You lead a team of engineers during the WWII, describe....

Well; the Allies made several times more tanks than Germany. As it has been pointed out several time that meant HE capability was more important for the Allies, since there were "relatively" few German tanks around. For the Germans the situation was the opposite, they usually faced large numbers of tanks, so the HE capability is less important.

Another aspect; the 88/L56 and 75/L70 guns were quite OK for killing Shermans and T-34, but that can also be done by an ordinary 75/L48 gun. The reason for making the "big" guns were the heavy Russians AFV and the Germans felt both the 88/L56 and the 75/L70 gun would not be powerful enough in the long run to cope with Russian armor.

 

The point is, in WWII, a large-calibre HE round was reasonably effective at killing tanks.
I think in one of Fletcher's books there's a quote from the official record of one British tank regiment where a Sherman came across a dug in heavy SP AT gun late in the war (type not specified) and was instructed to engage and destroy it.
Fletcher's comment after the quote was "the record doesn't state whether HE or AP was fired, but the target was left in flames as the regt advanced".
The British motto was "when in doubt, HE up the spout".
I would imagine that an 88mm HE round hitting a Sherman would be fairly effective...
BTW see my earlier post - I advocated the 88 L/71 as proposed for schmallturm Panther II. If the Germans were planning a bigger gun in a smaller turret then there couldn't have been that much of a problem.

 

I agree, but the 88mm gun was not made for killing Shermans! The arms race that lead to the development Tigers and so on happened on the Eastern Front. And I don´t think that HE has much effect on a SU-152. OK, a 170mm maybe.

 

The 88mm gun was developed for killing aircraft, and was first used on tanks in Spain... It really came into its own in France and North Africa (before Barbarossa) when it was one of the few guns capable of killing heavy Western tanks like the Matilda II.

The Tiger I was developed pre-war, rather than as a response to designs encounters in Russia, and the 88mm gun was the best gun they had...

 

The earliest Tiger prototypes are from around 1937. Not many of them resemble the definitive Tiger Ausf. E, such as for example the VK6501:




It didn't enter service before 1942 however...

 

That is not a prototype of a tiger, that´s a prototype of a heavy tank Germany was working on. And at that time this meant 30 tons and a 75mm gun with a muzzle velocity of 650 m/s. Definitely nothing that can be called "Tiger", "T-34" or "Sherman" would be more appropriate.

By the way: Regarding the "heavy SP AT gun" Oli mentioned. IIRC the Americans called all German Assault guns and TDs "self propelled guns". I think it makes little sense to put an SP artillery gun like the Hummel, a Nashorn and a Stug III in the same category. Personally I think this "heavy SP AT gun" was an actual SP gun with thin armour for protection against shrapnel. I just don´t think 75mm HE kills a Jagdpanther.

 

Considering the record said that it was "left in flames" then I would guess that the multiple hits and explosions caused an engine or ammunition fire.
Several rounds each of several kilogrammes of HE are NOT conducive to prolonged health. The sheer kinetic energy alone, while probably not penetrating (if it was heavily armoured) would cause ruptures in joints and leaks in fittings.
Total number of rounds fired was not stated IIRC, but also it read like the target didn't fire back - whether abandoned or crew concussed from the initial impact. But I'd guess there was certainly more than one round fired, probably three or more since setting the thing on fire would be the obvious way of making sure it was dead and safe to move past.
Put it this way - a 75mm round is roughly 7 kg and moves at say 600 m/sec on impact. That's 25,000,000 Joules (roughly). The same energy as, say, a 1 tonne family car doing 111 mph. But concentrated on a 75mm diameter circle - something will give way with enough impacts like that. And then add the energy of the HE going off.

Makes perfect sense, they were all capable of tank killing, they were all capable of firing HE, but none of them had the traverse of a tank: - and that would dictate tactics against it, get it from the side after manoeuvering so it can't shoot at you. Once it's dead then you can discuss exactly what it used to be...

 

Just shooting HE rounds into the target even if you had no chance of penetrating it was the tactic the Russians learned to use (succesfully) against Tigers with their obsolete T-34/76s.

 

But they have more differences, than the have things in common. A Hummel is an artillery gun, it´s made to fire HE indirectly. Any use as an AT gun is improvisational. A Marder is nothing but a Pak40 with an engine. The top and rear are open, the front and side shields are so thin it is as vulnerable against HE as any non SP gun. A Stug.III or a Hetzer has a fully closed compartment and is well enough armoured to stop smaller AP shells.
Puting all in the same category ignores these key differences.

