From: Ryan Gill (rmgill@mindspring.com)
Date: Tue Dec 14 2004 - 12:35:28 PST
At 1:49 PM -0500 12/14/04, Steve Grammont wrote:
> >The same could be said for the profusion of track links and other
>>materials that increased the number of shot traps on the exterior of
>>the armor.
>
>Exactly. However, at various points in time vs. specific weapons these
>extra track links did indeed help. The only example that comes right to
>mind is defeating ATR (anti-tank rifles) that were borderline capable of
>penetrating under normal conditions. It is also possible that the track
>links would have helped thinner armor better withstand fragmentation type
>hits that were borderline capable of penetrating the base armor.
>
>All sorts of expedients were used to better protect armor from
>penetration. Especially Western Allied vehicles which were generally
>outclassed by a large portion of German AT capabilities for most of the
>war. I've seen examples of concrete, wood beams/planks, logs, and even
>mattresses used to offer crews "greater" protection from AT weapons.
>Unfortunately, all these did was add weight to the vehicle and increased
>its chance of mechanical failure, bogging, or reduced speed.
>
>Even some of the field applied armor fell into this category, simply
>because the extra armor did not increase the practical effectiveness
>enough to make a difference. If you had, say, 20cm armor and you doubled
>it to 40cm you've added a lot of weight to a vehicle that was probably
>already underpowered and overloaded to begin with. However,
>effectiveness is only 50% greater (physics involved here) which really
Ahh, you're talking about the two plates of 20mm isn't equal to a
single plate of 40mm. That's had some interesting contradictory
conclusions based on the study. In some cases the welds that hold the
second plate on fail and the plate basically shears away leaving you
some net protection level of around 30mm. In other cases it seems to
offer more protection if the applique armor is added correctly.
Some of the studies looked at it with a naval caliber weapon issue
others were more from the land warfare perspective. In the naval
weapons area, the armor thicknesses were greater but the penetrators
were substantially larger too. Overall hardness was lower for a given
large section of RHA vs a much thinner section of plate.
Still, it really was mostly moot, when an 8.8cm Flak or 7.5cm L60 PAK
was shooting at you, it didn't matter if you had 20mm 40mm or 60mm,
you were still going to get perforated.
The only vehicle I can see really benefiting from the additional
"padding" as it were are the Churchills. They seemed to be able to
handle a great deal of additional weight and weren't all that fast.
With the last models having more armor than a tiger, it was a pretty
substantial beast for the Germans to shoot at regardless of their
usual state of significant overmatching of allied armor. At least in
the case of the Churchills, the crews tended to bail out of a
perforated tank in good order and make their way's back to the rear
area's to get another tank. More often than not, a Sherman or
Cromwell in the same situation was brewed up and perhaps one crewman
was able to escape.
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