"Pivot in place and/or turret rotation" Topic

This question is directed mainly at former tankers.

In a 1:1 tank game players can pivot their tank or rotate their turret to engage the enemy just as their real life counterparts did in WWII. I'm aware not all tanks could pivot/skid turn (I think the Sherman was one of them). I know the Panther and Tigers could neutral turn but that appears to have a good chance of damaging the engine or treads unless it is done on solid ground.

Question:
Could a WWII tank realistically rotate their turret and pivot in place at the same time or would that be too difficult for the TC, driver and gunner to realistically coordinate and engage a target under good conditions?

Under what conditions would it be better to pivot into the enemy and not rotate your turret?

Are ground conditions the determining factor in pivoting/skid turn in place?

I'm asking this question because I've seen dozens of pictures of WWII tanks knocked out and their turret is rotated 90 to 180 degrees. If pivoting your front into the threat is the logical action why didn't they do that? Is pivoting slower than turret rotation? Is the chance of bogging down or throwing a tread too great? I'd think pivoting/skid turn on soft terrain would be a bad idea.

One of the reason I'm trying to clarify this is because I don't think tanks can realistically pirouette around like ballerinas but most player seem to think they can.

Thanks
Wolfhag

Not sure how to address the issue, but it may be beneficial to not e that surprise, or the enemy that sees you first, is likely the one that gets you. Sure plenty of tanks get knocked out from the front, but many if not most, get knocked out by other than front shots. And if not from the front, then the shooter likely wasn't observed until too late. Of course, the best record of this is the photos you mention of tank turrets rotated to side or rear. this is a skewed record as these are the tanks that were KO'd and not all surprised tanks were KO'd. some may have driven out of the vulnerable target zone or pivoted the tank to face the threat, some may actually have been protected by flank or rear armor or friends watching their back, some may have actually won the duel once they registered the threat. Those "successes" do not leave a record on the battlefield. But I suspect if you were under fire by credible weapons outside your area of observation, then like air-to-air combat, you usually don't see the one that gets you.

As to how useful vehicle turns vis a vis turret turns are, you have mainly oral histories to go by complemented a little by technical capability. I also suspect that if you figure out you are being fired on in the rear, picking a fwd or reverse gear and jamming the gas pedal down is your best bet for continued survival. Your judgement in the end but I would comment that this almost below the grain even for a skirmish game.

I'm not a tanker so I'm only using logic here rather than experience, but…

Tank destroyers with a fixed gun, or combination tanks with a hull mounted weapon (like a Grant/Lee or a Char B) are all generally thought less effective in agressive, non-abush tactical actions than turreted tanks.

Even those with millimetre precise steering made especially for the job, like the Char B or an S tank, are always outclassed (it would seem) by the flexibility of rotation turrets.

The conclusion I draw from this is that turrets are 'better' than the alternatives. Wether they rotate faster than simply pivoting or offer more options in some other way I don't know.

I do recall reading about Wittmann's crew being practiced at increasing the speed with which they could turn the gun of their Tiger onto a target by using the turret rotation and the pivoting the tracks on the spot simultaneously, but then they were ex Stug men so I'm not surprised at that.

John T

Yea, only comment I can make is about Wittmann's men in their Stug, before they got a Tiger.

Apparently, they were very well drilled in maneuvering into place to get their shot off quickly. Not sure if they rotated in place (I suspect they did when needed), or if they used forward movement and turning), but they frequently won their engagements with the enemy.

Of course, they really weren't your average crew, either, I suspect, given all the kills they racked up over time.

I think if your enemy is behind ( 180 degrees ) then you're likely to be in trouble.
The best armour is going to be on the front of your tank so you want the front generally towards any enemy.
Although it's worth bearing in mind that angling your armour laterally gives you just as much a plus as vertically.

I thought the tiger and panther could turn on the spot without any particular issue.

Bear in mind 2 other things:
Tanks would be assigned different arcs to cover which would probably entail the turrets being at different facings, and with a lot of tanks, the turrets would be traversed if there was time when hit, to enable the driver and co-driver to get out of their hatches.

