Tanks!!

[dlnhank]

The Tank museum - Top Ten Tanks - Military History Visualized :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=RlJy18c4xdw


Tank chats #48 - Centaur Dozer :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh7g_WaQcbs


Tank chats #49 - A7V :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXO9VK1uyFs

[KissArmy]

Watched Fury again last night... when the Sherman got behind the Tiger and put two rounds in its rear, the holes glowed orange. Is that accurate?

[Hikarufan]

I'm not sure. There might be a bit of Hollywood to it. But there is a lot of energy in those rounds.

This is a Leopard 2 120mm SABOT hitting an APC at 750 metres.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5F2ateo-Ao

[Dr Pepper]

Originally Posted by KissArmy

Watched Fury again last night... when the Sherman got behind the Tiger and put two rounds in its rear, the holes glowed orange. Is that accurate?

Almost certainly not-given the velocity of the Sherman gun and the relative thinness of the rear armour of the Tiger 1. It is true though-and attested by those who have survived tank on tank or AT gun vs tank encounters-that a non penetrating hit by shot (ie a solid armour piercing projectile without any explosive filling) or a similar projectile-that almost penetrates the armour can cause the armour at the very point of the projectile to glow briefly from the heat.

After all these are KINETIC ENERGY projectiles-and on impact that energy is largely dissipated into the target (in the case of a ricochet, less energy is transferred)-most of the energy is expended in penetrating and forcing aside the armour-and if the projectile has sufficient-completely penetrating whatever thickness of armour is at the point of impact.....if insufficient energy-as a consequence of calibre, velocity, range of target, and thickness of the armour-then the energy will be dissipated in scooping out a 'divot' in the armour, and that area will have absorbed the energy of the projectile in the form of deformation and heat (in some cases the projectile may have become reshaped and welded into the armour by the force of the impact.

These comments of course are relative (and relevant) to WW2 steel armour-which was largely face hardened rolled or cast steel. Post WW2 of course composite and spaced armour of all types came into common use-though the term 'RHA' 'rolled homogenous armour' is still used when describing the penetration capability of modern tank guns and anti armour weapons.

The clips below may expand your understanding of the process..

In the case of solid shot, the magic limit (for steel) was ca 2700fps-beyond this velocity, the projectile shatters-yet it was quite routine from mid war on to have AT guns with MV greater than this-the projectiles required a 'cap' -generally in the form of a 'ring and donut' which spread the impact over a greater area of the projectile nose.....this in turn ruined the ballistics....so then a windshield had to be fitted to restore the nice streamlined shape of the original projectile, so you ended up with armour piercing (AP) armour piercing capped (APC) and finally armour piercing capped ballistic cap (APCBC)...! [the ballistic cap was simply light metal loosely attached to the projectile nose and is sole purpose was to restore the nice ballistic behaviour-on impact it simply flew off or crumpled aside]

Then of course people started (mainly the Germans) using tungsten shot-but of course tungsten whilst effective, was also a strategic metal needed for machine tools....so if you fired all your tungsten off at Russian tanks, you didn't have anything left at home to help manufacture new tanks.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI_hu7stdQM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTmx4jzd-4c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMIPgBk2foE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrH2DceIvJk

The last video shows the different effects of current types of anti armour projectiles on armour

[Dr Pepper]

Originally Posted by Hikarufan

I'm not sure. There might be a bit of Hollywood to it. But there is a lot of energy in those rounds.

This is a Leopard 2 120mm SABOT hitting an APC at 750 metres.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5F2ateo-Ao

This of course is a modern tank firing a sabot round at an aluminium hulled vehicle-and aluminium burns very nicely-especially if finely powdered-or hit with something big and nasty very fast (the example above)-here is a more realistic video of a tank on tank impact-admittedly between two modern tanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpezj_HrP2g

Most of the tank vs tank action in Fury and the impacts were quite well cinemagraphed-especially the head on ones with ricochets and misses-but a bit of hollywood inevitably creeps in......

[haroldeye]

Many years ago we had a lecture from someone who had fought as a tank commander in the battle for the Golan heights. He said that because of the dust ranges could drop to as low as 100m, and that a hit at that distance caused the target to ring like a bell.

