HETZER vs CROMWELL | 7.5cm Pzgr.39 vs Riveted Layered Plates Armour Piercing Simulation
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 พ.ย. 2022
- While the British Cromwell cruiser tank was highly mobile, it featured relatively weak armour, with most having the armour plates being bolted to a weak steel frame, at 0°. This creates quite an interesting penetration event, as presented in the simulation.
This armour array offers significantly less protection than its thickness and mass suggest, with the residual velocity of the projectile being compared to that against a monolithic 77mm RHA plate. The RHA used is ~260BHN (80 I.T) and the steel frame has been modelled as structural steel with a hardness of ~150BHN.
The body of the projectile was made rigid for these simulations to reduce computational time, as at this impact velocity, impact angle, and plate thickness there would be no shattering and little deformation of the projectile.
Amazing thumbnail artwork from: 3d_molier www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/...
and penetration hole images found by Peasant - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Surprisingly no damage to shell
Not at all. Recovered bolts through a sherman look similar
In the description they said that the shell was set rigid, on this armor it wouldn’t shatter and very little deformation would happen so it was just wasting computing time to model the small bit of deformation, but unlike what is shown, there actually would be some mild deformation.
However the cap and ballistic cap are no longer existing
U can collect them after battle and use again 😂
@@user-yc1xe1pd1f In fact...In Death Traps, the author, who was an officer in charge of damaged sherman tanks, found a projectile inside a Sherman, and used it to weld into the hole thereby repairing it.
Imagine being one of the crew and then having to receive a AP shell right through your chest.
well technically you won't be able to, since we can't exactly imagine what being *dead* feels, at least whoever got shot doesn't have to go through a lot of suffering
I mean, if you're going to go out - might as well go out instantly before you're even aware of it. Better than burning to death or bleeding out slowly, etc.
@@fdenrico9861 if it goes through your chest you will have time to feel that pain
I don't think you'd need to worry about it too much.
I don’t think that there will be any hole. You would probably be cut in half. But you won’t feel it.
From that distance, it still goes through like a knife through warm butter!
BTW: I've once heard that a tank crew had loaded their 75mm with an HE round and then spotted an enemy tank, which also had rivetted armor. They fired it onto the tank to make space for the AP round, but it was no longer necessary! The other tank literally fell apart and later inspection revealed that the rivets had become deadly shrapnel!
I'd love to see that scenario recreated in a simulation, but I'm not sure how that should work...
Yes...he should make simulation with HE round
@Tired of War italian Tanks too
@Tired of War как и осколками хрупкой брони. Бортовая 15мм броня пробивалась чем угодно. В процессе она крошилась и наносила дополнительные увечья. Лобовая 25 мм броня вела себя схожим образом.
Слышал о таком же что клепки могли становться убойными эллементами
Japanese tank in nutshell :v
I think with a gun as powerful as the 75mm Pak 40 the rivets won't make a difference as the shell can eaasily penetrate the armor anyways. Maybe you should retry this with a 50mm APC shell from a 5cm KwK 38 L/42, as it should have just below enough penetration to pierce through.
By 1944 the 50mm L/60 would be more accurate and interesting
Maybe, but that'll just pen.
The pak 39 had less pen than the kwk40 in the panzer IV and the kwk had slightly less pen than a pak 40 since it was shorted to fit the panzer IV chassis.
Tell that to gaijin
This reminds me of the case of the Cromwell training tank that was accidentally sent to Europe and used as a regular tank. It was only discovered when the tank was hit by some 20mm shells and they almost penetrated the poorer armour. I believe it used non-hardened steel (Edit: mild steel). It could make an interesting simulation! The tank commander was Bill Bellamy if you're interested. He wrote a brilliant book called Troop Leader
That's hellish to imagine what was in his head when it was realised. But I wonder if it had the same engine and if it did, if it was even more mobile.
