Wednesday 23 May 2018

Compare and Contrast

An interesting document was posted the other day on the War Thunder subreddit.


While very interesting on its own, there is one particular part of the trials that popped out at me.

The armour penetration of the HESH round is given as 150 mm at 60 degrees, which is exactly the same as the figure obtained by the Soviets in trials of a captured tank. Unfortunately there was no data on the HE-frag effect of the shell, as it would have been interesting to compare that.

The same poster also posted another interesting diagram of how the penetration changed with the impact angle.


7 comments:

  1. What calibre HESH is this ?

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    1. Just as an estimate from the given penetration figure it should be around 105mm.

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  2. I agree it's most likely 105mm from their L7 gun. But they also used HESH in the Malkara missile and still have a HESH round today for the Challenger's 120mm.

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  3. This is a 120 mm, just because that was the title of the Soviet Article "120 mm HESH vs 125 mm HE "

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  4. What I find interesting that a c.200mm defeat is possible at the ideal angle 90% of the time, and 175mm 90% of the time across a wide range of angles, quite a impressive performance

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    1. As far as I understand the operating principles of HESH (which isn't very thoroughly so I'm kind of winging it here) the angle matters primarily in regards to how well the plastic explosive gets deposited onto the plate before detonation. Would expect that at steep angles it starts being spread out too widely to be fully effective and the fuzes probably develop issues too, plus the possibility of the shell outright glancing off presumably becomes increasingly relevant.

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