Unexpected - Stalin fires HE when AP available

[RNL Tiger]

In a QB my Stalin fires at a Panzer IVH in the distance but unexpectedly fires an HE round rather than an AP round even though it is available. The HE round bounces harmlessly off the Panzer's armour.

Why did it fire HE rather AP?

[McIvan]

No idea. Sometimes tanks will do this when their AP shell had no chance of penetrating....at least the HE can cause gun damage or immobilisation or spalling. But that would not have been the problem here. It has me stumped.

[Fullhouse]

That was what was in the breach of the gun. Quicker to fire it and load a new shell then unload it and then reload with AP.

[PoorOldSpike]

It was my panzer on the receiving end, here the HE round simply splatters against the front of my boy without hurting the tank or crew.
PS - and a second later he fires back on the move at the Stalin (inset,a miss), how kool is that?
Incidentally notice the Stalins HE shell hit the paper-thin turret front, confirming just how poor HE is against armour..

[kineas]

Afaik they only fire HE if the round has good chance against the target, and they want to spare on AP ammo. Both holds in your case, though a simulation wouldn't hurt how really effective is the HE ammo.

It happened to me that my 76mmATG started to fire HE shells at an immobilised Stug (it was low on AT ammo already), and after 2-3 shots (and ineffective hits) it switched back to AT.

Personally I don't like this, because the speed of the HE round is usually much lower. Besides, what's the point in sparing if it will soon be dead anyway? :)

[Copper]

IS 2 he shell should penetrate pz 4 armour at 500 m no problem, the stats even say it, nevermind real life accounts. IS2 shells could blow the turets off tanks becouse of the power of the shells. The bottom line is that the game is full of buggs and the stats for armour penetration are wrong, u can check this site for some more realistic stats on tanks www.wwiitanks.co.uk .

[McIvan]

It hit the armour at quite an angle, close to 45 degrees from the picture, so you wouldn't expect it to penetrate. The game does fail to replicate kinetic energy taking off a turret however, as the 88mm did to T34s and the 122mm did to the Germans.

[PoorOldSpike]

My panzer got LUCKY plain and simple, because 9 times out of 10 a Stalins HE hit would have killed it..:)

I just ran a test a few times (pic below) by lining up 15x Stalins and 15x Pz IVH's facing each other, then stripped the AP shells from the Stalins, leaving them with HE shells only and let them shoot it out without any orders from me.

This pic shows the carnage, the Stalins HE shells ripped the panzers to pieces no matter where they hit (turret/ upper hull, lower hull) and only about 1 in 10 Stalin HE shots scored partial pens/flakings/ damaged gun/ immobilising hits.

By the end of the turn ALL 15 panzers were dead, for the loss of only 3 Stalins (I let the panzers keep their AP shot, most simply bounced off the Stalins tough hide)

PS - I ran the test a couple more times but gave the Stalins their AP back, and the result was the same, 15 dead panzers, 3 dead Stalins.
All the Stalins fired AP only even though they had HE shells on board.
So as I say, my panzer in the earlier pic was lucky to only take a HE flaking hit, and lucky again that the flying flakes never killed the crew, how lucky can you get?
(However it doesn't explain why the Stalin fired HE in the earlier pic, maybe it was because the Stalin was low on AP shells so the crew decided to fire HE because they knew it was very good against panzer IV's)

[Copper]

By the way, armour geometry is calculated wrong in the game. They used an incorect formula to calculate the thickness of sloaped armour. I might post the corect formula once i put it on papper.