2900fps seems to be correct.
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+1
Found some data on it’s armor penetration levels, apparently it only had access to AP and AP-T rounds:
Quote: “Hit probability is based on a static 2 x 2.4 metre panel at 0 degrees(vertical) at the range specified.” The 27mm is the thickness of the target panel used for penetration testing.
Source: Britain<br>BESA Machine Gun 15mm
I would say the gun is not too great for anti-armor role and I would prefer a bit of a beefier gun for War Thunder. But I think this vehicle would be ideal to be added in Enlisted instead.
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But it’s perfectly capable to destroying Rank 1 light tanks, especially with some Gaijin penetration calcualtor magic.
Also:
The data that has been used to create these records has come from Wikipedia, The Lone Sentry, The Bundes Archive and numerous books and websites that have provided the detailed information that has not been available anywhere else. The information we use to calculate the penetration tables, flight times and the hit probability comes from the Gun Calibre, the Shell Mass(Kg) and the muzzle velocity, plus range reductions to allow for gravity and wind resistance. This calculation originally came from a pre-war Krupp calculation which has been modified, and seems to fit the actual test results.
It will just be a beefier .50cal.
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I standby any 15mm Besa vehicle. Wanted them for ages. Would be a great 1.0 light tank to start off a proper light tank/armoured car line.
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Used Gaijin’s calculator to work out roughly what the 15mm Besa penetration should be. So it’s slightly better than the .50 cal by around 5mm.
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this would be so cool to have in game, my great uncle fought in north africa with the desert rats during the Second world war so it would be awesome to see such an iconic vehicle of that period introduced into the game. this is my favourite ww2 vehicle! :D
-1 for me. Less pen than the M2A2 would make this completely irrelevant.
It has more pen than the M2A2. The pen of the .50 cal on the M2A2 caps out at 31mm, while this has, per Jarms post, 36mm pen.
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Perfect for my collection
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Got any data on it? Besides what there is on the drawing.
Sadly not.
Okay.
I tried to replicate it in Fusion 360 in a “good enough” version just to see what weights it might have, and I got the following:
Steel core (regular steel) - 49.728 g
Lead cap (regular lead) - 4.423 g
Brass jacket (regular brass) - 22.762 g
Total projectile mass: 76.913 g
Design
It seems very much in line with other projectiles with the projectile mass of ~75 grams, albeit more towards the heavier side, but that could be a discrepancy from the sketch that was thrown together. What would be more interesting is if the lead cap would count as a regular cap, and improve angled penetration. That would be quite helpful I imagine.
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Thats very nice. Out of curiosity, isnt it relatively bad for AP that the core is just ~50g? Compared to the full steel driving band german 15 mm Pzgr. AP-T where most of the 72g will be AP material?
I doubt the lead counts as a cap from what i heared. And it seems a bit small.
50g for a 75g projectile is actually quite a lot compared to smaller calibers.
.50cal and .30cal bullets tend to have steel cores around 50-60% of the projectile mass.
The core of course isn’t 15mm like the German 15mm AP but 13mm.
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Perhaps, but I’m guessing they prioritized ballistics with the manufacturing means and resources they had, plus it would have been milder on the barrels reducing the wear and increasing barrel life. German rounds tend to be incredibly optimized with the trade-off that they cost more and/or requires more sophisticated manufacturing methods, while many other countries were satisfied with economical “good enough” rounds. Also to consider is that Germany gained a lot of experience from actively fighting, so they could tweak their designs with war-time expedience. Other countries, like Czechoslovakia, were either annexed or fell so fast that they didn’t have time to design, produce and field new ammunition types before it was over.
Lots of interwar technologies and designs met the same fate.
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I think the original Czech offering might have been a tungsten core, but the British seem to only use steel cored ammo. That’s actually pretty close, core weight is given as 769-770 grains, projectile weight as 1160 +/- 10 grains. A lighter core might also explain why they have the muzzle velocity at 920m/s.
That’s gratifying to hear. I wasn’t sure how accurate my model would be but it seems it came pretty close, maybe a bit on the larger side but close enough. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!
I also checked what the core would’ve have weighed if it was made of tungsten and it came out as a whopping ~122 grams. I can see why tungsten is such a desirable metal.
Where I wrote “tungsten” I should have put “tungsten steel” which is unfortunately just a descriptor for a whole range of alloys. So maybe not quite that heavy, but still likely heavier than a hard steel core.
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