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If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well
(Proverb)
Follow Ups:
made in Canada eh....
Someone, on an Armor Board (yeah, Armor Board) told me, in general, the thickness of armor plating to stop a projectile is approx. equal to the diameter of the bullet.So, armor thick to stop a 7.62mm round from an AK-47 = 7.62mm or about 0.3 inch solid plate. Think most military vehicles use 0.5 inch armor plating.
To stop a 20mm round, you'd need 1-inch of armor plating. The added overall weight of the plating really goes up with the diameter of the round.
This is using a solid projectile. Not shaped-charge or armor piercing.
Edits: 07/27/15 07/27/15
You can fire a 22LR at 1/4 inch plate all day and it might scratch it.
Penetration has to do with composition and velocity of the projectile.
This is why A10s in their 30 mm GAU-8 Avenger rotary cannon uses a slug consisting of a lightweight aluminum body, cast around a smaller caliber depleted uranium penetrating core. That will go well beyond its diameter. :-)
A full metal jacket high speed military round out of a carbine or greater would probably prove your estimate accurate. Bubba and his .30-06 deer rifle from 100 yards, probably not so much.
I may have a slug in my humble collection, use to find the darnedest things at gun shows back in the day.
I've fired 30:30 'Accelerator' rounds which EASILY penetrated stuff my .223 firing full metal jacket surplus rounds would NOT.
Energy is Mass x Velocity SQUARED. So, while 30.30 may overlap SOME in bullet weight with a 30.06 or perhaps even a .308, the higher velocity of the .308 provided better downrange ballistics AND penetration.
And while you may think the diameter / thickness rule of thumb good, I'd rather consider frontal area vs velocity.
Tank guns in current service fire a round at nearly a mile-a-second velocity.
Too much is never enough
Yeah. Rough rule of thumb. Not counting modern composite, sloping armor seen in many tanks and other armored vehicles.
For instance, the Panzer III MBT originally had 30mm frontal armor. Basically, to combat 20-30mm guns of the time (1939-40). By early 1941, they up-rated the frontal armor to 50mm. To combat 37mm and 50mm AT rounds they faced in Western Europe.
In summer 1941 (Barbarossa), the PzIII met up with heavier Russian armor bearing the 76mm main gun. They once again, uprated the armor to 57mm with stand-off plates. By mid 1942, the Germans started pulling the PzIII from frontlines, due to inability to up-armor and up-gun, anymore.
The relative armor thickness is amazingly close to the round diameter, even today. The Abrahms tank has 110mm sloping, composite armor to combat AT sabot rounds from a 120mm Russian smooth bore.
we are 'mixing metaphors' here.
There are basically 2 ways to penetrate armor.
Kinetic means using mass / velocity and usually a VERY hard penetrator core. Depleted Uranium is one such Very Heavy material and Tungsten Carbide is harder than a whores heart. The WWII tanks you mention used HOMOGENIOUS armor, the 'same' all the way thru. Modern SURFACE treatments can be used to make harder armor which can defeat some AP. I'm not going into any of the 'reactive' schemes.
The other method is using an explosive charge. Some tank rounds do not even need to penetrate to wreck havoc. You can use a round which was called HEP for High Explosive Plastic which will put a pretty big DENT in the outside while the inside is fractured into sharapnel and goes zipping around the inside.
I can't remember the other choices but people are pretty ingenious.
I do know that NAVAL rounds which are designed for VERY long range (say 35,000 yards) will have a flight time OVER 1 minute and terminal velocity of like 500ft/sec which you'd think you could defeat with a tennis racket. But the MASS is huge and it'll go thru a LOT of deck armor (plunging fire) before exploding. A round weighed OVER a ton in flight. OUCH!
Comparing a modern composite suite with OLD homogenious armor is not quite right. The modern stuff is equal to maybe a foot or MORE of the WWII stuff. Maybe MORE? A modern tank round would go thru 2 or 3 of ANYTHING fielded in WWII. And from ANY angle. I'd say that was a true statement up to at least 1000 yards.
Too much is never enough
That's why he told me, in general. With usual solid core. Not tungsten. Depleted uranium.Military arms. Not a rim-shot .22 shooting copper-clad rounds.
8^)
Edits: 07/27/15 07/27/15
and I'll offer to shoot the gun towards the vehicle to prove it out but not be inside to confirm it didn't enter.....
If you need an SUV with less S and more U there is this:
How much does it weigh?
is said to be 19,000 lbs. or 8846 Kg. excluding the weigh of the trailer that it'll might tow.
If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well
(Proverb)
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