23 replies to this topic

[zchen27]

Does the BL-9 gun have any historical basis, or is it just handwaved into the game for balancing purposes?
I know that 152mm BL-10/BL-8 have existed and is used in ISU-152-2.

Also, does the LB-2S on the SU-85B have any historical basis?

[minerguy1]

Dontmess with my BL-9

[NavySnipers]

The BL-10 did exist, yes. Not sure about BL-9.



The BL-10 had a maximum range of 18,000m with a shell that weighed 43.56kg. It's basically a direct fire meteor launcher.

[Harnisfechten]

NavySnipers, on Nov 14 2012 - 01:11, said:

The BL-10 did exist, yes. Not sure about BL-9.



The BL-10 had a maximum range of 18,000m with a shell that weighed 43.56kg. It's basically a direct fire meteor launcher.

that looks even more terrifying IRL than it does in game. OMG.

[zchen27]

NavySnipers, on Nov 14 2012 - 01:11, said:

The BL-10 did exist, yes. Not sure about BL-9.



The BL-10 had a maximum range of 18,000m with a shell that weighed 43.56kg. It's basically a direct fire meteor launcher.

It would be really cool if ISU-152-2 got put into production... But too bad, the Soviets wanted an urban environment assault gun, and a BL-10 is the last thing you will want to use in narrow streets and intersections. But hey, they would get a decent long-range TD out of the ISU-152.

[Rick_500]

NavySnipers, on Nov 14 2012 - 01:11, said:

The BL-10 did exist, yes. Not sure about BL-9.



The BL-10 had a maximum range of 18,000m with a shell that weighed 43.56kg. It's basically a direct fire meteor launcher.

Germans Maus never knew what hit them

[Tiger_23]

NavySnipers, on Nov 14 2012 - 01:11, said:

The BL-10 did exist, yes. Not sure about BL-9.



The BL-10 had a maximum range of 18,000m with a shell that weighed 43.56kg. It's basically a direct fire meteor launcher.

xD

during the trials, July 1944, the gun showed some deficiencies such as being difficult to operate by the crew, unreliable work of the muzzle brake and the breech block, and unsatisfactory performance of the shells. In addition, the gun, reaching out too far, was limiting the maneuverability of the fighting vehicle. The self-propelled gun carried 21 rounds of two piece (shell and charge) ammunition, and had a rate of fire of 2 rounds/min...

/Soviet

[AGMx]

Tiger_23, on Nov 14 2012 - 01:23, said:

xD

during the trials, July 1944, the gun showed some deficiencies such as being difficult to operate by the crew, unreliable work of the muzzle brake and the breech block, and unsatisfactory performance of the shells. In addition, the gun, reaching out too far, was limiting the maneuverability of the fighting vehicle. The self-propelled gun carried 21 rounds of two piece (shell and charge) ammunition, and had a rate of fire of 2 rounds/min...

/Soviet

Yea, all good

[Oberth]

I think the only really cannon proven be efficient, was JT´s main gun, the 128mm PaK 44/L55.

[LoooSeR78V]

zchen27, on Nov 14 2012 - 01:07, said:

Does the BL-9 gun have any historical basis, or is it just handwaved into the game for balancing purposes?
I know that 152mm BL-10/BL-8 have existed and is used in ISU-152-2.

http://tanki-voini.r...sau_isu_122.jpg
ISU-152 with 122 mm caliber BL-9 gun. Note - BL-9 don't have muzzle brake, unlike Bl-9 for IS-3 in-game.

Tiger_23, on Nov 14 2012 - 01:23, said:

during the trials, July 1944, the gun showed some deficiencies such as being difficult to operate by the crew, unreliable work of the muzzle brake and the breech block, and unsatisfactory performance of the shells. In addition, the gun, reaching out too far, was limiting the maneuverability of the fighting vehicle. The self-propelled gun carried 21 rounds of two piece (shell and charge) ammunition, and had a rate of fire of 2 rounds/min...
/Soviet

Normal for prototype, thats why they tested it.
/logic

And BTW did you mixed up BL-8 results with BL-10?