A bit of 'Googling' will return scores of photos of knocked out tanks with their turrets facing forwards, or nearly so. Further to that, unless you can see the penetration that killed the tank you can have no idea as to where the kill shot came from. A tank with its turret rotated may just have successfully engaged an enemy to its flank but have failed to spot another enemy in a different direction that destroyed it.

Thanks for the responses.

From my reading and research the Tiger and Panther "Neutral Turning" ability (turning in the same spot with treads moving in opposite direction) generated extreme lateral forces on the tracks and drive sprocket and in soft ground needed high engine RPM's. As the treads moved laterally across the ground they dug in deeper and accumulated dirt and rocks on top of the treads. Lateral forces could shear off the pins and when moving again the debris on top of the treads gets pulled up to the drive or idle sprocket which can pop the treads off. The high RPM on the Tiger or Panther could blow the engine.

Look at this picture:
link

Clearly the Panther was engaging a target 90 degrees to his left as evidenced by the two hits in the side engine compartment and one at the top of the mantlet (?). The ground seems pretty firm with no rocks or debris so should be pretty safe to pivot on. It appears to be a Panther A model so should have a rotation of about 15 degrees/second (is that correct?). Logic dictates he'd turn into the threat. The only reasons I can think that he did not pivot into the target was because pivoting was slower than traversing (which is pretty slow itself) or the tankers may have had an order not to perform neutral turns because of damage to the tracks or engine. I think one of the accounts of Whitmann performing a neutral turn was when he was on a hard paved street so less debris and stress on the engine.

I understand that it's hard to determine exactly the tactical situation a tank was in when KO. I guess my question should be: With WWII tanks when responding to a threat to your flanks is it quicker to rotate your turret or pivot into it?

Logically you'd pivot. If not why?

Thanks,
Wolfhag

Lining up the turret with a target on a flank only requires the efforts of the commander and the gunner -- lining it up by turning the whole tank requires the participation of the driver as well, and he can't see the target until he turns to face it; so logic says it would be much more difficult.

Tanks can pivot steer and rotate the turret simultaneously. The bad guys aren't always in front of you, so the hull and turret frequently face in different directions.

A true pivot turn is where one track goes forward and the other in reverse. Damage from tight turning varies by tank model and terrain. The most common damage is throwing a track, with one thrown to the "inside," or under the hull, being the hardest to repair. A "live" track, with the tread under full tension all the way around, turns faster and with far less chance of throwing a track than a "dead" track. A live track usually has support rollers holding the return portion of the tread off the road wheels, while the return portion of a dead track just rides along the top of the road wheels. A dead track like on the Mark V and VI can't do a true pivot turn on any but the hardest smooth surface, it can only lock one track in place and rotate around it. A dead track lasts longer and is easier to maintain, but they are very prone to throwing tracks in tight turns.

Throw a track in a fire fight and you are a stationary target, usually in a bad position. You either bail out or rotate your turret and keep fighting.

We only used neutral turns on hard, level ground. Too hard on the tracks otherwise.

Turret aspect on a wreck can be misleading. Sometimes the turret is rotated to make it easier to bail out (particularly for the driver and co driver, who can be trapped if the gun is over their hatch).

Commander or gunner turns the turret. Driver turns the tank. So yes both can be done at same time.

I think it is a variety of factors at play …

Firstly let's settle on which tanks we are discussing. Panthers had notable problems with their final drive. It was the single leading cause of break-downs and losses to mechanical failures (usually leading to an abandoned tank when it failed in combat). The French operated Panthers in two regiments for several years after WW2, and in their instructions made it clear that the pivot-in-place feature was NOT to be used for fear of stripping the final drive.

Tiger was a very different beast. So also was Churchill, and even Char B. These tanks seemed to have fully serviceable pivot-in-place capability, although it seems that the Churchill's neutral steer was fairly squirrely rather than precise.

As to the use of pivoting, whether in place or through a skid-turn, the issue is how many different people do you want turning the gun at once? The driver can pivot the tank onto a general heading, but he does not have a telescopic site, nor any angular gradient lines in his viewport. He may or may not have a serviceable compass, but even if he does, no TC is going to call out compass headings for a target.