@@dominikdylewicz3581 yes actually! The tank had always been faster than the other Cromwells. After they discovered it was a training tank, they elected to keep it as they deemed the extra speed was more valuable than the armour, since regular Cromwell armour couldn’t stand up to most German AT guns anyway
The crazier thing about it, they didn't change it out for the proper one when they had the chance
It wasn't a training tank per se, it was preproduction. It had been initially retained for training. Most training at the time was with Covenanters and Centaurs, not Cromwells.
@@pigpig252 that seems a bit unlikely as the standard Cromwell was sufficiently fast its engine had to be regulated to reduce the risk of damage to the suspension. Although perhaps, being lighter, such damage was less likely.
It's technically bolted armour but I saw it written as rivited in some documents...either way, it's not good.
Which one do you think would be worst for the crew though?
Up front I think riveting would cause the greatest casualties. Is there anywhere I can start looking to run such simulations on my own hardware? Software name, guide link, anything at all. I would like to actually find out.
Quickly dead either way by the looks of it.
At that thickness and angle it would not have made a difference if the armor was welded. This test shows that the armor is inadequate against the projectile regardless of construction method. To illustrate why bolted/riveted armor is inferior to welded armor you should use a lower power projectile like a 3,7cm, 4,5cm or 5cm fired from further away and hitting near the bolt/rivet and compare it to a simulation of the projectile hitting far away from the bolt/rivet and not penetrating. That would show why that construction type is inferior because of damaged bolts/rivets being pushed into the compartment even though the gun would have not piereced the plate otherwise. This simulation is therefore inconclusive in the regards of showcasing inferiority of bolted/riveted designs. In matters of weight riveted designs are always inferior since the construction steel base + armor plate is way inferior to the same weight/thickness in just armor plate.
Fun fact: welded armor done cheaply and without expertise can be worse than bolted. If the welder sucks he can ruin the heat treatment of armored plates at the edges where the welds are. Resulting in cracked armor upon striking the plate. If your industry cannot supply capable and knowledgeable welders its easier to stick to casting armor or riveted designs.
I'd love to see a cromwell against 20mm flak - there was a mild-steel cromwell that got lit up by one in Africa, I think Lindybeige has a video about it! That'd be super cool to see, it was a training-tank that accidentally ended up in front-line use, thing kicked ass tho!
@@schullerandreas556 I do not see the posibility for a WW2 era welder to weld a thick plate properly and in the same time not destroy the heat treatment... in fact that i would expect from a crapy wealder, not heat up the plate and end up with crapy weld.
Also here the rivets/bolts are huge, the whole problem with rivets on tanks was in case of standard rivet, properly made rivet will be stressed on its own, so hit from 8mm full power MG would break it and then the bolt will be ricocheting inside tank causing damage to everything on its way.
Also beause here it looks more like a screw than a rivet there can be not much tension pressent to the whole thing may be much less prone to breaking and acting like separate projectile.
i would also sugestt o test this bolt/rivet against high speed AP round from 20mm flak cannon.
Why are these vids so relaxing to watch? There is something therapeutic about them.
They're all about penetration ! 🙄
Crommie didn't stand a chance. saw video title and already knew where this was going
What would be really neat is more of these tanks vs tank comparisons but with both sides simulated, ie hetzer 75mm vs Cromwell frontal armor then cromwell 75mm vs hetzer front armor
Whoever decided to approve that armor configuration - without almost ZERO degrees of slope angling - should have been tried for treason.
Why. It was designed to support Infrantry not fight tanks 😂 a lot of people seem to forget that. Britain didn't really have tanks that were specifically designed for knocking out other tanks until late in the war when the comet was in development and they equipped shermans with 17 pounder as a stop gap. It did what it was designed to do. The job of a cruiser tank was support not tank killing.
Amazing job as always
It's surprising how British managed to neglect using sloped armor at that stage of war
one of the cleanest, most satisfying pens ever.
Smashes right through that plate like the god damn Kool Aid Man.
