Hetzer Vs Sherman 76

[Norm]

The Hetzer Vs the Sherman 76.

I lifted this slice of action out of a scenario in the Old School Tactical Vol II game.

I have put up a blog post that looks how OST represents these two vehicles and then moved to the tabletop to see how the Battlegroup miniatures rules handle the same action.

Link

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-little-hetzer-and-grizzled-sherman.html

[sultanbev]

The armour on the Hetzer is 60mm sloped at 30* from the horizontal, which makes it equivalent of 12cm of vertical armour. Hence it's good defence rating in both those examples shown. The 76mmL52 only penetrates 12cm of vertical armour at 300m at best with standard APC, so the Hetzer should be a challenge for the Sherman.

[Norm]

Thanks for commenting on the blog, it is always appreciated. I have pasted my comment there across to here. Cheers


Hi, thanks for the technical detail, I do enjoy this aspect of WWII rules. The slope is a very interesting area of wargame design, as it often seems to be applied inconsistently. The prime example being how designers treat the German Panther and Tiger I, with the sloped armour giving the panther a ballistic advantage, yet a variety of rules have the Tiger better, exactly equal or worse, yet only one of those can be true.

It can be difficult to know what other factors are being added into a vehicles stats to make the vehicle behave as the designer believes is right, so are some rules just trying to have the Tiger maintain its heavy status, its fear status or is something like crew quality and experience being added in, as Tiger I crews were particularly good and confident.

I am often unconvinced that the slope on the Sherman is generally accounted for in gun / armour performance stats in some rules when compared to other vehicles, though some rule sets, especially when using the tight bell curve of 2D6 have very few 'slots' available to classify armour and so the ranges for armour ratings can become very tight anyway, as indeed is true of gun capability, made worse by the variables of ammunition types.

It is probably the most fascinating area of WWII rule design and perhaps the better rules are those that settle upon what feels right right rather than what is absolutely technically right, so that everything is easier to put in place and other variables such as angle of shot and metal quality can be absorbed in the round .... but then of course that's the job of the dice :-)

This has only been a little exercise, but it has left me wanting to look at how other rules rate the Hetzer.

[Steve J]

The following website is well worth perusing for issues such as this:

http://www.tankarchives.ca/2020/04/reduce-reuse-recycle.html

[sultanbev]

I've used actual line of sight thickness for armour values for decades, in centimetres, with all penetration standardised to maximum theoretical vertical armour penetration.

Although this goes against British doctrine, which states armour penetration against armour at 60* from the horizontal, I was always taught in science to minimise variables. By using British reporting doctrine, you have two variables - meeting a tank with vertical armour, eg Comet, Tiger, Churchill, your quoted value whould actually be higher by an unknown amount, as well as being lower if you meet a tank with armour sloped at less than the 60* angle, eg a Panther hull or Hetzer, or Sherman for that matter. So here you have two possible variables, your actual penetration could be higher or lower.

By normalising penetration to that against vertical armour, you only have one variable, that is downwards. So to me that is more scientifically correct. And it can be applied consistently across the board, using scale plans to measure angles if necessary. As this is maximum possible penetration, you can then use your dice to reflect the probabilities of it being lower.

The next thing I consider is toughness. At 56 tons a Tiger I is incredibley underarmoured. The Churchill VII had 50% more armour on 16t less weight, for example. The KV-1C had 25% more armour on 9 tons less weight.
So,like the C-47 Dakota, the Tiger was just over-engineered and extremely tough. Similarly, the post-war Centurion was poorly armoured compared to it's contemporaries, but battle reports consistently show it was very resilient to enemy fire. Volume counts for something.

When you get down to atomic particle level, get two armour plates of the same grade and the same thickness, but one is 6' x10' and the other 4' x 8' and fire the same shells ten times at each, the smaller plate will fail before the larger one. The molecules try to spread the energy of impact over the plate and then that energy reaches the weld seams, which is a different composition in many ways, and that is when you're likely to get fracture, if penetration was borderline possible. Or the energy reaches the edge of the plate and with nowhere else to go, rebounds allong the molecular bonds weakening them further.

Which is one reason why Soviet post-war tanks, of smaller volume, although well armoured for their weight when slopes are factored in, are more easy to KO once you've penetrated.

To represent this, I use vehicle weight as a form of toughness. And besides kinetic energy of a shell, rules designers tend to forget momentum, which is directly proportional to shell weight, which is pretty much proportional to shell diameter (apart from a few guns). So I've used a D20 table cross-referencing weight and shell calibre to determine actual KO chance, once you penetrated.