Edited by LoooSeR78V, Nov 14 2012 - 11:51.

[Tiger_23]

LoooSeR78V, on Nov 14 2012 - 11:49, said:

http://tanki-voini.r...sau_isu_122.jpg
ISU-152 with 122 mm caliber BL-9 gun. Note - BL-9 don't have muzzle brake, unlike Bl-9 for IS-3 in-game.


Normal for prototype, thats why they tested it.
/logic

And BTW did you mixed up BL-8 results with BL-10?

Thats the info of the BL-10 gun, if was mixed with BL-8 isnot my problem.

Also, was a total failure in the tests Normal for prototype.

The shells weighed 43.56kg and the velocity at 850 m/s, this gun had the 122 d25t ''caracteristics''.

[LoooSeR78V]

Tiger_23, on Nov 14 2012 - 14:48, said:

Thats the info of the BL-10 gun, if was mixed with BL-8 isnot my problem.

Also, was a total failure in the tests Normal for prototype.

The shells weighed 43.56kg and the velocity at 850 m/s, this gun had the 122 d25t ''caracteristics''.

Why total failer?
It's not a surprise that long and heavy gun is not easy to handle, lol. Shell quality was fixed in 1944.

And why having 122 mm D-25T gun characteristic is bad?

[Tiger_23]

LoooSeR78V, on Nov 14 2012 - 19:36, said:

Why total failer?
It's not a surprise that long and heavy gun is not easy to handle, lol. Shell quality was fixed in 1944.

And why having 122 mm D-25T gun characteristic is bad?

Was fixed, but still with poor quality.

The d25t was pretty bad at AT role - slow rate of fire (slow and difficult reload rate due to the massive size/weight of the round, poor ammunition amounts, two component load i.e. the round and charge was separate just as with large artillery shells so it took twice as long to load, crew had to lower the barrel just for to reload), pretty poor accuracy, poor optics, and the penetration can be compared to the 7.5 L70 (Even the penetration of the 122mm was disappointing when you consider how large the round was).

Here a resume of the DDR/USA tests using german method (@30°) :

http://www.panzer-wa...Files/iiii1.jpg

[LoooSeR78V]

Tiger_23, on Nov 14 2012 - 20:57, said:

Was fixed, but still with poor quality.

IIRC 9% less than Germans. 9% difference is not critical.

Tiger_23, on Nov 14 2012 - 20:57, said:

The d25t was pretty bad at AT role - slow rate of fire (slow and difficult reload rate due to the massive size/weight of the round, poor ammunition amounts, two component load i.e. the round and charge was separate just as with large artillery shells so it took twice as long to load, crew had to lower the barrel just for to reload)

D-25T was gun-howitzer, something between pure gun and pure howitzer, so it's not a surprise that it is not as good as 128 for example. And this gun-howitzer never was suposed to be AT-cannon.

80% of times tank fight with other targets than other tanks according to Zaloga.

IS-100's 100 mm caliber D-10T had about ~190 penetration, higher RoF and one-piece ammunition, but Narkom Malushev chosed 122 mm for a reason.

1) 2 piece ammunition in case of D-25T increased RoF becouse 1 piece ammunition would weight about ~40 kg and it would be much harder to handle for 1 loader.
2) By lowering gun you will INCREASE distance between loader, round in ammorack and gun breach. You simply will increase time that needed to load gun, lol.
Moreover - if you will lower gun loader would find itself in situation when he should ram shells from bottom-up, fighting with gravity force. It is much easier to ram shells horizontally.
3) IS-2 were able to carry up to 42 shells, which is not "poor ammunition amounts" taking in to account RoF.

Tiger_23, on Nov 14 2012 - 20:57, said:

pretty poor accuracy

Generally same as 88L56 had - about 250 mm dispersion at 1000 meters for both gus (D-25T had higher horizontal dispersion than 88, but lower vertical). If D-25T gun have poor accuracy, than 88L56 also

Tiger_23, on Nov 14 2012 - 20:57, said:

poor optics

in 1942-to summer of 1943 - yes, After that Izuminsky factory were able to fully recover from evacuation and produce high-quality optics. Doyle noted that in war US reached level of optics quality of Germans, while Chrysler after war noted that Soviet optics/gunner sight were superior to US.
German tanks almost always had a lot of vision slots and very low number of actual optics in there's tank. Thats why you see commanders of Pz4 and 5 outside of turret main armor in open commander cupolas, looking for bullets and shrapnels.

