1000-Pound Bomb, Blast Radius, and Ground Vehicles

[Zippatuh]

Question:  Does anyone know the blast radius to damage ratio of a 1000-pound bomb in AH?  It does not appear to me that it is large enough.

I’m not the greatest dive-bomber in AH, but I’m not too shabby.  I generally hit on, or real close, to whatever the target happens to be at the time.  Some of the time it happens to be on various vehicles, which after some repeated attacks, started me thinking.  Is the vehicle armor to high or the blast radius to low?

I spent some time in the service and happened to get suckered in as the poor bastard who wondered around looking for land mines.  That wasn’t the whole job, I got to blow some things up also, as well as place my own mines.  Did I mention the miles of concertina-wire?  Anyway off track a little.  I had the opportunity to drive an Armored Personnel Carrier and sit 300 feet away from 1500 pounds of explosive, strung over 150 yards, as they were detonated.  It was pretty cool but thinking about that I started looking at AH.

I have on several occasions dropped a 1K with in what looks like 50 feet of a GV.  FP was moving, dived, dropped, looked back, and saw the blast and crater with the FP just on the edge of the ground scorch.  There was no visible damage.  Now I have then had someone else drop, GV explodes, and I get credit for the kill.  Obviously there was some damage but none that visibly affected the vehicle.  Knowing a little about the nature of explosives, I can go with that.  But what about the shock wave?

If someone is sitting in a steel can and 1k worth of bad karma is detonated with in 50 feet, they’re bell is going to get rung!  The vehicle might be somewhat OK but the people inside should be shaken.  It would be my suggestion to institute something like the pilot wound when sizeable ordinance is detonated in such a close proximity.  Not permanent mind you but 5-10 seconds of black out, then recovery.  Yes the vehicle is going to be vulnerable but it should be.  I just can’t imagine being able to drive through something like that as if it were just a pothole on the interstate.

So, bring on the shock wave and institute a driver blackout when you’re in that wave.

Zippatuh

[popeye]

"So, bring on the shock wave and institute a driver blackout when you’re in that wave."

Gets my vote.

[eskimo2]

Makes sense and sounds good.
Gunners should be able to be wounded and guns should able to be damaged as well.

eskimo

[Ripsnort]

Mine too, great post!

[Replicant]

Good post.

On a similar note about shockwaves, I was talking to some Army guys about the British 'Chobham' armour.  It's virtually inpenetratable to other Tank shells and he mentioned in the Gulf War a couple of Challenger tanks were hit by their counterparts.  Anyway, the shell just recochet'd off, but left the crews ears ringing for quite some time! Definitely messes with their heads anyhow.

Surely in AH this could be modelled as temporary blackout?  Say 10 - 20 seconds for a nearby bomb blast or 5 seconds for a shell hit?

I do agree that the 1000lb bomb blast is under modelled though...

Regards

Nexx

[Ripsnort]

On a side note, a 1000 lber. dropped within 500 feet of any GV such as M3 or M16 *should* roll that sucker over like a flea...

[Zippatuh]

The recent “friendly fire” accident that was in either Kuwait or Saudi I can’t remember which, where the pilot dropped ordinance on the observers position.  That was a 500 lber, there were a hand full of hummers and a few blazers (cant remember the ARMY term for em) that were scorched pretty bad.  I think a few were tore up.  I’ll see if I cant find the pictures they put out.

Zippatuh

[Fester']

it would be neat if bomb blasts could tip vehicles over

[Zippatuh]

Well, it seems the AP has all the pictures and they want a registered user to be able to look at them.  I don’t feel like registering.  In this situation the pilot dropped 3X 500’s.  In the few small captions I saw some of the vehicles caught on fire.

500 feet is a bit too far for that type of force required to turn a half track over.  500 feet is like 1 and half football fields.  At 100 feet though, yes, I would expect something as light as they are to gain some additional ground clearance.

Zippatuh