Causes of Soviet Tank Losses, by calibre

Unit, Operation/Date....................20.. 37.... 50sh. 50lg...75 ....88... 105... 128... AT rkt.... Unk
Up to September ‘42 ................................4.7 ..10.0 ....7.5 ......54.3 .... 0.1 ....3.4 .......2.9 .......0.0 .......0.0 ...........7.1
Stalingrad Operation ................................0.0 ...0.0 ....25.6 ......26.5 ..12.1 ...7.8 .......0.0 .......0.0 .......0.0 .........28.0
Central Front, Orel, ‘43 ..............................0.0 ..0.0 .....10.5 .....23.0 ...40.5 ..26.0 .....0.0 ........0.0 .......0.0 ...........0.0
1st Belorussian Front, Jun-Sep ‘44 .......0.0 ..0.0 ......0.0 .......0.0 ....39.0 ...38.0 .......-............ - ........9.0 .........14.0
1st Belorussian Front, Jan-March ‘45 ..0.0 ..0.0 ......0.0 .......0.0 ...29.0 ...64.0 .....0.0 ...... 1.0 .......5.5 ............0.5
1st Ukrainian Front, Jan-March ‘45 .......0.0 ..0.0 .......0.0 .......0.5 ..19.0 ....71.0 ....0.6 .......0.0 ........8.9 ...........0.0
4th Ukranian Front, Jan-March ‘45 ........0.0 ..0.0 .......0.0 ........0.0 ..25.3 ...51.5 ....0.9 ..........- .........9.0 .........13.3
1st Belorussian Front, Oder-Berlin ‘45 .0.0 .0.0 ......0.0........ 1.4 ....69.2 ..16.7 .......- ...........- .......10.5 ...........2.2
2nd Guards Tank Army, Berlin ‘45 ........0.0 .5.4 ......0.0....... 0.0 ....36.0 ...29.0 ....6.6 ......0.0 .......22.8 ..........0.0

Source: Zaloga and Ness: Red Army Handbook 1939-1945

(sorry about the formatting!!! )

 

I don't understand how 4.7 tanks where destroyed by 20mm?

 

Sorry, the figures above are % of total losses !!!

 

This is calibres in any form, whether it be as a tank,SP, or field gun?

nice figures either way, thanks mate.

 

Interesting figures Za, thanks! BTW what does "Unk" stand for?

 

Unk= Unknown ?

 

Either the super secret "Unk" gun, (kidding) or unknown.
Perhaps mines, abandoned, bombs, He-129's, Stuka's, internal fires/gun malfunctions/ammunition explosions, sunk in swamps/rivers, and the like.

one o them Chinese Teflon coated 7.62/39 corrosive rounds eh ? What are those ants going to do with that?

 

Well the 20mm and 37mm remains could be from aircraft.

 

Interesting how the 75mm and 88mm results fluctuated so much in different campaigns. Presumably due to different tactical circumstances - or was it just the varying availability of the guns in different places?

 

Were these numbers compiled from Russian or German sources?

The 88 is peculiar in that you only found it in 45 on a handful of tanks and tank hunters, but mainly in the Pak41/43. I would have to look it up but unless the 1st Ukrainian front was facing several heavy tank battalions most of their losses would have been at the hands of smaller antitank batteries... interesting, don't you think?

 

Russian sources, after the first example there weren't that many Germans left occupying the battlefield to count wrecks

 

Something's amiss here. How could the difference between 50L42 and 50L60 rounds be known so precisely? They are identical. With many tanks they suffer mulitple penetrating hits. How was the first lethal one determined? Anything after that is gratitutious and irrelevant.
How could vehicles that were destroyed beyond recognition be determined?
None were hit by aerial bombs?
With the level of precision in gun size shown why aren't other calibers common in the East like 4.7cm (Italian, Czech, and Romanian in particular) shown?

 

Well, to the lenght of the barrel part, the hits could be diferentiated by the kind of damage. An L60 round has a much greater Kinetic energy (L42 = 483301.75 J L60 = 718141.75 J that's 1.5X higher energy) so the kind of damage would be diferent
(regarding the damage inside the tank and the armor of the tank and all). other way could be looking at the wreckage that was left over in the battlefield and do a ratio (tough a lot less accurate and less funny too!).
I belive those other ways of wrecking a tanks are listed in the unknown region.
Great post Za just the way I like them. With numbers


Cheers...

 

Then why didn't they differentiate between the 75/43 AT gun, the 75/48 tank gun, and the 75/70 tank gun? All three fire essentially the same shot and shell but use different shell casings and have differing velocities and penetration. Or between the 88/56 and 88/71? There is even a bigger difference in performance and two completely different rounds involved.
Why include only the 105mm field piece and not the 150mm or other calibers?

 

Sure, it does look like a bit of cheesy Operational Research to me, but as it's the only one we have so...

Be careful, Miguel, numbers is something very difficult to get at, and even so they can be so debatable...

On the 5cm thing, and kinetical energy, a L/42 or L/60 round will have the same residual energy left at (WAG) 400m or 800m, so how can you tell? You have a hole (or more) in a target, how do you know how far from it was made so you can differentiate barrel length?

 

Just noticed this, if you add it all up it equals 100%, so that means that all the tanks lost in operation stalingrad were lost dues to tank or antitank fire, none to infantry weapons, mines or aircraft. Is that right?

 

Probably the Unknown 28% covers those.

 

You would probably be right

Didn't see that, my bad. lol

 

true, didn't think of that. Probably it was from wreckage analysis then (what they faced) wich is kind of a downer as it has no empirical scientific basis behind it.






Cheers...

 

Maybe the video taped the whole thing and picked the numbers out on instant replay.