I think the idea behind the "spaced-Layer" armor or supplemental skin
was to foil the hollow-charge projectiles by having them pierce the
first layer, then discharge their "hollow-charge",still outside of the
main armor plate, instead of discharging inside the hull. I am sure
there are experts in ballistics on this list who can elaborate on this
better than I. But if it is true, then it seems to me it was indeed
added protection, and not merely peace of mind... so? myth or reality?
Antoine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Product of Alkett" <sturmtiger1944@yahoo.com>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 10:04 PM
Subject: Re: [MV] Extra Armour On WW2 Shermans
> --- Geoff Winnington-Ball <gwball@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>
>
> > In the pic below, you can plainly see literally tons
> > of Churchill and
> > unidentified German track welded to the all sides of
> > this Sherman IC Hybrid Firefly (Holland, April
> > 1945).
> > Just how effective was this? Or was it more for
> > piece of mind? If good, good
> > only against Panzerfausts, or also good
> > for solid shot?
>
> Such ad-hoc "armor" offered up minimal protection, if
> any. Sandbags were the most common method followed by
> extra track links. Wood was also used. Interestingly,
> it seems that sandbags and tracks were used in the
> European theater while tracks and wood were the most
> common method in the Pacific theater.
>
> The addition of all these things ment more to the
> mental well-being of the crew more than actually doing
> anything to offer up adequate protection. One
> photograph in Steven Zaloga's "US Marine Tanks in
> World War Two" shows penetrations by Japanese AT guns
> through the wood planking on the hull side and into
> the hull itself. A novel idea in some Marine service
> M4s was to space the wood planks away from the hull by
> three inches and then fill in the gap with concrete.
> Another idea adopted by some Marine tankers was to
> mount oaken wood planks over the suspension to foil
> attempts by Japanese anti-tank teams from easily
> placing satchel charges and/or magnetic mines.
>
> In Steven Zaloga's "The Sherman At War: The European
> Theatre 1942-1945", he states that in Patton's 3rd.
> Army, Patton forbid the use of such additional "armor"
> stating that it lead to premature mechanical failure
> due to the added weight and that such protection was
> dubious at best. For the most part, this order was
> ignored...but Zaloga has a photograph of Patton after
> cussing out a tank crew whose Sherman was coated in
> sandbags.
>
> Spaced armor such as that used by the Germans or
> stand-off armor provided any sort of measure of
> defense against things like the Panzerfaust or bazooka
> in terms of add-on armor protection.
>
>
> Best,
>
> Ed
> http://members.aol.com/sturmpnzr
>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Oct 24 2000 - 20:55:34 PDT