Death to German occupants!
Areas of
GERMAN TANKS
vulnerable to the 85 mm gun
Directorate of the Commander of the Armoured and Mechanized Forces of the Red Army
Military publisher of the USSR NKO, Moscow, 1944
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Areas of tanks |
Range, meters |
Attention! |
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Ferdinand |
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1. Hit
the barrel with an AP shell at any range. The enemy’s gun will stop firing
when hit. 2. Hit
the tracks, front and rear wheels with an HE shell. The tank will stop. 3. Hit
the front of the tank (under the gun) with an HE shell. You will blind the
driver. 4. Hit
the machine gun mounts and sights with an AP shell. |
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Side and rear armour, 85 mm |
1000-2000 |
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Tiger B |
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Upper side armour, 82 mm |
1300 |
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Lower side armour, 82 mm |
2000 |
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Rear armour, 82 mm |
1300 |
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Tiger |
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Front armour, 100 mm |
1000 |
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Side armour, 62-82 mm |
1700- all ranges |
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Rear armour, 82 mm |
2000 |
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Panther |
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Front turret, 100 mm |
1000 |
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Side and rear armour, 45 mm |
All ranges |
Strike enemy tanks with certainty!
Any enemy heavy tank can be knocked out, stopped, or set aflame by our tank and anti-tank artillery. To be certain, let the tank approach as closely as possible.
The side of tanks is the most vulnerable to our artillery. If the shell strikes the fuel tank area, the tank will be set aflame.
Choose a vulnerable spot and aim your gun carefully. Make full use of your gun's rate of fire.
Aim to strike the enemy tank at normal (90 degrees). Don't lose heart if the hit is unsuccessful, keep firing until the enemy tank is completely destroyed. Believe in the power of your weapon. Observe your target carefully.
Legend
Subcaliber shot
AP shell
HE shell (fire from any range)
Machine gun port, sight opening, commander's cupola
Penetration range
No real big surprises, but:
ReplyDelete1) I would think that a frontal gun barrel hit on a King Tiger would be a risky affair (small target, surrounded by a thick tapered mantlet).
2) I think the middle of the Panther's mantlet (up to halfway up) is fair game at 1000 meters and even beyond, but at some point the slope would bounce shots. But I would have thought the lower, thinner hull plate was also vulnerable at some range (maybe less than 1000 meters, but still better than shooting the upper hull).
3) The 120 mm Tiger I mantlet I would be barely vulnerable at 1000 meters, but so would be the large lower plate (100 mm at 25 degrees, I think?). They are both about the same effective thickness. The only reason why the lower plate might not be cited is if it were covered with spare tracks.
I think British tests showed that the Tigers gun mantled was around as effective as a 100mm plate. It's especially vulnerable near MG and gun optic openings. Gun mantleds that cover the entire front of the turret also have the tendency to get stuck when hit or penetrated, jamming the guns gun elevation and disabling the tank that way.
DeleteInteresting if the Tiger's mantlet was that poor, overall (I don't think much of 'weak near the MG and optic openings' as nearly all tanks have that problem and those areas are far too small to be targetable).
DeleteI've concluded a lot of people seemingly on the War Thunder and WOT forums apparently think that tank designers were idiots (the turret is a lot weaker than the hull, etc"). That's because often they don't take things like the effective median slope of a rounded turret or whatnot--the Germans apparently calculated these to be ~40 degrees, for the IS-2 and T-34/85, just from my back-calculating from their data (I don't think the Germans calculated in the effects of overmatching, though). The Tiger is then, by design if not maybe in actual practice, supposed to be so that it really doesn't matter where you shoot at it, while there is some variation in the theoretical armor protection, it's not much.
And where there is a weak point, it's more often should be regarded as a strong point. The Pershing's hull is not really "weak" (what, 160 mm effective armor?) against most gun but its layered turret armor is actually quite strong (~200 mm) which means, combined with gun depression, it's quite good in reverse-slope situations.