Very (too much ?) effective AT Rifles

[PDF]

Hello
I'm playing the Somme Bridgehead scenario (as German vs Brit IA), and I'm rather astonished by the PzBuchse effectiveness : they kill A-9s on one penetrating hit out of 3, and they hit often even at 4+ hex range !
I thought (from my previous wargaming experience, I never manned one actually !) that those 7.92 rounds were not that powerful and often only pierced armor without much damage, here I have burning wrecks all around my PzBuchse teams...
Is that normal/realistic ?

[Helm]

Seems a little excessive British armour was in the main paltry but not that bad

[Gud]

A9 has rather pathetic armour (10-20mm), quite an easy kill for AT-rifle. Remember that ATRs were accurate enough to target weak spots - sights, muzzles, etc... Finns used their ATRs with great success against similiar-armoured BT tanks.

[Smersh]

4+ ranges seems a bit high, what where AT Rifles effective ranges?

[Marek_Tucan]

Smersh said:
4+ ranges seems a bit high, what where AT Rifles effective ranges?

Could be rather long, comparable to .50 machineguns - guess the A9 armour was similar to say BMP so about 500 meters for .50 bullets? (somewhat less for the 7.92mm monster ATR cartridge, more for 14.5mm ATR's)

[PDF]

Gud said:
A9 has rather pathetic armour (10-20mm), quite an easy kill for AT-rifle. Remember that ATRs were accurate enough to target weak spots - sights, muzzles, etc... Finns used their ATRs with great success against similiar-armoured BT tanks.

... but the Finn Lahti AT was 20mm caliber, a quasi-light ATG ! I don't object at accuracy of the PzB but at damage potential of a high-velocity 7.92 bullet.

[MarkSheppard]

According to the Guns vs Armor Webpage:

http://gva.freeweb.hu/weapons/german_guns1.html

25mm pen at 30 deg at 500m.

That works out to 29mm LOS Penetration. Considering the A9 cruiser has the following stats:

20mm Effective Hull Front
10mm Effective Hull Sides
10mm Effective Hull Rear
20mm Effective Turret Front
10mm Effective Turret Sides
10mm Effective Turret Rear
10mm Top Armor

it means the weapon can hole it at 500m.

[cbo]

MarkSheppard said:
According to the Guns vs Armor Webpage:

http://gva.freeweb.hu/weapons/german_guns1.html

25mm pen at 30 deg at 500m.

I'm pretty sure that is wrong, actually. If you look in the original source for the information (Jentz: "Tank Combat in North Africa"), the relevant table has an asterisk at this figure, but no mention of why the data is marked that way.

As most sources I've seen quote PzB 38/39 penetration at 100 and 300 meters, I suspect that the asterisk is supposed to mark that this data is not for the 500 meters in the table but for 300 meters. Another thing is that this figure could very well be for 0 degrees as that would seem to correspond with APG tests of the weapon.

However, there is so much conflicting data on this weapon (and other AT-rifles), that it is hard to pin down actual penetration. Jentz doesn't give the source for his information, so it is hard to tell what his data actually represents. It would be very odd if German test data actually exceeded US data for the same weapon!

Claus B

[PDF]

As I've already stressed, I think the problem isn't so much in the penetration power (even if it can be debated !)than in the damage dealt when penetrating.
If/when the ATR round penetrates the tank, a 7.92 shell without explosive power shouldn't make much more than occasional damage, even unarmored cars often withstand some bullets ...
Combat Mission models this quite satisfyingly, I remember a memorable game where my Russian ATRs sniped at ACs and holed them numerous times before it had any effect !

[cbo]

PDF said:
As I've already stressed, I think the problem isn't so much in the penetration power (even if it can be debated !)than in the damage dealt when penetrating.
If/when the ATR round penetrates the tank, a 7.92 shell without explosive power shouldn't make much more than occasional damage, even unarmored cars often withstand some bullets ...

The German PzB 38/39 fired an SmK round with a miniscule amount of teargas, so perhaps the game is trying to represent the British crews braking down in tears, resulting in a mission kill

Seriously, it seems that you may have found an issue with AT-rifle post-penetration effectiveness. It is tied to the way the code works and may require a large amount of work to fix properly, so may not happen. Just one of the quirks with the old system that pops up from time to time

Claus B