50 Cal verse Tank

[-ammo-]

yes I think that is not true. A ricochet has spent much energy adn is no longer efficient enough to penetrate armor. I dont beleive that at all. But brulle did his homwork after the war, and did so with interviews with all kinds of folks. I stated some of his references in an earlier post. My point is the Mk IV we have, gets destroyed in AH and while I dont think the DM is great, at least it is representative to an extent. Toad himself has brought up anomalies that deserve equal consideration. I just doint thinkt eh 50 cals deserve the rap they are getting.

brady said--

Irespective of what piolets say on the matter, studies done after the battle by inspectiors on the ground revealed that strafing atacks by Allied Jabo's( typhoons included) did not kill tanks.

blaaaa

[Vulcan]

Heres one for you... define KILLING a tank, in AH that is, versus KILLING a tank in the war.

For example, in WW2 the brits find a panzer abandoned. What if that panzer had been straffed with 50's, and a couple of 50's ended up doing the ricochet inside? Now the chances are slim, mebbe a 1000 to 1, but... if a group of aircraft unload a few thousand 50 rounds at tanks that puts a few 50's cals bouncing thru a tank crew.

So mebbe the tank crew abandoned the vehicle? Or mebbe they were killed without major damage to the tank and the allied soldiers that found them buried them. The brit inspectors turn up and call it an abandoned tank.

Or say a tank was detracked by a tiffies 20mm and the crew decides to leg it cos they don't have time to fix it. Brits find it and classify it as what? How do they know what took out the track. Hell, an AT team might have spotted the tank sitting there and decided to to whack it just in case and then its classifed as an AT kill.

The stats are really pure conjecture. Until one of us sits in a Panzer while the other strafes us we really don't know toejam

[Wotan]

how about just doing the math

bouncing 50 cal through the vision slit is probrably about the same odds as bouncing 1 off the ground. what kinda angle do you think you need to do that?

I dont know 100% sure. From what I gather tanks were abandoned as a result of their supply and support vehicles being destroyed. Out of gas, ammo etc. Joachim Peiper's crew left all their vehicles when they ran out of fuel in the battle of the bulge.

[brady]

Gentailmen, the above pentration figures posted by illo, are for impacts from 90 degrees, illo what happens to that pentration from 85 and 80 degrees, would you mind my math math skills are not as good as your's m8t:)

     Even rockets and bombs had a very slim chance of killing tanks on the battlefield, look at the info above.

  No matter how you rationalise it how many angles you look at it from the sources above and the simple math of it all point to the fact that 50 cal's in AH are curentaly was outa hand when it comes to their distructive effect aganst The Panzer IV, and Osty Hull.

  I have several books in my libary with conflicting data on all types of stuff, ranging from Submarines to Tanks to Aircraft, it is not unheard of for an auther to be wrong. Why would those batifield inspectors be blowing smoke up our but's from half a centuary ago, what the guy's were on the take? they worked for a tank company? dident want the Aircraft makers runing thier busisness?

[Vulcan]

Wotan... what do ya reckon    lets say 10000:1 odds. Now how many 50 cal rounds were hosed away per week by 51s and Jugs and 38s at tanks? It still works out theres quite a few 50 cals rounds bouncing around in them panzers.

Brady, as you said... Even rockets and bombs had a very slim chance of killing tanks on the battlefield.

The keywords are KILL and TANK. Look at these stats:
AP Shot: 16
Hollow charge projectile: 0
HE Shell: 3
Aircraft rocket: 3
Aircraft cannon: 0
Destroyed by crew: 10
Abandoned: 10
Unknown: 5

10 tanks abandoned. WHY were they abandoned. Did A/C kill their fuel trailors, detrack them, or kill a significant portion of the crew?

10 Destroyed by crew. Once again... WHY?

5 Unknown. Unknown???

Of these stats over 50% of the casualties have no detailed explanation. That doesn't even take a look at the possibility that some of AP/HE shot tanks may have been at already abandoned or dead units.

They were blowing smoke up someones arse if they thought that this added up to informative data.

What I'm saying is a P51 pilot could have effectively disabled a tank and/or its crew. Now are AH tank 'kills' this sort of thing, or are they catastrophic destruction of the tank? If they are the later, then yes its screwed.

