What size bomb will auto kill a tank with a single touch? Why does a direct hit always kill a tank?

[[KG]Destaex]

I know the armour on the top of a tank is thin, so a direct hit on the roof of a tank by a bomb would possibly kill a tank. Last night as I got one shotted by an aircraft with a bomb, I think it felt like that because their was an aircraft sound a loud explosion and I was instantly dead. I assume it was a pinpoint accuracy bomb from an aircraft. 

 

The questions that come to mind are:

 

a) What size bombs in game will insta kill tanks every time they hit them?

b) Do they need to be armour piercing bombs to pierce? HE bombs would dissipate most of their energy on the outside of the armour I expect.

c) Can we expect a near miss to kill a tank. I know that il2 was originally geared towards near misses just giving the player a kill. Otherwise tanks would be very hard targets indeed. Which is why dedicated tank killer aircraft usually were equipped with guns to fire at the engine deck.

d) I get the feeling so far that it is not necessary to fire at the engine deck in il2 to kill a heavy tank with low calibre weapons like the 20 and even 30mm, that a tank will simply die or take damage when touched by anything but machine guns.

e) Don't even talk to me about rockets, these should miss most of the time.

 

Essentially the question is how realistic il2 as a flight simulator is in giving tanks a realistic go. In history I expect on the western front that most tanks attacked by aircraft were either not hit (it's hard to hit tanks) or only damaged or disabled, not blown up every time.

 

As a disclaimer, my only real experience of being attacked was last night as a lone tank. So I need a larger sample than that obviously. But you guys probably know fairly well what the story is for tanks. Are they modelled correctly or are they modelled after the originally (I assume) premise of most flight simulators that if an aircraft can hit anything they should be rewarded with a kill?

[MajorMagee]

There are several pages like this Example Website but the story is pretty much the same on all of them.

Edited November 5, 2021 by MajorMagee

[[F.Circus]sith1144]

A) at least 50kgs, never tried it with lighter. Maybe the Russian cluster bombs are the lightest?

 

B) they do not. Even a 50kg bomb carries *a lot* of explosive.

 

C)if the bomb is big enough, absolutely. Splash damage in the game is pretty bad tho so you can quite often be fine

 

D) depends on what you mean by "heavy tank" and "low calibre". Penetration capability varies from gun to gun. The Hispano can penetrate some things the shvak can't for example. Something like a tiger I've not known to be particularly vulnerable to even 37mm cannon fire from the side. (I have tested, practiced and trained a bunch on a custom training server with a friend in the tank assessing damage)

[[KG]Destaex]

16 minutes ago, [F.Circus]sith1144 said:

A) at least 50kgs, never tried it with lighter. Maybe the Russian cluster bombs are the lightest?

 

B) they do not. Even a 50kg bomb carries *a lot* of explosive.

 

C)if the bomb is big enough, absolutely. Splash damage in the game is pretty bad tho so you can quite often be fine

 

D) depends on what you mean by "heavy tank" and "low calibre". Penetration capability varies from gun to gun. The Hispano can penetrate some things the shvak can't for example. Something like a tiger I've not known to be particularly vulnerable to even 37mm cannon fire from the side. (I have tested, practiced and trained a bunch on a custom training server with a friend in the tank assessing damage)

B would be interesting to find some DATA on. I have a few books that may confirm this.

[[F.Circus]sith1144]

11 minutes ago, [KG]Destaex said:

B would be interesting to find some DATA on. I have a few books that may confirm this.

One of your best bets to get an impression is to look at the historical effectiveness of the SU-152 HE shell against tanks, then imagine it had about four to five times as much explosive in it (~6kg filler for he shells, ~25kg filler for the fab-50)

[[KG]Destaex]

Yeah, I think that shell for the su152 was about 50-60kg and generally did not penetrate the tank, just blew off turrets with lucky shots or killed the crew through concussion. That is from ambush and I would say very close in, because I doubt it was accurate at long range killing of heavy tanks. When it did hit it would cause damage through spalling if the german armour was crappy enough, which it was late war. Not so sure this early though. Tank Crew is set in Kursk which is mid war iirc.