 

To a guy in a tank such as a Sherman, who'd have been shot at more times than any of us would care to be, there would be NO DIFFERENCE between one SP gun and another. It's a very credible threat (a Hummel's gun is sufficiently large to damage/ kill a Sherman) and what would count is whether it has traverse or not.
That would dictate (as I said earlier) tactics on killing it. Once the thing is dead is the time to say (if they were even bothered, that is) "Oh, it was a Hummel/ Marder/ StuG"
Tanks are one type of threat, SP guns another. Regardless of type or sub-type they all require neutralising before you can move on. This is why regimental histories and the like rarely state what the opposition was other than "panzer" or "SP gun" or "AT gun" - if it's in in your way and shooting you don't give a d*mn WHAT it is until it's dead.
It's all very well us here discussing penetration values (as Merlin has remarked) but the guys there at the time had what they had, and had to do the job with what they had. A Sherman crew on point may have the chance to call in artillery if there's time, but if it's a big push then they had to deal with the threats as and when they appeared with the weapons fitted to the vehicle they were in.
It would do no good for them to say "well the penetration of the 75 at 1000 metres is Xmm and that vehicle (which I can't really identify becuase it's so well dug in and camouflaged) is Ymm. Let's wait for a 17 pr to come along".
In that situation you shoot at the b*gger and keep shooting until it's dead, you're dead or one of you runs away... there's no other option.

 

Well, if the guys in this Sherman fire HE they will notice the difference between a Nashorn and a JgPz.IV. The former will burst into flames, the latter will set them on fire. Not all so-called and actual "SP guns" are equally dangerous.

 

Like I said multiple 25MJ hits (plus the HE going off).... very nasty regardless of what you're in. If you've been hit once from something you can't see what do you? You leg it as fast as possible (Paraphrasing Peter Elstob in Warrior for the Working Day - "if shot at and missed you abandon the vehicle and let somebody else take care of it. If he missed close enough for you to notice, he's going to get a second round off that WILL hit before you've found him to shoot back")
From what I've read Brit practise in tanks with HE-capable guns carried an HE up the spout ready because it was a better all-purpose shot than AP. And some of my reading would indicate that HE was used against armour as much as AP.
It's a heavy lump coming at very high speed. Regardless of penetration statistics there's cracking of joints, rupturing or fracturing plate, shock load fatiguing etc. etc. And, like I said, 3-4 kg of HE going off directly on the vehicle is off-putting to say the least and will rip fittings and sights to pieces.
If you've been hit you get out. Any vehicle containing fuel and ammunition will catch fire if hit enough times with even non-penetrating rounds.

 

That made sense! Germany produced relatively few AFV compared to the Allies, so they were much more likely to come encounter a "soft" target than a hard one. But that does not change the fact that a StugIII or a JgPz.IV is a much more dangerous opponent than a Marder and so on. Therefore you should not be credited with killing just another SP gun, when you have if fact killed something much more powerful and dangerous. That just underrates your achievements.

 

That's a good point, but tankies were not fighter pilots and shared none of the glory of that job. Very few tankies were mentioned by name (Wittman of course being a major exception) and there were no celebrity/ ace tankies for the Brit public (AFAIK - anybody know different?)
For most of the guys on the ground it was something that needed doing. And they did it. A bunch of ordinary guys (on both sides) and their mates did what had to be done, and being alive at the end of the day was achievement enough...
After the third or fourth (or however many) the attitude would have been, they're dead, we're not, who cares what it was?
If it got taken out then that was problem solved and warranted no further thought. If it didn't get taken out then you were dead and weren't capable of further thought.
I haven't spoken to many tankies, mostly a German who was 9th Pz Div Recce and I knew two guys who were at also Arnhem and they were all, always, vague on what they'd faced - they knew of (and tolerated to great extent, even watching sometimes) my wargaming interest, but could never quite see why we differentiated between tank types so much...
Basically it never mattered to them particularly at the time.

 

Oli:
The reference you made on British crews carrying an HE round up-the-spout is a good point.
One thing I learned quickly in some of my video-tank-busting games is how important it is to keep the enemies head-down.
You fire that HE round and quickly reload with an AP. You don't unload the HE-round in breech with a AP-round... and give the enemy the extra-time to zero-in on you.
He who hesitates is lost...

Tim

 

Interestingly, one account I read stated that they liked to use AP against Anti-tank guns. For the life of me I can't figure out why...

 

At a guess that would be because they couldn't get a clear shot at the crew behind the shield? Put an AP through the gun shield and panic the crew, maybe.

 

but what if you miss? Get a HE hit near the gun and potentially kill/injure the crew, or at worst you at least make them duck. HE just seems the best option to me. I'm sure they had a good reason for preferring AP, I just can't see it.

 

I agree, a near miss will do if if the traget is a poorly protected gun. Maybe they used AP, because initially they did not have anything else? It still sucks, but it´s better than a bullet from a machine gun.

 

Rats. Just remembered reading some accounts of the desert war and I'm fairly sure that AP was used vs. AT guns because a hit was guaranteed to put the gun out of commission, as opposed to a near miss with HE which maybe wouldn't actually affect the mechanism of the weapon.
Although ISTR that the account was mainly about Matildas that didn't fire HE anyway....