For some examples then:
Hetzer armour is 12-2-2, ie 12cm frontal, 2cm side, 2cm rear, including the slopes, but is only 16 tons
Panther G is 11-5-5 turret, 14-6-5 hull. So the 80mm thick hull at its angle works out to 140mm line of sight thickness, tank weighs 45t
Tiger is 11-8-8 turret, 10-8-8 hull, but weighs 56t.
M4A3 Sherman is 11-6-6 turret, 7-4-4 hull on 32 tons.
Churchill VII 15-9-9 turret, 15-9-9 hull on 40t.

The Sherman is indeed quite well armoured, when you add in the slopes and mantlet, the problem was that the standard German gun, the 7.5cmL48 could penetrate 12cm of vertical armour at 1000m, and 8cm at 2500m, so it's most common opponents could deal with the Sherman at any usable range frontally. If the Shermans were fighting Cromwells or T-34/76s, then it would be quite a tough tank. I've used M4A2s in my Turkish army against Soviet T-34/76s, they pretty much have to get within 300m of each other for effective penetrations. Although with both being fast cross-country it often turned into a game of who can get round to the side armour first.

As you can see, the Hetzer is very good frontally, better than the Tiger, but get round the side and you can penetrate it with a .50" HMG or Boys anti-tank rifle!

However, if you did penetrate any of the above with a 76mm round, then these are the D20 numbers I use to KO the AFV:
Hetzer: 8+
Panther: 13+
Sherman: 10+
Churchill VII: 12+
Tiger I: 15+
Centurion: 15+
A KO in this case being sufficient damage to mobility or gun and/or cause crew casaulties such that they bale out; rolling 4 higher than needed sets it on fire; rolling 8 higher than needed blows it up.
You would subtract 4 from the D20 if your armour penetration equals the armour thickness. Add 3 though if hitting it in the side, add 5 if hitting it in the rear.
These numbers might appear quite high for some tastes, but because we are using maximum theoretical penetration, it factors in the variables quite nicely I feel.

There are some rules mechanisms that are just plain fails. Hitting on a single D6 is a major problem as you only have 16% intervals, and gunnery was far more nuanced than that. I think I saw in your example the Hetzer being on 50% chance to hit at 350m, which is tosh basically.
But worse, is using the difference between armour penetration and armour thickness to determine chance of KO. Such rules would make a Hetzer harder to kill than a Sherman.

Of course, all these factors are not the only thing. Mobility is an issue. Your M4A3(76mm) has a cross-country speed of 28kmh, the Hetzer 14kmh, so even if the 76mm can't in theory penetrate a Hetzer at over 300m, with such great discrepancy in mobility the other Shermans in the platoon (or the original tank if it survived) could quickly outflank the Hetzer before it could bug-out.

Another think i did the maths on was hills. Because everyone has seen WoT where you park a tank on 60* slope and fire into the upper plate at high angles negating any slope in a ridiculous fashion, I did some maths.
Turns out, at 300m with a 50' elevation, the effect of the extra height increases vertically armoured tanks armour by 07%, and correspondingly reduced sloped armoured vehicles by about the same. This is linear, so on a 100' elevation, it would be 14%. But at that elevation and range you couldn't be hull down, yoru gun wouldn't depress low enough. But differences in heights on real battlefields are measuered in feet, not tens of feet most of the time, so the occasions when you'd have sufficient elevation to affect line-of-sight armour thickness sufficiently would be so rare as to be ignored. Extending the range reduced the % armour change to neglible amounts, under 3%.

Here's another statistic for everyone. 60% of tanks knocked out by direct gunfire in WW2 were hit in the side. You'd have to think about that. It implies that hordes of tanks boucning shells of the front of each other that we all do in wargames wasn't that common, and that everyone tried as hard as possible to outflank enemy armour.

[Norm]

Thanks, a fascinating insight and exactly what is good about the internet and forums operating their its best.

The subject is complex and there are other nuances going on, such as what environment a weapon system is used. I am thinking of the Tiger I, which in some respects is not as well armoured as we might suppose, but .... it was in 1942 and even into 1943. Also, the real asset of the Tiger was it's 88/56 gun, which added to the capability of the armour. On the Russian Steppe, the 88mm could engage at long range and at that point and tyope of engagement, it's armour was thick enough to be relatively immune to the enemy. In 1944 in the Ardennes ... not so much!

