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JustinL -> RE: Dunnigan's research on tanks (4/27/2014 11:17:38 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Mad Russian
quote:
ORIGINAL: GamerGuy
From his data, it seems that the M1A2 is very tough to destroy by the T-80, at 1000 meters (i.e. penetration of 500 at that range vs armor rating of 800 of the M1A2). For the M1 it is a completely different story.
There are a couple of things about that statement:
1) Since the two tanks have never been in combat with them all we have are range tests and whatever comparisons can be extrapolated from any actual combat. Since there are no tanks in the class of the T-80 that have fought the Abrams that makes it all pure speculation. To put that into perspective the when the Germans invaded Russia in 1941 there were 967 T-34 and 508 KV-1 tanks in the Red Army. The Germans attacked with a total of 3494 tanks. Of that total only 707 were PzIII's armed with a medium velocity 50mm gun.
On paper the Red Army should have handled the German Panzers easily. But there were a couple of small items. The tanks were so new the crews were barely trained and the guns were so new that almost no armor piercing ammunition was available. They often went into battle with HE rounds only.
2) T-80 vs M1A2 front to front? With which ammo? Does the equation talk about Kontact 5 which was found to be extremely difficult for NATO tank ammunition to penetrate? There is more than just straight up kinetic energy versus steel computations involved in a battle between these two tanks.
Good Hunting.
MR
I took a look at the Kontact 5 wiki article. That doesn't seem to be factored into Dunnigan's table, though perhaps that is a function of the number of T-80s or T-72s that were fitted with that armor. Any ideas on the percentage fitted with Kontact 5?
If the percentage was high, then it seems aircraft such as the A-10 would be called in more often for these (provided air cover was available).
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