Russian Ammunition

EDIT - I may of been a bit misleading and wrong in a few areas and will correct several errors.

Okay, I have been reading about your comments about the Prussian 85mm vs the German 75 and US 76.2 and how it is equal. That is actually incorrect in several ways.

Russian used a different type of shot then most countries who used these three types.

AP - simply a solid shot used to pierce enemy armor
APC - an AP round with a soft cap on the nose, which would absorb the shock from impact and reduce the chance of the round shattering. However, the shell had horrible ballistics, and generally was followed by...
APCBC - and APC round with a Ballistic Cap (BC) on it to improve ballistics.

Generally most armies had an HE filler in their APCBC shells, the Germans having half an ounce of explosives while the Sherman shell had 2.3 ounces of filler. The British seemed to take out the fuse and use the shell like a regular AP round.

Now onto the Russians, they used what was called an APBC round, the ballistic cap being a blunt nose with a soft material at the tip.

http://www.freeweb.hu/gva/references/gl ... .html#APBC

Now you can understand, blunt nose projectiles are not the greatest shells for penetrating armor since the kinetic energy is focused into a much bigger area, and thus Russian shells suffered from pretty poor penetration in general.

Now, what advantages did this shell offer? The simple answer is better performance vs sloped armor. The blunt nose meant the shell was less likely to ricochet, and the soft blunted cap actually would redirect the shell into a MORE vertical position with the armor, neglecting much of the slope advantage. This is the effect:



This site sums it up better then I can:

http://www.battlefield.ru/index.php?opt ... 64&lang=ru

Here is a picture of soviet blunt nose ammo, the top shell.



http://www.flamesofwar.com/Article.asp?ArticleID=324

Here is a nice picture of soviet ammo types



1. An Armor-Piercing High Explosive projectile with a sharp nose (APHE);
2. An Armor-Piercing High Explosive projectile with a blunt nose and a ballistic cap (APHEBC);
3. ASolid Armor-Piercing projectile with a blunt nose and a ballistic cap (APBC);
4. A Solid Armor-Piercing projectile with a blunt caped and a ballistic cap (APCBC).

It appears it was more the blunt nose then the type of cap which allowed the russian ammo to readjust its angle, which explains why allied shells with Ballistic Caps did not experience "normalization".

So in effect, the 85mm, while having the same penetrate at zero degrees as the 75mm and 76.2mm, the 85mm would be much better vs sloped armor then either of the two, and really, much better at killing panthers because of the sloped parts (though the hull was still too thick).

However, in more practical terms, most combat engagements do not occur at 0 degree angles where all shells hit flat slabs of metal. For example the hull of a Mark4 panzer might not be facing your tank at all, but be at a 30 degree angle, hence you shell will be hitting angled armor even though the tank itself has no sloped armor. THis is why penetration tables are often given in 30 degree angles, because combat is never at flat angles.

As a result the 85mm would be overall a better shot because it would have superior penetration at angled armor, and its shells were less likely to be deflected because of the blunt nose angle. On the other hand, a lot of velocity was lossed due to its blunt nose created more drag and the kenetic energy being distributed over a larger area. Overall, it was at least slightly superior to the US and German guns.

However the 85mm should of been so much more powerful. Taking away the blunt nose APBC ammo could of make it much more superior to the axis 75 and US 76.2 because of increased velocity and penetration. Even if it had a greater chance of richochet, a better shell could have increased penetration over the APBC round at flat and angled armor. At least that is MY opinion, and an opinion only.

 

Yes, but since the German ammunition was all APCBC (except for the few APCR shells being used), these shells would have the same advantage.

 

CORRECTION:

Actually it really wasnt the Ballistic Cap, my fault for misleading you. See my changes to the little article I wrote.

 

You surely you ment Soviet and not Prussian (Prussia was part of Germany and population of German nationality).

152,4mm BR-540 AP round for ML-20 howitzer (used on SU-152 and Isu-152) ~48,5 kg :

BR-540 shell:
1- shirt - high quality forged steel, made from one peace and specialy thermicaly improved (for improved hardness) - 47,450kg
2- explosive charge -heksogen and aluminium powder - 1,2kg
3- detonator MD-7 - 120gr

propellant charge for BR-540 (for other shells this charge is slightly different):
1- compound for sealing
2- cardboard plugs
3- casing - brass - 7,5kg
4- bag with gunpowder
5- gunpowder (NDT-3 16/1) - 7,2kg
6- incendiary cap BD

entire round (shell + propellant charge with casing + all detonators) weighted 63,325kg. Now imagine getting hit with that :smok:

Why Zveroboi (beast fighter) was abush predator if used against tanks:
Penetration for BR-540 (all info for impact angle of 90 degrees):
range - penetration
100m - 140mm
500m - 132mm
1000m - 124mm
2000m - 109mm
3000m - 96mm
5000m - 85mm

BTW they also found out that for knocking out King Tigers, G-530 (penetrating HE - weight of the shell :40kg of which 5,1kg of TNT) bunker busters were more effective that BR-540 when KT was hit from a side.