"Acccch jaaaaa!!!!" (German Kool-Aid Man in a black panzer outfit)
It's worth noting that the separate plates were only on some of them. Many Cromwells DID use a mono-plate. Some even had thicker armour up to 100mm+ on certain manufacturer's models.
And even though it was heavier, speed wasn't necessarily an issue. The Cromwell more suffered from being able to go faster than the suspension could reliably survive cross-country.
@@wbertie2604 yeah they had to put speed govenors on certain models to avoid excessive wear on suspension and to prevent throwing track
@@justinkedgetor5949 Sometimes crews took them out, of course! IIRC the Meteor was first tested in a Crusader, and that could do 50mph with it. Reputedly a Cromwell could manage up to 40mph on roads.
@@wbertie2604 I think its hard to get any tracked vehicle to exceed 40mph due to the centrifugal force on the tracks, it becomes very high above 40mph.
@@williamzk9083 there have been a fair few metal link tracked vehicles that can or have achieved it. In WW2 breaking the suspension rather than the track seemed to be the limiting factor, at least based on the British putting governors on Cromwells to limit them to 32mph. Tracks coming off seemed to be the other big issue, but that seemed to be for British cruiser tanks in general. So I'm not sure to what extent other properties of tracks are an issue.
Rubber tracked (Kegresse style, as on American WW2 half tracks) seem to work at 50 mph (I've seen it done) although apparently track failure ended up being an issue as they are essentially big rubber bands and rubber ages. Apparently one failed on such a vehicle doing 50 on a motorway in the UK in the 1980s leading to ban on half tracks on that type of road.
The Cromwell: Well, I tried.
The Hetzer: Did you though?
I once read a book written by British tankies in WW2. They didn’t blame the Germans for their casualties but their own tank designers. Saying they were sent to war in flawed or obsolete tanks.
Seeing the rivet there makes me think, what if you tried a simulation to confirm the claim of rivets shooting into the fighting compartiment?
Perhaps with a shot from an early WW2 anti tank gun into the right side of an M3 Lee viewed from the front, on the angled plate opposite to the hull-mounted 75mm. That would be a 38mm plate with an impact angle of 70-ish degrees, have it hit along the line of rivets and lets see if we can get rivets firing into the fighting compartment without actual penetration of the shell.
maybe the most satisfying videos you've made though i am surprised that the shell didn't even crack at all
Love the cromwell, cool tank
Now do Cromwell vs hetzer
I think it's fair to see the other simulation
Half the range and I would still bet on the sloped frontal armour of the Hetzer to stop the Cromwell's round.
I have a request: can you show the difference between the overpressure of an apfsds vs heat on a light vehicle
Amazing coincidence! just as i was looking for a tamiya cromwell kit this channel i follow relased a video about it.
You should now do a glancing hit where the plate is deformed (enough to create minor spalling on a homogenous plate) but the round fails to penetrate. It seems reasonable that the soft frame may actually have the effect of minimising that spall in the event of a failed penetration. I've seen one other sim that suggests that may be the case. However you should include the rivet in the sim, as under those condition, perhaps the rivet it more likely to shear, if it will at all
Enjoy your videos. Gonna geek out a little bit here… could you compare Star Wars ATAT armor to say US 76mmE8, 105mm, 120mm tank guns firing HE, HEAT and APFS (silver bullet)?
That shell came with 18g of explosive RDX filler, once inside that thing goes boom, and if any of the melting metal pieces touch the ammo, more boom. And given the fact that all the ammo was stored vertically around the turret basket on the floor, aiming towards the center mass, from any angle, was deadly.
Do 30mm Autocannons against Abrams hull or turret armor. How do Autocannon strikes deform or damage modern composite armor?
Can you do an 152mm hitting the top of the STRV-103?
Dunno how much it actually matters, but it looks like the Cromwell's plate as modeled seems to produce less spalling fragments upon penetration. Like, for the same thickness of RHA, there's more fragments flying around the compartment, while on vanilla plate the shell seems to overpen.
