Round impacts enemy armor with a delayed fuse. The shell has a relatively thin outer casing, enabling it to splat against the armor before detonating. The shockwave of the round is transmitted through the armor, causing inner lining pieces to spall at the crew.
Because the shockwave gets transmitted through the armor, which is quite literally a pressure wave, given combat reports of T-54 crews hit by 90mm HESH in Korea being totally incapacitated by bleeding eardrums even if minimal internal spalling occurred, doesn’t this sound awfully similar to overpressure?
Hence what I am wondering - would HESH rounds be too strong if them penetrating the crew compartment of a vehicle caused overpressure to trigger and one-tap said tank?
My thought process on this is generally NO.
HESH rounds have much lower velocity than typical AP rounds, nevermind APDS rounds or larger.
The handful of derp cannons with such rounds all have exceptionally low shell velocities (Centurion AVRE, M728 CEV, Lancia 100/17Ro) and/or very long reload times (all prior plus FV4005).
The 106mm Recoilless Rifle light tanks have particularly bad shell velocities for their BR ranges of 6.7+ (less than 500m/s)
The 90mm HESH rounds have comparable velocities but in many cases not enough penetration to reliably go through even the side of many opponents, nevermind the front, and most of those machines with such shells are either glass (M56, Jpz 4-5, etc.) or very high BR (M48s)
I am very skeptical that HESH would be truly game-breaking here. What are your thoughts on this matter?
If it’s realistic, add it. Besides, HESH could use a buff anyway, given the fact it’s explosive filler is practically non existent and it can never overpressure things it should easily be able to…
Well no, not exactly. HESH, because of the way it works, should be able to penetrate the same level of armour at any distance (exempting for where composites and ERA are used) - in the case of, say, the FV4005, that should allow it to basically ruin anything (and by ruin, I mean kill, unlike now where you can conceivably end up failing to kill a single crew member) in a single shot around its BR, with of course the obvious penalty of a 40 second reload and comical levels of protection.
The smaller HESH rounds, such as those found on the 105s, would probably be more effective against IFVs and other lightly armoured vehicles.
Agreed. Although, I did take the barn out, and exempting one shot where i derped it into a Tiger II engine deck I did alright with it. As in, one shots were a thing (except to a Tiger IIs turret front which was to be expected).
You’d like to believe, but my good sir, the insane amount of begging and pleading and whining got the L/I-1 for the ICE, yet the same volume of protesting got… nothing to improve the two new Brit air additions.
These are very different. Old hesh would be more consistant and go through thicker armor at higher angles. Adding your suggest means that all hesh will one shot if it can do any damage.
105mm hesh has 127mm of pen. This would mean that all you would have to do is hit an area with less than 127mm of raw armor and you insta kill them.
I am pretty sure that giving them what is basically the insta kill of a large HE but with better aiming and pen would increase their br.
No that isn’t the way it works. IRL or IWT.
IRL: HESH works by creating that scabbing. There is no “overpressure” and the shockwave does not go past the armor (that is why it works in the first place). Likely those reports are anecdotal, or caused by the blast effect from open hatches.
IWT: “Overpressure” is like a catch all for all the various ways that “Significant Emotional Events” can be inflicted upon a vehicle. Sheer blastwave breaking things and causing structural failure (old school “hull break”), and the penetration of armor by blast propelled fragments.
HESH is underwhelming because it is all or nothing on one hand for “penetrating” armor, but gains none of the fragmentation penetration of a HE shell.
It is modelled fairly accurately in the game and does not need to be buffed.
Well, after testing, it seems that the supposed change to the HESH does not exist, since they are still the same semi-useless bullets as always.I shot the barrel of an SPH with a 120mm HESH and didn’t break anything at all. Once again gaijin has made us fools.
No. Its caused by the interference between the shockwave of the reflection from the inner face of the solid matter (armor, concrete, etc) inducing a sheer force on the material
That is not the “sound blast” but literally the overpressurization, which is not the same thing as WT’s Overpressure. This is caused by any input energy into an enclosed space increasing the gas pressure, which is very detrimental to soft tissues. HEAT penetrations will do the same effect.
You have it backwards, the phenomenon that is exploited by HESH is functional against effectively any thickness of density monolithic material. But any kind of variation of density (like steel to fiberglass) or standoff disrupts it. HEAT is far more tolerant of inconstancies in the target material (composites, spaced, etc. armor) and obstructions.
You also have that backwards. The scab that comes off has a vector at 90 degrees to the inner surface of the armor. So if the armor is angled, the fragment(s) is going to travel “down” not in the same trajectory of the original projectile.
The probelm in WT is that this isn’t modelled in the game, because I suspect Gaijin just reused the same code that models HEAT with some modifications to its parameters.