"HEAT ammunition vs. flesh" Topic

Back in 2009, Stephen "FPilot" Bierce came up with some dinosaur stats for Flames of War. The funny thing with the list (which is stated as untested) is that Sauropods have toughness/front armour values that surpass those of tanks. The Brachiosaurus has a front armour of 21, which could not be penetrated by any weapon until the release of Team Yankee. Seeing this absurdity, my mind went to comparative anatomy, since the animals that fill most closely the same ecological niche today are the pachyderms: elephants and rhinoceros.

Bringing back the subject matter, my general assumption is that if someone fired a HEAT shell (be it via a bazooka, an RPG-7, a LAW…) at a pachyderm, it would blow a pretty large chunk out of the animal, if it is not immediately fatal than most certain to mortally wound it.

Now how would this actually work out, what would actually happen?

High-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warhead is a type of shaped charge explosive that uses the Munroe effect to penetrate armor. The warhead functions by having the explosive charge melt a metal liner to form a high-velocity superplastic jet. This concentrated metal jet is capable of penetrating armor steel to a depth of seven or more times the diameter of the charge (charge diameters, CD). Contrary to a widespread misconception (possibly resulting from the acronym HEAT), the jet does not melt its way through armor, as its effect is purely kinetic in nature.

In short, it hits, goes bang, and shoots a jet of molten metal (like a super high velocity acetylene blow torch) through the 'barrier' on which it exploded.

I have participated in discussions here and on yahoo groups about bazooka rounds. In gaming terms, people relate the explosion to a US hand grenade strength. The force of the blast would be similar but with much less fragmentation effect. Aside from that, you would be dealing with burns plus the penetration (or non-penetration) by the blast jet. I would imagine this would be anything from temporarily stunned to incapacitated. It would all depend on the Rhino, Elephant or dinosaur and where it was hit.

Since poachers have been known to use RPG's against elephants, there is probably info on the 'net describing the effects. And I don't think any thickness of dino bone compares to steel (if dino bone was that dense, the dino probably wouldn't be able to move.) Now, getting a direct hit on a dino brain the size of an orange, that's another matter… ;-)

I'm not buying dinos tougher than tanks, after all carnivorous dinos were able to take bites out of other dinos but I doubt a tyrannosaurus could take a bite out of a King Tiger tank. Also early antitank rifles were based on elephant guns, while a Dino might be tougher I still don't see it stopping a high velocity 75 or 88mm shell. Frankly I don't even see it stopping a 37 mm.

I don't think a dino would stop or deflect the shell, but what happens when the shell goes off? A really hot jet of molten metal blows a hole through the dino. And cauterizing the hole as it went. So it won't bleed to death.

So the dino could die of shock…or not.
How big would the hole be? If it's small enough, the dino might just feel a sting then get really mad at the folks carrying the heavy launcher. If it's big enough, or hits something important (like a heart or lung), it would disable or kill the dino. When deer hunters don't hit the vital organs, the deer runs off (sometimes for quite a distance) before finally succumbing.

It will be a small hole on the side that gets hit but HEAT rapidly begins to expand past the contact point. It could be very ugly.

HEAT vs. Dino = DE …

It'll be dead, one way or another, and most likely very quickly after being hit, if not killed outright.

There are write ups from the Vietnam war where elephants and water buffalo being used as logistical transport by the VC/NVA were killed by LAW rockets. Small crater with a hole on the impact side, big hole with lots of fleshy debris on the exit side and the whole body deformed by the thermal expansion as well as flash gas-conversion of liquids. Generally instant death to the critter. A HUGE dino might take more than 1 round to kill, but I would think that most would be killed outright regardless of where hit.

You guys are being 'way too scientific. Tank guns don't kill dinosaurs; heroes with .45's kill dinosaurs, from up close (usually shooting through the dino equivalent of the soft palate…). Sheesh!

Shouldn't this be HEAT vs FLESH?

"OK, T-Rex, hands above your head, or you get blasted!"

"I said 'Hands above your…oh right, I can see the problem with that – just get them up as far as you can, then."

The copper liner's not molten--it simply deforms fluidly under extremely high pressure.

There's a really cute experiment that proved that the liner remained a solid, beyond the common-sense and deep theoretical evidence. An exercise for the reader: calculate the total energy released by the explosion, the energy consumed in accelerating the liner, and the energy that would be required to melt the liner. Given the other energy losses (heating the surrounding air, velocity of the escaping explosion gasses), is it likely that there was enough energy available to melt the liner?