Aotearas

But the point that I'm making is that if that happens, the penetrator won't bounce. If it impacts the target with anything other than its point the forces acting on it will break the projectile apart, it shatters. If shot over a sufficiently long range, by the time the projectile slowed down enough that it wouldn't happen it will also be failing to do its job as a penetrator due to the loss of penetration capability (unless of course the target is something ludicrously flimsy to shoot at with an APFSDS in the first place ...), i.e.: be way out of its effective range and such a circumstance is of no concern since it's expected not to work at that point anyway.

First of all an important distinction: just because an APFSDS penetrator won't bounce off angled armour and rather shatter, doesn't mean there's nothing ricocheting. If it shatters, there's loads of fragments flying around. Why did someone simulate such ricochets and wrote a paper on it? Because their job is to clean shooting ranges of hazardous material, such as APFSDS fragments that have been spread through test firing, exercises, etc. pp. before such a site can be safely transferred back to civilian authorities without them later finding heaps of fragments where they don't want it (or in case of classified tests, make sure no one gets their hands on stuff they aren't supposed to). Simulating the spread pattern of such weapon fragments makes it a damn lot easier and faster to clear a site rather than combing through the entire place. To make that point abundantly clear, that paper you linked was NOT investigating if or why APFSDS penetrators bounce off armour or what circumstances would be required such a thing to occur. The cause for the fragmentation the paper is simulating is entirely unknown. Same as the cause for its offhand mention of having found two full length penetrators way down the shooting range past its target. And once more, there is a distinction between APFSDS penetrators ricocheting, or its fragments ricocheting after it shattered on impact.

Let me just remind you I'm arguing against people who say APFSDS will bounce off armour. As in it will glance off if the angle is just shallow enough. It doesn't. If it hits any hard surface perpendicularily, the force applied to the penetrator rod will shatter it. The only thing that will bounce is what remains of the projectile after it disintegrated. What you and the article you linked are talking about is fragments ricocheting. That happens. After the penetrator shattered its fragments will inevitably hit and ricochet of the target since they obviously won't penetrate it. I don't deny that! I deny the possiblity of APFSDS skipping off armour as if it were a WW2 solid AP shell as others were implying. I'll concede though that this distinction may have gotten lost in the chain of arguments.

No, its not. The source you provided isn't even about APFSDS specifically, it just uses the test firing as a statistical model to predict fragmentation patterns. Do note the word "fragments" that is used throughout the entire article. The only mention of full penetrators is about how they were found far behind the actual test target, which implies they missed the target. But since the article isn't about APFSDS ballistic behaviour, that offhand information is of no relevance. He simulates the possibilities of ricochets because it's his job to make sure that the site is clean of hazardous material. And since APFSDS shatter, that means a lot of fragments that can by themselves ricochet off the test target or of the ground, etc. pp. ... Have you read the article or just seached for buzzwords in it? And as for your pictures, rather than just embed them without any information, how about you actually read through the reddit thread from where you got it.The topcomment (from a tanker as per his own words, take that as you will) actually explains it quite well and goes out of his way to tell you how penetrators get mangled after hitting anything hard.

That source is talking about cleaning up military shooting ranges of potential hazard material (referred to as fragments) before it can be given back to civilian authorities. When it talks about ricochets, it doesn't mean ammunition bouncing of armour as that isn't the point of its simulation, it means ammunition or fragments thereof scattering around the site and gathering statistical models to help with clean-up. It mentions full penetrators once, but never gave any detail as to the cause of them apart from mentioning there were far off the designed stopping wall which indicates that they didn't actually hit the target and were the cause of inaccurate test firing, but that is my assumption since the actual fest-firing experiment is only mentioned as the basis for fragmentation simulations to get a reference on how to clear a military shooting range.

*sigh* Again, at the velocities and the resulting forces exerted on a long and thin projectile, no, they don't bounce. Period! It either finds purchase and does its thing as a penetrator, or it doesn't find purchase and disintegrates because it can't withstand the kind of forces applied to it. The only, ABSOLUTELY SINGLE, circumstance in which an APFSDS penetrator (or similar) would EVER bounce instead of shattering is if it were fired at a velocity slow enough that it has to be considered an equipment and/or operating failure and that obviously doesn't qualify as a valid argument, because if we were to stoop down to such a level I could just drop a .50 BMG bullet on a sheet of paper and then conclude that paper is sufficient protection against .50 BMG bullets under the right circumstances. And I didn't infer as such. I simply made the point that the clip in question is a bad analogy to make regarding ricochets of extremely thin "armour" and mentioned the APFSDS offhandedly, it took off from there because people somehow insist that penetrator rods can still bounce despite the physics involved.

