The 76mm gun on the shermans are pretty common at around 5.0-5.7 BR range. It can only penetrate the cupola, which does not kill the gunner. You would need to shoot there correctly at least 2 or 3 times to kill it.
Even the Panther’s gun cannot penetrate anything more than just the Cupola and the machine gun port, which has even less explosive filler than the 76 sherman.
The only thing in a downtier that is remotely scary (and common enough) are the Tigers, which can overpressure with PzGr. But the lowest one is at 5.7, with the VK 45.01 (P) being 5.3, but also being very rare. These vehicles should be extremely easy to deal with, as their armour (even when angled) shouldn’t be a problem, same with the Panthers.
All heavies and heavy TDs have to deal with 7.7 heat slingers. The Tortoise is not alone.
If anything, the extremely well armoured Jagdtiger would suffer more from them, due to having to rely on its armour more than the Tortoise, as well as having a much worse reload, and gun handling.
The gunner is standing up right behind that flat 250mm plate.
Instead we have high pen HEAT(FS) like on the M-51, M56, Type 61, etc. Which can even go through the JT’s UFP and have enough postpen left over to kill the driver, gunner, AND one of the loaders.
With its shorter reload, better hull traverse and gun arc, the tortoise is much better suited at countering the various poorly armored cold war tanks.
As you said, charioteer can do it. And there are many others “around 6.7”, some of them stabilized (FV 4202 and friends). And as I mentioned above, heat slingers are a dime a dozen.
Jagdtiger has a pretty significant edge in one thing- firepower (this thing let’s you handle uptiers). Like 270mm pen with so much tnt eqv will be able to one shot post things still.
Exactly, the much better reload makes it so that you can engage more than one target quicker, or take a following shot if the first one didn’t do enough damage or not penetrate (albeit Jagdtiger would not really have that issue too often).
In a downtier, the round and reload of the Tortoise is much more useful than the Jagdtiger’s, which its gun is only more useful if you’re dealing with large, heavily armoured targets.
You’d have no issues 1-shotting the Panthers and Jumbos through center mass shots.
I love TOG II 94mm AP round at 5.3, especially considering it has a 6s reload. Doesn’t need APHE since center mass shots almost always 1-shots most tanks. The penetration is enough to do it against most vehicles it faces.
Similarly with the Shot Mk.8, found on the Challengers, Comets, Avengers, and Fireflies.
Challenger most notably since it gets a 5s reload with it.
Sure quick reload is funny in a downtier where u can pen stuff easily, but in an uptier having a good shell is much better imo, especially when ur armor can’t save you anymore.
And honestly I’m not waiting for 8 sec if an opponent misses his shot or non pens me.
???
How does the Tiger II H have a gunner sitting behind 250mm of armour?
The Turret cheek of the Tiger II H is only 185mm thick.
There are quite a few that don’t have much armour.
I’m looking at the M46, Ru 251, M47 (albeit its UFP is fairly good), M48 (UFP is decent and mantlet is good, but LFP and whole turret cheeks are absymal), Marder A1 and AML-90.
All of these are pretty squishy in general.
Quite a luxury at 7.3 to be honest with you.
I quite like the FV4202, and I am surprised the Cent Mk.2 is still at 6.7, despite having a two-plane stabilizer and good turret armour.
T34 has a better shell, but the Tortoise more than compensates for it by having a much better reload (8.6s instead of 14.9s).
Mobility of the T34 is good, but its top speed is fairly lackluster compared to other 6.7 heavies.
Its armour is quite mediocre (other than the turret). You need to angle for the hull armour to be good enough to reliably stop the long 88mm’s APHE round. The mantlet itself is decent but is still a giant weakspot.
Both are quite survivable, although left turret cheek of the T34 will instantly kill it, as well as the LFP, in certain conditions, with AP / APDS.
The right cheek of the Tortoise (next to the gun) can also detonate, given enough HE filler to be reliable:
Pretty equal mobility, so what are you babbling about?
Yeah, the Jagdtigers gun is massive, 128mm; massive overmatch on lots of tanks. Who would have thought its gun would be better in the APHE dept.; tortoise is British, they don’t like APHE, but you have APDS iirc.
Like most of them. Most US 90mm cant pen anywhere, even with APCR, unless it has HEATFS. The 75mm even less. Only chance you got is if you catch it in the side.
Jagdtiger has better HP/ton (accelerates better), as well as having a higher top speed (42km/h instead of 19km/h). Although, the Tortoise has a better reverse speed of 19km/h instead of 11km/h.
Jagdtiger also has a massive vertical profile, square construction, and a massive bomb target. The Tortoise is just British, and suffers as such.(not saying Brit’s are bad in game, but in real life too; because uhh, horrendous engine designs (See leyland V-12 in the centurions))
American short 90mm APCR is actually quite underrated, being able to frontally penetrate Panthers at fairly far ranges, and doing decent amount of damage (albeit not as good as regular AP).
You can quite reliably get both the gunner and driver, rendering them completely incapacitated, unlike with APHE, where it’s quite unlikely that you can get both the gunner and driver, or get their ammo.