[Dr Pepper]

Originally Posted by haroldeye

Many years ago we had a lecture from someone who had fought as a tank commander in the battle for the Golan heights. He said that because of the dust ranges could drop to as low as 100m, and that a hit at that distance caused the target to ring like a bell.

Some of the Israeli reserve officers I worked with on UNTSO inspections on the Golan Heights were veterans of the 73 War-and of course the 'Valley of Tears' battle (in the northern part of the Golan) was the second largest tank battle in history, after Kursk. One of them mentioned to me that they even had to resort to ramming each other towards the end, amidst the dust, smoke, confusion and total lack of cohesion

[dlnhank]

The Tank Museum - Top Five Tanks - Al Murray :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4uXnGbi650

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Dr Pepper

This of course is a modern tank firing a sabot round at an aluminium hulled vehicle-and aluminium burns very nicely-especially if finely powdered-or hit with something big and nasty very fast (the example above)-here is a more realistic video of a tank on tank impact-admittedly between two modern tanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpezj_HrP2g

Most of the tank vs tank action in Fury and the impacts were quite well cinemagraphed-especially the head on ones with ricochets and misses-but a bit of hollywood inevitably creeps in......

I doubt if being a crewman in the Leopard 1 tank on the receiving end of those sabot rounds would have been a pleasant experience. There would presumably be a lot of splintering and bits of your own tank flying around, and even without that there would be blast waves radiating from the point of impact. It would be quite noisy as well.

Anyone got a white flag?

Sabot rounds were a French invention, but were first taken up by British Commonwealth and American forces, who needed a way to make the woefully inadequate 57mm cannons much in vogue with their armies competitive against Tiger tanks. Tigers were impervious to a standard 57mm round, except if fired into the weaker rear armour; but even though the impact from a sabot was a 2 pound shell, not six pounds, it was made of tungsten and travelling well above 850 meters a second, speeds at which a standard steel round would just shatter on impact. Not even a Tiger tank could just take a hit like that and not know it had been well and truly hit.

[Dr Pepper]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

I doubt if being a crewman in the Leopard 1 tank on the receiving end of those sabot rounds would have been a pleasant experience. There would presumably be a lot of splintering and bits of your own tank flying around, and even without that there would be blast waves radiating from the point of impact. It would be quite noisy as well.

Anyone got a white flag?

Sabot rounds were a French invention, but were first taken up by British Commonwealth and American forces, who needed a way to make the woefully inadequate 57mm cannons much in vogue with their armies competitive against Tiger tanks. Tigers were impervious to a standard 57mm round, except if fired into the weaker rear armour; but even though the impact from a sabot was a 2 pound shell, not six pounds, it was made of tungsten and travelling well above 850 meters a second, speeds at which a standard steel round would just shatter on impact. Not even a Tiger tank could just take a hit like that and not know it had been well and truly hit.

Fair comment-the problem with sabot rounds as they were initially conceived and utilised in WW2 was that they were not particularly accurate compared to a full calibre AP round-and they were something of an ad hoc solution to using the better hardness of tungsten coupled with its heavier weight to deliver a heavier punch-the trouble with that idea was a full calibre tungsten shot was too heavy and dense to achieve much velocity-in fact to achieve both adequate velocity and range-so you entered a vicious circle of needing a bigger gun-or a much larger cartridge-which meant a new gun design-which had to be developed, tested, put into production etc-and then of course either the new gun wouldn't fit your vehicle-or the recoil length was too great-so it wouldn't fit for different reasons-or if you shortened the recoil length, the shock on the vehicle was too great....

Even the much vaunted 17 pounder in the Firefly suffered accuracy problems....despite it being a marvellous example of shoehorning....or perhaps an honest critic might say BECAUSE of shoehorning....

Ach zo-zen inschted ve vill putten zese aluminium pieces around ze tungsten-and zen ze granat vill be the same veight as ze stahl vun, ja? ....and so it was...

...and we ended up with sabot rounds-or rather sabot projectiles-and variations on the theme such as APCR APNR

Now you begin to understand why tank designers are often depressed...but they finally got it right with the APFSDS projectiles......though I'm a HESH man myself....only coz its a bit challenging firing APFSDS from a recoilless rifle...