"Simply for interest" Topic

I did some very crude statistics on how many rounds to Kill a tank in our rules.

The analysis would not be rigorous enough to go further so this is a ball park number.

Shooting at 100 tanks that are moving at say mid range where there is a 50% chance of the projectile penetrating takes 4 rounds to be sure its not going to be doing anything else in this game. If the tank was static it would take fewer, and also if the gun was closer resulting in a higher penetration of the gun. Obviously at longer ranges it would require more rounds.

The statistics are dominated by the penetration statistics. That may not be unreasonable. I have read that even in WW2 a well placed 88nn Flak operating in the ground mode with a range card so there is little guessing of the range a hit rate of as high as 90% would be possible. Our rules with high grade lazer ranging and ballistics computer assumes a 75% hit rate on a moving target so not overly optimistic.

WW2 I read recently may have needed as many as 7 shots to kill a tank. This does not look unreasonable.

The point of this, just a bit of fun to see where we are. Its not a particular statistic we tested for in the initial design and it does have some interesting assumptions so it is only ballpark.

Many times they just shot the tank till it burned, that way you knew it was kaput.

I have read the same from tank commanders. You know it is out of action when it explodes or is on fire.

Listened earlier today to HR McMaster being
interviewed on a podcast(school of war ep 1…highly recommend). He said an M1A1 with a highly trained crew that has been properly prepared and maintained basically doesn't miss. Gave the example of a crew getting 3 verified kills on t-72s in roughly 10 seconds at 73 Easting. From watching footage out of Ukraine it also seems that Soviet armor in particular isn't actually that great. Seems like you're being conservative in your games which isn't a bad thing.

smithsco that is interesting. We went for a lowish hit rate for a number of reasons. Interestingly as it happned a documentary on the Challenger was showing. They achieved a hit rate of about 85% on the range. He commented that not everything was working quite on top form.
On that basis plus a bit of real battle stress, 75% was in the right ballpark and helped elsewhere in the overall system design assumptions.

Here is an analysis of the Normandy battles:

I would rephrase the "Average number of penetrations to knock out a tank" to "Average number of penetrations on knocked out tanks" as it would be difficult to determine which round knocked out the tank and normally you'd keep firing until you saw smoke or a fire.

Wolfhag