Speaking of rivets I would be interesting to see rivets being disloged by non-penetrating hits, like it supposedly happen with M3.
There was a documented case of a crew being issued a training tank (cromwell) made of mild steel, seeing action in market garden and discovering that their tank was a trainer made of mild steel when 20mm AP rounds were found lodged in the armour, not shattered or ricocheted, would be cool to see it simulated
is i remember i was not mild steel but rather thiner steel plates
It would be really interesting to see a simulation of more riveted armor from WW2 tanks like the early war British ones. There are many stories of rivets coming loose and shooting inside of the crew compartment but this one seemed unaffected by the shot. Maybe you could solve this possible myth!
to be fair, the "significantly better" part is largely academic because the shell also goes through it like hot chainsaw through butter. True, the petaling will kill you deader, but even with the monolitic plate you would be already dead enough not to notice the difference.
What computer specs are you running for rendering? Great video as usual.
Wonder how much some sloping would have helped?
It is amazing, it comes with 594 m/s, but some part of the cap fly backwards after impact...
Many did use a monolithic 77-80mm plate, some even had 100mm plates, also only the mantlet plate wouldve presented a flat surface, the cheeks were angled. And the ufp was a monolithic 76.2 mm plate, over an angled plate, over another angled plate, much like the Tiger I.
"Straight through the heart . . ." Scary.
The worst part for the crew isn't when the shell goes through but when it goes boom.
one thing to note is though the armour is weaker than the equivilant of just RHA, it produces much less spalling due to the ductility of the interior mild steel layer with large portions being stuck between the layers, idk if this had a significant effect on survivability, but its neat to see
For a fair silmulation, could you include the Cromwell's back armor and the one behind it as well?
Aye, that looks like it would come out the other side of the tank.
Shell hitting tracks from the side then hitting side armor
That just soared straight through without a scratch lol
Just imagine a Jagttieger with a 150mm gun. They might get a penetration of the front and the back.
I have a question: 1:20 If the residual velocity of the projectile after perforating the 77mm thick plate is ~320m/s, then then ballistic limit is about ~500m/s. Using DeMarre formula the BL for a 64mm plate alone would be ~440m/s and the residual velocity with striking velocity of 594m/s, ~400m/s (not taking into account the backing plate).
But in the video it says: "~500m/s residual velocity". Did you miscalculate? How would you even determine the velocity of an object in ANSYS?
Edit: Hope you dont mind answering this question. ;)
Interesting to see the simulation of a panzerfaust.
Cool how do i make a simulation like this?
hey SY Simulations im a mechanical student but i dont know which version of ANSYS to get for ballistic simulations, should i get ansys student, discovery student or LS-DYNA student?
Could we this shell vs Churchill VII close range?
The idea with plates rivetted to a mild steel plate frame was to reduce spalling from hits that didn't fully penetrate, but did manage to damage the plate, reducing the risk from glancing blows and lower calibre rounds. It was basically a very old and mediocre version of an integrated spall liner.
when simulation creators finally do 90 degrees impact and the shell is fully penetrated
King Tiger: You think it will completely destroy your entire group of tanks but then its engine fails, the transmission breaks, the inexperienced crew drives it into the wall and the armor is surprisingly easy to penetrate because of the lack of Molybdenum in the steel
Hetzer: Tiny joke of a tank based on an outdated czechoslovakian chassis and a gun from 1940. Your entire division is destroyed, three convoys in the Atlantic sunk, Winston Churchill is on fire, everyone goes absolutely bananas.
what kind of software did you do this
You should do this again but also with the back face of the turret to see the over penetration
You'd need to model all the rest of the stuff in the turret, like the radio, gun, etc, as there's a lot a shell might hit before the other turret wall.
Wow!... RIP...
I'm glad you took the time and effort to make a simulation I suggested. :)The results look very similar to the photo. Now I'm curious about how this plate arrangement would fare under angled attack.
