Russians will hate the lates

[RedDevil]

bolted armor, while certainly better for keeping out high velocity hornets, was actually a bad idea, and the end results were rolling thicker sheets of steel and going 1 piece.
why was it bad?
Bolts, when hit by a projectile going X# of FPS, tend to splinter INSIDE the vehicle and do more damage to the crew and internals, than a penetrating AP round tended to do.
The bolts absorbed all the energy making them super fast shards of metal zipping about inside, as compared to a single large slug of AP, ( unless of course the AP round had a large HE charge in it, but most were defective in the early war periods) that in most cases, passed right on thru the fighting compartment, causing minimal damage.
unless of course it hit a crewman or a stored round....

[JasonC]

Actually, the side skirts on German tanks were not intended to detonate shape charge rounds early, because there weren't any shaped charge rounds to defeat at the time. They were intended to stop ATR rounds from penetrating the thin 30mm side armor on the standard model Panzers and StuGs.

A secondary benefit was noticed - they helped protect against 76mm HE, with side angle included. However, those tended to wreck the skirt with the first shot, and the same guns firing AP would go right in.

It wasn't until much later that they faced any appreciable number of shaped charge rounds, in the form of bazookas and Piats of the western allies. Even then, they were marginal, because (1) the western allies had a lot more armor and the Germans didn't have much to use against them, most of the time, (2) such short range weapons were marginal to start with, especially when the allies were attacking which was most of the time, and (3) even spaced, the skirts were so thin and the plate behind them so over-penetrated by a zook or piat that they weren't remotely foolproof, in that case.

But they did stop ATR rounds, which was what they were actually for.

Obviously, this is all quite independent of the bolted on extra armor for the frontal arc, under discussion. Which is incidentally overmodeled in CMBB in particular. (To the point where 30+50 StuG fronts bounce 1943 era Russian 85mm APBC at medium range, which is simply absurd).