"Tank Armor Rating" Topic

Okay, I'm wondering if you residents of TMP could do me a favor. I'm converting a set of modern rules to WW2, and in the rules tank armors are rated on an A-E scale for the front, side, and flank. Since I don't know how to contact the author, I do not know how the original armor values were created, and since I know next to nothing about WW2 tank warfare, I'm hoping you guys can rate the more commonly used tanks in that sort of scale.

So A = the best available armor around while E = the least quality of armor found on armored vehicles. Hopefully you could give me a rating for front, flank, and rear but I would be willing to settle for just the front ratings.

Thanks if anyone is willing to help me out,

SJ

Here's a quick starting point, the extremes and the middle

A – King Tiger, IS3,
B
C – PzIVJ, T34, Sherman
D
E – PzI, halftracks

With just 5 classes it'll be fun categorising the rest of the armoured world

With 5 categories, the finer points of flank and rear armour is mostly irrelevant. Just drop 1 class for flank and rear though you might have to drop 2 for the rear of some of the German tank destroyers.

Which set of Modern Rules?

Rapid Fire has a very similar ranking system and the vehicle rankings for the major combatants are available as free downloads from the website.

Rob

Actully with only 5 levels quite a lot of tanks would have the same front and flank armour (eg KV, TigerI, any of the british I tanks or French tanks) while very few would have flank armour 2 levels less than the front (maybe the Hetzer).

The WRG WWII armor & infantry rules used this type of rating. I'd have to dig through my files to find my copy. Don't hold your breath.

You might want to check a copy of 'Fire! Ogon! Fruer!' which has numerical rating charts for all AFVs. These should easy to group into your letter codes. FOF is Free.

My copy of the June 1973 WRG Armour & Infantry rules is right here. The following is list of frontal armour only taken from pg 8 of the rule book.

Class A – Tiger2 Elephant Jagdtiger JS3
Class B – Panther Churchill Centurion Pershing JS2
Class C – Tiger Comet KV1 T34/85
Class D – CharB Matilda Panzer4 Sherman
Class E – Panzer3 Crusader Stuart
Class F – Panzer1 FT17
as you can see there are 6 classes armour, also the side and rear armour is not always proportional

Wow! Thanks for all the info guys, it should help me a lot.

My recollection of WRG also includes the side armour (for some of them)

Panther BE, maybe BD
Tiger CC
Pz IV/Sherman DE
Tiger II AC(?)

I don't have a copy at work though;-)

Given the difference in armour quality and bulk, I'd be inclined to give a Tiger 1 BC, which makes it truely scary.

I recall one 1943 game where my oppo took an entire company of Tiger 1s forgetting that vastly underrated allied AT tank – the Crusader III with a 6pdr which can auto-penetrate class C armour at ranges less than 500m. Oh happy days. I never cottoned on to the backwards firing bazooka trick until someone told me about it though.

Another approach is you could use the 5 ratings to be scenario specific for different periods of the war, and AT values similarly, its a bit more work, though less than you'd think.
So in 1940 a Matilda would be an A, a panzerIII might be a C etc. You don't have to worry about King Tigers. Likewise in 43 a Tiger 1 would be the A, but in 45 a B or C and so on and so forth.
The chances are in any given game you probably won't have that many weapon systems, and can easily produce sheets specific for the game you are playing, saves a lot of time wading through stats you don't need.

That's how I do it with sg2 ww2.
I feel it's not terribly difficult to do if you have a reasonable idea of tank anti-tank for the period.
Other people seem to feel you need an exhaustive list of everything before a ruleset is usable.

Yes, I do the relative armour thing as well. If you are only using Light, Medium or Heavy you really, need to do it that way.

5 classifications is quite a lot though, VL, L, M, H, VH.

The WRG WWII armor & infantry rules used this type of rating. I'd have to dig through my files to find my copy. Don't hold your breath.

Anyway, from WRG's 'Armour and Infantry' rules., June 1973 p8

A front C side
Tiger II
Elefant
Jagdtiger
Sturmtiger
JS III

A/D
Jagpanther

B/D
Panther
Churchill VII/VIII
Centurion
Pershing
JS II
SU 152/122

B/E
Brumbar
JagdPz IV
SU 100

C/C
Tiger I !!!!