G-530 152,4mm round for busting bunkers built from armoured concrete:


1- TNT 5,1kg
2-shirt thick walled steel
3-detonator KTD
4-bottom

 

I thought the most common Russian AP round type was regular AP, not APBC. In any case, the best rounds would always be the scarce helpings of APCR (called HVAP by the Americans, Subcalibre by the Russians).

 

I have edited my initial post with this info.

 

Woops. Sorry the latest update of Firefox has a spell check (not a perfect one mind you). Generally I type pretty fast, so I neglect to put capitals on countries names. When you type russia with a small r, you can correct it two ways, the first choice being Prussia, the second being Russia with a capital R. I accidentally clicked on the first choice being Prussia. My fault. Yes I mean Russia.

 

A quick look at the Guns vs Armour site that you referenced shows nearly identical penetration for the 85mm AP and APBC rounds at both zero and 30deg with maybe a slight advantage to the APBC round at longer range, and the US 76mm is still very close.

If the blunt nose offered any advantage against sloped armour it is not borne out by these figures, especially the 30deg which you would expect to be little different to 0deg for the APBC.

 

Too bad penetration tables only serve as estimates and not actuality as underbattlefield conditions the round would not always hit its target head on but from wierd angles as well. Kinda hard to explain but than again I was never good with words.

 

The Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin penetration tables rank as such:

Sherman 76: 100m 500m 1000m 2000m
0 deg - 123 113 103 88
30 deg - 96 89 81 70
60 deg - 47 45 41 35

T-34/85: 100m 500m 1000m 2000m
0 deg - 120 110 97 77
30 deg - 109 100 90 73
60 deg - 56 54 51 45

I tend to go with these tables because normalization should have an effect, and these tables show that it does. In my own opinion, I cant help but wonder if the makers of many of these penetration tables simply got the penetration at zero degrees, then multiplied it by 0.8 to get the equivalent 30 degree angle. While this would work fine for most shells, it would not give the proper penetration for Russian shells because of the blunt nose effecting penetration more.

 

Proper sources list their own sources when they report such information. They would not simply "multiply by 0.8" to get penetration values at different angles, they'd base their tables on testing and if no numbers are available they would not be listed.

I'd appreciate it if you can find a source for these tables; even if they are accurate, a computer game is not a source of any reliability by default. If this game is good they'll probably have their own sources listed so could you cite them on that please?

 

I will ask around on the battlefront forums for this info.

However I never meant to imply the people on the web site used math to determine the angle, but more so the testers themselves. I have absolutely no clue how they determined how much armor a shell could penetrate, whether they tested their shots against angled armor or not.

However simply in my opinion, it seems much more reasonable that the blunt nose ammo would outdo the US ammo, since both travel at the same speed, roughtly 800m/s, and the 85mm shell would have more mass and the blunt nose principle increased penetration vs sloped armor. That is why I stick by the combat mission penetration tables.

If however this is not true, and the 85mm performs just like the 76.2mm at all ranges, one has to wonder why the Soviets would produce ammo that would reduce the performance of a shell against flat armor at all.

 

Unfortunately it's the Russians that mostly just played by ear with their penetration testing. Among their numbers it is not surprising to find wild overestimations or numbers reached by applying modifiers. Other countries mostly tested their rounds at 0 degree and 30 degree plates.

 

Well this may shed some light on this issue.

http://www.freeweb.hu/gva/weapons/soviet.html

Still waiting for the mod in the battlefront forums to let me in so I can inquire about the penetration tables.

 

Unfortunately that quote does little to support your previous posts concerning the penetrative power of Russian ammunition. In fact, what credit can we still give Russian penetration tables at all, if they were not the result of actual testing?

 

Actually I beg to differ, it could very well mean all the Russian penetration tables at 30 degrees on most sites are simply calculated, and thus the blunt nose effect is not taken into account.

Again, this is the reason why I am asking around at battlefront, so I can see if their tables are credible. However, it also means most other sites penetration tables for Russian ammo are probably flawed, so its hard to draw any conclusions about Russian and US guns.

 

That isn't a "blunt-nosed" AP - it's a nose-fuzed HE shell. I have one in my collection.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

I was thinking that, but I went along with the caption. Yeah, my mistake, thanks for the correction.

 

I have learned never to disagree with Tony- he will beat you down with superior logic jk, Tony

How accurate are those, though, I wonder (no seriously how accurate are those...other than 'more than combat tables')

 

To be honest I dont know how accurate the Combat Tables are, however it seems to be different then the norm. I mean all web tables put the penetration at similar to that of the sherman 76s gun, which makes sense from the whole calculation aspect because the sherman 76 and 34/85 had about the same penetration at 0 degrees, so if it was simply 0.8x calculations, then it makes sense why both would have about the same penetration at 30 degrees.

Combat mission is basically the only tables that I have seen that gives teh 85mm greater penetration at angles over the US 76 while similar penetration at 0 degrees. Due to the whole principle of blunt nose ammo, simply put the combat tables seem to make more sense, otherwise the whole reason for using blunt nose ammo is pretty dumb if it cant outdo similar ammo without blunt noses at angles.

Still working on battlefront forums.