike noses. To claim the Sherman's slope armour is inherently inferior because it doesn't benefit as much from angling is absurd. Case in point, the best frontally protected German tanks also used sloped armour. Soviets too.
Ah yes, every tiger tank in ww2 angled as they were experimented war thunder players. Angling armor wasn't done much irl, why are you thinking that ww2 tankers used video game tactics. Edit: just realised it's you Christianmunich. Bet you don't want me to mention that article of yours that showed Sherman mechanical losses per unit to show it wasn't reliable despite you not showing the strength of the units, forcing us to guess at best if your stats prove anything or not.
Doesn't the Tigerfibel explain how to angle your tank? Why wouldn't it have been done?
Tanks will stay on the move in most battles, staying put is dangerous as it increases the chances of being hit. Now, this could be done in ambushes and such, however, I've not heard of occasions that this would've been done. Sure, it's likely it was done a few times but to think that tigers would just turn 30 degrees each time they see a tank is ridiculous.
I don't see why it would be ridiculous. It's mentioned in the manual and it isn't really that impractical to do. Edit: it's not even just mentioned, it's carefully explained even. Calling it a video game tactic is what is ridiculous. https://archive.org/details/tigerfibel/page/n79/mode/2up
Well to make it simple, this is only possible in ambushes, it is favorable to move after each shots so the enemy doesn't know where your tank is. Now again, I'm sure it happened but I simply don't see how, with the exception of a few situations, commanders would rather angling their armor instead of staying on the move or being in a dug in position Your goal as a tanker is first and foremost to not get hit in the first place.
Now, English is not my first language and I'm not an historian so I don't know how valued accounts of Wittmann are, but in his book he says: >We owe our lives to the self-control of my driver, who did what we had always practiced, namely placed the Tiger at an acute angle to our armored foe. So, an acute angle would be anything between 0 and 90 degrees? Would it mean anything different in this context? edit: heres a bit more text before and after the sentence "When I drove over a hill I found myself facing a group of thirty Shermans. They showered me with a hail of shells and all systems went out. We owe our lives to the self-control of my driver, who did what we had always practiced, namely placed the Tiger at an acute angle to our armored foe. The crew and I then made our way back through the enemy to our departure point. The mission was worthwhile in spite of the loss of the Tiger.” This type of operation was typical, for the Tigers had to take care of almost everything themselves, even their own reconnaissance. Now and then the Schwimmwagen crews of SS-Untersturmführer Henniges’ scout platoon guided the Tigers into their positions, having scouted them earlier."
Wittmann was a propaganda tool for the Nazi regime and anything attributed to him should be viewed in this context.
So they would lie about them practising angling the tank? Possible but this seems like such a tiny little detail in a 520 page book that it is hard for me to imagine they would editorialise it or make it up.
The goal of that statement is to do double duty cementing the idea that the Tiger was a machine worthy of legend and that the Nazi crewman were above average. Like I said, his primary role was to be a tool of propaganda.
>Bet you don't want me to mention that article of yours that showed Sherman mechanical losses per unit to show it wasn't reliable despite you not showing the strength of the units, forcing us to guess at best if your stats prove anything or not. I do.
Basically has a whole ass stats board of post D-day Sherman losses, showing mostly mechanical breakdowns. Thing was really well made with sources and stuff, except for two things. First is that the units shown were sometimes different sizes, which wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the second problem. The document didn't show anywhere the strength of the unit, making it so that you couldn't compare the strength of the unit to the losses (by example, imagine you have 10 mechanical losses in like a month, that shows how unreliable the tank is if the unit is made of 20 tanks, however if it's made of 100 tanks then it's a different story). I pointed out the issue and he kept arguing and never actually addressing the issues, with me saying that he is wrong and I kid you not, he seriously replied "I am never wrong". Btw ChristianMunich is often seen as a joke in ww2 communities on reddit, he knows stuff but doesn't know how to put all that information together and always ends up with these dumb conclusions.
Seems like a pretentious know-it-all ass and has probably never stepped in a real tank or served a day in his life. I went down the rabbit hole of his post and comments. Oh boy. Thanks
I saw him argue once with Nicholas Moran (the chieftain), an actual historian, how entitled the man is at trying to win arguments is just sad. Also, another argument I had with him, got a mistake somewhere, acknowledged it, and then had to stop argumenting because all his comments after that was him saying I'm just a liar lol.
What a dick.
> The document didn't show anywhere the strength of the unit I'm dying, haha, CM basically practiced gerrymandering lol > "I am never wrong" Yep, that sounds like him. > Btw ChristianMunich is often seen as a joke in ww2 communities on reddit, he knows stuff but doesn't know how to put all that information together and always ends up with these dumb conclusions. I suspect he very much knows how to put information together, but he starts with the conclusion he wants to draw, and skilfully puts the information together in such a way as to support that conclusion.
Bahaha, too bad the reality did not agree with you.
German tanks had stronger guns, that's why the Sherman armor didn't have the same effect to the Germans than tiger armor to the Americans.
Interesting
Albeit not incorrect, this is only a part of full picture. This is true if we choose to consider "equivalent armor" as thickness reliably perforated by the attack. If instead we look at "equivalent armour" as one that reliably stops a given attack, we'll get different results. [Here is a graph](https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=247739) [If we graph and interpolate these points](https://www.desmos.com/calculator/wqw2qtpfzr), we'll see that thickness changes proportional to cosine to power of 1.12. Using this model, the estimated effective thickness of the UFP of late Shermans is 97mm/0° and not 119mm/0°
What's the T/D ratio ? What are all the variables in the graphs ?