Of tanks and decapping plates

[theprestige]

Mmm, modern warfare is bifurcating into two distinctive scenarios:

1) All out superpower war. Here nothing matters, because tanks and indeed any kind of armor is outdated.

2) Interfering in local wars. Here, you are typically up against non-sophisticated adversaries, with fairly light weapons. However, even light losses are hard to accept (because the home country is in peace condition). Here moderate armor is useful, and hi-tech weapons make the day.

This is very narrow-minded. You're looking at maybe two or three countries, and ignoring everyone else.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Mmm, modern warfare is bifurcating into two distinctive scenarios:

1) All out superpower war. Here nothing matters, because tanks and indeed any kind of armor is outdated.

2) Interfering in local wars. Here, you are typically up against non-sophisticated adversaries, with fairly light weapons. However, even light losses are hard to accept (because the home country is in peace condition). Here moderate armor is useful, and hi-tech weapons make the day.

Stuff like heavy tanks are museum exhibits.

Hans

Until your light armour comes up against them and they have air superiority.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

1) All out superpower war. Here nothing matters, because tanks and indeed any kind of armor is outdated.

Only in the same sense as they always were, since 1915. Tanks never were all that hard to kill, and even the WW2 manuals said the effect on infantry was mostly psychological. But at the end of the day, they still scared the bejeesus out of infantry anyway, even after you gave your infantry that lecture. And it was always possible to just mass enough in one place to basically overrun the enemy with more tanks than they can kill. Mind you, it wasn't always FEASIBLE to have that many on hand, but the possibility always existed.

Edit: also, combined arms isn't necessarily about having one arm be invulnerable. The thing is, soldiers can only deal with only so many problems at the same time. E.g., recruits can only deal with one, e.g., some guy shooting at them. You throw in a second problem like artillery fire, and they can't deal with both. Trained soldiers can generally deal with two. And it goes up as they get more experienced and better trained and led, but only so far. You throw in direct fire, indirect fire, tanks, mines, aviation, etc, and eventually nobody can really deal effectively with ALL of that at the same time. Sure, they could deal perfectly well with any one of those, e.g., just the tanks, but not with all at the same time.

 

[Pope130]

Israel, too. They have some of the heaviest main battle tanks in current service, and their doctrine seems to be based on the assumption that they're surrounded by regimes that would happily roll tank treads from the Jordan to the sea, if there weren't heavy tanks in the force arrayed against them.

Israel is an excellent example of full spectrum combat. They have to be prepared to deal with threats from rock throwing protestors up through counter terrorist, small unit conventional, force protection, heavy armor, fourth and fifth generation air-to-air to nuclear IRBMs.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Some exceptions, perhaps.

 

[Mark F]

Where you see decapping plates on armored vehicles today are on light armored vehicles - wheeled LAV's, IFV's and upgraded older APC's. This is usually to deal with 12.7mm and 14.5mm MG ammunition.

Just not practical to do it on modern tanks.

 

[theprestige]

Some exceptions, perhaps.

I'd say it's mostly exceptions.

 

[8enotto]

Air power takes ground and infantry holds it. Transport and fighting vehicles depend heavily on both for long term survival.

There have been spectacular tank battles of course and probably a few more to come but the high point has been passed.

War is far more electronic now and other weapons exist that may not put a man or machine in harm's way. I

 

[Matthew Ellard]

German Tanks didn't have 'decapping plates'

Their spaced armour and skirts were entirely concerned with disrupting shaped charges.

Yes. That's what I also understood.


Armor with two or more plates spaced a distance apart is called spaced armour. When sloped it reduces the penetrating power of bullets and solid shot, as after penetrating each plate they tend to tumble, deflect, deform, or disintegrate; when not sloped it increases the protection offered by the armour because explosive projectiles detonate on it before they reach the inner plates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_armour

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Yay for taking some generic statements that don't consider the timeline as proof for a specific point in time. At that point we might also conclude that if airplanes use GPS nowadays, surely they used it in WW2 too

And surely underlining and bolding some nonsense makes it true, right?

Again, at the time when the first skirts and such were introduced on German tanks -- and doubly so when the skirts on, say, a Matilda were put there -- shaped charges were NOT a concern.

The first actual reliable bazookas were not even used until the invasion in Sicily in 1943. The first version, quoth the same Wiki, "A US general visiting the Tunisian front in 1943 after the close of combat operations could not find any soldiers who could report that the weapon had actually stopped an enemy tank." And even that one hadn't been issued until earlier in 1943. The PIAT is also 1943.

The Soviets, which were THE biggest concern for Germany, only had only lend-leased bazookas and PIATs after 1943, and pretty much only in homeopathic amounts. So nobody designed armour designed to stop those, because the guys hammering them didn't use those.

Technically, the Brits had a rifle grenade a little earlier that had a shaped round, but it proved to be next to useless in practice.

Meanwhile, the Germans start putting spaced armour on, say, the Pz III M in 1942.

