Ok ppl, I need a little help, see Im trying to figure out something of about tank armor. How much extra armor does sloped armor give than box type armor as with a king tiger with-out that weight. how much more inches does sloping give to armor? 60mm to 70mm? 80 to 90? Id like to figure that out of how much more mm does a shell have to get thru on sloped armor some tank? how much does A Panther get on 60mm, 35 Degree angled front hull armor? wat is the T34's extra thickness? A Sherman's?Wat about a MAuses armor bonus? IF there's calculations you know plz send them to kathleen.bain@attbi.com And If your dont know wat im talkin aabout, tell me and ill try to simplify it, itll be hard thou. Thx


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I'll give you the short version. While actual armor thickness doubles at 60 degrees and is about 1.5 times vertical at 45 degrees the effective thickness is more like double at 45 and triple at 60 degrees.
Now, there are a considerable number of of other factors involved in this including the type of metal, its manufacturing process (cast steelis less effective than rolled plate armor for instance by a slight amount), the type of shot being used, etc.
For a basic introduction to this see: "Design and Development of Fighting Vehicles" by R. M. Ogorkiewicz.

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I think Mr Gardner has just about answered it, thanks for that. So an incline of 60 degrees effectivley doubles the armours thickness, what is the incline on the armour of a Panther again?

I am guessing that the type of ammunition being fired at the tank must also be taken into consideration, I mean non penetrative ammunition (the equivilant of HESH) would have a different effectivness when fired at 60mm of armour than AP etc.

One other thought, how about ammunition glancing of armour, I have read accounts of rounds hitting the armour of a Hetzer but the incline of the armour at the front caused the round to glance off and do very little damage. I was just wondering whether this was actually a design feature so much as a useful side effect.

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Panther armour specs as follows ( all variants ) : -

Hull Front : 80mm @ 55deg.
Hull Side Upper : 50mm @ 60deg.
Hull Side Lower : 40mm @ 90deg.
Hull Rear : 40mm @ 30deg.
Hull Top : 40-16mm @ 90deg.
Hull Bottom : 25-16mm @ 90deg.
Turret Front : 100mm @ 12deg.
Sides : 45mm @ 25deg.
Mantle : 100mm curved
Rear : 45mm @ 25deg.
Top : 16mm @ 90deg.

Info courtesy of ' The Panther Tank ' by Hughes/Mann, Spellmount, 2000.

The 'glancing off' is most definitely an intended design feature !

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Here´s something to refresh our memories

..the things that made life easier for the Russians was the German poor supply of manganese and they had to use nickel ( since summer of 1944 ) instead which made the tanks´armor brittle, especially at the seam welds.So a good hit at least made cracks in the front armour and personally I would get out of the tank after that...

http://www.battlefield.ru/is2_1.html

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Certainly the type of round plays a part. The heavy wall semi-armor piercing 105mm round used by the US in WW II for instance was found to be able to catastrophically damage a Panther's glacis armor through a combination of impact and detonation effects at close ranges (say under 500 yards). The photos I have seen of this show almost uniformly a large hole as much as a foot or more in diameter blown into the glacis by these rounds. Certainly, their penetrative ability alone could never do this.
With rounds like this, high explosive rounds in general, HESH (as you mention) the effect is different than with solid shot or APHE rounds (where there is a small bursting charge and a slight delay in the fuze action). With the former, the simple thickness of the plate and its ability to withstand an impulsive load take precedence over penetrative ability.
Thus, slope helps against AP type rounds more than explosive ones. It also helped against earlier HEAT rounds where the jet was less well formed and stand-off distances not well understood. Against a modern HEAT round slope makes far less difference.
Slope can also make a round skip or glance off. Here the angle of impact has to be considered. One trick veteran tank crews used frequently to increase their armor's effectiveness was to attempt when possible to move at an angle to enemy fire. This presented the armor at an angle to that fire effectively doing by direction of motion the same as having the armor sloped.
Like I stated at the beginning of this thread, it is a very complex subject.

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