This has been known for some time ye, credit to OhSlowpoke our friend from Canada.
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I’ve been playing the FV4005 a fair bit lately because I enjoy big guns, and yeah, the damage is very hit or miss. It’s pretty clear that the shell only causes shrapneling, and not even good shrapneling. I hit the top of the haul (not the turret) on a Tiger H1 coming down a slope and killed the turret crew since that was the shrapnel direction. Heck, I’ve shot an AA truck, had the round go through the armor, explode outside, and do absolutely nothing
After a week of playing, I will say it’s the king of 1 shot, 1 kill… that 1 kill being a single crew member. The number of times I hit the front plate on tanks just to kill only the driver or machine gunner is absurd.
But yeah, shooting the track/wheel of a vehicle does seem to insta-kill it. Especially hitting the back of the track on the inside. It’s a lot more consistent than hitting the hull. I don’t think it’s overpressure, but looks more like shrapnel from all over the track is penning the side. Not sure
P.S. The reload is 38.9 seconds :D I wish it was just 30
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Makes HESH great again, it works like a bad HEAT shell, if only more players would push for it, Gaijin would start to ‘rethink’ their nerf decision.
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idk, i been having great games with it lol Just a few pics i took from many matches with it. I aim for the weakspots still and not the toughest part of the armor, it somewhat acts like HE rounds but with some more pen power.
Visible proof that 5 shots of 165mm HESH cannot destroy a Panther.
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Ah, Mr. Zephoid, I see you’re curious about the state of HESH in War Thunder. Allow me to enlighten you. You see, HESH rounds are still “broken” because their effectiveness against Russian tanks is simply too… inconvenient. We can’t have those formidable Russian tanks being easily dispatched by mere HESH rounds, now can we? That would disrupt the delicate balans of the game, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?
It’s almost as if the developers have a vested interest in maintaining the supremacy of certain vehicles. But of course, that’s just a wild conspiracy theory, isn’t it? So, we must endure the “broken” HESH rounds for the greater good of the game. After all, balans is key, even if it means sacrificing a bit of realism and fairness. Welcome to the Matrix, Mr. Zephoid Enjoy your SUFFERING.
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And again, shot in the front of an IS-3 with 165mm HESH = only driver killed.
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Russian tanks are the only ones HESH works against thanks to their small size.
Except they still aren’t reliable due to the terrible damage of each spalling fragment, the inability for spalling to penetrate crew, spalling only generated from a pinpoint effect rather than across a larger area, the lack of a ‘hull break’ effect, no overpressure for HESH (despite even 120mm+ APHE having overpressure with <5% of the HE filler of a hesh shell), and the lack of shericial impact damage. UFP should be blowing barrels like HE.
Its just a nerfed shell. Its not realistic in the slightest and doesn’t function in gameplay. Any tank with a shell option besides HESH is better off using the other round. The 8.7 Chieftans have the same HESH shell as the Challenger 2 and its still not viable even at such a HUGE BR discrepency.
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Yes I know but claiming this is because of russian bias is retarded. Sure it will only kill 1 crewmember but on USA/GER it will most likely kill 0.
APHE only overpressures inside a tank and HESH can overpressure open tops too. The problem is the overpressure sphere is way too small.
I’m pretty sure the Conqueror has the same round and even at 7.7 the shell sucks for anything other than killing SPAA (I checked and it’s not the same but a similar round. Conqueror HESH has 4kg TNT and the Chieftain HESH has 6.5kg but both have 152mm of penetration).
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Sure, but HESH rounds were designed to countered heavily sloped armor layouts like the T54/55/62. US use thicker armor and less slope. Even in a buffed state the HESH round would not be all that great vs US but it would be devistating vs Russia.
There is some merit to the russian bias argument. HESH was a viable primary round at one point. Then it was HEAVILY nerfed, even into a worse state than it is now. The next patch saw the introduction of the IS6 (with the double mantlet bug that gave it ~450mm turret armor) and the era of the most dominant tank in WT history. Most competent players were putting up 90%+ WRs. Thunderskill had access to the full WT API at the time and was reporting 81% IS6 win rate. Meanwhile, HESH statistically would have been one of the most effective rounds vs the IS-6. Seems mighty coincidental the two lined up that nicely, that the double mantlet bug existed for months before being fixed, and it took over a year until hesh was put back into a state where it could kill anything at all.
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there’s 0 reason to put it at 7.3. It’s not even an especially good tank at 6.0
Well, mainly because of the inconsistency of the damage from that HEAT.
Non-penetrations with 88mm high filler APHE are capable of overpressure killing tanks quite often. It’s inconsistent, but I have had my Jumbo killed with a non-penetration to the gun mantlet by Tiger 1 with the high filler shell.
Realistically, the minimum HE filler to overpressure with thick wall ammo should be increased to 950+ grams. That leaves only actual naval guns and gun-howitzers with that capability
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That only works if the round just barely penetrates and normally wouldn’t produce a lot of spall but because it can overpressure you’re instantly dead.
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my contribution to this post
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Average reaction to watching HESH do nothing to light skin vehicles.
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This posts reminded me of that one time I shot a CR1 HESH round on the radar of a Gepard, just to do nothing to it.
Pantsir’s empty void is a volumetric nightmare and eats HE damage like crazy, it’s not just HESH that struggles at over pressuring it.
Was just in a match where I fired a 105 mm HESH shell from a Vickers Mk.3 at a Gepard radar dish. Only killed the gunner lmao.