EU Questions & Answers

Raketensegler, on 18 October 2011 - 10:07 AM, said: Most German guns lack a fair amount of their historical penetrative power, because they got values at 30° angle of obliquity.
This part from battlefield.ru: "The armor counted to be penetrated if at least 75% of a projectile's fragments happened to be found behind the armor plate. Most of the Soviet armor penetration tables based on this value. Curiously, but the German way of calculation the armor penetration was based on 50% penetration. That's why the Soviet and the German penetration values are so different."
has lead to the reduced and ahistorical numbers we got. Source: http://english.battl...enetration.html
(The 30° obliquity was equalized to the Russian one at 0° because of this.)
The above statement is false as I have shown through primary documentation of German firing trials, which can be found here: http://www.bismarck-...al_archive.html
(Steel AP and Theory of Penetration)
It was either complete penetration or none at all for German guns, the eye was required to be safe behind the plate of armour. It seems, the requirement of battlefield.ru is referring to the requirement of the German Panzersprenggranate to remain fit to burst in 50% of the case when hitting face hardened armour, which was not used in non German tanks.
I don't think, that the American gun will get 300mm of penetration, when the 8,8/l71 had 235mm historical and even 249mm with late war AP (regular, not APCR) ammo.
So I would say, that historical penetration values can't be taken as a benchmark at all for new guns.
Btw, the Germans used 1.23 as a multiplier for calculating 30° to 0°.