"Anti-tank rifle overlooked." Topic

I feel that most WW2 skirmish gamers overlook the importance of ATR to the platoon defense.
I just finished watching a movie on Prime based on the defense of Moscow. It was called Pavilovs 28 men. Seemed to be based on an actual skirmish.
The ATRs were a vital part of the Russians defense. Great movie.

You have to watch out with Modern movies (especially Russian). They tend to overplay the ATR as much as other sources underplay them.

Soviet anti-tank rifle is quite a serious anti-tank weapon at the initial stage of the war. We just recently discussed this topic here:

TMP link

Soviet instructions for soldiers on how to defeat enemy tanks with infantry anti-tank weapons. Including identified vulnerabilities for firing anti-tank rifles.

And even when they're not powerful enough to damage later model tanks, ATRs can play havoc with armoured cars, halftracks and other lighter vehicles!

My friend and I set up some variant rules for What A Tanker with AT guns in bunkers and roaming AT rifle teams. The tankers had huge penalties to spot the ATR teams, which tended to pop up in ambush to take rear or flank shots. Maybe not enough to knock out a tank in a single shot, but get enough glancing blows and sometimes get a morale kill.

Soviet anti-tank rifle were part of special anti-tank platoons (9 rifles in an anti-tank platoon, 27 in the rifle regiment (for 1942)) and were rarely used alone. The instructions prescribed to conduct concentrated fire of several rifles at once on one tank.
The ability to destroy a tank with anti-tank gun fire was described by veterans comparable to the ability to kill a person with a long needle. If you know where and how to strike, this is entirely possible. If you do not know how to do this – you can make twenty shots, but not achieve any result. Usually in battle the task was to immobilize the tank, and then finish it off with grenades or bottles with a combustible mixture.

The side armor of was only 30mm on the lower hull side until around '43 and so was vulnerable to the ATRs a close range. Also the Soviet doctrine was to use them in mass at close range. Kind of death a by a thousand cuts, shooting at gunsights, vision blocks, running gear and so on.

The sideskirt modifications (Schurzen) by the Germans were in response to track and running gear damage from ATR's on the Eastern Front.
Later in the war ,predominantly in the West, the solid plates were replaced with wire mesh to combat the different infantry anti tank threat from PIAT and Bazooka rounds.

So if you want an AT rifle to not be overlooked in a skirmish game, you need 10-20 of them.

Great intel Cuprum2 !

And as I said on another thread here. In AH's Squad Leader Game, the USSR and others had AT rifles. Admittedly it was not as deadly as some other Infantry AT weapons. But if use properly under the right circumstances it could do damage. And at a longer range than an AT grenade or Satchel Charge, etc.

A mobility kill of and AFV makes it any easier target for all types of AT weapons. Especially in closed terrain, like urban, trails/roads in thick woods, etc.

Immobilize with an ATR, then use AT Grenades and/or Satchel Charges, etc.

I believe tankers often bailed out if their tank was immobilized, anyway.

My thanks too, I'd seen the image for the weak points of a Panzer III but not the others. I din't realise there was a full series of them. If our Russian speakers could help me out then, my understanding of the graphics at the bottom of each image is;

The curving arrow symbol – where to throw hand grenades of petrol bombs

The circular target symbol – where to aim rifle and machine gun fire

The circular target symbol with projectile superimposed – where to aim cannon and anti-tank rifle fire.

On the last image only, the explosion symbol – where to hit with anti-tank grenades.

One thing that strikes me when comparing the PTRD and PTRS to the Boys and the PzB39 was that the 14.5-mm had a incendiary tip, the object being to ignite combustible materials within the tank. I'm pretty sure that the British .55-in and the German 7.92-mm rounds were purely armour piercing, with no secondary effect intended.

Gary

Starfury Rider, exactly!
Naturally, those places that are designated as accessible for destruction by conventional small arms, the anti-tank rifle hit almost guaranteed.
By the way, in the film "28 Panfilov mens" the work of anti-tank rifles is shown very reliably (although not without artistic exaggeration for the sake of entertainment, of course).
14.5 mm bullet – already a small artillery shell…

Watch combat episodes from the 6th minute:
YouTube link

Watched 28 Panov men couple weeks ago, worth watching.

I believe tankers often bailed out if their tank was immobilized, anyway.

Yes it seems many did, but as we know from the historical records some did not. Sometime it worked out for them … sometimes not.

An immobilized AFV can generally be repaired. E.g. IIRC, in the North Africa WWII. If possible many times both sides would demo some abandoned/KO'd AFVs. Making them unusable for recovery and repair. Or in some cases the Germans would booby trap some AFVs. When the Brits went to recover/repair or demo … BOOoooooom !

And of course we know the Germans were "masters" of re-using captured equipment. Even if they had to repair them at times.

The sideskirt modifications (Schurzen) by the Germans were in response to track and running gear damage from ATR's on the Eastern Front.
Later in the war ,predominantly in the West, the solid plates were replaced with wire mesh to combat the different infantry anti tank threat from PIAT and Bazooka rounds.