Would've liked it more if there had been more clips in the video showing velocity/temperature/strain view rather than plain grey color.
Have a nice day. :)
You're welcome, but yeah i forgot to record the velocity plot of the first case (but still got the data) and the strain plot just didn't look interesting in this case.
You too though :)
"Everyone's dead, Jim"
You're missing the witness plate, how am I supposed to see if there was any penetration without? ^^
The shell be like slicing through butter
Nearly 2000 meters... And consider that average range of engagement was generally below 1000, if memory serves me right.
Maybe try T80BVM vs M1A2 abrams next time
That was never going to end well...
Dang that's from almost 2km out.
At :24 why does the shell make that "cross" shape. I expected round.
When the Shell has better armor than the target
It would be good to have the material properties for both shell and armour posted at the beginning.
Only because British armour plate of the period is going to differ from American or German plate, especially in the face hardening process used. Although I guess as it's being modeled as if it were a homogenous plate of a given hardness.
Also, what's not explained was the difficulty in welding face-hardened plates at the time & how even non-perforating hits could cause catestrophic cracking along welds. So there was a good reason to use plain steel as the hull material and bolt face-hardened plates onto the outside of that.
How about bullets V aircraft engines.
In ww2 the engine was often used as pilot protection.
So how well do radial protect against V. Can the bullets go through the thin cooling fins between the cylinders?
That would be cool.
Seems to me there was less spaling in riveted design
Like butter
It’s all fun and games until the shell blows next to the loaders ear
The picture of 0:42 perfectly examplifies why you cannot listen to "experts" who bring you "real life data" on ww2 tank combat. Often I hear statistics relating to ammunition expendature vs tank kills being used as proof that tank crews could not hit worth a damn, it seemed obvious that the answer were target identification diffculties in heat of battle. A disabled tank not engulfed in a massive pyre would recieve multiple shots, not only from the same tank, but from other tanks within view and at different times. Why would a Hetzer or Stug hold their fire on a cromwell from 1400m away? They had no way of knowing if the tank was knocked out or not.
DM 53 vs T90 upper glacis please.. 🔥
Would be interesting to know how much you’d have to slope the same armour for it to stop the round.
In this case, the loss of internal volume is definitely worth the extra protection
Really depends, if uts the min space then you need to add more armour and weight.
But at a rough guess, 77mm of plate slowed it down by 200m/s. So do the maths, you need around 110mm of armor. Basic trig should solve it. But I am being lazy so say 30degs
Fine did the maths. 65mm at an angle of over 35degs gives you over 110mm of armor
Like butter.
The cromwell have bolted plate on a welded turret. If you look in the photograph you can see it.
Yep, that's what's shown here, but only a small portion of it
Armor: *armors*
Shell: *what armor?*
Can you test telescoping APFSDS against ERA?
Maybe some early war tanks would be cool? Like Panzer II/III/IV versus S35 Somua, T-26, Mathilda II, etc.
What is the program?
Did the Comet Tank have the same issue with its armor? Or did it see improvments?
Afaik that was welded and cast, so no frame. Not certain though
Comet tank had a new turret with up to 4in. (102mm) of armour on the front.
I think shell deformation is important
I always imagined that those giant rivets would start flying around as soon as the armor was sufficiently distributed. I guess I was wrong.. Still not a good day for the Cromwell though.
Cromwell's armor: ouch! that hurts!
Tutel (hetzer) ammunition: EZ Penetration
If world of tanks taught me anything, the front armor on the hetzer can bounce alot of shells because of the angling.
I wonder how this would do against one of the uparmored cromwells?
you mean the Excelsior?
@@Jean-bs5ip No, there was an uparmored Cromwell. It had the same exact turret as a normal Cromwell, but the hull was uparmored because it was built with welds instead of rivets, freeing up weight.
"sir we can't just add composite armo-"
BRUTAL!
what happend when a 5cm-pak hit unter same circumsdance?
i thing it would go through too
@@peasant8246 same distance.