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Vulcan
Heres one for you... define KILLING a tank, in AH that is, versus KILLING a tank in the war.

For example, blah blah blah

Or blah blah blah

So we are down to wild speculations now?

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Vulcan
Wotan... what do ya reckon    lets say 10000:1 odds. Now how many 50 cal rounds were hosed away per week by 51s and Jugs and 38s at tanks? It still works out theres quite a few 50 cals rounds bouncing around in them panzers.

Brady, as you said... Even rockets and bombs had a very slim chance of killing tanks on the battlefield.

The keywords are KILL and TANK. Look at these stats:
AP Shot: 16
Hollow charge projectile: 0
HE Shell: 3
Aircraft rocket: 3
Aircraft cannon: 0
Destroyed by crew: 10
Abandoned: 10
Unknown: 5

10 tanks abandoned. WHY were they abandoned. Did A/C kill their fuel trailors, detrack them, or kill a significant portion of the crew?

10 Destroyed by crew. Once again... WHY?

5 Unknown. Unknown???

Of these stats over 50% of the casualties have no detailed explanation. That doesn't even take a look at the possibility that some of AP/HE shot tanks may have been at already abandoned or dead units.

They were blowing smoke up someones arse if they thought that this added up to informative data.

What I'm saying is a P51 pilot could have effectively disabled a tank and/or its crew. Now are AH tank 'kills' this sort of thing, or are they catastrophic destruction of the tank? If they are the later, then yes its screwed.

The odds for shooting a .50 cal bullet through a vision slit is much much worse than 10000:1...try 1 000 000:1 and you are closer to the truth.

Abandoned=no visible battle damage, most agreed upon reason for that is no fuel. And exactly what is your mental picture of the 1944 German army? "Oh no, a P-51 strafed us and killed Heinz and Otto (who were outside the tank for some reason) we must abandon the tank instead of driving it home to get replacements."

Destroyed by crew=normal scenario, immobilized tank, allies approaching, crew bails and destorys tank.

If you look at the numbers you are quoting, they are from the 17 dec 1944-16 jan 1945 table. That means we are looking at German losses during the battle of the Bulge. Most people tend to agree that the German forces were pretty low on gas during that battle. Heck, some will even claim that alot of German panzer units had to abandon their tanks because they were out of fuel. But if you want to speculate that the tank COULD have been badly shot up by a passing P-47 who raked it a couple of times with deadly .50 cal bullets, and this scared the crew enough for them to abandon the tank and destroy it, go ahead.

Unknown is just that, unknown.
These are tanks that were so badly damaged that it was impossible to determine the cause of destruction.

If one were to speculate, it might be more concievable that those tanks were killed in close combat vs allied infantry, or that some of those 5 tanks suffered a direct hit from a 2000lbs bomb, or 203mm arty shell.

But if you want to speculate that some P-51 pilot might have bounced a couple of .50 cals off a tree, through the vision slit, and hit the reserve ammo to blow the tank up, then go ahead.

[brady]

After reading extensively on the Subject over my life time ( I used to be an ASL junky), I know that mechanical break downs were for the German heavy tanks a bigger problem than the Allies. in fact most all the losses of German heavy tanks were from abandoment due to mechanical break down, If the tank was at the front and not able to be recovered, then It was destroyed by the crew.

 If I were to engage in speculation , I would say more likely than not the AP shot "kills" were more likely on the Medieum tanks like the Panzer IV, and that the abandoned tanks were heavy's Panther's or Tiger's. To compiund this issue of abandoment All the tigers in the Bulge were the King Tigers save one( if memorie servies) This monster was very prone to break downs.

   A prime example of how wacked the armor model is an event that hapened just a few minitues ago to me in the MA, ya I know not another storie... but bear with me...


         I am in a M8 siting just behind the VH at a V base sofening up the VH with whats left of my 37mm HE.

 A osty spawns, he drives around to whear I am so he can shoot me.

 I wait, I got my trusty 50 cal UBER cannon in hand...no fear...take a drink....

