I’m wondering about the performance of the Armor Piercing Incendiary ammunition used by a multitude of autocannons in game. I have noticed that on cannons like the Gepard’s that the AP-I shells penetrate armor and then detonate like APHE rounds. Is this how that ammunition is supposed to perform? My understanding was that the ammunition ignited on impact and caused burning damage, but not explode after penetrating.
If it was API it would be slow and graduating damage instead of instantly explosive as APHE,
Maybe is just the amount of spalling after the penetration,
Only few auto cannons shoot APHE ammunition like Fox’s L21A1 and Falcon’s HSS 831L.
It isn’t normal spalling. I’ll grab a picture after this game. It is a penetration with spalling and then a separate detonation.
Here are the pics of it happening.
I caught it almost at detonation at the 3rd picture.
The game uses an unusual abbreviation for ammunition. It is actually SAPHEI - Semi-Armour Piercing High Explosive Incendiary.
In the Bundeswehr, including the B2L version, a mix of High-Explosive Incendiary (HEI) and Semi-Armor-Piercing High-Explosive Incendiary (SAPHEI) ammunition was used 3 to 1 as a combat mix against air targets. These types of ammunition have a muzzle velocity of 1175 meters per second (m/s) and a combined impact-delay fuse with self-disintegration to prevent collateral damage, i.e. the ammunition explodes automatically after a preset time if the fuse has not been triggered otherwise. The combat range is 3500 meters. At the time of decommissioning, the Gepard 1A2 was now using FAPDS ammunition (Frangible Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot), which achieves a muzzle velocity (v0) of at least 1400 m/s. The effective range against air targets with this ammunition is up to 5000 meters distance and 3500 meters altitude.
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it doesn’t have any bug, the dm13 api-t have 37.4 gram tnt equivalent expulsive in the shell
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To be clear, the ammuntion naming in game doesn’t always accurately describe it’s performance. For instance, low tier Soviet tank shells are usually the only ones to actually denote HE content in the shell name (APHEBC, rather than APBC), despite the fact that it’s definitely not the only nation to have HE filler in the shells.
The only way to check is look at the shells stat card. If it’s got HE filler listed, it will explode after penetration. If it doesn’t, it won’t.
For autocannon vehicles with mixed belts (Like the Gepard), you can look at the stat card for individual shells by opening protection analysis, which lets you select each shell on it’s own.
Neat, I should have figured that the shells were labeled wrong… Thanks for the tip about the belt’s individual rounds though.