 

The accuracy of level bombing by fighter bombers seems very accurate though in il2. Players rarely miss tanks that I have seen. Whether they are missing or the blast is destroying the tank (I which it should definitely not) is yet to be determined in my eyes.

 

Dive bombing where the bomb is hitting dead straight down like a stuka would defo concuss things. 

 

I also remember reading about Lorraine I think it was in 1944. Massive aerial bombing by over 1000 b17s as well as p47 strafing and all sorts took place and disabled but did not destroy most of the 16 panthers in situ. Some remained operational actually, the others just needed repairing. A direct hit being needed by bombers with any sized bomb to actually kill the machines rather than just disable them. The crew was probably another matter.

[NoelGallagher]

first of all bomb doesn't interact with tank as physical object in this game unfortunately

thus even if you hit it directly it will pass through the tank and explode on the ground 

 

A)50kg bomb will kill the tank if it's dropped whithin 2m radius from the tank inside the game

 

side notes : since we have super large size bombs like 1000kg 1800kg 2500kg bomb

many of us neglect the lethality of 50kg bomb

it is small bomb only in comparison to other super heavy bombs 

it has silimar amount of explosive charge of what 30cm naval gun HE shell contains 

it can contain more explosive charge than the "shell" that has same size now put that in perspective here's a picture of 30.5 cm 305mm shell looks like

large caliber naval gun like this use seperate propellant charge 

so this shell doesn't contain propellant 

if you want to compare with tank shells like 88mm

this might give you the perspective

now compare the 88mm shell body(indicated by red line to 30cm shell image above)

it can surely do serious damge to the tanks even if it explode around the tank

 

otto carius(german tank ace of ww2) in hist account once called the naval artillery support on soviet tank position

company size of medium soviet tank completely destroyed by naval artillery 

 

also if you put 4 of sc50 on soviet destroyer inside the game 

you can sink him down

now that tells eveything 

 

B)yes it dissipate most of their energy on the outside of the armour 

But the shockwave is so great many times it flips the tank upside down and also cause internal spalling of the armour

this is the pic of the tiger that flipped upside down by allied bombing(from the falaise pocket)

if you watch the ww2 footage you can see a lot of tank in this condition

here's a video footage of tank got hit by bombs and flipped upside down

 

C)i ony fly aircraft when i want to bomb the tanks 

and more than half of the times it was direct hit(bomb hitting the tank armour)after watching recorded footage 

but as i said before it's not simualted inside the game so it pass through the tank and exploded on the ground

 

D)50.cal and hispano 20mm can penetrate the medium german tank

while mg151/15 which has simlilar velocity (more than 850ms) doens't 

overall i don't think 20mm can pen the tank unless it hits the roof less than 60 degree angle

becasue even if it has enough velocity to penetrate the certain armour 

the shell will simply die out(deform) before it penetrate the armour becaus of it's small caliber

also there's a bug about this and i reported this on forum only to get loughed by some il-2 Elite LOL

and they demanded the video as if i ought to while they tag themselves with "the testers"

 

 

 

Edited November 6, 2021 by NoelGallagher

[NoelGallagher]

7 hours ago, [KG]Destaex said:

Yeah, I think that shell for the su152 was about 50-60kg and generally did not penetrate the tank, just blew off turrets with lucky shots or killed the crew through concussion. .

su-152 HE shell is nowhere near what 50kg bomb contains

7 hours ago, [KG]Destaex said:

 

The accuracy of level bombing by fighter bombers seems very accurate though in il2. Players rarely miss tanks that I have seen. Whether they are missing or the blast is destroying the tank (I which it should definitely not) is yet to be determined in my eyes.

yes it is more accurate than real life because you don't actually die even if something goes wrong 

thus you can pull off something like very low level sahllow angle dive 

in this way you can even make a direct hit of the bomb on tank very frequently

which i doubt that it happened in real history

some of il-2 plane players alsmot fly right above you to fire the rocket or drop bombs( 100m above the tank)

 

 

7 hours ago, [KG]Destaex said:

I also remember reading about Lorraine I think it was in 1944. Massive aerial bombing by over 1000 b17s as well as p47 strafing and all sorts took place and disabled but did not destroy most of the 16 panthers in situ. Some remained operational actually, the others just needed repairing. A direct hit being needed by bombers with any sized bomb to actually kill the machines rather than just disable them. The crew was probably another matter.