Exactly.

Yep, that's what solid penetrators do. In this case the shot failed to completely penetrate.

I didn't play quite enough for that, but I have completed a couple of the clan battle missions that WG could check to verify. Also, 2nd to 23rd of April ... wasn't yesterday the last day of clan battles? Even if I wanted and could play another CB just to meet the requirement, how am I supposed to do that when the season is over? Where did that 23rd come from, did the season get extended by a week?

It says in the explanation, the pressure generated by the penetrator exceeds the force the armour can exert on it. The result is the armour acting like a fluid (quite literally in many cases as the intense pressure will melt parts of the (layered) armour that aren't heat resistant enough) until the penetrator has lost enough velocity that its pressure no longer overwhelms the armour. However by the time the penetrator has slowed down that mauch, it's already snugly inside the armour. If the armour is string enough, the penetrator might not succeed in penetrating the armour completely, but it can't quite literally bounce when it's stuck inside. As as I said multiple times now, APFSDS will not bounce. Those penetrators are long and thin. Not exactly a sound structural design for something to withstand force applied to it perpendicularily. It's design with stand a lot of force straight-on to its point, not to its sides. If the armour is triong enough to completely block the penetrator, it will shatter on impact, not bounce. As for the light in the explosion, that smoking charge I'm speaking off, something has to set it off, otherwise all you get is a broken shell leaking smoke from its cracks. There is a small amount of explosives in the fuze along with the smoke canister, but the actual HE filling inside a live shell meant for actual combat isn't present in training shells, too expensive (also too risky if you assume that training shells are also used by people that are still in training, wouldn't want to hand those live rounds and then something goes wrong).

Same here. Participated in clanbattles before that 2nd April date but couldn't really keep it up due to time constraints so I don't think I played any clan battles in the specified time period. I have witnesses that can attest I played clan battles: I'd provide a screenshot of CB teamcomposition from a match I played in, but the battle records only go back to the 7th April ... If that means that despite me having played clanbattles (and respecced captains and ships for that purpose) I don't get to reset for free, I'm going to be absolutely livid. @MrConway, @Tuccy, @Crysantos ... please tell me this isn't going to be the case!

Wow, you managed to read the answer without understanding it ... tell me, after the armour yielded to the projectile (which means it penetrated), how is that penetrator going to ricochet from inside the armour? You think it just bounces straight out backwards? APFSDS doesn't bounce, if the armour is strong enough to completely withstand the impact it will shatter. And again, training shells don't come with an high explosive filling. That stuff is expensive, too expensive to waste on a shooting range shooting at old cars. Training shells come with a smoking charge as visual cue of a simulated hit (and I don't see a "fireball" in that video, a whole lot of smoke though ...). Didn't find something about Russian training shells, but here's a diagram of an US 155mm training shell.

I'll just be lazy and link to this. It's technically a ricochet, but that's arguing semantics. The car roof didn't block the projectile from penetrating, no part of the car even fully intersected with the projectile trajectory. And that explosion at the end was just a small smoking charge whose purpose is to give visual confirmation of the simulated detonation. You can clearly see that none of the bushes near the explosion were buffeted by what should be a high-pressure blastwave if that was an actual HE shell with a proper high explosive filling.

Let's be fair, that shell barely touched the car and only with the body of the shell rather than the point. You can also see that the shell tumbles erratically after the contact. In effect it practically failed to hit the car, the tip of the shell never touched the roof to bite into the target so to speak. That metal roof would probably dent if you just dropped the shell on it, nevermind shoot at it. It didn't resist the impact as much as it deformed out of its way. This clip is a terribly inadequate source to explain projectile ricochets. Also, if we're talking modern ammunition: that was a training shell without explosive filling. I'm not sure how sensitive the fuze of modern HE artillery shells are, but even that glancing hit should've resulted in its detonation due to the significant deceleration of the shell. If we were to talk about modern rigid penetrators (APFSDS), ricochets are de facto an impossibility due to the velocities involved. They will either shatter on impact, imbed but fail to penetrate completely, or penetrate, but never bounce. Yes, projectiles (particularily relatively low velocity shells) can bounce off even comparatively little armour at extreme angles, but the armour at the point of impact at least has to be strong enough to actually withstand the force and deflect rather than deform. If it deforms but fails to deflect, the shell might still be able to bite into the armour and then pierce it if its penetration is great enough to defeat the effective armour thickness.

