Bombs/rockets vs GV's

[BALSUR]

well, its not that i dont want to believe what your saying but, studies have shown that only 4% of german armor lost in WW2 was due to air strike. There are cases with direct hits to the tanks with no lost of life and in some cases minimal damage.

As for the wall trick, 1st I am not pressing myself to the wall, I am sure the tank crews didnt either. 2nd my walls aren't made of 100mm of rolled steel.
Concusion waves cannot penetrate armor, if the tank is buttoned up it has no way of getting in, thus little damage to the crew.

You have to remember the key here is penetration. If the armor was to be penetrated then ok, but if there's no projectile to allow entrance then it just doesn't happen.

There's plenty of stuff to read about this out there. Try reading "Tigers in Combat" by Wolfgang Scheider. Or just surf the web on Allied air power on german armor, gives you tons of stuff to compair too.

I am only making this point because everybody screams for reality and the gv mode in AH is nowhere near it.

[hubsonfire]

Point being, while ground attack runs didn't often obliterate the tanks, more than a few crew died- an aspect of gameplay that simply doesn't exist. No one gets cooked from a fuel fire, or killed by spalling, or turned to pudding by a GP bomb going off nearby. No one's deafened by nearby explosions, or the hammering away of their own weapons, or a shell pinging off their hull. No one sticks their bucket up through a hatch to catch a lucky bb either.

Till such things are added to the vehicle damage model, I think wiping out roaches with ordnance is a necessary and logical compromise for the purposes of gameplay.

[hubsonfire]

btw, wave forms do damned well penetrate metal. Everything resonates; metal especially.

[MadSquirrel]

Lets also remember that German Tank Crews were wearing leather helmets with earphones that would help to some degree protect there ears from "booms".

What I have read so far is a lot of "In My Opinion".  Or the "It makes sense to me" comments.  These are the same type of people that claimed the tanks were destroyed, but were not.

Please somebody post some printed, documented Facts.  Like I said, there was an Official document about this.  And it stated what I posted above.  I haven't been able to find it and I hope that someone out there has it or can find it.

LTARsqrl  

[Karnak]

Originally posted by BALSUR
well, its not that i dont want to believe what your saying but, studies have shown that only 4% of german armor lost in WW2 was due to air strike. There are cases with direct hits to the tanks with no lost of life and in some cases minimal damage.

This is true, but not because the tanks had a magical ability to disobey the laws of physics but rather because 99+% of bombs and rockets missed.  The ones that actually hit did the job as intended.

I have read the British reports that you refered to and it's conclusions are accurate, but tanks in AH come under much more intense and continuous air assualt than any WWII tank likely experienced.

The fact is that the Tiger I in my example should have been blown apart.  It may have been able to ignore the 500lber than exploded nearby, but the one that hit it (an actual strike on the tank itself and the only one I have ever seen from me in AH) should have destroyed it.

[Suave]

Don't forget that in AH the target tanks are mid to late war heavily armored tanks.

I'm sure the HurriIID and IL2 were very effective against amored cars, half tracks, PZ IIIs and BT-7s.

[Suave]

Anybody happen to know Rudel's tank kills broken down by model? I'm curious to how many were t-34s and KV tanks.

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by BALSUR


You have to remember the key here is penetration. If the armor was to be penetrated then ok, but if there's no projectile to allow entrance then it just doesn't happen.

 

Do you think a torpedo penerates a ships hull and THEN explodes?

How do you think a torpedo does its damage?

From the concussion of the blast as it explodes in the water.

[Karnak]

Suave,

Hurri IId's bagged a goodly number of Panzer IVs as well.

And no tank would take that 500lb bomb hit I have described which seems to get roundly ignored by the pro-tank people.

[Delirium]

Originally posted by Morpheus
From the concussion of the blast as it explodes in the water.

