In October 1973, in the Golan Heights during the Fourth Middle East War , the Syrian army positions were filled with wind and in a mess.
Facing the frontal offensive of the Israeli army, hundreds of the world's most advanced Soviet tanks T-54 and T-62 tanks parked quietly on the position, motionless, as if they were participating in a weapons exhibition.
However, inside these tanks , there are bloody corpses. What is going on?
1. Tank killer Fighting cattle across mountains
Tanks are great killers in land warfare. They are very practical, have high mobility and powerful firepower. The most important thing is that the thick armor provides the best protection while attacking. defense.
Since World War British soldiers changed "water tanks" to "tanks", the contribution of tanks in modern warfare has been regarded by armored forces as higher than any land warfare weapon. It is the main weapon of the armies of various countries and has been widely used. With a wide range of equipment, the competition for land warfare equipment in various countries largely revolves around tanks.
Generally speaking, tanks are mobile armored equipment that can be used with different types of artillery shells to carry out various targeted strikes, such as range-killing armor-piercing projectiles and armor-piercing projectiles, etc., which have extremely powerful effects on enemy tank shells. Destruction ability.
However, there is a kind of artillery shell that is different. It is good at "hitting cattle across mountains". After hitting the shell of the enemy tank, it is fine, but it is a nightmare for the soldiers inside. What is going on?
In 1973, the Fourth Middle East War broke out. Syria With the help of the Soviet Union, it formed an armored torrent consisting of T-54 and T-62 tanks. The number was three times that of Israel, and its performance was much higher than that of the main equipment of the Israeli army. The British Centurion main battle tank vows to regain the Golan Heights.
In the battle of the Golan Heights, the strength gap between the two sides was very different. Syria had 300 advanced Soviet tanks and more than 1,200 troops.
T-54 and T-62 tanks were the most advanced main battle tanks of the Soviet Union at the time. They were famous for their power. They were equipped with 115mm smoothbore cannon and heavy machine gun . The tank shells were made of double armor: rolled steel and homogeneous armor plates.
On the other hand, Israel has less than 500 troops and only 100 tanks. Moreover, they are still "junk" purchased from the British. Their performance is only at the World War II level. No matter how you look at it, they cannot win.
However, a miracle happened. Within a few hours, more than 260 Syrian tanks that were charging stopped, waiting for the Israeli army to "pick peaches". The scene at the beginning of the article appeared.
The Syrian tank that was bombed at that time was intact from the outside, and even the paint on the tank body was not peeled off. However, all the soldiers inside looked ugly, giving people a strange and strange feeling, just like the Israelis had learned to "fight from across the mountain" Bull" martial arts.
It is naturally impossible for the Israelis to "beat the cow across the mountain". This is actually using a British artillery shell called " armor-breaking bullet ".
The warhead of this artillery shell is very easy to break. After hitting the Syrian tank, the explosive inside will stick directly to the steel plate and detonate, thus generating a powerful shock wave .
Under the shock wave, the tank shell will collapse and fragments will be ejected at high speed inside the tank. The soldiers inside the tank will be scraped to death by such small fragments.
2. Revealing the true face of the armor-breaking bullet
Armor-breaking bullet HESH (High Explosive Squash Head), literally translated as high-explosive smashing warhead, the focus of its effect is to "break" the armor.
To put it simply, after the armor-breaking projectile hits the armored target, the plastic explosive stack in the projectile sticks to the armor surface and explodes instantly under the action of the delayed fuse, generating a strong shock wave.
The shock wave overpressure produces a collapse effect on the inner surface of the vehicle armor, and the collapsed inner fragments kill personnel, targets, and damage equipment.
Because the shell of the armor-breaking projectile is soft and the flight speed is slow, and the cross wind has a great influence on the accuracy under the condition of stable tail fin, the armor-breaking projectile is usually stabilized by rotation.
People have noticed a long time ago that when a high-explosive grenade hits a target such as a concrete bunker, although the target will not be blown through, the inner wall will be broken into many fragments by the shock wave. These flying fragments will also cause damage to those behind. Some casualties were caused to personnel. This damaging effect is called spalling or caving effect.
armor-breaking bullets specifically use this effect to kill targets. Its structure is relatively simple. It is basically a thin-shelled metal projectile loaded with a large amount of plastic explosives and a delayed fuse at the bottom of the projectile.