 

because it was b-17 it does level bombing from very high alt 

if real pilot can pull off the stuff like what il-2 players do in multiplayer(low level shallow diving)

they can make a direct hit on tnak sized target 

 

ususally from what i know 

if you make a dive to destroy the ground target with bombs 

they drop the bomb atleast 700-1000m above from the ground

but inside the game you do this at 300m becasue even if you crash it's jsut a game and you don't actually die 

that's also one of the reason why palyers can drop the bomb with super accuracy

not because any physics inside the game is wrong but it's a game and real life thing (anxiety, tension, pilots life ETC don't count)

Edited November 5, 2021 by NoelGallagher

[palker4]

While 50kg bomb is often enough, there is no kill like overkill.(othersim but you get the point)

 

[[KG]Destaex]

Thanks Noel. That is a lot of good information there. I had not considered that the 50kg bomb would contain as much explosive as a 300mm naval shell. I had always assumed that anything but a direct hit by common attack-aircraft bombs would only damage the tank,  rather than destroy it outright. Flipping tanks on their backs was something I thought was the domain of heavy bombers that dropped 1800kg and above bombs usually. If 50kg bombs were so effective against medium and heavy tanks I am not sure why countries bothered with specialised anti-tank aircraft at all.

 

I have a book called "How to kill a panther by Craig Moore", all they have in that book is some tests the British did with Typhoon Rocket firing aircraft; which fired RP-3 rockets. Which were very small in comparison to the 50kg bomb. They say about them that the firing range tests showed very poor hit rates even with nobody firing back at the pilots and the panther painted with a giant white cross to show the pilots where it was as well as being stationary.

 

The book also notes with regard to British Typhoons attacking German Troops in August 1944:

"They claimed hundreds of tanks and vehicles hit. The 2TAF Operational Research Section was sent to study the vehicle wrecks still littering the battlefield immediately after the fighting in the area had stopped. They concluded that there was only evidence that seventeen vehicles had been destroyed by rocket fire alone."

 

From the same book, this time a US source:

"The US ORO (Operation Research Office) concluded that in in a sample of 522 knocked out German tanks the team viewed between 1944 and 1945 ninety-one had been destroyed outright by air attack, thirty five of these by rocket fire. The team concluded that only 7.5 per cent of the total 522 immobilised tanks they sampled had been knocked out by air attack"

 

The above is far from conclusive but does lead me to believe that the level bombing in il2:

 

a) Allows pilots to actually hit their targets far too often.

b) Kills the target way too often.

 

I would have expected that in il2 you would need to dive bomb tanks or use the specialised anti tank aircraft guns in il2 or HS-129 aircraft for instance. Standard attack aircraft bombs like the 50kg one would have had a fairly low hit rat if the above is right. It also makes me think that il2 does not have enough smoke and dust effects or even AA to give pilots the kind of pressure and vision problems they would actually have experienced on attack runs.

 

I have been playing a bit lately and generally it takes just a single run and bomb from an enemy aircraft to kill me. Perhaps the pilots in this game are all aces?

 

Additionally I would not be surprised if tank and aircraft production was almost on a 1:1 ratio. As in for each tank built during ww2 an aircraft was built. Which begs the question as to why any tanks made it to the front line and actually fought in battles. I mean granted some aircraft would have been strategic bombers (even though these were used on tanks) and aircraft like tanks would not always have been firing at tanks. So how did tanks survive at all? If they are so flawed and their are so many aircraft?

Edited November 8, 2021 by [KG]Destaex

[Monostripezebra]

Well, the 250Kg is good.. but 500 is better