Rather than looking at some of the bigger guns of WW2. With how ubiquitous the M2 Browning was on US vehicles. I am curious how it would have fared against the standard armoured troop carrier of the Germans, namely the Sd.Kfz. 251
The armor on the rear array isn't just regular structural steel, it's IT-100 type plate which is a psudeo-armor plate, although certainly weaker than regular RHA plates of UK manufacture, it was designed to be easier to weld, cut, etc.
Yeah, we got that part from the documents whelmy posted on WarThunder forums, but do you have any specific characteristics for this material? From the looks of it, when comparing the simulation results to the photo, this material behaves pretty much like structural steel.
They used IT100 quite often for thinner parts, correct, but I never saw a specific diagram saying the backing at this point was IT100...couldnt find any info on what it was in fact. I initially started with a steel approximate of IT100 but I had to run the model a few times with sequentially lower hardness steel until the petaling matched the picture, this only happened at the strength of structural steel
one shot one kill
wtf dude, Pzgr.39 made of adamantium? Why is there no deformation at all?
Do Maus Shell bullet vs A39 Tortoise and then see if A39 Tortoise Shell Bullet could pen Maus
What CPU do you run the sim on?
Z80H
That's an almost "why did they bother" with the armor type question? Late war, that 75 on the Hetzer was pretty common. It begs the question of what Kraut AT fire WOULD that level of armor stop? 37mm? 50mm?
37mm for sure, maybe short barrel 50 mm at distance, both where retired from service before the cromwell enterd in service.
Cromwell was supposed to enter service in 1942, where 64/76mm was more common if still weak for a new tank. Uparmoring to 102mm was tested and recommended in 1943 but even though it was feasible to upgrade the tanks in time this was never done.
The same could be said of almost any allied tank. A Sherman's sloped frontal armour, for example, is nearly the match of a Tiger's frontal armour - the difference is that the Sherman's gun will bounce off, while a Tiger's gun will zip through the Sherman in an instant. Almost no allied tank had armour capable of stopping a German high velocity 75mm or 88mm round, etc. Allied tanks would have all been as heavy and slow as the Churchill if they really tried to stop the German guns. Armour was put on to stop basically every other threat...but there was no stopping a 88mm round with your name on it, really.
In real life you almost never ever get a perpendicular hit. Also shells are rarely if ever perfect in their crystalline structure either (neither is the armor). A simulation represents a mathematical ideal situation without the many, many random variables of real life. And after having that reinforced many times such as aircraft engines having failures that didn't show up in modeling leading the FAA to require test flying engines again we keep relearning that.
Anyway in relation to WW2. German analysis show that for example it was expected to take 3-5 shots from a Panther's 75mm to knock out a M4. Some of it might be conservative estimates but also the reality that things rarely lined up perfectly in real life. Ultimately what really mattered the most was who spotted who first and who fired first. As reacting to being fired on tends to force errors. An example of such as a 76.2mm anti tank gun crew that effectively knocked out a Tiger II in the battle of the bulge because on coming under fire (And the commander of course not knowing from what) tried to get his vehicle repositioned and it backed into a building which partially collapsed on it making it immobilized and thus abandoned (Tiger II number 105 belonging to s.SS.Pz.Abt. 501 abandoned 18th December 1944 at Stavelot when it got stuck in a building. Source: Schneider)
@@oskar6661 The firefly could kill the tiger and vice verca. It came down to getting the first hit.
You didn't shoot the bolt :(
What a death trap!
The Hetzer was a mean beast to both sides with minimal armor, essentially zero traverse, and the Panther’s cannon.
It had a modified PAK 40, not a KwK 42.
It didn't have the same gun as the panther, it had a pak 39. The jagdpanzer IV/70 had kwk 42 l/70
How is this even a competition?
WT be like yellow turret crew.
"Ah yes sir the tea was quite delicious indee- HA-OH MY GOODNESS! MY BLOODY LUNGS!"
War thunder:that a bounce,take it