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#132
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Guy Alcala wrote:
"Paul J. Adam" wrote: In message , Mike Marron writes In other words, maybe squeezing a few hundred rounds of .50 caliber underneath a German tank was an exercise in futility as you say -- but then again -- maybe it actually worked just as Art et. al. said it did even if it was only a fluke and didn't always kill the tank as advertised every single time. I can easily imagine "worth a try". Especially because many "suspected Tiger tanks" were actually much less well-protected vehicles, which _were_ vulnerable to .50" fire. Try identifying road vehicles at a mile with the naked eye: even standing still on a good day, it's hard to get much more than colour, size and general type. Pilots were doing well to find targets and hit them, let alone precisely identify them not only as "armoured vehicle", get beyond that to "tank" and further to pick out the differences between a Tiger and a PzKW IV. Okay, so a Tiger would actually pretty much ignore being shot up by fifty-cal (or 20mm, for that matter) - but the half-track or truck you might actually be strafing would be much more affected if you hit it, regardless of what you'd identified it as. Be a shame to let killable targets get away because a pilot mis-identified a half-track as a Tiger tank and pulled off his run. snip Of interest to this discussion is the following site: http://www.geocities.com/spades53.geo/prodocs.htm and go down to the "Firing Trials of 20mm H.S. Ammunition" section. Armor penetration of homogenous plate at 200 yards and normal impact is described, as well as various other targets representative of parts of a/c. These are static tests, so penetration should be boosted somewhat for a moving a/c attacking a ground target. Even so, it does give a good idea about the chances of 20mm Hispano ammo penetrating rear or top hull tank armor. The chances don't appear that good, but it is certainly possible for the lighter tanks. Guy |
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