Thats why Otto Carius used his "erzats" "panoramic" sight (artillery periscope) - poor visibilty from commanders cupola, while pre-war KV-1 had PT-K panoramic sight with 360 degrees field of veiw, T-34-85 and IS-2 had MK-4 360 degrees panoramic sight. Later you see that Soviets completely dropped commander cupola with IS-3 tanks. Now all MBTs have similar panoramic sight, like pre-war KV-1 or war time IS-2s.

Tiger_23, on Nov 14 2012 - 20:57, said:

and the penetration can be compared to the 7.5 L70 (Even the penetration of the 122mm was disappointing when you consider how large the round was).

Size of round don't say anything about it's penetration ability, look at 152 ML-20S howitzers for example    Many peoples sayed that 75L70 had very high penetration, so if D-25T have comparible... I don't see much problems with gun-howitzer having similar penetration like pure AT gun.

D-25T was a weapon, created for 80% of enemys, that IS-2  fighted, and almost all German tanks were not enought armored to be able to survive D-25T round hit. Only Ferdinands, KT frontal armor and JTs frontal armor could do that, but their's number were really low.
This mean that almost 70-90% of german tank could not survive frontal hit from D-25T.
Not so bad for direct-firing howitzer IMO.

[balmung60]

^Actually, if I understand, the main reason they chose the A-19 (or rather, the tank mounted version, the D-25T), is because the USSR had lots and lots of 122mm ammo in stock, but rather little 100mm ammo

[LoooSeR78V]

balmung60, on Nov 15 2012 - 10:46, said:

^Actually, if I understand, the main reason they chose the A-19 (or rather, the tank mounted version, the D-25T), is because the USSR had lots and lots of 122mm ammo in stock, but rather little 100mm ammo

IS-2 production was low-numbers, they could handle it IMO.

[Vollketten]

NavySnipers, on Nov 14 2012 - 01:11, said:

LoooSeR78V, on Nov 14 2012 - 11:49, said:

http://tanki-voini.r...sau_isu_122.jpg

The location of the vehicles seems suspiciously similar, along with the daytime shadows on the guns. Either two vehicles are next to each other or someone has been messing with the pictures. That first picture looks like there has been something fiddled with to do with the barrel judging by the parralel shading of the trees behind in line with the barrel. Also in the second picture you can see that where the sunlight has touched the top of the barrel is is lighter in colour due to sunlight but this is omitted in the first picture despite identical sunlight situations. Unless/until I see some other pictures of that gun on that vehicle I'm afraid I smell a photoshop rat.

The only obvious difference between the vehicles is that one has its front hatch open.

Edit: I'm not saying that that gun did not exist nor that is wasn't fitted that an ISU but that I have severe doubts over the photo.

Edited by Vollketten, Nov 15 2012 - 16:23.

[Vollketten]

NavySnipers, on Nov 14 2012 - 01:11, said:

This is a better quality version of the above image:
http://en.valka.cz/f...u-152-1_114.jpg
and yet in this one the lighting on the top of the barrel is much better and done correctly.
My guess is that at some point in the past the larger photo has been published and has had to be touched up by hand (a fairly common practice) accounting for the odd lighting and lines parralel to the gun but either way it is an altered picture and shouldn't be used.

Edited by Vollketten, Nov 15 2012 - 16:36.

[Xlucine]

Vollketten, on Nov 15 2012 - 16:17, said:

The location of the vehicles seems suspiciously similar,

Perhaps guy in charge of the testing grounds had a favourite line of trees that he wanted all the tanks to be photographed next to?

[Vollketten]

I beleive that that is actually taken outside a tank factory in Leningrad. But it is the lighting and 'touch-up' that concerned me. The shadows are exactly the same as well, see that front right mudguard.