AT
Guns
|
Armored
Cars
|
Half-Tracks
|
Tanks
|
Tank
Killers
|
|
|
|
||||
AT
Guns
|
Armored
Cars
|
Half-Tracks
|
Tanks
|
Tank
Killers
|
Armor thickness - Actual vs. Effective All armor values used in our tables are expressed in effective millimeters of thickness as opposed to actual millimeters of thickness. For those of you unfamiliar with armored vehicles and the values associated with their armor, the following details should shed some light on the subject. A description of actual armor thickness is this: if you were to fire a projectile directly at a 30mm plate of steel the actual 'armor value' would be expressed as 30mm. In other words, the projectile need only penetrate 30mm of armor to breach its 'protection.' On the other hand, if you were to take that same plate of steel and place it at a forty-five degree angle, relative to the barrel, you now have a different 'armor value.' In this situation, the projectile needs to penetrate 42mm of armor rather than the previous 30mm. Because the armor plate sits at an angle, in order to penetrate it, the projectile must pass through more of the armor than in the first scenario. Interpreting Gun Specifications Without going into any detail, a good rule of thumb for guns is that the velocity of its projectile incresses with the length of the barrel. And higher velocities mean greater armor penetration. You'll notice that almost all main guns are listed as xxmm L/x or yymm L/y. Just what do all these numbers mean? At first glance they look more like serial numbers than something that has any real meaning. But rest assured there is a method to this madness. Engineers being who they are, like to keep everyone in the dark about what they design. I guess they get less arguments from management that way. So they came up with this cryptic way of classifing gun barrels. The first number is the caliber of the weapon, most often expressed in millimeters. Everything after that is an expression of the barrel length. The L stands for length, simple enough right? That's where it ends. The last numbers give you the actual length. Not expressed in feet, meters, or even cubits, oh no that'd be too obvious. The length is expressed in the gun's caliber. For example the main gun of the Panther G is an 7.5cm L/40. Plugging in these values into our equation you come up with (7.5cm x 40 = 300cm) or just shy of 10 feet. |