These perspectives are present in some of the western histories of the period, but are not at all supported by German documentation or behavior during the period.

Why would the Germans have put Schurzen around the turrets of Pz IIIs and IVs if their concern was for the running gear? Well they wouldn't. Yet they did put it there. Because their concern was not damage to the running gear, but penetration of the side armor.

They had found, by late 1942, that any armored plate that was near vertical and 40mm or less was vulnerable in combat to both Soviet ATRs and HE projectiles of 75mm and above. (In mid 1942 AP ammo was not always available in sufficient quantities, and so Soviet tanks and guns of 76.2mm caliber and more fired a lot of HE at German tanks, with pretty good results when hitting the sides).

Both the Pz III and IV had already been up-gunned, and up-armored across the front to provide effective protection from Russian 45mm and British 2pdr gunfire. Those upgrades added a lot of weight, and as a result both were somewhat over-weight to the performance of the chassis and automotive components. Up-armoring the sides (a LARGE area to cover with weighty armor) to provide effective protection from ATRs and 3-inch class HE was just not in the cards. This is what lead to the development of schurzen ("aprons").

A series of test-firings against tanks with schurzen were conducted at the Kummersdorf range in February 1943. These were the tests that led to the orders to begin production and installation of schurzen. The only projectiles tested were 14.5mm ATRs and 75mm HE. It was found that both 5mm soft plate and wire mesh screens were effective. The screens had the advantage of lower weight, but they were less rigid and would require new mounting techniques. So the plates went into production immediately, and the screens didn't appear until 1944.

When the Panther appeared in mid-1943, it was found that they too were vulnerable to ATR fire, along the small portion of the lower hull side above the return run of the tracks. The wheels protected the rest of the lower hull side, and the upper hull side and turret sides were not vulnerable (as they had sufficient armor and slope to provide effective protection). What was clear from combat was that the Red Army was effectively training their ATR gunners where to aim, and firing en masse, and when 10 or 20 shots were directed at a given tank in close combat, ANY vulnerable area was likely to be hit. So later Panthers also had small schurzen along the sides.

In no cases did the Germans consider schurzen to be a defense against hollow-charge weapons. At least not in their development/production organization (not saying what units in the field may have thought). In fact, in December of 1944 they did test firings at Kummersdorf of hollow-charge weapons against schurzen, both plates and screens. The WaPruf report from those tests concluded that both forms of schurzen were ineffective as a defense against hollow-charge weapons.

In neither case was the running gear the core issue they were defending. It was always the thinner plate armor.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I'm pretty sure that the British .55-in and the German 7.92-mm rounds were purely armour piercing, with no secondary effect intended.

The German 7.92mm round had a small pellet of chemicals at the base, much as a tracer might have a small flaring/smoking compound at the base. But for the German ATR round it was a tear gas pellet. The concept was to drive secondary effects on combat efficiency and morale from a penetration by making the interior of the tank a difficult place to continue working.

As it was smaller than an aspirin tablet, it had to burn/smoke along all the way to the tank, it had a tendancy to get knocked off as the projectile went through the armor, and the inside of a tank in combat was already a smoke-filled noxious environment, it was not judged to be a particularly useful behind-armor effect.

Interestingly, the ATR that seems to have come as close to the performance of the Russian 14.5mm was the Polish Marosczek ATR. It too was a small calibre weapon, 7.92mm like the German PzBsch. Like the Russian 14.5mm it seems to have been a useful weapon against up to 35-40mm of armor plate (when struck at or near vertical), which is notably better than the German or British ATRs. It also seems to have been less sensitive to slope -- which is a good thing in an ATR. But it was more sensitive to the composition of the armored plate.

Those unique characteristics come because of the interesting difference of the Marosczek projectile, which was not a penetrator. The projectile it fired was a squash-head. It was a soft-cored bullet, which flattened against armor, leading to a very high transfer of it's energy into the plate. It was expected to defeat the tank not by punching holes in it, but by sending scabs of armor flying around inside the tank with our without a hole.

The problem was that this scabbing effect was not particularly pronounced on either face-hardened or ductile armor. German tank armor of less than 50mm was almost always face-hardened. The shock waves simply didn't propagate well through the differing hardnesses of the plate, and the softer, more ductile back side of the armor did a good job of absorbing the impact without generating high velocity scabs. Western armor (both British and American) tended to be fairly ductile (American armor in particular). Russian and Italian armor tended to be harder and more brittle. Against these, the Marosczek may have been a good solution. But the Poles had very little call for shooting at Italian tanks, and by the time they were facing Russian tanks the show was already almost over.

The Italians took most of the captured Marosczeks off of the Germans' hands. They didn't deploy them (or at least not many of them) to Africa, but did use them fairly extensively against the Russians in the east.

While I know they were deployed, I've never seen any assesments as to their effectiveness against Soviet tanks.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)