".50 cal armour penetration" Topic

What kind of armour penetration could you expect from a .50 cal?

I ask because I'm doing SAS/LRDG v's Italians and DAK and I'm wondering if the .50 cal I've fitted to a couple of vehicles would be able to penetrate the armour on the German 250's/251's and 2328-Rad and the Italian Autoblinda armoured car.

I have got a Ford F30 with a 37mm AT gun and a Chevy with a 20mm Breda so I already have some anti armour but it would be useful if the .50 could worry the opposition as well.

My books are inaccessible right now, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that a .50 BMG woudl penetrate halftracks and other light armor fairly easily, but for tanks, its defintely a rear or side armor only option. As for specifics, don't have those.

Rob

Lots of info about .50 cal ammo here:

link

AP ammo pentration is around 20mm at 500m, but normal ball ammo is much less.

The .50 COULD penetrate the AC's and the halftracks, if it was close enough – usually much closer than 500m, which set of rules are you using?

The .50 has some armor penetration values in some rules and is negligible in others. I know that the US used their quad .50's against light armored vehicles in Normandy and through the rest of the war.

"The .50 has some armor penetration values in some rules and is negligible in others."

I've always wondered why that is. It should be comprable to the anti-tank rifles of early in the war, with the addition of being belt-fed. When I was in they still used a mixture of ball, armor piercing, and tracer in the belts. From what I recall of training just prior to Gulf War I, the Kuwaitis had passed on to us that it would punch a BMP and OT-64.

The armor on German halftracks is sloped though (essentially making it thicker), so penetration, if any, would be restricted to very close range only.

Don't have the stats in front of me right now, sorry.

hen I as the Safety officer for the First Cavalry Division back in the 1970s, I had to inspect a night-time live fire incident in which a couple of .50 caliber MGs engaged a M133 target.

Unfortunately it was one of the unit's APCs that had advanced too far ahead of the firing line. Most rounds not only penetrated the APC's side armor but even penetrated the other side . So the rounds went through two thicknesses of armor.

Yes a few guys were killed and more wounded.

Like I said – it all depended on range and deflection – most of the German half-tracks had similar armor to the M133 described above. The most important factor was range.

In the Russo-Finnish Winter War, the Finns used .50 cal machine guns as Anti-Tanks weapons against Soviet tanks – including T-34's by firing at the relatively unarmored bottoms of the vehicles and by forcing them to cross obstacles which forced exposure of the underside of the tank. Numerous examples given in the several histories I've read.

I guess for game purposes – it depends on the flavor of your game. So, look at the rules and see how they treat the .50 cal. The .50 cal WAS used in anti-armor roles – but it wasn't the favored weapon by any means – it was the weapon of last resort in most cases.

I'm working in 28mm 1:1 and with the nature of LRDG ops I suspect it's all going to be close ranges with a lot of flank/rear shots due to ambushes etc. Like I say, I've got a couple of heavy weapons trucks so the .50cal would just be an emergency fallback weapon but it's nice to know that, if needed, it's there.

In the Russo-Finnish Winter War, the Finns used .50 cal machine guns as Anti-Tanks weapons against Soviet tanks – including T-34's by firing at the relatively unarmored bottoms of the vehicles and by forcing them to cross obstacles which forced exposure of the underside of the tank. Numerous examples given in the several histories I've read.

I would take those histories with a few wagonloads of salt, due to the facts that during the Winter War:

1.) Red Army did not have T-34 tanks, except for a few prototypes.

2.) Finnish army did not have any .50 cal machineguns, though there was one 13.2 mm machinegun mounted on an armoured car, and a couple of prototypes of 13.2 mm machine-gun mounted on wheeled anti-tank carriages.

Griefbringer

I second the fact that .50 cal ball just tears through M-113s and M114s on target ranges. No way a half track or most armored cars stop it. And thats just armored vehicles. It is also pretty nasty against brick and stone walls, etc.