Tuesday 30 December 2014

More Ferdinand Penetration Tests

You may recall two previous article where the Ferdinand's armour was tested: against the 152 mm ML-20 and 122 mm D-25. Today, thanks to Yuri Bakhurin, I bring you the results of the rest of the test.

First, we have the 45 mm gun. Naturally, it can't do anything to the Ferdinand's thick side. AP shells shatter when hitting the armour, cores from APCR shells sink into the armour without penetrating.


Next, the 6-pounder from the Churchill. Penetration is achieved at ranges of 300 meters, but firing from 500 meters yields little results. Shells either get stuck in the armour or shatter.


Now, the Sherman's turn. M-72 shells from the 75 mm gun cannot penetrate the side or rear armour. The M-61 shell fares better, penetrating the side at 500 meters.



Next, the Soviet 85 mm gun. These shells are easily able to pierce the side of a Ferdinand, causing spalling on the inside.



The proving grounds also had a Panther, and decided to see if it could take on a Ferdinand. Turns out, it could. The vertical front armour can be penetrated by the Panther's gun.


The front of the casemate, however, proved too tough of a challenge. The shells made 170-180 mm dents and could not penetrate all the way,.


75 mm APCR can penetrate even this tough armour.


Penetration through the side. Note the jagged outline of the hole, caused by spalling.


Spalling damage from the inside. The large hole is from an AP penetration, the small hole is from APCR penetration.


The Ferdinand had a chance to take revenge on the Panther. The 88 mm shell ricocheted, but led to a breach and spalling in a 300 mm by 250 mm area.


The results of these trials were used to compose this guide on fighting the Ferdinand.

15 comments:

  1. No ranges given on the 85mm, German 88mm or 75mm?
    -m

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  2. Did the Panther shown in the article have a 60 or 80 mm glacis? Thank you.

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    1. Trials recorded that the UFP was 85 mm and LFP was 65 mm.

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  3. What about the distance at which the 88mm fired to the Panther? According to other tests, it should penetrate at around 650 meters.

    http://english.battlefield.ru/documents/29-technics/96-testing-100-mm-and-122-mm-tank-guns.html

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    1. Range was not mentioned for that one either.

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  4. The 7,5 cm L/70 penetrated the frontalarmor but the Ferdi but the D-25 didnt? Thats pretty odd.

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    1. Yes, but if you look closely two penetrations on the bolted driver's plate are right next to a bolt. Basically they sandwich one. So that might be slightly weaker than further away.
      -m

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    2. The penetration of Soviet AP shells was very poor due to insufficent hardening and shell quality. Thats why they often used flat nosed shells instead, since their regular AP shells would shatter against thick armor anyway and these kinds of shells are easy to produce. Both 122mm BR-471 and BR-471B only penetrated around ~160mm of flat armor at 100m while the 75mm PzGr. 39, which would not shatter, penetrated around 180mm and more.
      Against sloped armor the Soviet shells were still effective and penetrated as much as you could expect from their respective caliber and velocity.
      It should be noted that because the Soviet shells shattered so easily against thick armor (= high velocity) they would maintain their close range penetration even at long range until the shell was so slow enough to not shatter.
      So thick vertical armor was actually more effective against Soviet shells than sloped armor.
      Compared to the Ferdinands 200mm armor the Panthers 80mm sloped at 55° only offers around 185mm of protection against AP shells. But because uncapped AP shells are better at penetrate sloped armor than thick vertical armor, the Panthers armor was basically worse.

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  5. Now that I can examine the photo closer it looks like the same Ferdinand is used in testing the Russian heavy guns. Where the 152mm supposedly alone destroyed the driver's plate on the right side there are the same penetrations from the 75mm.
    The same chip mark in the driver's plate and nose plate can be seen. Also you can see the partially erased chalk marks of the '75 HEM Bp' under the 'D' of 'D-1200' are still there in photo #40.
    http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2013/03/suisu-152-vs-german-big-cats.html
    Odds are that two different Ferdinands would't have dents in identical places.
    -m

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  6. If you look at the pictures of the other test you can see the roof armor is basically blown off and its on its side missing on set of tracks and wheels I believe this Ferdinand was blown up by its crew ( Ferdinands at Kursk that were unrecoverable were blown up according to records) before the russian testing meaning that the plates were already weakened before any testing was done to the vehicle.

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    1. Look at the third picture, the roof is fine. This vehicle was not blown up by its crew.

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  7. From the scoops made by non penetrating M61 shells at 700m I'd say these shots were taken from an angle, probably +20° to the side as soviet testers often did. With a perfectly 90° shot these would've probably penetrated.

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  8. From the demonstrated complete immunity of Ferdinand's casemate against 75mm PzGr.39/42 at s.v. of 912m/s (100m) I estimate that this shell would require at least 946m/s to defeat this target.

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