Soviet OOB11 corrections and suggestions

[PvtJoker]

Originally Posted by DRG

There isn't a source in existence that does not say in one way or another that ATR were near useless at anything more than point blank range. Wiki, which you like to quote. says......"The PTRD suffered from numerous flaws; the most notable are the lack of penetration versus enemy vehicles and inability to aim accurately "

Useless against tanks, yes, especially later in the war. The Soviet ATRs also appeared relatively late in numbers and by that time the Germans were already retiring the Pzkw I and relegating the Pzkw II to recce and other secondary roles.

However, light armored cars and APC halftracks had armor only against rifle caliber ball bullets and ATRs were useful against them at much greater ranges. Not to mention unarmored vehicles. English language sources sometimes have a poor understanding of these finer points, since the only ATR used by the Western Allies was the Boys, which unfortunately was also one of the least effective ones, and also suffered somewhat from the choice of sights (fixed sights to 300/500 yards and later only to 300 yards).

Especially the 20mm ATRs were actually more like man-portable light AT guns and the Germans even designated the 20mm Solothurn as such (official designation was 2,0 cm PaK). The Soviet 14.5mm ATRs on the other hand replicated the ballistic performance of the 20mm ATRs on a lighter package (especially the PTRS) thanks to the use of tungsten-core bullets. Well, not all of the performance: the behind-the-armor effects of 14.5mm bullets were noticeably inferior to 20mm projectiles.

Originally Posted by DRG

but someone else, a fan obviously, wrote the PTRS write up "The 14.5 mm armour-piercing bullet has a muzzle velocity of 1013 m/s and devastating ballistics. It can penetrate an armour plate up to 40 mm thick at a distance of 100 meters" and it also claims the effective range against armour vehicles is 800m .

Not just a "fan" but someone who has read Russian sources. 800 meters was a quite realistic range against light AFVs. 40mm at 100 meters at 0 degrees is the penetration number commonly given by Russian sources.

Originally Posted by DRG

Even at the current range your best AP pen could go as high as 5 for PBR and stay at 4 all the way to 250 yards which by all accounts this would be unrealistically HIGH and increasing the range beyond what we have now only pushes that unrealistically high potential penetration even further so while the accuracy we have now is too low and will be adjusted there is no justification for increasing the range to widen the potential 4 pen zone even further than it is now

The normal penetration should be still 25 mm (3) at 500 meters:

http://www.russianammo.org/Russian_A...e_145mm.html#4

I think you are quoting the maximum possible AP penetration above, which Andy has said one can pretty much ignore, since it is so unlikely. With current range the normal penetration at 550 meters is 0, which like I wrote, clearly does not make any sense in light of available data and ballistics science. The 14.5mm bullets were not high drag APCR projectiles!

Originally Posted by DRG

Edit........ as for "had adjustable sights up to 1,500 meters ".... that's nice. The Lee Enfield had adjustable sights up to 1300 yards and the 98k has sights that go to 2000m so how high the adjustable sights can be adjusted is worthless information in game terms and in real life

Don

Those settings were for volley/area fire, which was a standard part of infantry small unit tactics prior to WW1, not for targeting individual soldiers. Machine guns were not very common when those rifles were designed and it was not realized by anyone how much they would dominate the battlefield, especially at ranges above 500 meters. Institutional inertia and general conservatism of armies carried on such settings even to post-WW1 period in many cases.

As for ATRs, they were supposed to target vehicles, which are rather bigger targets than even standing soldiers. ATR bullets also had better external ballistics (flatter trajectory i.e. lower bullet drop) than normal rifle bullets, which meant that errors in evaluating the range were not as serious. So while I agree that a setting of 1,500 meters might be slightly optimistic without a telescopic sight, a fact remains that hitting vehicular targets at 1000+ meters was certainly possible for an experienced user.