When we look at the JagdPanther, which carried the 88/71, Doctrine was that it should engage the enemy at 2000 metres. At that range, the vehicle is operating as a complete weapon system at peak performance. The lack of a turret matters less, its gun is high velocity so is still accurate and the firepower is deadly enough that at that range it can still secure a kill or at least suppress enemy movement, while also at that range, it's own armour was easily sufficient to be immune. However, as wargamers, we want them on the table operating at what equates to 350 - 750 metres :-)

The early war stuff (1940 - 41) is interesting in that the success of the available kit is as much down to good command and control, deployment and training / experience / field craft as it is the 'on paper' spec of the vehicle.

It is also interesting how the division of design falls between the use of D6, 2D6 and D10 as this has a big impact on the translation of data to the game table.  

Overall I can only really speak about my wargaming, which needs to have a balance between raw gun /armour data and all the other little quirky stuff that comes into play, but it remains important to believe that the designer has a knowledge that underpins the way results are arrived at.

I know when I have written rules, I do keep half an eye (perhaps wrongly) of keeping the range of outcomes to something that will keep vehicles in the game long enough to build up player tension and the cat and mouse shenanigans can play out. I have played a few modern games in which the principle of 'if it can be seen, it can be killed' is adopted and while this underpins a truth of the  more modern systems, i find the rate of kills and the high number of vehicles needed to sustain that for a good game, to be less satisfying.

[sultanbev]

I don't have the latter problem as I use the same D20 kill table for WW2 and modern, with modifiers for fancy armours and shell types. Whilst APDS rounds have enormous Kinetic energy (and hence penetration) their momentum isn't the same order of magnitude greater so my modern tanks have quite a surviveability. It might not be quite 100% right but it gives us a good game. Recently had a T-55 take over 6x 105mm APDS hits before it succumbed....

But yes, your comment about early war tanks is spot on. And I do tend to prefer early war armies fo WW2, the heroic action with the anti-tank rifle always calls!

The best way to test a set of rules is get some T-55s with Israeli or West German crews and pit them against early model M1 Abrams manned by Libyans. If the T-55 units (not individual tanks) don't win half the time at least, then the rules are wrong. Or put 1943 SS Panzer crews in M3 Lees and make them fight Iraqis in Panthers.

Most rules it seems decide on the dice first then try and fit the probabilities they want to those dice. The current fad in commercial rules to resolve combat outcomes with a single D6 is poor game design as far as I'm concerned, well, worse than poor. FoW and BA and the like might be good games with pretty models, but good wargames they are not.

I find the probability outcomes I want then choose the dice to fit. Thus I use 1D6, 2D4, 2D6, 3D6, 4D6, 2D8, 1D10, 2D10, 1D20, 2D20, 2D12, % dice, as appropriate. You get a much more nuanced game with sufficient unpredictability but with sufficient playability to be enjoyable. And because I use real world stats for my vehicles, it feels like your using those vehicles, rather than chess pieces with a number. The trick I've found, is to treat data as simply that, then have rules for game play. That way, at a later date you can alter the data (eg, when new details are discovered) without wrecking the rules.

[Ithoriel]

A fascinating discussion and an interesting initial comparison between the way different systems handle the process.

It is something I find myself considering from time to time too.

Might I suggest that an equally important question to which tank is the better tank killer might be why wargamers are so fixated on the question. I confess to being every bit as guilty of this as anyone else!

I suspect our games should feature less tank-on-tank action and far more minefields and antitank guns.

The British Army made a comprehensive investigation of the cause of their tank losses, after WW2. The result is shown in the table below. You can see that tanks and self-propelled guns accounted for less than half of total British losses. I doubt other nations results would be significantly different.

Cause of British tank losses during the Second World War.
Theater             Tanks Lost    Mines    Anti-tank Guns    Tanks    Self-propelled Guns    Panzerfaust/schreck      Other
Northwest Europe      1305        22.1%      22.7%                   14.5%    24.4%                           14.2%                               2.1%
Italy                           671        30.0%      16.0%                   12.0%    26.0%                             9.0%                               7.0%
North Africa              1734        19.5%      40.3%                   38.2%    -                                      -                                     2.0%
Average                   3710        22.3%      29.8%                   25.3%    13.5%                             6.1%                               3.0%

[jimduncanuk]

Minefields aren't cool and anti-tank guns ain't trendy.

[sultanbev]

"....and anti-tank guns ain't trendy."
All my armies have towed anti-tank guns. Buying all the horse limbers is a bind, but whatho. As we use a fire priority system, they can be incredibily useful. When your tanks only have machine guns, then they are essential 

[fsn]

AT guns are great!

I love an AT gun ambush. Small and hard to spot.