It’s a modern tank, though. The level of situational awareness it has even with a damaged cupola is incomparable.
Obviously in WW2 you would also get variation depending on individual designs. For example a Panther without a cupola would be in a worse situation than a Tiger, because most crew members other than the commander were almost blind (one of the reasons why so many Panthers were lost to flanking actions). But still, imagine coordinating the operations of a Tiger using only WW2-era gunner optics and what the driver sees. It’s just crippling.
Doubt it. Most of WW2 era tanks had many different visors and triplexes to let the entire team look around. And modern machinery, especially T-72s, provide much less for other than commander. That being said, the crew of the soviet machinery is 3 people, so the awareness drops dramatically if commander is taken out
Since it’s very long, I’m going to quote a couple excerpts that are relevant to this conversation. Also it appears I overestimated the visibility inside Tigers.
[quote] The next German tank, The Panther, had all the same drawbacks. It had a similar cupola with vision slits covered by glass blocks. The gunner and loader had no vision slits, let alone periscopes. This was a strange solution to pair with the high tech T.ZF.12 binocular telescope sight. The vision situation in the driver’s compartment was slightly better. The driver and radio operator/hull gunner had periscopes. The driver also had a vision port in the upper front plate. This port was used during driving since it offered much better vision. However, not one of these periscopes could rotate, which reduced their usefulness. This also meant that little by little, German tank designers made their tanks blind on the flanks.
This can be seen through the evolution (or rather degradation) of observation devices in German medium tanks in 1942-1944. The changes began in 1942 due to a large number of anti-tank rifles coming into service with the Red Army. Anyone who thinks that the leaflets pointing out the location of vision slits on German tanks were only good as toilet paper is sorely mistaken. Blinding enemy tanks was a high priority task for Soviet infantry, and one it performed well. As a result, German tanks lost their vision ports on the side. They didn’t have vision slits anyway and weakened the turret armour. The Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.G also lost the loader’s vision port in the front. Observation ports in the turret platform sides were the next to go. Finally, the only vision devices remaining were the commander’s cupola, gun sight, and his vision port (although it was removed on the Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.J), as well as the driver’s observation device. The combat driving device was removed on the Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.H.
The Germans were not alone in this. Since all infantry loved to shoot at vision ports, they disappeared from American tanks as well. However, there was a big difference. Other nations replaced vision ports with periscopes that were either a direct copy of the Gundlach periscope or were built according to similar principles. For example, the USSR introduced the MK-IV periscope in 1943. The Germans on the other hand removed observation devices without replacing them with anything, even though there was a possibility of putting a periscope on the Pz.Kpfw.IV turret. Paradoxically, in 1944 German tanks suffered from the same issues that Soviet ones did in 1941-42. [/quote]
It penetrated his sub-turret on the SMK and instantly killed the main turret crew when most of the damage should’ve been confined to the sub-turret and nearby hull.
APHE overpressure allowing some vehicles to instantly delete anything they penetrate (even if penetrating cupolas or sub-turrets) is one of the things the original thread poster was very angry about.
There is no internal separation of the crew-compartment on SMK and as such it is counted as a singular space.
This means that if overpressure damage of sufficient tnt equivalent is applied to any part of the crew-compartment (needs to hit anything allocated to it with a fragment, usually crew and some modules) the rest of it will have the pressure damage applied to it.
This is not something that is exclusive to APHE but is universal for all shells dealing HE-pressure damage.
I was using the WIKI terminology to differentiate it from the plain HE shell.
It’s not even doing “overpressure”. Overpressure is large HE-type shell damaging the interior of a vehicle when it does NOT pen.
In this case it appears to be a simple case of 120mm shell having 1) enough pen to get inside the SMK and 2) plenty of TNT (890g) to destroy most of the interior of the tank. There’s a bunch of 45mm shells on the floor of the turret that could also have contributed.
The sav is a crazy vehicle to have at 3.7. A 1.2sec autoloader on a 120mm gun?
The damn thing can pen most vehicles it meets AND do more than enough damage with just one hit to wipe out anything.
Common misconception. Overpressure does occur in event of a penetration by high power ammo. The difference is that APHE that is capable of overpressure will always oneshot something it penetrates while similar APHE will have a small chance of only dealing massive damage.
See German 88/51 Pzgr.39 vs Pzgr for a easy example.
Either way, the fact is that it’s very ridiculous for APHE to already have such massive post-penetration damage and some of them will guaranteed oneshot kill anything they penetrate and many things they don’t penetrate. Leading to ridiculous situations where something should probably have done fairly localized damage instantly destroying the entire vehicle. Cupola shots and engine shots causing one-hit kills are one example.
I have no problem with APHE shots that one-shot kill when they pen the turret or the body of the vehicle. Especially the larger guns. And as mentioned, the Sav 120mm has 890g. That’s a LOT more than the Tiger 1 88mm.
I do have problems with killing an entire tank by hitting just the cupola, or an APHE that is allowed to overpressure when there’s no pen. That’s what big HE are for. Most APHE don’t have enough explosive filler to realistically perform an overpressure.
Overpressure does seem to be out of control. I was killed by an m44 when it hit the top of my Chi-To-Late barrel. How the heck does overpressure affect a tank when it does not hit anywhere on the body.
Buddy, that’s a massive shell hitting the turret, which will easily over pressure the hull of ur tank, I have no problem with that. It also has a 40 second reload and can be killed with a 50 cal, so I can’t be complaining that u aren’t invincible in ur heavy tank. The only problem I have is with tanks like the PZ200H which have fast reloads and decent survivability as well as being able to one tap everything
Of course I am annoyed, the community voted to keep their fantasy APHE nuke shells.
If the change went through APHE wouldn’t be the end all be all of ammunition in the lower brackets and would only fair marginally better than solid shot as it did IRL. Even more annoying is the change to transmissions where you can now disable a Tiger 1 or Panther by hitting the commander’s cupola and destroying the transmission as well.
APHE is broken and will continue to be broken as players would rather have easy mode over historical and fair gameplay.
Having votes on changes to the game is usually the best way to do things but sometimes I do wish Gaijin had more of a spine especially where massively needed changes like these are on the table. APHE should’ve been nerfed, there would’ve been minimal BR changes needed after this as nothing is changing in regards to penetration, merely the overblown post pen damage. You might need one extra shot to kill a tank, I know it’s a shocker isn’t it?
Then you have the massive hypocrisy in the fact that nerfed APHE would be “unfair” as tanks would have to aim for actual weak spots instead of obliterating tanks in one shot to the engine bay… lads remind me how have AP tanks been forced to play for years now? If we can do it so can you, no excuses.
Gaijin should just force the change, or better yet lets make AP as broken as APHE. AP is an automatic one shot kill and APDS never shatters.
