I need help on Sherman...

[Panzer Leo]

...applique armor.

I'm researching the whole thing at the moment and I have a hard time finding good data on the extra armor kits for Shermans. The only kit I found sofar is the addition of side plates to protect the ammo and the extra plates in front of the two bulges on the upper hull. Where there any other types of these kits ? Maybe a kit that covered the whole upper front ?
Data would really be appreciated...

Thanks, Leo

[Orzel Bialy]

some late model Shermans where they encased the whole hull body in a wood frame filled with sandbags. I'd love to see an icon for that one! lmao

[Supervisor]

Is there any particular variant your interested in??

[Bernie]

Originally posted by Orzel Bialy
some late model Shermans where they encased the whole hull body in a wood frame filled with sandbags. I'd love to see an icon for that one! lmao

A brilliant, but misguided, attempt by the Allies to lure in the German Kats? Disguise a Sherman as a giant litter box?

[Panzer Leo]

Originally posted by gmenfan
Is there any particular variant your interested in??

I'm looking for welded-on applique armor like on T-34Es, e.g. ... the 7.1 version has plates welded on all "W" type Shermans on the full front...but I cannot find these armor kits in any reference...I only find smaller plates on specific locations to increase survivability, but not sufficiant enough to raise the whole armor value...

Maybe someone knows what 7.1 calculated in there...

[Voriax]

Only 'factory' kit I found was those plates Leo mentioned in the first post.

Perhaps the 7.1 oob values reflect the field modifications? Sandbags, track pieces, scavenged armour plates?

Voriax

[Vetkin]

Do what everybody does, glue on some extra tracks taken from some other tank kit all over your tank, two vertical strips to the M4s front hull seem like a common thing for tankers to do at that time.

BTW, Wood actually helps a lot against HEAT rounds, I don't know what it does against AP rounds though.

Wood may be ugly but they act as effective & cheap reactive armor.

Case in point: 2 Simba "APCs" here in the Philippines deployed in Mindanao are hit with RPG-7 type or copy weapons. These Simbas are armed with only a single MG, probably 7.62 or .50 cal (highly unlikely) and have probably at the most 10mm of steel armor.

One Simba is "modified" with wood planks etc., one is left plain. RPGs hit the side of both vehicles. The one without the wood "plating" is penetrated and a huge hole is blown to the side, killing everyone inside. The wooden Simba survives with little more than a dent to its paint job (despite all that wood flying everywhere.)

[Griefbringer]

As for factory made applique armour, no idea, but I have seen pictures of M4s kitted up on field with spare tracks and sandbags on the fronts.

Soviets and some German tanks (the ones with sloped sides), could sometimes have whole tree trunks attached to the sides. Handy protection against HEAT rounds, as well as helping with camouflage. And if you ever needed a spare tree trunk (for example to stiffen up really muddy road or to make a camp fire) you always had one at hand.

Vetkin: wood does not work as a reactive armour, as reactive armour works by blowing up and thus directing away the sharp jet of HEAT. I think the principle of wood protection is to trigger up the HEAT round too early (requires thick wood or a space of air between planking and hull), thus making it far less effective in penetrating against the actual armour. To be most effective the HEAT round needs to be triggered at the correct distance away.

Against AP rounds, the wood is pretty useless, other than for sending splinters around. It takes a great thickness of wood to stop even a normal bullet (somewhere around 30-60 centimeters, if I remember properly).

Griefbringer

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

"Factory" made applique, that seems unlikely.

I think everything that was not strictly to specs, was done through creative crews entirely.

Everything was used. Spare armour plate, spare track, spare boggies, wood encasing sandbags, wire screen, steel skirts (think that was only a german notion).

Everything I have ever read or seen in battlefield photos makes it clear this was something the crews did without official doctrinal permission.

To repressent one crews tank vs another crews tank though is likely a concept impossible to do.

I am only aware of the Jumbo being a methodically beefed up sherman.

[Kevin E. Duguay]

Hi Leo!

The armor added to the sides of the Sherman only covered the area of the hull opposite the three sponson racks. This armor was 1inch thick. It was an attempt to stop the ammo in these areas from being set off by a pennetration. When "wet stowage" was introduced the practice stoped. This armor was supplied as a kit and was also applied directly at the factory.

