A Guide to Tank Ammo | Koala Explains: Tank Ammunition Types and their Differences

all right troops koala here tanks have come a long way since their debut in the first world war and as the vehicles have gotten more advanced so too have the ammunition types available to them as tank design changed favored ammo types transitioned from armor piercing rounds to cumulative or shaped charge warheads and then back again thanks to changing doctrines and armor types in today's episode of koala explains we are going to have a brief look at the various different types of ammunition used by tanks from the second world war to the modern day and go over a few terms you may be unfamiliar with this video is brought to you by supporters like you thanks for helping me make rent tank ammunition can be broken up into two main types kinetic energy or armor piercing rounds and chemical energy or shaped charge warheads with several sub times within those categories the first and most basic shell type is your standard armor piercing or ap slug basically just a big bullet with no internal structure or mechanism this was your primary round of choice for anti-tank work early on and was later improved with various inner workings to the shell allowing for better ballistics penetration or post-penetration effect that is the damage done to the interior of whatever you're shooting at apc or armor-piercing capped rounds could allow shells to better penetrate angled armor plates of enemy tanks such as the shaman t-34 or panther a typical conical shaped round would simply ping off into space upon contacting a significantly angled plate but by using a cap made out of softer steel helping the round to angle down slightly on impact the penetrative force of an apc round could be better directed into the armor plate these ap caps however were relatively flat which makes the shell less aerodynamic giving it more drag and lower penetration at longer ranges as these rounds rely entirely on kinetic force to combat this ballistic caps were invented which introduced a more pointed shape to the tip of the round in the form of apbc rounds solid ap slugs with the pointed ballistic cap on top or ap cbc rounds armor-piercing capped ballistic capped which bring the benefit of both previously mentioned types these shell types do their damage to the internals of a vehicle or fortification by creating clouds of shrapnel as they pass through either from the round itself or from the armor they just penetrated the latter is known as spalling and as the main way ap rounds capped or not do damage there are also shrapnel shells which are designed to break apart much more violently upon penetration making more use of shrapnel from the round itself than from spalling while this does allow these rounds to create a larger shrapnel effect even against thinly armored targets where less spalling would occur shrapnel shells lacked penetration capacity and were quickly rendered obsolete during world war ii to discuss what replaced them however we first need to look at chemical energy rounds high explosive rounds were used to engage infantry positions and light fortifications and had minimal capacity to actually penetrate ammo these shells consist of a thin steel casing inside which is a large amount of explosive usually tnt are a mixture of tnt with amity or rdx plus a mechanism to trigger it similar to the way a regular gun works with a hammer sparking the explosive charge these rounds can also use a timed fuse detonating the explosive with a timer or altimeter these types of rounds were typically found in flak guns such as the german 88 millimeter of world war ii batteries of which would saturate an area with explosions and shrapnel at a predetermined height fantastic for combating the formations of bomber aircraft used by the allies later on timed fuses gave way to proximity fused rounds where a radio transmitter will detect a target at close proximity and detonate the shell this meant that even if the range or altitude of the target were unknown it could still be destroyed without a direct hit as the projectile simply had to fly near the target at some point during its flight time while it might require up to 50 000 rounds from anti-aircraft guns to destroy a single aircraft with direct hits at least with world war two aiming technology a timed fuse round could do it with just a couple hundred and a proximity fuse round in just one or two well aimed shots heading back over to the anti-armor spectrum ap rounds could include he filler allowing the round to explode after penetrating an amount of armor and cause much more damage to the interior of a target this was the theory at least but in practice the hollowed center for explosive charge both lightened and weakened the shell meaning less penetration while the explosive content didn't end up creating much of a difference in overall damage dealt and aphe shells were quickly rendered obsolete as well these apag shells could also bring both armor piercing caps and ballistic caps to improve their angled penetration or range just as with regular ap shells these are also sometimes known as semi armor piercing or sap as steel armor got ever thicker the first instances of what are known as sub-caliber projectiles were invented the design of these allows them to sit comfortably in a relatively large gun barrel allowing for a larger explosive and hence higher velocity and range the part of the round that penetrates armor however is far smaller than the diameter of the gun that fired it allowing for some interesting effects the first of these ammunition types was apcr or armor piercing composite rigid sometimes known as high velocity ap or hvap these rounds have a type of jacket of lighter steel around them creating the aerodynamic shape and allowing them to fit into the barrels of tank guns the core of these rounds however is made of a much heavier and denser steel giving it more force as it impacts the armor and putting all that force on a smaller point the downside to these types of rounds is that they create less spalling and shrapnelling as only the core actually penetrates the plate leaving the thinner metal jacket to shatter on impact apcr also lacks penetration at range and so variations of these rounds were created that do away with that thinner jacket immediately after exiting the gun barrel these are known as apds rounds for armor-piercing discarding sabo the sabo or sabo depending on where you're from is that metal jacket which is discarded after the round exits the barrel flying off and petals the sable means that the round can be fired from much bigger guns which means more explosive and hence more power but the core may only be half the diameter of the gun making it much more aerodynamic than a full bore ap route and giving it a flatter ballistic carve and more penetration at long ranges in modern tanks you'll hear of apfsds or armor-piercing fin stabilized discarding sable to describe what these rounds are as quite simple they are apds rounds with stabilizing fins to keep them on course to discover why they were so necessary however is slightly more complex you may understand rifling to improve a gun's accuracy the spin from the gun barrel giving a gyroscopic effect to the round as it flies this only applies however when the round is roughly conically shaped like a bullet or ap shell mod on sable rounds however have gotten quite long as the longer round will mean more penetration of armor but a long yet thin round will actually respond negatively