Leopard Tank Question

[Wiedzmin]

Bundesarchive reports mostly

 

 

Leopard 1a3 turret, steel used HZB 301 370-410HB and up to 490 for 12mm plates,roof HZB20 260-300HB

[bojan]

Note a value for a supposedly solid gun cradle...

[Wiedzmin]

Gun cradle of all leo1 before 1a3 was made from constructional steel(not armor) and it hollow box yes, 1a3 have cradle from armor steel, as 2k, but for leo2av/2a4 I don't have any good info at this moment

[Wiedzmin]

 

 

 

here what Leopard-2AV(and i think 2A0/4) mantlet armour look like in 1976

[Interlinked]

What do the numbers and letters signify?

[Wiedzmin]

thickness

 

260mm from front face of frontal 15mm plate to rear face of rear 20mm plate(225m "pocket" for special armour consisting of 12mm HHA and 4mm bulging plate)

 

"hh" - hohe Härte

TL - TL spec steel

"w" i don't know, maybe some german speaking members could help

Lochblech - perforated sheet

Edited July 12, 2019 by Wiedzmin

[Panzermann]

thickness

 

260mm from front face of frontal 15mm plate to rear face of rear 20mm plate(225m "pocket" for special armour consisting of 12mm HHA and 4mm bulging plate)

 

"hh" - hohe Härte

TL - TL spec steel

"w" i don't know, maybe some german speaking members could help

Lochblech - perforated sheet

 

With the context of marking high hardness and TL steels and where the plates marked w are, I could imagine the "w" stands for weich, that is soft or mild (steel).

[KV7]

What is the bulging plate (in olive ?) made from ?

[Wiedzmin]

 

1976 Leopard 2AV armour(all from declassified reports)

 

 

What is the bulging plate (in olive ?) made from ?

mild steel i think, but no data in report

 

 

 

 

With the context of marking high hardness and TL steels and where the plates marked w are, I could imagine the "w" stands for weich, that is soft or mild (steel).

 

maybe, thank you

Edited July 13, 2019 by Wiedzmin

[Rick]

Bundesarchive reports mostly

 

 

Leopard 1a3 turret, steel used HZB 301 370-410HB and up to 490 for 12mm plates,roof HZB20 260-300HB

Why the space between armor plates?

[Rick]

 

 

 

here what Leopard-2AV(and i think 2A0/4) mantlet armour look like in 1976

Why the diagonal spaced plates?

[DB]

Penetrators are damaged at interfaces due to compression/release that creates internal shock pulses that exceed the material strength. But I am probably not using the right technical terms here.

 

The air gaps also give room for the bulging plates to move.

[Przezdzieblo]

Bulging plates need obliquity. There is little flow of armour material at projectile trajectory if there is no step angle.

Note that the first scheme (Leopard 2 prototype I generation) is oriented vs KE threats (full bore AP, APDS).

[Wiedzmin]

 

Why the space between armor plates?

 

for example, for protection from 20mm DM43 you don't need thick and heavy 65-70mm plates, you can use 12-35 spaced armor, firts plate damaging/destabilizes core second holds all thats left after first plate

[Colin]

The performance leap from 100mm to 115mm is impressive with frontal armour penetration leaping from 500m to 3000m. Not good being a Leo 1 crewman

[KV7]

What is the rationale for using quite thick plates with a single thin bulging plate vs. NERA with a thicker interlayer and two flyer plates ?

Edited July 15, 2019 by KV7

[Rick]

 

1976 Leopard 2AV armour(all from declassified reports)

 

 

What is the bulging plate (in olive ?) made from ?

mild steel i think, but no data in report

 

 

 

 

With the context of marking high hardness and TL steels and where the plates marked w are, I could imagine the "w" stands for weich, that is soft or mild (steel).

 

maybe, thank you

Ex-sailor question, but why that set up of spaced, "thin" plates?

[Paul Lakowski]

I cant read the Russian, but the rational I got was mild steel plates [1/4 of the price of HHS] was just as effective if not even more effective than hard armor plates . These mild steel plates put increasing lateral strain simultaneously on the long rod penetrator at different places along the rod.

 

Best guess, this reduces/breaks up the penetrator.

[Interlinked]

Ex-sailor question, but why that set up of spaced, "thin" plates?

Hard to say. As a whole, the armour design seems to be rather inefficient.

Edited July 16, 2019 by Interlinked

[Wiedzmin]

What is the rationale for using quite thick plates with a single thin bulging plate vs. NERA with a thicker interlayer and two flyer plates ?

Without thick plates you doesn't have KE protection, so, you must make spaced array of steel before and after(or between)light NERA package(early chobham armour variants gain KE protection only from spaced armour part, NERA was only against CE) , or use it like on leo2av, t72b, where you have plates thick enough to work against KE and bulging plates helps against CE

 

+ it's better to have thick back plate to stop damaged rod (like on cr1/2, m1, t-series)

Edited July 16, 2019 by Wiedzmin

[Ssnake]

The AV was never meant to be representative of the ACTUAL armor configuration. The intent was that the armor cavities would be filled with whatever the US would choose to place there, but that for the purpose of evaluation/trials "something" had to be put in there to approximate the weight. In the US Chrysler (to save the XM-1) and the unions then started a smear campaign that the armor protection was inadequate (well, duh!) and that the US would "buy" a foreign tank when the explicit intent was a license production completely under US control. Irrespective of the question whether the Leopard ever had a chance to be adopted by the US (I don't think so), poring over the details of the AV's armor package is a complete waste of time.

