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[Strife26]

That's enfilade fire. Defilade fire is having a position where the terrain give partial or total cover.

   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfilade_and_defilade

[Sheb]

So your point is that engagement time would be shorter as you can move around the hillock to shoot the tank out of cover?

[JWNoctis]

Partially off topic and only a newbie tank simmer here, but as far as I've seen, hull-down position might not actually offer as much protection as one might imagine in a tank-versus-tank battle, as (especially lower velocity) rounds fired from longer range would arc over any cover and hit parts of vehicle not in LOS. Albeit indeed this is much better than being in the open. In other words, LOS and LOF might be significantly different even for tank guns.

Experienced this from both sides in Graviteam's Steel Armor, which is reasonably accurate in its representation as far as I can tell...with nothing to tell from but gut feeling. Is that also how it works in real combat conditions?

[TheBiggerFish]

Hoo boy, PTW.

[Strife26]

So your point is that engagement time would be shorter as you can move around the hillock to shoot the tank out of cover?

Engagement time is slower on the defensive because there's the relatively safer position to take time from.

Partially off topic and only a newbie tank simmer here, but as far as I've seen, hull-down position might not actually offer as much protection as one might imagine in a tank-versus-tank battle, as (especially lower velocity) rounds fired from longer range would arc over any cover and hit parts of vehicle not in LOS. Albeit indeed this is much better than being in the open. In other words, LOS and LOF might be significantly different even for tank guns.

Experienced this from both sides in Graviteam's Steel Armor, which is reasonably accurate in its representation as far as I can tell...with nothing to tell from but gut feeling. Is that also how it works in real combat conditions?

Long story short? No. Very no.

[Helgoland]

The top is armored much more heavily, no?

[wobbly]

Question is the diagram showing that the tracks are vulnerable & you can be immobilized or something else? Apologies I know nothing about tanks.

Edit: to clarify I'm talking about the front tank in the diagram.

[Strife26]

An IV line stopping a modern rank round is mostly a crap shoot. I'm about ninety percent sure that some Iraqis ate sabot through sand dunes during 73 Eastings, but I'm unable to look in depth at the moment. Hard packed ground or non-kenetic rounds would certainly have a larger disruptive effect.

That's not the importantly thing, however. The important thing is that ground blocks sight lines. If a tank can't be seen, it can't (generally) be killed.

The diagram I posted is somewhat technical. That first tank in the line is a t72 being compares to an Abrams. The 72 has a lower height, which would normally be a significant advantage. However, when firing from the defilade, the Abrams is able to show much less of itself and still fire, because of greater gun depression and high sights. Going further back, you can see how much more of itself the Abrams can get behind cover.


Doctrine-wise the Abrams does everything good, while the Soviets were optimizing for high production tanks and offensive (or counteroffensive) actions.

[Shazbot]

The turret front is typically the best armored piece of the tank, or at least every effort is made to make it so. Geometry (the power of sloped armor) makes a sloped hull front typically very resistant to fire as well. The roof, however, tends to be the thinnest part. This is because it is nearly impossible to shoot into another tank's roof unless the target is doing something stupid, like parking on the forward slope of a very steep hill.

The best armor on the battlefield is a hill, and hull-down positions place a hundred feet of dirt in front of a foot of steel. Furthermore, the best concealment on the battlefield is also a hill. With modern sensors, you can see and shoot through all the trees in the world, but dirt is very opaque to both radar and infra-red. The principle of a tank in hull-down is precisely the same as an infantryman in a foxhole exposing as little of himself to observation and fire in order to put his observation and fire devices (eyeballs and rifles) into operation.

Shooting for the tracks was strongly discouraged in the A-10 Coloring Book, because you just put a little 30mm hole that won't actually break the track. However the side of the tank behind the track tends to be thinner than the wall above the track.

Yes, it was an official coloring book.

[mainiac]

That is actually a coloring book.

[JWNoctis]

Partially off topic and only a newbie tank simmer here, but as far as I've seen, hull-down position might not actually offer as much protection as one might imagine in a tank-versus-tank battle, as (especially lower velocity) rounds fired from longer range would arc over any cover and hit parts of vehicle not in LOS. Albeit indeed this is much better than being in the open. In other words, LOS and LOF might be significantly different even for tank guns.

