To stick my gun in the vision slit of a tiger, or not...

It eventualy came down to the guy posting this:

At this point I have to concede because it sounds accurate.

 

Maybe one of our members from Dorset could pop in to the Tank Museum and have a check...

 

but phelps, i still think you have a point!
As if a tank crew were to pass through a city, they would more than likely butto up for the duration.
It would only be relevant if the tank crew were not expecting to be attacked by infantry. They probably would in a city.

 

If one of you fellows wants to subscribe to this forum and help me out here, it would be appriciated. Now these idiots are tryong to throw vague comparisons that have nothing to do with the topic as an actual rebuttal. I'm frankly out of material.

 

I am already there Danyel, but I'm afraid I'm having a bit of trouble with the "Skipping-bullets-into-the-weak-belly-armour-of-Tanks" thing at the moment... :roll:

 

The vision blocks could be changed and spares were kept aboard for that purpose IIRC.

 

Interesting - so potentially that is why they seem unscrewable... not to open them but to change/replace them.

 

That makes sense, if one bullt or shrapnel piece could scratch or crack the glass so much that you can't see through it anymore.

About the bullets skipping up from the ground penetrating the floor armour, wasn't there a thread or discussion about that around here? Probably in the "how to kill a Tiger" thread, someone claimed that fighter pilots during WW2 had claimed Tiger kills through 50cal ammo skipping up through the floor armour. I believe the conclusion there was that it was possible in theory but too unlikely in practice.

 

Roel IIRC the .50 Browning M2 used in P-47 and others couldn't penetrate the Tigers deck armor (and floor armor....these are the same 25 mm) in normal ways so why should it work when bounced by the ground?

I think that bouncing bullets is a thing MS brought into the world when they launched CombatFlightSim ?????

BTW looking for a little info about the .50 cal bullets i found this...
http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/infa ... _ammo.html

 

Under the right conditions and at short range the M2 using ball ammunition could penetrate up to 50mm of armour.

 

could be true.... but no way an aircraft is gonna hit a tank on the deck at short range vertically without either hitting the tank or running into the ground!

 

It is quite easy to refute the entire concept.

If an aircraft fires into the ground, the bullet will either remain in the ground, or deflect upwards, the latter of which is only likely of the surface is very hard (such as concrete or asphalt) or the angle is very steep.

At the first impact, the harder the surface is, the more kinetic energy the bullet will loose. Furthermore, since the angle with which the bullet strikes the underside of the tank will be the same as the one it struk the groud with, the underside of the tank would have to be softer than the surface it deflected from, or the bullet will deflect again.

Therefore, we can determine, that the underside of the tank will be struck by a bullet, which failed to penetrate a softer surface while having greater kinetic energy, at an angle with which it has previously deflected from a softer surface.

Christian

 

Hard to argue with such logic.

 

This whole debate stems from what was basically a theory on the part of airmen. They could sometimes (apparently) start fires in German tanks when they strafed them. Smoke and dust convinced them that they had "knocked out" the tank. It may be that bullets were impacting the cooling fans and other semi-exposed parts and the tanks were indeed damaged, perhaps even on fire. In any case it was conjectured that .50 cal. bullets which could not penetrate thick armor plate under usual circumstances was being deflected through the thinner belly armor.