[Ssnake]

 

thickness

 

260mm from front face of frontal 15mm plate to rear face of rear 20mm plate(225m "pocket" for special armour consisting of 12mm HHA and 4mm bulging plate)

 

"hh" - hohe Härte

TL - TL spec steel

"w" i don't know, maybe some german speaking members could help

Lochblech - perforated sheet

 

With the context of marking high hardness and TL steels and where the plates marked w are, I could imagine the "w" stands for weich, that is soft or mild (steel).

 

"weich" appears rather unspecific; it could equally well stand for "Walzstahl" (rolled armor plate) which at least would signify some production standard.

[Wiedzmin]

The AV was never meant to be representative of the ACTUAL armor configuration. The intent was that the armor cavities would be filled with whatever the US would choose to place there, but that for the purpose of evaluation/trials "something" had to be put in there to approximate the weight. In the US Chrysler (to save the XM-1) and the unions then started a smear campaign that the armor protection was inadequate (well, duh!) and that the US would "buy" a foreign tank when the explicit intent was a license production completely under US control. Irrespective of the question whether the Leopard ever had a chance to be adopted by the US (I don't think so), poring over the details of the AV's armor package is a complete waste of time.

i will add firing trials for this version later, it's not very detailed, but uses US spec threats for tests

 

just some random photo of Leopard 2AV

 

 

"weich" appears rather unspecific; it could equally well stand for "Walzstahl" (rolled armor plate) which at least would signify some production standard.

 

thank you

Edited July 16, 2019 by Wiedzmin

[Ssnake]

BOTH are, however, speculation. "w" is nothing but a single letter.

[Wiedzmin]

1974 requirements

-105mm KE

-120mm KE

-120mm HEAT

120mm HEAT penetration, and there is a first problem did they tested Leopard-2 with real shots and built in stand-off or they used static tests with Optimum stand-off, because protection could be 480-500(btw my bad, not Meppen test, some RARDE reports), or up to 700

 

1977-78 requirements

did they dropeed idea of protection from 120mm KE, or just not mentioned it in report, also Milan, penetration of Milan at built in stand-off 530-560mm

 

mean crater profiles, it's not pen, but depth of jet inside target, pen little bit less, so again, did they have protection from Milan in 1974 or they updated in only after 74(76 maybe? or even 77-78) did they fired it on tank, or used static with optimum stand off ?

 

 

1987 requirements(one of british reports claim that germans will start placing D-tech packages in 1987-88)

 

-120mm DM23

- HOT

and once again

 

 

HOT mean crater profiles, so if they tested Leo2 in 1974 and 77 with optimum stand-off(710mm pen) then 1987 "improvement" look silly in terms of CE protection (710mm 1974-1978 up to 750-780 in 1987), but if they have only 480-550 in 1974-1978, there is a great increase in CE protection level, or they were "ok" with CE level, but want improvement in KE + some little "update" for CE.

 

as for "abandoned bulging armour" i think they just mixed it with ceramic to get protection against CE, if they ever really used ceramics inside Leo2, because germans still can't produce good enough ceramic plates(Al2O3 plates IRRC) for body armour, and i'm seriously doubt that they can produce good quality ceramic for use in tank CE protection, it's expensive, it's not durable, and you need to have some very good quality check for it, or they just used some chip "dirt" like in T-64 turret, it doesn't need to be "super high tech" if it's work.

 

british claims that this report also contain about "Leo-2 protects only vs old steel soviet APFSDS" is BS, this is clearly seen in the 1974 report, germans have WHA long rods requirements from the start, and this requirements was stronger than US 105mm APFSDS, and i think more or less similar to british requirements for CR1 with XL23(IIRC, yes it's monoblock APFSDS, but shitty alloy and round), as for "low numbers" or "lol it's level of T-64" without knowing real estimation procedures you can't compare "300 vs APFSDS german" vs "300mm vs APDS/APFSDS soviet", again, for example we have T-72M1 with 16mm addon, which gives 405mm vs M111 APFSDS, does it mean that T-72M1 have better armour than Leopard-2 or...

 

for understand what is real level of protection you need to test all tanks with similar rounds in similar conditions

 

 

firing trials of 2AV and full armour scheme i will upload later...

 

 

 

 

 

Turret L2AV

 

 

BOTH are, however, speculation. "w" is nothing but a single letter.

user Gun Ready from SH said:

 

"The letters are used in the old German specification for armour steel TL-2350-0001 for different hardnesses where W is 400 to 450 HBW, V is for 440 to 490 HBW and C is for 340 to 390 HBW. The letters hh and sh are not German abbreviations."

Edited July 28, 2019 by Wiedzmin