I'm not taking the tanker's side, but blasts in water is greatly enchanced due to the water pressure, not to mention they'd try and have the torpedo 'break the back' of the ship. Many ships also had torpedo blisters to cushion any torpedo explosions against a thin outer hull away from the main hull. A good example is the Bismark, it has been discovered that no torpedo was able to get past the torpedo blisters and actually score real damage against the ship and it was likely scuttled by the Germans.

Back to the tank argument, I have rarely, if ever hit with a bomb against a GV, and almost never with a rocket regardless.

[Karnak]

Battleships have many times the armor of a tank and WWII torps designed to "break the back" of the ship were rather unsuccessful.  The torps that hit, and eventually sank, the Bismark, US BBs at Pearl, Prince of Wales, Musashi and Yamato did not break any backs and had extremely thick armor to penetrate at times.

[BALSUR]

Not the same as bombs Morph, torpedos have shaped charges.

[MadSquirrel]

Torpedos that had magnetic detonators passed about 2 meters under the keel of the ship and exploded creating a shockwave of water that expanded around the explosion lifing and many times "Breaking the back" of the ship.  A shockwave of water has a bit more "Ummphh" than a shockwave of air.  And bombs didn't explode under tanks and lift them like torpedos did.  Not to mention the Mass difference.  And impact detonators exploded on the side of the ships creating a hole.  It isn't really fair to compare the two.

Now the bomb exploding far enough away that the shockwave hits the tank.  The shockwave does not effect the inside of the tank.  It will pass around it like a rock.  It will be effected but not in the way people are suggesting.  If anything the crew would be injured by acceration and decceleration of the tank after the initial shockwave.  Or from it tipping over.  A direct hit by a 1000 lber here I don't think is the issue.  It is the 500 lber that lands 50 yards away and the tank is destroyed.  

If I can have a both tracks blown off or land upside down after rolling out of a tree or for crying out loud  bouncing down a 11,000 foot mountain, supplies should fix what a 500 lber does when I am all buttoned up.  

LTARsqrl  

[Bodhi]

I really wonder what Michael Wittman thinks, wherever he is, about rockets or bombs not being effective against heavy tanks.

Flat out, a 500 lb egg landing next to a Tiger will likely stun/injure the crew from the shock and resulting bodies thrown against hard metal and render it combat ineffective.  It will also likely throw a track and damage the running gear.

An egg or cannon / MG shells setting fire to an "external fuel tank" as some have suggested will likely catch the tank itself on fire, and result in a destroyed vehicle.  In case you are not aware, sustained heat of the magnitude of a fire will turn the armour brittle with no chance of repair.

A 1000 lb egg hitting near a heavy tank is likely going to kill the crew from the shock and split weld seams, and make the tank so heavily damaged that it will likely be abandoned.  A direct hit is likely going to go through, or have we forgotten about inertia.

I have studied and read extensively on WW2 armour.  While I am not an expert, I do retore aircraft and vehicles.  I even sat in a Tiger that was abandoned in a foreign country and sits there to this day (can not get an import permit for it).  The hardness you guys claim of these vehicles is just not the case.  

All in all, heavy tanks were very vulnerable to air power.  If they were not, the allies would never have been able to win at Normandy, because it was the incessant allied attacks during good weather that kept the German Armour at bay.  They, the German Armour, faired very well at Normandy when the weather prohibited the jabos from finding their tanks.


I will say a supportive thing for the pro armour guys here though.  The US halftracks should not stop ANY round in here short of a 7.9mm fired from 500 yds.  The armour is 1/4 inch thick on the whole of the vehicle with the exception being 1/2 inch think armour for the drivers FWD windscreen cover.  The only other US halftracks with thicker armour were the International Harvester manufactured M5 and M9 series with 5/16 inch armour, which has homogenous steel (welded together) and not face hardened like the 1/4 inch armour on the White and Autocar versions.

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by BALSUR
Not the same as bombs Morph, torpedos have shaped charges.

THE POINT was my friend is shock wave. One that you just cant seem to get through you head.

Maybe you need a lesson in physics?

What do you think a bombs job is?