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Prince of Eckmühl -> RE: StuG BS discussions (12/22/2010 12:02:36 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ratzki
Well, back from the bush and killing concrete. If it makes a difference to Mobius and others, I was shooting a Speer soft point 180gr bullet at about 50m. I will start off by saying that shooting real concrete is nothing like the store bought pavers and such that have no real pea sized and larger aggrergate. I decided in the morning that I would rid myself of several Home Depot pavers that I had left over from the patio project from a couple yaers ago. So some of the pavers that I shot up were around 3 inches thick. Now when hit these commercial pavers would break into a couple pieces and nothing to note happened, the round passed right through. It was starting to get a little boring so I brought out the 1 inch guys that I had. Took aim and when the dust settled, these 6x6"x1" thick self poured pavers vapourized. The commercial ones would dance around and break, but I was able to always find the pieces, My more coarse aggregate pavers that were larger by about 40-50% would cease to exist. Now to explain, these coarse aggregate pavers would explode and I could hear small pieces landing all over the place in the bush for probably 50+ feet all around where I had them placed. So now, I brought out the two larger chunks of sidewalk that I had been using block the wheels on my Willys when I needed to work on it(my wife has bought me actual wheel chocks, so I was up two nice size 5" thick chunks of concrete). So I line this 1st hunk of concrete up and pull the trigger, next thing I know I am getting pelted by a mixture of rocks and concrete, ok, maybe not pelted but the difference is this thicker piece of concrete fails to stop the bullet like the others, but pieces actually come back at me and a couple whistle through the branches in the trees just over my head. Now I am down to my last real chunk of concrete when I realize that I might be on to something so I set the last piece up, but this time I place a 10" square cardboard target about 4-5" in front of the concrete. The idea is I want to see what is going on in front of the concrete when hit. So below is the result of that last shot. The cardboard in the picture is in 2 pieces, I am just holding it together. Now I was out in about 1" of fresh snow, and for every shot but the last 2, nothing of note was evident, but on these final 2 shots into larger chunks of medium aggregate concrete I got a deffinate fan pattern that aimed right back at my location. I would have argued that it was just the spalling around the impact of the bullet, but it did not happen on the home made pavers, just these two thicker pieces of sidewalk. Don't get me wrong, they too failed to stop the bullets. But it would seem that hitting small rocks in the concrete changed how it reacted when hit, could this blowback cone shaped blast of rock and concrete give some kind of added protection to the tank before the round would impact the plate of the tank?
[image]http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk136/Carapar114/concrete.png[/image]
On a side note, why do I get the feeling that you, Yoozer, are just waiting to pounce about how we are all crazy and only you have the answers to all life's questions. I agree with a statement made a while back that we are all here to discuss things, and in doing so we must entertain the fact that we all can be wrong at times. You seem to fail to grasp this, if you are so right, why not find a better forum where only your opinion matters, say maybe write a book on the subject, that way no one can disagree with you views. There are guys here that have probably forgotten more facts about WW2 topics then most of us will ever know, and they seem to be fine with some of our ramblings and questions, sometimes setting us straight but always eager to see if we might have some snippet of information that they might not know or have not thought of before. So now, you can start bashing this post as you do all the rest as I am off to bed for the night. Then in the morning or some time tomorrow I will sift through your drivel ignoring most of it and look for these other fellows responses that treat everyone like they have an opinion that is just as important as their own.
Hi Ratzki,
I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to do this. And I'd be wrong if I didn't acknowledge that it clearly undermines the desirability of concrete as armor, ersatz or otherwise. I can only imagine being in the vicinity of a concrete-encrusted Stug when a .50-caliber round struck it, and sent fragments slicing through flesh and bone. Your little experiment helps us understand the nature of the material being discussed and it's very, very cool of you to have shared the results with our readers.[8D]
Thanks again!
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