AP/HE ammo ???

[seabolt]

Sounds like you have a widescreen HDTV with the benefit of super-zoomed in close ups? :smoke:

Usually I have two Mk I eyeballs on the sideline or in the stands.

Our original post was regarding a range of over a KM! Not sure about the visibility, but you can imagine the exhaust smoke, battlefield smoke, dust etc. The target tank may have had painted camo, netting, logs, sandbags, foliage, or kit bags/boxes to further obscure its identity.

I thought the discussion had migrated to the benefits and realism of penetration tables in general, not just in an outlier example.

Let's say 400 meters is a more standard engagement range. German gunners routinely used the 11x Entfernungmesser 14 or 34 for rangefinding. Let's halve that to effective 5.5x to account for the negative effects of 11x picture wobble. That gives us an effective range of 73 meters. (A Soviet would be using 8x30 binoculars, instead, halved to an effective range of 100 meters.) The cupola on a Mark IV was ~0.8 meters across. A football kneepad is ~0.1 meters wide. Can I distinguish whether a football kneepad is being worn, and if so whether it's been modified, at 9.1 (or 12.5) meters distance? Most certainly.

I don't want to suggest that the points you raise are not valid. I do want to suggest that we may underestimate our grandfathers' ingenuity and skill in overcoming those difficulties. If you or I were asked to use a rangefinder and ID a target on a 1942 battlefield, we'd be in real trouble. But that's like asking Ivan the 45mm ace to create a FaceBook page.

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