I believe it was mainly due to a doctrinal issue, which is why throughout WWII, the countries that had APHE continued using it almost until the end.
In the American case, it’s curious, since they had initial APHE rounds with many flaws, which forced them to manufacture full AP ammunition for their 75, 76.2, and finally 90mm cannons until they improved the APHE. As far as I understand, the Americans had an initial and a final M82 model, but towards the end of the war, they proved that the full AP rounds were equal to or even better than the APHE rounds, since by simply improving the M77 they developed the T33, which, despite arriving quite late in the war, proved to be the best 90mm ammunition. That’s why after the war they standardized it as the M318. All this doesn’t mean they stopped using the M82 because it simply wouldn’t be logical to abandon millions of already manufactured projectiles.
That is a good theory, but that stil leaves the question of why they kept the M82 90m shell in production even at nam, when the M48s got even the HEATs already. As i can see, the M77 shell production was abandoned during 1944, and the M82 production was kept through the 1950s. Ah but the M318 WAS in fact to replace the M82, kept production till 1960s so that also makes a good argument for the solid AP.
Best part is when you only have partial vision of an enemy tank.
So you kill the crew you can see.
Then have to time your second shot perfectly to kill said crew again as they get replaced but before the enemy starts driving again because if you shoot too early, you’ll be reloading. if you shoot too late - you get shot/enemy drives away.
While with APHE you can just nuke the entire compartment even if all you can see is the driver/loader/gunner.
The fact that they discontinued the M77 is understandable, since it was an AP round with poor heat treatment. Besides, the M318 was exactly the same as the M77, but with improved heat treatment and a higher ballistic cap.
According to several sources, the M82 was discontinued in the United States in 1953, which doesn’t mean it was manufactured until 1953. Furthermore, the fact that they already had the HEAT-FS doesn’t tell us anything, since doctrinally, each type of ammunition had a specific intended use: HEAT-FS for some things, APCR for others, and full AP for yet another purpose.
In the case you mention, it’s simply the disastrous and fanciful balancing of the game, since if the Firefly had its correct damage, it could be in a BR similar to the T-34-85, besides the fact that the Firefly historically should take longer to reload, since it is a huge bullet, with a huge barrel, and all inside a turret that is rather small for the model of cannon.
There’s also the fact that it’s nothing new for any army to make use of stockpiled ammo that is obsolete or out of production in normal use. Even the USA isn’t going to take a look at 1 million already made 90mm rounds and say “well it’s old ammo so we will just not use it when new ammo is there”.
There’s a simple example that illustrates what you’re saying.
Both the AMX-13 M24 and the AMX-13 FL11 use the short 75mm round (the Sherman’s). Interestingly, both models came after the AMX-13 with the long 75mm gun. Why is that? Simply because France had hundreds of thousands of short 75mm rounds in stockpile. Since they decided to decommission the Chaffee tanks, they needed other tank models that could use this type of ammunition. That’s why they first fitted Chaffee turrets to a few AMX-13s, and then fitted EBR turrets to a few others. It was simply so they could continue using these large quantities of stored ammunition.
Well, why did they produce flat headed AP projectile, when pointed projectiles can penetrate a lot more armor?
6pdr 57mm easily penetrates a Tigers 100mm plate, while ZIS-2 57mm with even higher velocity can’t and and can only penetrate the 80mm side armor.
It’s because the Soviet Union couldn’t produce high quality AP projectiles for how much ammo they needed. Since low hardness pointed AP has no real benefit, they just went with flat noses, which performed the same against face hardened armor while simplifying production.
Also added benefit of increasing penetration when overmatching armor.
So there was simply no point to produce solid shot, since it wouldn’t have increased penetration anyway.
German philosophy was that APHE would have better behind armor effect.
It’s very likely that the Soviet Union also went with APHE because of that, even when in reality the benefit was neglectedable once the armor was penetrated.
M103 also fires uncapped solid shot while T-10s started to use APCBC.
So the SU started to use capped shells while the US went back to uncapped AP.
One defeats thick sloped armor, the other thick vertical armor.
In WT flat headed projectiles are simply better than sharp nosed. No disadvantage at all.
Thats funny: British crews prayed to have 17pdr around if they met the tiger, because 6pdr they had on Churchill, Crusader and as field cannon couldnt penetrate tiger. Tiger 131 is prime example.
On the other hand, ZiS 2 entered production exactly because it gave at least some chance to penetrate a Tiger.
Ah but it would cut costs, and make the process easier therefore making more shots per month, which was critical.
Thats also one of the ways to look at it. Same logic i use when say brits never adopted APHE because philosophy.
It is one possible situation. Also, both British and Russian production of munitions can be described with another economical logic - already existing production line is cheaper to keep that way than trying to redo for never type of munitions.
they usually pen worse flat tho. BR-365 and BR-365K are the example.
They never shot like that irl tho, but yes, tiger was only pennable with 76mm to the side and with great effort and close range.
its mostly because the distance. Even ZIS struggles to pen it from 700m, and the Tigers loved to fight between 1000-2000m. Especially in Africa where they met occasional groups of enemies, not being involved in mass close distance combat.
M61 APC-T was introduced due to its cap and ballistic cap, not because of its filler. It’s the same reason why M62 APC-T replaced M79 AP-T in production, since the former ended up having worse armor-piercing performance, and why T33/M318 AP-T replaced M82 APC-T since the former had better armor-piercing performance. It had nothing to do with their filler, it just had to do with their ballistics.
Edit: Before anyone goes “akshually,” T33 penetrated better than M82. It just doesn’t in-game because the penetration calculator is simplified to only take into account caliber, weight, velocity, and shell filler, plus an arbitrary modifier if it has a cap, and doesn’t take into account shell construction, quality, material or any number of other factors that affect penetration.
This is easily observed when you compare 90-mm T41/M82 and 90-mm T50. Both are APC-T projectiles that had identical velocity, identical mass, and identical filler. In reality, T50 was able to penetrate more than T41 due to its different and heavier nose construction with the ballistic cap being decreased in size. In-game, they would have identical penetration since the improvements the T50 made would not be modeled in-game.
For the same reason, the T33 is incapable of penetrating as much as it should despite it penetrating more than the M82 in real life, and completely supplanting it when it was formalized as the M318.