First game of the day in my Guilio Cesare to warm up: First Blood was particularily satisfying with a longshot volley (~15km) at the Aigle that was smoking up. Island obstructed my view for a clear shot, so best I could do was approximate the correct elevation, wait for him to slow down enough and take the shot just before he'd get undetected. Hit him with four shells for 8k damage (AP of course). Rest of the game was rather tense, especially after I had to kite and tank a third of the enemy team on my own, taking opportunistic shots when I could whilst trying not to get sunk. Killed all the enemy DDs (with AP of course ...), though I do wonder why I even had to shoot the Farragut ... he was on 800 HP last time he was spotted and our Minekaze that went into B to cap and flush him out was on 6k HP, yet for some reason the Farragut sunk the Minekaze (his own fifth kill and Kraken) and lived until I could get a clear shot in between islands as he was running for his life, sinking him in return for my fifth kill and Kraken. With the number of BBs in the queue, I picked my Kamikaze for the second gameof the day, wasn't quite as successful. But since I wanted to get a win in that ship anyway, my third game of the day ... That game was intense for all the wrong reasons. Two thirds of the team went down the bloody 2 line whilst I tried to cap all by my lonesome with de facto no support. Even got lip from one of our BBs after I pinged the map (where they were, all cozy on the 2 line, far away from the caps that we really, really needed at that point) ... said capping was the little guys job, completely oblivious to the fact that two of said little guys were with him in the bloody boonies nowhere near the map and the only DD who actually tried to play the objectives was me, with zero support. By the end of it, I had to kill all three enemy DDs by myself (well, kill two and finish off one to be fair, someone had done a number on the Minekaze) and stall half the enemy team. Hadn't I been chipping away at the enemy ships and containing the enemy push on my side of the map, the enemy would've easily won on points since our precious lemmingtrain wouldn't have been able to catch the enemy fast enough to kill them before that happens.

When you're in a DD with no AA to speak of, there's two carriers per team and the only one on yours that can actually put up a fight is the tier V that can't even manual attack/strafe, whilst the enemy tier VI CV is just farming ours and spotting our DDs ... which also meant me. Did a pretty decent job trying to sneak around his aircraft for the most part, but with him spotting near the caps he was zoning me away from the objectives pretty good. Only thing I could do in lieu to PTFO was to remove guns and hope someone else picks up the slack. They didn't. By the end I even had to slug it out with a Gremyashchy in a gunnery duel and even almost won before he disengaged (yeah, this IJN DD knows how to use his guns) and I couldn't afford to try chase him when their CV kept me permantently spotted at that point. Was a shame too, because just two more decent volleys and he would've been my fifth kill for the Kraken (which would've been the second Kraken of the day in my second game of the day).

@MrConway, @Tuccy, @Crysantos, want to chime in?

More about venting disbelief on how little it takes to outperform so many people. Some days you get teams that set the bar so low you can sink first with barely anything done and still outscore half the team.

So you're a 5CRUB now, eh? Maybe we should division up sometime, but only if you spot for my DD so I can hide in smoke and shoot at the enemy with impunity. Be prepared for lots of whining about radar balance though.

Eh, the losing team in both scenarios has to suck really, really hard if the lose in a handful minutes due to points eclipsing 1000 or bottoming out at 0. Like, ignoring all caps and dying without managing to kill a single enemy kind of sucking hard. I consider that a mercy-killing.

Give me some time.

Part 1 done, got camouflages. Always camouflages ... I'm swimming in bloody camouflages.

Looks like russian BiasBotes are incoming.

No need to convert elite XP to free XP just to advance up the tiers. Just play the ships. Skipping the grind isn't recommended for newcomers because you still need to learn the lessons on how to play. And since I had you on my team today another bit of advice: please don't play in a division where the other player uses a ship of a different tier. You're really not that much use in a KGV in a tier X game ...

No, they're so dirty we have to lick overtime and got no time to post slobbered memes.