The armored patch on th right side of the turret on the Sherman "rebuilds" were also supplied in the same way. However the reason for it's application were compleatly different.
The right inside of the early Sherman turret had to be machined to provide clearance to operate the 75mm gun. The patch on the outside right of the turret only made that part of the turret as thick as the left side. I have no data on the thickness of this plate, but it looks to be about 1 inch also but then again what ever it is the subject is moot. The patch was eliminated only when the turret was redesigned.

A third area that was re-enforced was the vertical surfaces on the front of the drivers hoods but only on welded hull M4's. These plates were 1 1/2 inches thick and were angled at about 35 degrees. These plates were also offered in kit form or were applied at the factory. When better hulls were designed these to were done away with.

The other stuff like wood, sandbags, tracks and chicken wire were acts of desperate men that knew all to well through experience that they were driving a death trap into battle. Most of these efforts were for their own morale only and had very little real world effect. A good example would be the reported effect of a pazerfaust against the side hull armor of a Sherman. The round not only penetrated, but burned clear through the other side!! So after burning through 1 1/2 inches of armor, the plasma jet produced by the panzerfaust passed through the width of the vehicle and burned through the other side. How much stand-off armor is that??? Like wise with AP rounds. The piled up junk on the front of these tanks looks nice but probably offered very little extra protection.

So in ending I'd say forget it. Some of this stuff might improve crew survivability to a point, but the tank would still be kaput. As I stated before, besides the Shermans automotive reliability, it's armor was inadequet making it nothing more than a reliable death trap for it's crews.

Sorry M4 but thats the way it was.

[Vetkin]

I think tracks tacked on a Sherman's front or side would help, that would be an additional 1cm++ steel armor. Panzerfausts were not that accurate anyways :rolleyes:

[Belisarius]

Originally posted by Vetkin
I think tracks tacked on a Sherman's front or side would help, that would be an additional 1cm++ steel armor. Panzerfausts were not that accurate anyways :rolleyes:

Accuracy is already handled by the game engine. If they hit, they hit. :rolleyes: B'sides, tracks are soft steel compared to armor. Tracks does help, but I wouldn't say they're equivalent to 10+ mm of armor.

/armchair general and engineer... :p

[Panzer Leo]

Thanks for all your input !

Originally posted by Belisarius
B'sides, tracks are soft steel compared to armor. Tracks does help, but I wouldn't say they're equivalent to 10+ mm of armor.

/armchair general and engineer... :p

Tracks would help on a non-sloped armor to a certain degree, but on a well sloped plate, they can have the opposite effect, as far as I can tell. When the tracks are fastened well enough (and they usually are, as you would loose them in rough terrain if not), the soft steel would let the AP round go in and prevent the deflection usually happening on sloped plates...so a track can even worsen the performence of a tanks armor, if I'm not wrong here...but I think I recall that being the reason why a lot of official decrees were thrown out on both sides, not to place any stuff on the armor plates...

keep up your good comments, I still got a bit time left to make up my mind how to model the Sherman variants in htis aspect...

[Bernie]

Originally posted by Panzer Leo
Thanks for all your input !



Tracks would help on a non-sloped armor to a certain degree, but on a well sloped plate, they can have the opposite effect, as far as I can tell. When the tracks are fastened well enough (and they usually are, as you would loose them in rough terrain if not), the soft steel would let the AP round go in and prevent the deflection usually happening on sloped plates...so a track can even worsen the performence of a tanks armor, if I'm not wrong here...but I think I recall that being the reason why a lot of official decrees were thrown out on both sides, not to place any stuff on the armor plates...

keep up your good comments, I still got a bit time left to make up my mind how to model the Sherman variants in htis aspect...

I think that much would depend upon just how the tracks/plates/whatever were attached to the armor. If they were bolted on, the shear strength of the bolts used (and number) would determine if the piece held or was ripped off. If it were welded on, the size, type and location of the welds would be the major factors (and possible changes to the tempering of the regular armor as well, from the heat of welding or brazing). A typical arc weld has a strength of between 35,000 and 50,000 psi, a braze can go as high as 75,000 to 90,000 psi, and other, more modern welds and brazes can hit 120,000 psi or higher. All these factors, and more (angle of hit, force vectors, etc) would have to be considered to even come close to estimating what a hit on add-on armor would do. Picture this scenario if you will, just as a really wild example of what "could" happen:

You weld a track section to your tank. The section is about one foot square. Because you REALLY want it to be solid you have a continuous weld done, going around all four sides of the piece. Solid, right? Ain't no way that sucker is coming off, right? Okay, now you're in combat and some lucky gunner places an AT round of decent size dead center in that track piece. Later, when the vehicle is recovered, everyone is amazed at the SQUARE hole punched through the armor. Did the track fail? No, but the heat of the welding changed the temper of the armor it was welded to, creating a square outline of soft steel that failed when the round hit. Think "pop-top can", and how it breaks cleanly at the score line in the metal, and you get the idea. With that weld you created a "score line", and then made the center of it thicker so more of the force of the round was transferred to that "score" line.