Experienced this from both sides in Graviteam's Steel Armor, which is reasonably accurate in its representation as far as I can tell...with nothing to tell from but gut feeling. Is that also how it works in real combat conditions?

Long story short? No. Very no.

Thanks for the answer!....Yep, it certainly sounded more likely than another tale I heard of someone's acquaintance firing at something fully covered by a crest, aiming under the dust cloud that was thrown up which is all they can see.

Guess that's a no as well. And indeed, they missed.

EDIT: Messed up quote

[Helgoland]

'Strafe those atheistic degenerates.'

There's one or two point I'd like to make, if I may...

[Strife26]

So, this one time, I accidentally lit Korea on fire.

*passes around fresh mugs of hot chocolate*

We were having some pretty standard training, with 32 (my tank at the time, later christened Devastator when I wasn't present to object)  playing one vehicle ambush force. We weren't allowed to do any serious work with preparing a fighting position or getting proper defilade, so we just ended up tucking ourselves back into some brush as best as we could. Any concealment is better than no concealment.

The first engagement of the day went well; we killed the heck out of Crazy White, probably because they didn't prepare their training equipment properly. Now, they might not know how to boresight laser tag gear,  but they  certainly competent enough to cheat tell their other platoons about our hide (being beaten by another platoon is bad, but to be beaten by another company is simply unacceptable). As a result, we relocated before the next platoon came through.

The new spot wasn't quite as good as the old, especially because it was under 100 meters away. We settled down to wait for the next contestant, when we noticed a nice bit of smoke from the old spot. Yep. We'd lit something on fire.

Now, we considered call the local training area management or hoping it'd go out by itself, but that would likely scrub training for awhile and I'd feel a little bad about possibly burning a large swath of a Peninsula that I'm quite fond of. And besides, who doesn't like an excuse to play with fire? Fire is fun!

So, for any task, it's important to select the best (available) tool for the job. Under normal circumstances, I'd dismount with my loader to do the firefighting work. Unfortunately, putting out a fire is not something I would have trusted my then-loader to do. Throwing the loader at the problem would have literally required throwing the loader on the problem (I'm reasonably sure that one thrown person would have smothered the fire just fine). Fourtunately for the loader and his uniform, he was tasted out and not training with us that afternoon.

Next best tool for the job would be just using a fire extinguisher. We had them available, but using a fire extinguisher is problematic. If I did that, we'd be down an extinguisher until I could find/refill one. That's a fairly major safety issue, so putting the fire out with the fire extinguisher wasn't a great option (in my army career, I've only resorted to using a fire extinguisher once).

The fire wasn't terribly large, thankfully, mostly confined to one shrub-tree thing. A few shovelfuls of dirt would likely be enough to put it out, if I threw them accurately enough. Our shovel was, of course, currently loaned out to another crew to work on a fuel spill. No dice there.

At that point, I took the fourth-best tool available and left 32 in the care of commander and driver. I was off to firefight with an axe.

As I said, the fire was mostly limited to one shrub-tree thingie. I put out some smoldering brush around the target area to ensure that it didn't spread. My next step was to watch the flames for a bit and poke the tree-bush with my axe, because hey, fire is fun. I eventually completed the observation stage and got to work getting it put out.

The burning plant was only slightly shorter than my towering five foot, four inches (161 cm), so it was not an insignificant problem. I decided to try the dirt throwing method I discussed earlier. However, axefuls of dirt are significantly less effective than shovelfuls, besides making me feel a little ridiculous. My solution involved several strong axe swings to the base of the trunk, followed by braving the flames to push the thing over, followed by several more axe swings to stop the flaming thing from springing back up (which would have been pretty cool, actually).  At that point, it was just a matter of stomping everything out, then kicking enough dirt over the shrub-tree to make sure it wouldn't start up again once my back was turned. Unfortunately, the cooler looking singe marks on my tanker boots were covered up by the dust and ash.

 

[JWNoctis]

Interesting story!

Guess it was gas turbine exhaust that did it? Significantly hotter than diesel exhaust, I read...Wonder how that shows on thermal scopes and targeting pods too. Probably not quite helpful for concealment.

[NullForceOmega]

Not good for concealment, but nearly irrelevant considering the configuration of the exhaust plating.