Quote:
Originally Posted by DRG
Quote:
Originally Posted by PvtJoker
Weapon 084 Satchel Charge: has unrealistically high WH Size, HE Pen and HE Kill for a charge carried by hand. Compare to German OOB Weapon 229..
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That might have something to do with the two being entirely different weapons. |
Satchel charges had more HE (typically 3-6 kg), but unlike offensive hand grenades and artillery shells, they had practically zero fragmentation effect and relied solely on blast for any apers effects they had.
A 6 kg satchel charge had about as much HE as a 155mm artillery shell, but no fragmentation effect to speak of. 155mm HE shell has HE kill 21, so HE kill 20 for the satchel charge is way out there, at least 2x too effective. WH size 10 is also bigger than the 155mm shell (8). Penetration 18 is also excessive by a factor of two -- 155mm HE shell has only 4 (which is actually a bit low).
I don't know what size of satchel charge the SPWW2 weapon data is based upon, but in practice about 5-6 kg is the max that a normal man can throw any distance. If a much larger charge is used, the user will be within the blast radius and the whole thing becomes a Japanese pole mine type suicide weapon.
I have read that up to 10 kg charges were sometimes used, but they had to be placed rather than thrown and had to have a longish time fuze, and were therefore quite impractical as AT weapons. They were also unnecessary, I might add; Finnish experience showed that a 6 kg TNT satchel charge could destroy even heavy tanks (IS-2) fairly consistently if placed on thinner top armor.
Jaeger Platoon's writeup on satchel charges:
http://www.jaegerplatoon.net/OTHER_AT_WEAPONS1.htm
Soviet satchel charges used for AT purposes were in most ways similar to the Finnish ones.