In WW2, in most armies, the TC would identify targets, and call out the heading to the target relative to the current orientation of the hull. He might use a clock dial bearing from the tank's orientation, ie: "Target, tank, 9 o'clock, in the treeline at 600m!" Or he might call out an angle from the orientation: ie: "Target, tank, 90 degrees left (or "270 degrees"), in the treeline at 600m!"

The gunner did not yet have eyes on the target, and so would traverse to the relative facing before searching for the target in his site. In most tanks he had a turret orientation indicator, showing him when he has the turret at 9 o'clock, or 90 degrees left, or 270 degrees. If the driver pivoted the tank while the gunner was traversing to the target bearing, the gunner would never find the target, because when he got to 9 o'clock or 90 degrees left and began searching for the target, he would have been over-rotated from the target's actual direction.

If you were trained in a non-turreted AFV (like a StuG), you had no choice but to train the driver to get the vehicle oriented onto the target. "Driver, 90 degrees left! Gunner, target, tank, in the treeline at 600m!" Then the gunner only did fine adjustments in aim at a target that was already in his view.

Turning both the hull and the turret at once would certainly rotate the gun barrel faster, but in most cases would take far longer to get on target, as the gunner would not be in control of the rotation and would wind up needing to correct his aim for his own vehicle's pivot.

In some cases, though, crews were trained in the fine levels of cooperation needed to achieve this faster rotation. Tiger crews seem to have been trained on this. I have seen references to pivoting as well as traversing to bring the gun onto target, and I don't recall it being specific to Whitman's unit. May be wrong on that, though.

US TD crews were also notably trained in this. Perhaps this is because of the early M3 halftrack-based TDs (which had no turret), or because the M10s used for the initial expansion of the force, and the M10A1 TDs used for the training of so many of the crews, did not have power traverse. In either case TD crew members frequently comment on their training in getting onto target quickly by coordinated action of driver and gunner.

More modern tanks have TC overrides, so that it is the TC who brings the turret to the target's bearing, so the gunner needs only aim the weapon. With that, the TC might very well give pivot or turn commands to the driver, as he already has eyes on the target and will know when he has traversed enough to align on the target bearing.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

"Firstly let's settle on which tanks we are discussing. Panthers had notable problems with their final drive."

Well thats what you get with a tank that is 45 tons when it was designed to be 30 tons.

Oh and I found driving a Chieftain a lot of fun but have no experience driving WW2 tanks. Before my time. But from my reading tank drivers were treasured.

Very few WW2 tanks had the regenerative transmission required to do neutral turns so they could only pivot forwards or backwards by braking one tread.

As a mechanic in a mechanized unit I can vouch for the high probability of throwing a track by pivoting in place. Also, depending on the soil, you could churn up enough to effectively bog the wheels or get debris jammed in them.

From a practical stand point: tank commander calls target at 9 o'clock. Turret starts to rotate left to engage the target. But, if the driver is pivoting the tank, the target is no longer at 9 o'clock. Thus, it takes longer to bring the gun to bear because the gunner has to locate the target while he is essentially moving.

I think wizbang, Mark 1 and a couple of others have answered my question. I'm going with you can pivot or rotate the turret but not both at the same time. Pivoting will give you better overall defense but also take more time to get the shot off. When you are surprised and out flanked time is important.

Another reason I don't come across pivoting to engage could be the delay in the driver responding. Assuming a vehicle at the stop and the brakes on. An order to pivot the tank would mean the driver adjusting the steering lever/brake on the opposite side to turn. Then engaging the clutch (double clutch?), putting the transmission into 1st gear (not always an easy thing to do) and then applying the power and letting out the clutch to pivot the entire tank. Like wizbang says in his second paragraph now the gunner does not now where the target is which will take additional time to coordinate with the TC and gunner to get on target.

Even if it only takes 3-4 seconds for the driver to perform all of the above a tank with a turret rotation of 20 degrees/second could have moved 60-80 degrees with almost no delay. Then consider the chance of throwing a track or bog down in the middle of combat I'd go with the turret rotation only.

Thanks guys,
Wolfhag

IIRC Panthers could make neutral turns but drivers were forbidden from doing so because of damage to the transmission and the risk of throwing a track