[Panzer Leo]

As far as the whole thing shows itself to me at the moment:

I cannot really follow the 72mm front hull of 7.1 for all (W) type Shermans.
The vehicles leaving the factory had a 64mm plate/cast and there's no evidence of any systematic armor upgrading like on T-34E models, e.g.
All kits were made for special purposes and never covered the majority of any larger plate to make an overall upgrade of the armor.

I will reset values in the patch to this 64mm. But I will also try to model a few vehicles with improvised HEAT protection. The late war Easy8 already has skirts (I modeled the sandbag frame there) in the current H2H version and I will add a 75mm Sherman and maybe a earlier 76mm one, too.
These "skirts" are only usefull to a certain degree, as the coding counts the skirts as effective only against HEAT ammo, but not HE.
German infantry has weapons that fire HE rounds with penetration capability like HEAT ammo and normal HEAT ammo (PzSchreck and PzFaust).
This kind of makes these "skirts" unreliable and nothing you can really count on, but here and there it saves your butt...pretty realistic I think, for an improvised feature...

[Frank W.]

Originally posted by Panzer Leo
I'm looking for welded-on applique armor like on T-34Es, e.g. ... the 7.1 version has plates welded on all "W" type Shermans on the full front...but I cannot find these armor kits in any reference...I only find smaller plates on specific locations to increase survivability, but not sufficiant enough to raise the whole armor value...

Maybe someone knows what 7.1 calculated in there...

what i remember from my sherman book...is that in field workshops often armor was added to the shermans.
as soon as they figured out that the gerries 75 + 88mm
guns killed their tanks to easy......

also tires,tracks,sandbags etc were often used as improvised
armor...

[Panzer Leo]

Originally posted by Frank W.
what i remember from my sherman book...is that in field workshops often armor was added to the shermans.
as soon as they figured out that the gerries 75 + 88mm
guns killed their tanks to easy......

also tires,tracks,sandbags etc were often used as improvised
armor...

I heard "rumors" of this additional armor plates aswell (some saying 15mm welded on the front hull), but never found a source for it or any numbers how frequent it was, if it existed as a common kit...I can't even recall a pic showing it...I have several pics of T-34E where you easily can see the additional armor plates, although this model wasn't to common. But no pic of a Sherman with something similar, although this kit is told to be some sort of standard by some ?

Someone out there has to have a good book on Shermans to sort this one out...noone ?

BTW, where did you put your book, that you have to recall and cannot look it up ?

[Frank W.]

Originally posted by Panzer Leo
I heard "rumors" of this additional armor plates aswell (some saying 15mm welded on the front hull), but never found a source for it or any numbers how frequent it was, if it existed as a common kit...I can't even recall a pic showing it...I have several pics of T-34E where you easily can see the additional armor plates, although this model wasn't to common. But no pic of a Sherman with something similar, although this kit is told to be some sort of standard by some ?

Someone out there has to have a good book on Shermans to sort this one out...noone ?

BTW, where did you put your book, that you have to recall and cannot look it up ?

mhhh.. looked it up.

perhaps not what you meant, but found a photo which shows a M4A3, the text says: "infantriesoldaten im schutze eines M4A3 kurz nach der landung in der normandie . auffällig das horn am bug und die zusatzpanzerung seitlich über den ketten und am turm." there are 2 plates on the side hull and one ( which seems to be thicker ) on the turret front...

the book is called "sherman panzer" ( how surprising ) i bought it at amazon or even at karstadt. they have / had some nice books there. have get a cool normandy invasion and " die großen luftschlachten in WW2 " there, too.

[Frank W.]

another pic of a sherman in italy with additional armor: a huge bottle of whine !!

[Panzer Leo]

Just as I said...the applique armor everyone has heard of is usually the welding of a few smaller plates onto specific locations and in some sort of rumors going around they somewhat mutate to the big extra armor on the hull...but that's definetely not enough to improve the overall amor rating on any side of the tank...

Unless someone has a pic with an extra plate on the hull covering it completely, I will go down to 64mm, as that seems the most realistic and historical value...