HEAT rounds for tank guns, were also at the time only used by the Germans. One reason being that you needed a relatively high calibre for that round to actually do anything AND because you needed to find a way to not spin it when shooting it, and the Germans were the first to figure out how to shoot one from a rifled barrel without it spinning much. The best use that anyone could find for a shaped charge with a, say, 37mm gun, was basically making a large rifle grenade for it. As in you actually put it over and around the muzzle of the gun, then shoot the gun to chuck it forwards. And again, those were the Germans. So unless Germany was planning to fight itself at some point, those rounds were not a concern in designing any German tank.

Even by '44, only the Germans, Italians and Japanese were really using HEAT rounds in artillery, and even then with rather unimpressive results. Really only the German 150mm HEAT rounds actually DID much.

The Soviets, again, were't using them even by '44.

So, WTH, without involving a time machine, how the hell can one blame WW2 spaced armour on shaped charges?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

OK, now let's get into the projectile construction, so it will hopefully be clearer what those plates were about.

The Brits went solid AP shot the earliest, and they invented sabot rounds, so on that front, yeah, as the cap'n said, they were nothing like naval rounds.

The soviets on the other hand stuck to APHE the longest, and they had a lot of HE in them. The idea was to have a bursting charge inside and a delayed fuse, so the round explodes inside the tank after passing through armour. The idea isn't new, and is in fact exactly how naval rounds worked. Most nations who tried it, however, had very little bursting charge in their APHE rounds, making the charge do little more than break the projectile apart so it doesn't go straight out the other side. The Italians used a bit more, IIRC, not that it helped THEM much, and the soviets used a LOT.

The BR-350 round used on the short-barreled T-34 IIRC had some 155g of explosive inside.

In effect, the standard Soviet round was a hardened HE shell with a ballistic cap. EXACTLY like a naval round.

The downside was that it had crap penetration, and often enough it either didn't actually explode inside, or it exploded prematurely, breaking the projectile on the surface of the enemy armour. Yeah, their fuses weren't very good. But when it worked right, it could make a right mess inside the enemy tank.

And basically THAT was the point of the skirts and extra plates on German tanks. They had to be thick enough that they triggered the fuse, and then have enough space between them and the main armour so the projectile would explode before it. And incidentally that's also how the Panther skirts helped against Soviet 45mm AT guns, not just against AT rifles.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Where you see decapping plates on armored vehicles today are on light armored vehicles - wheeled LAV's, IFV's and upgraded older APC's. This is usually to deal with 12.7mm and 14.5mm MG ammunition.

Just not practical to do it on modern tanks.

No. they are to deal with hollow charge rounds from missiles and RPGs.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Matilda had skirts because of the suspension design, nothing to do with 'decapping'

Germany introduced the first HEAT round in 1940 to be fired by the 75mm gun in the Panzer IV and Stug years before the Bazooka and other rocket propelled rounds came in to service.
They assumed the enemy would also have HEAT rounds and started to armour their tanks against them. Britain had the AT Rifle Grenade in service before this date, it was also a HEAT round.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Since the chieftain seems to have some credibility here, here's him too saying that it was NOT against shaped charges, and that that's just a misconception:



Hear him saying exactly that at about 8:00, or start at 7:20 for the actual reason for those skirts.

So can you please stop repeating that falsehood already?

 

[Mark F]

No. they are to deal with hollow charge rounds from missiles and RPGs.

Not true at all. Look at the M2A1 Bradley. 25.4mm aluminum hull (I hate to call it armor) with a 6.35mm steel armor plate bolted directly over the aluminum and a spaced 6.35mm steel plate. This worked brilliantly for breaking up 14.5mm MG rounds.

The "Afghan armor" spaced plates applied to the hull sides on BMP-2's was designed to break up 12.7mm rounds fired by Afghan rebels.

On neither vehicle was there any hope of stopping anything like an RPG. Slat armor is much more effective and lighter and can be placed at a much greater standoff distance.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Since the chieftain seems to have some credibility here, here's him too saying that it was NOT against shaped charges, and that that's just a misconception:



Hear him saying exactly that at about 8:00, or start at 7:20 for the actual reason for those skirts.

So can you please stop repeating that falsehood already?

Who is he. I don't think it's a 'falsehood'

That is one specific application to one vehicle in one situation.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Not true at all. Look at the M2A1 Bradley. 25.4mm aluminum hull (I hate to call it armor) with a 6.35mm steel armor plate bolted directly over the aluminum and a spaced 6.35mm steel plate. This worked brilliantly for breaking up 14.5mm MG rounds.

The "Afghan armor" spaced plates applied to the hull sides on BMP-2's was designed to break up 12.7mm rounds fired by Afghan rebels.

On neither vehicle was there any hope of stopping anything like an RPG. Slat armor is much more effective and lighter and can be placed at a much greater standoff distance.

Sorry, I thought you were referring to the slat armour.

 

[Mark F]

Sorry, I thought you were referring to the slat armour.

Plate, not slat.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Who is he. I don't think it's a 'falsehood'

That is one specific application to one vehicle in one situation.

What has any of it got to do with 'decapping'?

 

[MRC_Hans]

Until your light armour comes up against them and they have air superiority.

I'm taking about terrorists and insurgents. They don't have air superiority. ... Ever.

Hans

ETA: In fact, the best aircraft they are likely to have are grenade-lugging drones.