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Ratzki -> RE: StuG BS discussions (12/20/2010 7:47:55 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Yoozername
LOL! Yeah, ok. I was in the mall and sitting on Santas lap and he said he was a StuGIIIF8 commander.
Here's some 'concrete' evidence...
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But take heart, Old School Cav is here. The WWII-vintage .30-06 M2 AP round, often called Black Tip ammo, launches a 165.7-grain hardened steel alloy FMJ projectile at just over 2,700 feet per second. The old Army small arms cartridge manual says: "Penetration, fired at a 7/8-inch thick homogeneuous armor plate at 100 yards, will not be less than 0.42 inch." That's the minimum. The same manual says the round is good for penetrating a half inch of homgeneous armor plate and 0.3 inches of face-hardened armor plate at 200 yards, and 0.3 and 0.2 inches respectively at 600 yards.
In The Ultimate Sniper, Major John Plaster conducted some informal media tests and found that single rounds of M2 ball AP could, at 100 yards, penetrate 19 inches of sand, 48 inches of timbers, 14 inches of rubble, and 7 inches of concrete. I have an old WWII training film, Infantry Weapons and Their Effects, that clearly shows a soldier with an M1 punching holes through a 4-inch concrete wall at 200 yards. I've personally tried the stuff on stacked railroad tie plates and old farm plow shanks and it went right on through. About 15 years ago (I think I was 8 at the time) we had an old concrete farm silo due for being torn down. I fired several M2 APs from my Garand at a range of fifty yards. On the exterior of the silo, there was a tiny .30-caliber hole with the copper jacket mushroomed out around it. On the interior of the 4-inch concrete wall, the exit wound was spalled out in a shallow dish-shaped crater about 8 inches in diameter. The penetrators themselves, still sharp on the end, were about halfway through the far wall and had to be removed with pliers. During WWII, it was reported that this stuff would go through the German armored halftracks at close range and I've read of a Korean War vet who claimed he could penetrate the light armored gunshields of the Chinese heavy machine guns at ranges of 300-350 yards.
M2 AP loaded ammo and projectiles used to be a dime-a-dozen just a few years ago but now there are getting very hard to find. If you come across some at a gunshow or on the 'net, they might be a wise purchase. There are also still some 7.62x51mm M61 147-grain Armor Piercing projectiles still around from a few sources as well. The manual says it can be used: "against personnel and light armored or unarmored targets, concrete shelters, and similiar bullet-resisting targets." Also identified by a black tip on the projectile, its performance is roughly 10% less than the .30-06 AP.
I am not really even gonna address your comment, as it looks like you have all the answers, and I would say that this is the closest thing to one person calling another a liar without having the guts or balls to actually do so.
What's the problem, don't you have anyone where you hail from with enough guts to have ever fought in an actual battle, or do they all just read about it like yourself. What were you doin' in Santa's lap anyhow?... cheap thrills?
Now back to the subject, the old guy never said that he had actually used it, but they had had conversations within their group about things that would give them all a better chance at getting through the dust-ups with all their parts intact. They were all most afraid of burning up inside. He has stated that crews would use whatever they felt would give them an edge, no matter how small, in surviving. I never stated that it was a great thing that was done, but did state that their crew had chatted about different things and that concrete had been part of that conversation in both ATmines and enemy tank encounters. Apparently his crew did not care how many tanks that they went through,as long as everyone survived. I thought that everyone might actually be interested in what someone who was there actually had to say, right or wrong. I mean it is just an opinion, and a one sided one at that. But it sounded to me like they all were very interested in what some might be doing that would increase the survival rate. Did it actually increase the survival rate, do not have a clue, but it would seem that there might be some legs to the stories as there are alot of sandbagged, logged, and other such stuff in pictures out there, and I am sure that the crews did what they had heard worked, whether it did or not is not part of my statement. We shared a couple theories, mostly his with me being a set of ears only for the most part.
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