Serious question on tanking in AH

[vorticon]

Originally posted by Blue Mako
BenDover, dive bombing has precisely zero relevance to this discussion.  Although, as you brought it up, let's look at the logic of it, shall we?  Would a real life pilot make a pass to strafe a hardened object like a tank if he is carrying bombs?

what if he doesnt have a bomb but the next guy does???




you have a greater chance of getting your mg fire through the hatch that the pintle gunner is standing in than you do to bounce a .50 round off the ground creating a HUGE loss in E then hitting 10mm thick german armour creating a peirce in the armour that proves to be magically deadly...

[MAJ KONIG]

ok, I heard enough. Here's the skinny on german tanks being straffed.

1. heavy tanks could not be taken out with .50 cals period. The fighter pilots would try and bounce rounds underneath the tank because  personnel would sometimes seek cover under a heavy tank during an air attack.

2. the crews of tanks would bail out because almost all planes that attacked them carried rockets. Pilots perferred to save .50 cals for softer targets or the occasional axis fighter. The rockets would destroy the motor or detrack the tank. The crews wouldn't stay inside because gettin bounced around inside a tank aint too good concidering they aint padded like our cars.

3. as for fumes or leaking fuel, yes german tanks leaked all the time. but the crews didnt care because they didnt run on gas like the allied death traps did. they ran on diesel, which needs more than a spark to ignite.

4. the biggest reason you can straff and kill AH panzers is because they are not perk vehicles. You must be able to defend a base if the ordinence is down you could just spawn panzers and roll over any field.

ps. one more note look and see when they invented armor piercing .50 cal ammo and see if they used it in airplanes. you answer will be .50 ball ammo is all they used with the 4 to 1 ratio on tracers.

[Pei]

Originally posted by MAJ KONIG
.

ps. one more note look and see when they invented armor piercing .50 cal ammo and see if they used it in airplanes. you answer will be .50 ball ammo is all they used with the 4 to 1 ratio on tracers.

No they used API bullets as well (almost all a/c mounted MGs had some form of AP or API bullet in a standard load).

However the chances of a .50 call bullet piecing 10mm+ of armour plate at a high angle of incidence after bouncing off a road are pretty damn slim. Whatever the notional penetration of the round you must take into account that
a) It has lost significant energy after hitting the road surface
b) the round has most likely been deformed to some extent by the impact
c) the round will have been made very unstable (it will likely be tumbling or at least is unlikely to be flying exactly nose on).

The RAF and the LW found that AP rounds could be made significantly unstable by passage through a few mm of aircraft skin and this in turn drastically reduced thier armour penetration.

The RAF did a study of tanks knocked out in France in 1944 and found that very few of them had been disabled by a/c (vastly less then claims by RAF and USAAF pilots: something like 5% IIRC), and most of them had been taken out by direct rocket or bomb hits.

I think it most likely that reported kills were more likely to be light or unarmoured vehicles or just complete mistakes.

[Blue Mako]

Originally posted by Furious
It's easy to end this conversation.  Provide one documented case in which a tank was determined to have been disabled by mg fire to its underside.

Don't end the conversion, it's much too much fun to see everyone get all excited about it.  Everytime someone hears something on History channel or reads a single opinion in a book they become experts.  It's fun to keep em posting.  "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

[vorticon]

Don't end the conversion, it's much too much fun to see everyone get all excited about it. Everytime someone hears something on History channel or reads a single opinion in a book they become experts. It's fun to keep em posting. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

of course that little knowledge is usually the extent of it...




once again we have come to the agreement that there is no way a .50 could peirce a tanks armour...let alone after ritchocheting off a road

[Drunky]

I once ricocheted a round from my panzer off another panzer and killed an osti.

I had to gauge the angle very, very closely to make sure my round skipped off the enemy panzer's turret and hit the osti dead six.

It was tough.

[BenDover]

got a film?