ADVANCED 3RD
VERSION OUT!!!
Emailed to you with
a $19.99 donation that supports my website for a full month!
(The price is a code that ensures I send you the right file.)
*THIS PROGRAM RUNS IN AND REQUIRES
MICROSOFT EXCEL!*
Where to start? This epic project has taken such a long time, but
I have enjoyed doing it.
What it does: At a
glance, you can tell how vulnerable a vehicle is to fire from an enemy
gun.
How to use it: Using the
drop down boxes (not the ones above, it is a simple image, not the
program itself!) you select an allied and axis vehicle, tank, or towed
gun. On the inner drop down boxes you select the ammunition type
and date. In the graphs above, you can read the vulnerability of
each vehicle to the enemy ammunition.
How to read the graphs: These
are 360° representations of the vehicle, the front is always at the
top, the rear is always towards the bottom of the page. Let's
take the above "Upper Hull" graph with a grey background. This
represents the vulnerability of the upper hull of the Panther to the
ammunition shown in the yellow strip below. The graph shows
performance out to 2000m. The graph compares the gun's
penetrative power referencing the ammunition used, at range, versus the
armor plate selected. Simply put, if a hypothetical gun can
penetrate 105mm of armor at whatever range and is striking a 100mm
plate, it has 105% the required power. That does not necessarily
mean a penetration or a kill, keep reading.
Red
area: The outer perimeter of the red area, working
inwards, indicates >110% power. Thousands of tests on many
different vehicles determined that if the round has more than 110%
power it will almost always penetrate.
Orange area: Indicates
100 - 109% power, very good chance of penetration.
Yellow
area: 90 - 99% power, fair chance of penetration.
Towards the bottom end of this there are many ricochets and "internal
armor flaking".
Unshaded area: Just
beyond the yellow area there is less than a 90% chance of
penetration. The tanks in the game will not fire on their own,
only if you specifically target them.
CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW
(These are not images from the program,
just illustrations to explain how it works.)
In this "Upper Hull" graph, you can see that the Panther is vulnerable
to enemy fire to beyond 2000m. The IS-2 can penetrate some part
of the Upper hull of the Panther if firing at 2000m, as long it is at
least 40° from the front of the vehicle. These charts show
WHICHEVER PANEL IS MOST VULNERABLE.
Also consider:
- Just because a vehicle is outside effective range does not mean
it cannot eventually destroy a vehicle. I once attacked a KV with
a few PzII. In the game roughly 1 in 20 rounds causes
damage. I surrounded the KV and ordered them all to open
fire. I lost some, but the hail of 2cm rounds, which had no
chance of penetrating, ripped off the tracks and destroyed some
component of the gun system. The crew of the immobilized and
nearly unarmed KV finally abandoned it. (Remember that some MGs
can still fire, be careful when assaulting with infantry.)
- A penetration does not mean a kill. A vehicle at a slight
disadvantage in probability of penetration that is firing AP with a
large explosive component can easily wipe out a vehicle that is firing
a solid shot like APRC.
- These charts do not show accuracy or rate of fire. That is
another chart which is a free download also listed on this page.
(I need to list an updated one, that one is years old!)
THE OTHER CHARTS SHOW THE INFORMATION FOR THE OVERALL VEHICLE, TURRET,
UPPER AND LOWER HULL, FOR BOTH VEHICLES.
This tool is also great for comparing ammo. For example you can
switch between the Soviet AP and APBC ammunition... and find that it is
much more lethal against the Panther.
Things I have corrected thus far, and
now work correctly:
- Vehicles without turrets, like the Jagdpanther, work correctly
and simply do not display any possibility to penetrate the turret.
- Vehicles with open, unarmored areas- like the Marder, show red
from any angle which fire can enter that unarmored space.
Limitations I am correcting (with some
help),
but require tremendous work:
- For the most part it includes all German and Soviet Guns,
Vehicles, and Tanks. I have included some equipment from other
nations, but want to make it all inclusive. As soon as I get to
it in spite of all the other projects! CMAK DATA IS NOW
INCLUDED!!!!
A limitation that I will not correct
(because it is not modelled in the game, and this calculator is built
for the game)... and it'd be really, really hard to do!:
- Items where the armored plate is not a simple box like a
KV-2 or Jagdpanther are not completely correct. Rounded turrets,
like a
BT-2 or Tiger, still show the obliquity angle even though the turret
face is
round. The front of the IS-3 hull still shows like a traditional
hull, and does not take into account the 'pike' nose. Tests have
shown that the game uses everything having rectangular turret and hull
models.
Status: The program is
complete. I am just entering all of my data which
is taking a long time, but I am nearly done.
Purchase price is
$19.99, simply a donation to my
website to help me loose less money on it! ($20 pays for a month
for me!) I will email the file to you.
CLICK THE
DONATION BUTTON BELOW, AND ENTER $19.99, THAT'S MY
CODE TO KNOW YOU WANT ME TO SEND THIS FILE TO YOU.
As new data gets entered I
will send out new versions of the file as soon as they are
complete.
I WILL SEND OUT
REVISIONS FREE OF CHARGE!

(click pic for full size link)
Another chart showing a PzIVF firing HEAT ammo versus a Matilda II
firing AP Shot.
HEAT ammo gives wierd charts like this on the right because it is not
based upon projectile velocity.
Panther Data (free!):
(I have included a larger pic, just click the small
pic below. I suggest opening the link in another window to see
the data better.)

This pic of part of one of my spreadsheets gives a ton of data I have
collected on the Panther series of tanks. The impact data (left
chart) shows, from direct front, where the rounds strike the tank, this
is from 1555 impacts, so it's pretty significant... and it took a long
time. I also tested to see if perhaps the percentage of the upper
hull hits increased and lower hull hits decreased with range because of
the higher trajectory of the rounds, it does not, even with slow rounds
(top chart).
Lastly (bottom chart) I show a somewhat statistically significant chart
breaking down upper hull penetrations. This data was the purpose
for this entire exercise. I placed the Panther tanks at 900m, the
range that my new parabolic equations suggest that the UH armor of 100%
quality will be right at the maximum yield of 100mm AP. Sure
enough, those that struck the early Ausf A almost never suffered any
penetrations. The "occasional flaws" of the late Ausf A allowed
many more partial penetrations, including a few full
penetrations. "Frequent Flaws" in the G model glacis allowed
frequent penetrations in this test model; 4 times as many full
penetrations. Now, I understand that 562 hits is hardly stat-sig,
but it gives a clear view of how the Panther glacis plate is modeled in
CM, and I think it is probably modeled very well. I am impressed
that they took the time to single out this problematic part and model
it with (reasonable) historical accuracy! I'll do the math to
approximate the 'armor quality' percentage that was probably applied
sometime soon. I bet I can figure out Rexford's standard
deviation / penetration percentage data to do this... but right now
it's 4:30am and my brain's melted!
As a side project you can see in the data that I kept track of turret
hits. Though not totally stat-sig, I noticed that there were no
"penetration at weak point" for the G, late turret, and wondered if
these weak point penetrations were how CM handles the shot trap.