C/D
Churchill I-VI
Comet
KV I/85

C/E
StuG III
Hetzer
SU 85
T34/85

D/D
Char B
Infantry tank Mk.I
Matilda
T28

D/E
Pz III H-N
Pz IV E-K
Valentine
Firefly
Centaur
Cromwell
Lee/Grant
Sherman
KV II
T34/76

E/E
Pz III A-G
Pz IV A-D
M13
Semovente 75/18
R/H/S 35
A10
A13 II
Crusader
AEC a/c
Archer
Sexton
Priest
Kangaroo
Stuart
Chaffee
Hellcat
M10 & M36
Chi-ha
Chi-nu

E/F
Pz II
SIG
Marder
Nashorn
Wespe
Hummel
SdKfz234

F/F (much abbreviated)
Pz I
Tetrach
SU 76
(all of the light 'T' series Russian armour)
Halftracks
Scout cars
Armoured cars

Note that I'm not attempting to start a war here, those are the factors as published. You may agree or (more likely) disagree, but don't attack the messenger.

You may have mentioned this and I missed it. You should consider using a weaker class for flank and rear shots.

Another approach is you could use the 5 ratings to be scenario specific for different periods of the war, and AT values similarly, its a bit more work, though less than you'd think.

A good idea, but how does one quantify this in data tables? Do you have listings of vehicles for each year, perhaps? I'm toying with this idea for my next incarnation of my CF armour house rules.
--
Tim

Personally, I prefer to use numbers, not letters -- namely the armor thickness in centimeters, adjusted for slope.

Plenty of data here:

gva.freeweb.hu/index.html

"Do you have listings of vehicles for each year, perhaps?"

That is exactly what I did, although I did it in bands 39-40, 41-42, 43-45.

41-42 is important to account for 'super heavy' tanks like KVs and Tigers as well as uparmoured T28s, Pz III/IVs etc.

I don't quantify it in data tables.

That would limit my freedom of spirit….
I'm a delicate bird of creativity.
I need to fly free.

FREEE from the burden of endless data tables.
FREEE from the errors you so often find in these.

Either that or I'm a lazy arse who prefers to make it up 10 minutes before the game.

Back in 1986 (3rd Ed) Ian Shaw with Tabletop Games produced "WWII Army Organizations and Equipment". This softcover book was designed to work with "WRG", "Cambrai to Sinai" and "Combined Arms", but also refined the armour class ratings especially for the WRG rules including adding an extra "D F" classification for the M10, Wolverine and Achilles SPAT.

WRG changed from "letters" (F worst to A best) to "Roman Numerals" ( I worst to VIII best) for WW2 rules and upto "X" for their current modern set.

Martin what was the backwards firing bazooka trick?

The WRG set is available free on line isn't it?

The bazooka trick is just that bazooka have a beaten zone out of the back (risk of back last).

So, to optimise their use against infantry, turn the bazooka around and fire it. Bingo. Instant canister round.

For Combat Command after much research and fiddling, I have only managed to reduce WWII armor ratings down to to nine catagories:

Light(-), Light, Light(+); Medium(-), Medium, Medium(+); Heavy(-), Heavy; Heavy(+). Same for guns.

Anything less and you have to shave off to many signifigant differences. (Even so I had to do some "lumping".)

Frontal armor of Tiger and Panther should be in same category – even with nine grades!

Categories work better than numbers for game play as they require less math. And yes just reducing by 1 (for "box" tanks) and two catagories for most and three for a few exceptions with weaker side armor (Panther) works well.

TomT

A-E or F. Everything old is new again.

There are a number of issues with Armour rating.

What do you want it for? If you want the close in tactics it is essential that you have enough armor ratings to reflect the vulnerabilities of a vehicle at least regarding front back and sides and potentially turret as well. This needs to be valid for all vehicles. Thus 6 values my not be enough. Particularly if you want to discriminate at low levels for example the difference between Rifle proof and HMG proof as this can be significant.

Further more, adding say 20mm of armour to a 8mm basic plate more than doubles its protection. Adding 20mm to say 250mm will have effects below what is necessary to discriminate for.

Add to the fact that in WWII particularly the angle of the plate simply in the horizontal changes the thickness by some 40%. Do you account for this or just live with the inaccuracy (in MG it influences our armour thickness "granuality" but we do not accont for it directly as it is not considered its rules (hassle) to benefit ration not being considered worth it).

To get something acceptable MG uses a non linear value of equivalent Rolled Homogeneous Armour (RHA) using a value for Kinetic rounds (AP, APCBC )etc. and one for Chemical weapons (Bazookas etc.) where the use of "Bazzoka Plates" adds more protection than just the added thickness of the plate.

^