This gun has a frustrating development in War Thunder despite all the gargantuan reports made in the old forum.
The M82 should be seperated into two variants called M82 Early and M82 Late. Early having reduced pen but has overpressurable explosive filler, while the Late round has the high penetration as seen on the M36B2, with 170g of filler. The German Tiger is allowed both early and late variants of its Pzgr, so the precedent is there for these rounds to exists as their own seperate entities.
The T33 round should be revamped to allow its histroical performance against irl Panthers. Currently, it cant penetrate the Panthers front plate when it could do so at 1000 meters.
These changes will not affect american mid tier. Updating the 90mm shells will simply bring the US to parity with other tanks in its BR when it comes to firepower.
@TheMightySardine
I highly suggest you try this out in the armor viewer because the Panther’s UFP is all but impervious to the 76mm M62 shot when both vehicles are level. The only instance where the Panther’s UFP can be penetrated is if the Sherman or 90mm is sitting above it.
The UFP might be penetrable if the plate is flat relative to the shell, but that is very rare, and I’d never intentionally aim there unless I had no other choice. The turret mantlet is penetrable, but it is very inconsistent. The most consistent weakness is the cupola, but it’s tiny and at 500m there’s not a high chance of getting hit there. The only “panther” that the 76mm can penetrate the UFP is the VK.
After having 800 games in Ersatz and another over 600 in Ausf. A i can tell from experience that isn´t true. I thought it cant pen it either,yet it does even when both are on completely level ground. Some things are just weird.
Maybe it was a British or Italian 17lber. Otherwise its just an inaccuracy in the replay because every panther in the game except for the VK is immune to American 76mm guns from the UFP. Sometimes you can get lucky and get a shot in where the turret meets the rest of the hull, but even that is a rare occurrence with volumetric. The LFP on the other hand can be penetrated.
Yeah, its ridiculous how poorly researched and designed Gaijin made the 90mm. Its baffling that the only guns the US has that can reliably penetrate the Panthers front armor are the massive 105mm guns and up, or post war APDS and HEAT rounds.
The M26, T25, and M36 have to treat Panthers as troublesome heavies. While with the exception of the Pershing, other 90mm gun carriers can get one tapped by a Panther anywhere on its hull.
You’re going to have to provide screenshots, or a video to show proof. It sounds like the M4A2 was making a risky shot in your turret ring rather than actually going through the front plate.
The only full caliber AP shells that the Pantber needs to worry about in its BR is Russian 122s. As well as the odd APDS and HEAT rounds but those have the benifit of doing almost nothing at all to a tank after penetration.
I confirmed in the protection analysis that the 76mm can go through the hull gunner’s viewport and to a lesser extent the area around the viewport, at least on the models that have it (the Panther D does not have this weakness). Even so, it’s not practical in battles to try to hit it because if you do you risk bouncing off of the armor around it. If I were you I would just put bushes around it. That being said, the 90mm gun is still very weak.
Documents show two M82 rounds. One had 199 grams of filler and one had 140 grams of filler. The M82 was fired at 2670 fps, 2800 fps and 2850 fps. The 2850 fps version was scrapped because the powder caused too much barrel wear. The M82 was modified to the T41 and fired at 3200 fps in the T15 but that was scrapped in favor of the T50. The T50 may have been also fired at 3300 fps.
Here is a picture Gaijin says is impossible. A Jagdpanther knocked out by an M36 with a shot to its glacis.
So 170 grams for M82 isn’t correct? That’s really all I am looking for.
I am aware of T33’s capabilities in real life. However, getting T33 to the performance it had in real life would require changing the calculator, something that Gaijin does not want to do.
T33 APBC has a penetrator that is 2.78 calibers long (250mm) and has no HE filler. Penetrator weight is 10.61kg
M82 APCBC only has a penetrator that is 2.414 calibers long (217mm) and has huge HE filler further reducing the size of the penetrator
2.78 / 2.414 = 15.15% smaller penetrator and we didn’t even deduct the weight yet from the fact that T33 AP(BC) is still featuring penetrator material in that huge area which is just HE cavity for M82.
Both are shot at 853m/s but it’s clear that the T33 has way heavier penetrator and far more kinetic penetration energy.
But according to gaijin the T33 AP has less penetration…
I know that it wouldn’t have different performance in-game since the calculator wouldn’t be able to discern it from normal M82 APCBC. But I’ve read that, later on, T50 got standardized and just became a new M82. Is there any proof to this?