to rifling beginning to tumble end over end as it flies and veer off course or at the very least slam into the target with the flat side rather than the sharp point of the rod there are a variety of scientific reasons behind this effect but suffice it to just say physics the stabilizing fins on ap fsds rounds are actually designed to negate the spin from a rifled gun while at the same time replacing that stabilizing function much like the fletching on an arrow the use of stabilizing fins to counteract the spin from a rifled gun allowed these types of rounds to get much much longer than standard ap shells and while they may only be 27 millimeters in diameter the shells of an m1 abrams leopard 2 or t90 may reach 800 to 1 000 millimeters in length side note all of those tanks at least all but the initial abrams variants use smoothbore rather than rifled guns which do not impart a spin at all the fins only acting to keep the round on course while armor piercing rounds developed into subcaliber projectiles for penetration of thicker steel armor fast on german tanks like the panther or tiger 2 and then soviet tanks like the is-3 a new type of chemical energy round had been developed to do much the same thing these high-explosive anti-tank or heat rounds work in a very different way to either regular he or ap rounds and are what you might hear referred to as cumulative charge or shaped charge warheads these shells consist of a cone of a softer metal such as copper the open end of the cone facing the tip of the round where the target will be and a concentrated explosive charge behind it upon contact the round is fused just like a standard high explosive round would be but uses that explosive force to both superheat and invert the softer metal cone forming a jet that pushes through the metal armor at hypersonic speeds creating a fireball on the inside these shells are known as chemical energy munitions due to their reliance on explosive but the actual penetrative effect is still kinetic a metal projectile punching through the armor using kinetic force the idea that the softer metal part is melted by the explosive and burns through the armor is not correct as while the metal will get very hot in order to form it into shape it is still well below its own melting point let alone that of the armor plate the explosive charge behind the cone-shaped lining means that these rounds do not lose any penetrative power at range as the force needed to invert the copper cone and penetrate the armor is all contained within the round itself the gun is only there to get the round two its target and these heat warheads are also found in anti-tank missiles air-to-ground missiles or rpgs heat rounds also lose effectiveness thanks to the spin imparted by a rifled cannon as the rotating motion of the projectile wastes some force laterally spreading out the energy rather than concentrating it on a narrower point for this reason heat rounds would also include stabilizing fins to become heat fs in modern times where composite armor makes tanks nearly impervious to heat or heat fs rounds this ammunition type is mostly relegated to use against soft targets fortifications or low-flying aircraft and has been renamed to heat mp for high-explosive anti-tank multi-purpose or in the u.s mpat or m-pad from multi-purpose anti-tank heat warheads require room between where the explosion happened and the armor of the tank underneath and so you'll often see what's called a standoff probe on the front of these munitions designed to detonate the explosive further away from the armor allowing that metal jet to form properly before it makes contact if the detonation happens too far away from the armor however some of that power will be lost especially when it comes to heat rounds without stabilizing fins to counteract spin which as we said lose some power to the rotational force to take advantage of this spaced armor could be used where the round will hit the outer layer detonate and only then impact the main body of the target these shaped charge rounds are also easily defeated by explosive reactive armor something we'll talk about more specifically in the next episode but to counter this tandem charge heat rounds were developed wherein two warheads sit in the shell one behind the other the first activates the era leaving the second to penetrate clean through the armor as if it weren't even there heat rounds became popularized as the main anti-tank munition during the later phase of world war ii and the early stages of the cold war where tanks like the is-3 were nato's biggest threat but as composite armor was developed kinetic armor-piercing rounds like ap fsds were switched back in with tanks like the m60 leopard 1 or chieftain when it comes to destroying fortifications or light armored vehicles however what you really need is hesh this stands for high explosive squash head but you'll also hear them referred to as hep for high explosive plastic or beish if you're a truly cultured individual hess shells are not designed to penetrate armor but instead rely entirely on spalling fragments from the armor itself making them especially effective for demolition they accomplish this with a large amount of plastic explosive within the shell which spreads out across the target upon impact before detonating the resulting explosion sends shock waves through the armor whether it be steel or concrete rupturing the inner wall and causing huge amounts of spalling fragments in the target a target destroyed by a hess shell may actually show no hole where the impact took place just a large scorch mark with a plastic explosive detonated on the inside however pure carnage unlike heat or sable rounds hess shells actually require rifling to work as that same rotational force that wastes energy on a heat round disperses the plastic explosive pat further across the face of the armor creating larger shock waves which offer more damage this is the main reason why challenger tanks still use rifled guns while every other main battle tank today uses smoothbore but that is a topic for another video i hope you have enjoyed this episode of koala explains and that if you did you leave a like it really helps me out and subscribe for more videos every week support us on patreon to get access to exclusive content early videos our private discord server where you can vote in polls and much much more thanks for watching stay safe and i'll catch you on the battlefield there are a ton of tactics you can use to defend incoming missiles outside of just pull a town tight enough that they can't follow and these will become even more important to understand once we step into rank 7 with later missiles including box 3s so i'm gonna talk about all of them in a future video but the maps are so small currently that by the time you take off and gain enough speed to put any of those tactics to work you're already too close to use them

Channel: Armor Cast

Views: 390,494

Rating: 4.9464288 out of 5

Keywords: tank ammunition, tank ammo, tank rounds, tank shells, apfsds shell, m1 abrams in action, leopard 2 in action, challenger 2 in action, t-90 in action, tank ammunition types, heat-fs shell, high explosive anti tank, armor piercing discarding sabot, tank sabot shells, m829 apfsds, apfsds, world of tanks ammunition, war thunder ammo types, war thunder shell types, world of tanks shell types, modern tank ammunition, antitank ammunition, artillery ammunition

Id: 01eqS2K0aTQ

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021