Tank Angling: Historical or Stupid Game Mechanic?

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So, recently I got a comment accusing me of being “a little too invested in playing videos games”, since I mentioned the angling of armor in reference to the penetration values of a gun in my Marder III video. Note that armor angling is the activity of turning the tank or its turret in a way to create an angle towards the enemy that increases the effective armor of one’s tank towards that particular enemy. Nowadays it is practiced mostly by gamers in War Thunder and World of Tanks, but the question is, was this always the case? So, is armor angling an activity invented by gamers or was it actually used by Tankers in World War 2 and later?

Comment
“One sign that a person is a little too invested in playing video games is when in a serious analysis of a real armored vehicle the phrase ‘if the armor is properly angled’ crops up. Real tankers don't worry about that other than having an imaginary ‘this side toward enemy’ sign on their frontal armor. They're a lot more concerned with finding the enemy and getting the first shot off, and real tanks don't instantly respond to keyboard movement commands.” (Comment on Marder III Ausf. H. Video)

Links to WW2Armor:

Screenshot from War Thunder and modified by vonKickass. Cover Idea: Military Aviation History.

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» SOURCES «

D 656/27: Die Tigerfibel. Generalinspekteur der Panzertruppen, 1943.

D 655/27: Die Pantherfibel. Generalinspekteur der Panzertruppen, 1944.

D 226/4: Merkblatt für die Bekämpfung der schweren englischen Panzerkampfwagen. Heft 4: Flak-Artillerie (Heer und Luftwaffe). Oberkommando des Heeres: Berlin, 1941.

Military Intelligence Division: Tactical and Technical Trends. Number 16. War Department: Washington, D.C., USA, 1943.

Handbuch für Panzerbesatzungen II: Mittlere Panzer. 3., überarbeitete und ergänzte Auflage, Militärverlag der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik: Berlin, German Democratic Republic, 1975.

Handbuch für Panzerbesatzungen I: Mittlere Panzer. 4., überarbeitete Auflage, Militärverlag der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik: Berlin, German Democratic Republic, 1976.

The Chieftain: Myths of American Armor. TankFest Northwest 2015

#TankAngling,#HistoricalOrNot,#GameMechanics
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I certainly have nothing to add to the above. Seems quite thorough. My suspicions are the same as yours: Modern tank side armor is far too vulnerable to modern ammunition types, especially compared to the front. Besides, if you angle to the guy you know about, you may be presenting a flank to the guy you don't know about.

Also worth noting is the percentage of tanks killed without knowing it was getting shot at. Can't angle against anything you haven't seen!

TheChieftainsHatch
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If that guy had angled his comment he might have survived this counter attack.

Jimbob
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I love how this entire video is basically "OP is an idiot", but with footnotes and a list of primary sources.

grimIitz
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Panzer Gunner, by Bruno Friesen, pg. 72: "..for us, it would very likely be a matter of firing the main gun with its barrel over one of the front corners of our Panzer IV because that method added the advantage of slope to our vertical front amour and to the vertical armor of one side of our hull. Understandably, neither the driver nor the radio operator liked that technique because of the likelihood that one or the other's hatch cover would be obstructed by the gun barrel."

Mobius
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"So is armor angling an activity invented by gamers" You're forgetting the Third Reich consisted entirely of gamers

merchanttube
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Thanks for the shoutout, Bernhard! We miss you!

WWArmor
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Yeah, tanker that also got an engineering degree here, Angling is no longer done on modern MBTs because:

A)Most if not all of the armor is concentrated at the front of the tanks. NERA elements take up a lot of volume. You dont have that kind of space in the dimension of the width of the tank if you want to keep it road/tunnel size. The armor on the side is A LOT weaker.

B) Adding to the prior point, APFSDS and modern HEAT with proper distance rod(the funny stick on top of HEAT shells) do not ricochet because of critical angles. So what gamers call an "auto-bounce" doesnt happen anymore because the angle of impact for an automatic ricochet needs to be absurdly flat. Something like 10°. So the shells always start the penetration process and "bite" into the armor. After that, the normal penetration process occurs. And because the armor on the side(~100mm equivalent) is laughable when compared to the front (~1000mm RHA equivalent) no amount of angling will give the sides any meaningfull protection from enemy tank gun fire of 100mm calibre or above when exposed.

