The word “Over-penetration” is tossed around a lot in ground battles, in many different cases. Some of these cases where it doesn’t seem justified, I am here to ask what the true definition of over-penetration is.
I have seen 3 different definitions for this word.
Definition 1: There is not much use of the word on official websites, the most I could find was a description of over-penetration in regards to small arms fire. Which was
“Excessive penetration or overpenetration occurs when a bullet passes through its intended target and out of the other side, with enough residual kinetic energy to continue flying as a stray projectile and risk causing unintended collateral damage to objects or persons beyond.”
Definition 2: When any ammunition that uses kinetic energy as a penetrator simply has too little much power for the thin armor it is puncturing, which causes it to not spall in game and doing minimal damage before exiting the other side.
Definition 3: When SPECIFICALLY APHE is passing through such thin armor that it exits the other side of the vehicle without reaching the minimum armor penetration to detonate the fuse.
i personally believe that definition 3 is the correct definition, and that definition 2 should be disregarded, as AP rounds are simply designed to penetrate armor, the fact that they have too much power to create a major amount of spall does not justify the use of the word overpenetration, as the AP round performed as it was supposed to. In contrast APHE rounds are designed to detonate upon breaching enemy armor, but as the armor of the vehicle was too thin to cause a detonation, and causes the APHE round to pass through without detonation would be a proper use of the word “over-penetration”