IS-3s never saw action in Europe!

Anomaly27 · Post by **Anomaly27** » Mon Feb 05, 2001 2:48 am

read this: http://history.vif2.ru/is3.html

in addition, the IS-3s had 250mm of frontal turret armor.

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Mon Feb 05, 2001 5:31 am

Do a search on the subject my friend, this is an old argument, and there are reasons behind armor values!! You can't just put in 'book' values.They are there for what-if's.Hope this helps.

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Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue

Anomaly27 · Post by **Anomaly27** » Mon Feb 05, 2001 5:47 am

Explain to me why the IS-3s are in the Seelow Assault senario, a HISTORICAL senario. Also explain to me why the frontal turret armor of the IS-3 was reduced by 36%?? For gameplay reasons??

[This message has been edited by Anomaly27 (edited February 04, 2001).]

AmmoSgt · Post by **AmmoSgt** » Mon Feb 05, 2001 5:52 am

Anomaly we have a certain tone and certain kind of respectful attitude here on this forum ..read some of the posts ..try to catch on ... You cerainly have the tools to Modify any scenario if you have some problem with some values.. but try and remember as of right now you have problems with armor ratings and unit availablity and not with other gamers ...If you don't understand how something works then ask politely disagree politely .... it works alot better than copping an attitude ...

AmmoSgt · Post by **AmmoSgt** » Mon Feb 05, 2001 8:23 am

Glad You edited that message friend

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Mon Feb 05, 2001 8:45 am

Scenario designers unfortunately never know the exact composition of the "real forces" involved in any action. Sources that contradict one another on any battle can be found. The cool thing about being a scenario designer is a certain artistic liscence to try to get the "feel" of the battle in game terms right. As any scenario designer will tell you the worst thing you can do is often to blindly follow a purported TO&E and let the play balance fall where it may.

Scenario design is not just about "the facts , Ma'am, just the facts", but interpreting them wihtin the distortion of the game you are using to portray the battle.

Often this means including some troops or vehicles that might or could have been there, or whose presence was in doubt, in order to craft a "Fun game". Pure realism is NO FUN...and nobody plays a scenario that is no fun.

As to the front turret on the IS_3 I just looked up 4 differnet sources and got numbers ranging from 200-230mm, to 160mm, to 110mm (the latter being the thickness listed on the armor diagram on the site youreffered to which has the statment that:

Moreover, the turret's good internal layout minimized its dimensions while allowing its armor protection to be increased to 250 mm

Not indicating that the 250 was on the front (more likely being the thicker base of the cast turret "clamshell" - not the front. Cast armor is also only 85% as efective as RHA so the value of 160 * .85 = 136 for some reason I rounded down to 135 in the new OOBs (unless one fo the oob reviewers changed it on me

.

The mantle is round and an average incidence angle of 40 degrees is used which means the effective thickness is going to be significantly greater tha 135, this is over rated in itself becasue like the panthers round mantle, shots that strike the lower area of it will tend to ricochet throught the roof, something that is accounted for by the fact that a "non-penetrating" turret ring hit can knock the tank out.

A careful review of the literature on armor penetration efects will revela that there si a LOT more to modeling a tanks vulnerability than looking up "thickness" and "armor penetration" values in a book! we have only scratched the surface of the problem in SP:WaW and will dig a lot deeper (not still well short of what finite element modeling on a supercomputer can do! And even that disagrees sometimes significantly form experimental result.

[This message has been edited by Paul Vebber (edited February 04, 2001).]

Pille · Post by **Pille** » Mon Feb 05, 2001 6:54 pm

Excuse me,
I am no native speaker so could somebody please explain the meaning of these phrases and abbreviations to me?

1. What is ""clamshell"?
2. What is "Cast armour"?
3. Waht is"RHA"?

thanks,
Pille

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Mon Feb 05, 2001 7:01 pm

"clamshell" is the shape (the shallow bowl-like shape) of a clams shell, which is like the IS-3 turret shape - rounded and tapered. A challange to evaluate in the context of a box, which is teh armor model we have currently.

RHA is Rolled homogeneous armor - the standard.

Cast armor is made using a casting rather than rolling process

Pille · Post by **Pille** » Mon Feb 05, 2001 8:42 pm

Thank you very much, Paul!

Pille

Major_Johnson · Post by **Major_Johnson** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 3:07 am

I am a native speaker and I didn't understand those abbreviations and phrases!! So don't feel bad!!
Yes, thanks Paul!

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MJ
We serve others best when at the same time we serve ourselves.

sven · Post by **sven** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 5:45 am

Good to know that 'Anomaly' is so quick to pick up on the inexact nature of modeling WW2 warfare. Lurking is so fun....

missed you all,
sven

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Give all you can all you can give....

Greg McCarty · Post by **Greg McCarty** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 7:50 am

This business about the IS-3 never seeing
action in Europe is debatable. I personally
read an account on one of many historic WWII
sites by a former StuGIIIg commander who
had his vehicle made into scrap iron by a direct hit from one of these in the closing
weeks of the war. The story was quite detailed, and seemed plausable. He said the
Soviets used a t34-85 as a decoy at some distance. When the StuG crew opened up on
it, a concealed IS-3 on an opposing hillside
slamed a 122mm round into the area of the
gun mantle, which if I recall correctly,
killed at least one crewmember and badly
burned the rest. One was trapped in the
wreckage and had to be pulled free.
They felt they were lucky to get out at all.
The sense I get from what I've read is that
the numbers of these operational in combat before May 1945 were few in number, and its
a fair argument to say that the impact of their presence beyond the already formidable
IS-2 wasn't going to be that noticeable. Nevertheless, it seems as though the few that
were around made a clear impression on those
unfortunate enough to find themselves on the
business end of one.

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Greg.

37 mill AA...
can suddenly ruin your day.

Grumble · Post by **Grumble** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 9:22 pm

FWIW, I've heard the same (about IS-IIIs in Berlin). When I was in Germany, one of my Master's classes involved fieldwork in Berlin (yeah somebody's gotta do it

). I met one Mr Tony Latisserie (sp) a Berlin resident historian who has written a few books on Seelowe Heights and the Battle of Berlin.
When I asked him about this issue, he replied that the Soviets rushed a number of them (how many he didn't recall) to the front for combat testing.
On the German side, there were ancedotal reports but no intelligence summary -as record keeping was chaotic at best in April/May '45.
His view was, it was PLAUSIBLE that they were at Seelowe Heights and LIKELY they were in the battle of Berlin

Supervisor · Post by **Supervisor** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 10:21 pm

I have a list of sources in the end of the scenario text file that corroborate all of my work. I always strive to make a scenario as accurate as I can. From my data, the 44 Guards Breakthrough Tank Regiment received 12 JS-III's in mid April and did employ them at Seelowe and Berlin as part of 8 Guards Army.

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Grenadier
Matrix Games Technical Writer

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 11:28 pm

Brent, I know you do your research, unfortunately some folk are very quick to jump at something without reading further, the text file was probably not read

Such is life!!

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Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue

Viriato · Post by **Viriato** » Thu Feb 08, 2001 12:54 am

your scenarios are very detailed and very accurate . your work is better than good it's great . unless someone was there and can tell me that there wasn't a single IS-3 used by the red army i'll play the scen like it's the real thing ....

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A sorte protege os audazes