The only angling you could do without exposing to much side is like maybe 5°? But achieving that kind of angling when an accurate shot is ranged and fired in a matter of seconds, thanks to laser rangerfinders and ballistic computers, is superhuman reflexes, battlefield awareness and would take a driver that is basically a hivemind with his TC and machine. All that for what? 5° that increase your chances to a point where its makes just an academic difference.

schullerandreas
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I'm still going to angle my sausages so I can get more mustard on them.

ooxprfk
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An interesting and informed rebuttal, courteous as expected from you. It's still a standard thing in modern tanks but engineered in rather than achieved through manouvre. There's also a significant difference in the degree of armour in different areas, as you mentioned. The sloping used nowadays, reinforcement of shot trap areas and overall armour layout as well as the munitions they have to defend against would tend to make the angling approach both unnecessary and counterproductive.

MrGrimsmith
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Another aspect: tank angling works best with boxy tanks.
Round amor have a good angle from every side - but not a special good one at 'mealtime'

Krusesensei
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I watched a lot of old Bundeswehr training videos from the late 50s a few years ago and what struck me as most interesting about the tank training material was that they didn't even mention the word "armor" (I mean the German equivalent of course.) once. They teach the drivers to point the front towards the enemy, but not because the armor is thickest there, but to minimize the tank's silhouette and make it the smallest possible target (not just for hitting, but mostly for detection).

The "between the lines" message you get from those old training videos is that armor really wasn't something considered a factor in combat. They pretty much dismiss it and treat it at best like some "last ditch", "hail Mary", "might maybe do something after everything else failed" kind of thing.

The mentality seems to have been that relying on armor on a tank in combat is like relying on your car's airbag and seat belt to get you from A to B safely, instead of your driving skills.

TrangleC
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Everything is more clear with sausages

ClaymoreM
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Ahh, but I’m an engineer on the USS Enterprise specializing in dilitheum delivery mechanics, and I’m telling you that no tanks could possibly have used rivets to hold them together. That’s just a myth cooked up by people trying to explain why the titanic sank.

Anglomachian
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I love old manuals and how they describe things in a way that a layman can understand. When I was in the military still I worked on a piece of gear that had its last manual revision in 1946 and it had pictures of little elves in it showing how to do this and that. My favorite part was the first line in the introduction page: "Only skilled men shall perform repairs on this unit".

arcta
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I'm still not quite sold on the prospect of tank angling. I mean, I know some of them can float and traverse on water, but do you really need that much firepower just to go fishing?

romaliop
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If that fellow hadn't written his snarky comment, I would not have learned so much! Thank you both!! :)

jconradh
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“Angling is irrelevant to real tankers”

All weapon tests and trials ever: “what is the penetration against an armor plate angled at 30 degrees at what ranges?”

looinrims
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So in summary people who get upset that games model effective angling are wack lol

gd
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Speculation on why angling appears less in American sources even during WW2:
I suggest this may be related to their armor layout. The Tiger is infamously (near-)vertically constructed on all sides, with the side armor being 80% of the front armor. Even little angling bears little risk and notable reward. The T-34 has a decreased angle on the side-armor, but it does still have a constructional angle and an even better 89% of the frontal thickness, partially making up for the more oblique angle. This again has little risk of showing a vulnerability, whilst improving the overall protection should the crew choose to angle.

The M4 meanwhile had flat sides which were additionally only between 60 and 75% of the frontal armor's raw thickness, depending on the variant (excluding the Jumbo variants). The amount of angling that could be done before it becomes more of a liability to the tank in question is going to be less. Higher risk, fewer rewards.

It would be interesting to see whether this can also be observed in manuals for the Tiger II and especially the Panther, due to them sharing those design characteristics of a much thinner, flat side in combination with an angled front.

At least that's my take on why the practice doesn't appear to have been as common with US forces even at that time.

Tepid
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There seems to be a big habit of people to think everyone from the past was stupid. To think there's no way they could have the same knowledge I do. It's such an odd thing but far too common.

edwardscott