 He comes around the end of the VH and I T/O his turet with a 1 sec burst of 50 cal fire from about 50 yards( now that armore is 16mm thik and sloped at 25 Degreas....not to shure this is Possable in the real world)

 I emideatly switch to his track, another one sec burst he is imobalized( even your vaunted expert on the killer 50 cal sya's that Panzer tracks could shrug off 50 cal fire)

 Their he sits smoking and stuck in less than 3 seconds...But wait!

  He is not one to give up easly, he jumps into his bow gun, and in just one short burst I lose my MA( the 50 cal).

 I go back to my 37mm and continue on the hanger....

  He respawns...

  This time one shot from my 37mm to his turet t/o his gun, no suprise ost turet guns die easy.

 Now I switch to his tracks, 5 hits in to his tracks and NOTHING he keeps coming firing his MG 34 the whole time, soon I lose a tire, then I explode...from a MG 34....lol

[Shiva]

What I'm saying is a P51 pilot could have effectively disabled a tank and/or its crew. Now are AH tank 'kills' this sort of thing, or are they catastrophic destruction of the tank? If they are the later, then yes its screwed.

One of the things that is going to distort results in the MA is that players in AH lack the urgency of self-preservation that exists in RL. You get shot down, or blown up, and you just take off again; you've run your K/D down a bit, but it's not a big deal.

This is why, for example, you have people who can consistently take down heavily-armed bombers, or who have gunnery percentages many times what good pilots in WWII had -- when you can try again and again, and it doesn't matter if you 'die' dozens of times in the process, eventually you learn how to do it right.

How many tank crews would continue to man a tank after the main armament was disabled? Pretty few; they'd unass the tank and retreat ASAP. But we regularly see GVs and aircraft continuing to fight long past the point at which, in RL, the crew would have either disengaged or abandoned the vehicle. So even if the damage model is fixed, we're still going to get results that are distorted from what happened in RL. But we should at least be able to get realistic damage, even if what the players do with their damaged machines is ahistorical.

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by brady
After reading extensively on the Subject over my life time ( I used to be an ASL junky), I know that mechanical break downs were for the German heavy tanks a bigger problem than the Allies. in fact most all the losses of German heavy tanks were from abandoment due to mechanical break down, If the tank was at the front and not able to be recovered, then It was destroyed by the crew.

 If I were to engage in speculation , I would say more likely than not the AP shot "kills" were more likely on the Medieum tanks like the Panzer IV, and that the abandoned tanks were heavy's Panther's or Tiger's. To compiund this issue of abandoment All the tigers in the Bulge were the King Tigers save one( if memorie servies) This monster was very prone to break downs.

Hehe, cool, Im an old ASL player too. Still play sometimes too. In the middle of a Red Barricades campaign with a couple of friends.

Your theory is sound, but the british study whose numbers Ive quoted only examined PzV wrecks. There are similar studies for PzVI and PzIV wrecks too.

[0scar]

I've never killed a panzer in AH with 50s b4 and have never seen it done. I've disabled plenty of armor in AH with 50 cals and when they abandon them they obviously explode and you get the 'kill'.

[brady]

Oscar I do not know how much time you have online or do I intend this to be deragotary in nature, but last tour I hade over 180 hours on line, I have been playing for a few years and I have seen a lot of stuff, I have seen this happen often enough to warent my posting on this subject and based on my experance and knowledge of the subject matter find fault with it m8t.

      Wow red baracades I have that one, had some good fights on it......ahhh those were the days:)

[WldThing]

Well i can confirm that ive killed a panzer with 6x .50 cals in the P51.  A squaddie needed to bring a goon in for capture and   I used 1080/800 rds to kill the panzer made several passes and with 1 pass i got him smoking, i still kept shooting within the passes that were being made.  And with 200 rds left i made 1 last pass and i seen the Panzer blow up.. I know he wasnt soft since he just spawned and i was the only a/c around when he spawned.  

Moral of this story:  Anything is possible.

[HeLLcAt]

I agree with WldThing...I have used the F6F MANY of times to kill ostys and panzers...I take out there main gun on the first pass and let em have it after that. The best way to kill a tank is from the back because the engine is there and it blows up the easiest. SALUTE ALL!

~BlueiceJ~