In order to allow the plastic explosives to accumulate on the armor surface as quickly as possible during impact, the metal material used in the thin-shell projectile is low carbon steel with low hardness but good toughness, and the warhead is the thinnest, generally 2-3mm, and the projectile wall It gradually thickens from the cylindrical part to the tail.
When hitting the armor plate, before the fuze at the bottom of the projectile detonates, due to inertia, the projectile head is deformed and upset due to pressure, the projectile body expands outward, and then the thin-walled warhead ruptures, and the plastic explosive becomes disc-shaped accumulated on the armor surface.
The delayed fuse detonated after a few milliseconds. Due to the strong impact and compression of the shock wave on the armor, it caused the propagation, reflection and superposition of stress wave in the armor, causing a large disc-shaped fragment or several metal fragments to collapse from the inside of the armor.
These metal fragments splashed at high speed inside the vehicle, causing the effects of killing and injuring members, damaging equipment, and igniting or detonating fuel and ammunition. Unlike shaped ammunition such as armor-breaking rounds, armor-breaking rounds do not kill targets by penetration.
armor-breaking bombs were invented by Sir Dennistoun Burney in 1940 and were originally used against concrete fortifications. The earliest application of armor-breaking bullets was the Churchill VII AVRE of the British Royal Engineers. The 165mm L9 obstacle-breaking cannon fired armor-breaking bullets.
After a period of use, it was discovered that this ammunition can also act on homogeneous steel armor, and has excellent killing effects on the Soviet Union's main tanks T-55 and T-62 at the time.
With the export of the L7 rifled gun, the matching L35 armor-breaking bullet has also become the main ammunition for tanks in many countries.
The Israeli army purchased British armor-breaking bombs and carried out a devastating attack on Syrian Soviet tanks.
However, since the end of the Fourth Middle East War in the 1970s, armor-breaking bullets have become increasingly unpopular. Seeing the power of armor-breaking bullets, the Soviet Union began to use composite armor . Shock waves cannot be effectively propagated in different media. As a result, armor-breaking shells are just a big firecracker for the new generation of Soviet main battle tanks.
Similarly, gap armor can also protect against armor-breaking bullets. And Kevlar anti-collapse linings have also begun to be used on armored vehicles, which can effectively block collapsing metal fragments and greatly reduce the aftereffects of armor-breaking bullets.
Countries have also begun to follow suit and update tank protection.
In addition to protective factors, another reason why armor-breaking bullets are gradually being eliminated is the artillery .
At this time, various countries have begun to replace smoothbore cannons with stronger performance, and armor-breaking bullets rely on the high-speed spin provided by the rifling to achieve the best killing effect, because this characteristic of armor-breaking bullets cannot be applied to smoothbore guns.
This is one of the reasons why the British Army still uses rifled tank guns: they still insist on using armor-breaking shells as multi-purpose grenades.
At present, armor-breaking ammunition is mostly used for obstacle-breaking purposes. In addition to the British main battle tanks, they are basically used by combat engineering vehicles or secondary tanks, such as the British AVRE, our country's VT-4, and the Canadian "Leopard" C1/C2 etc.
Even if the popularity is far less than before, it will not be able to recreate the glorious moment of the Golan Heights. However, the armor-breaking projectile still has good versatility and can be effective against most targets. The effect on homogeneous armor is still quite significant, and it can still be used now. Used as ordinary high explosive bomb .
3. Analysis of armor-breaking bullets, armor-piercing bullets, and armor-breaking bullets
Since tanks were put into use in World War I, anti-armor weapons to deal with armored vehicles such as tanks came into being. The knowledge of various types of anti-armor ammunition in has almost become a must-have common sense for military fans and military game fans.
However, some entry-level military enthusiasts may still be a little confused about the three types of anti-armor ammunition: armor-breaking bullets, armor-piercing bullets, and armor-piercing bullets. Then at the end of the article, I will explain to you how to distinguish them. These three types of anti-armor ammunition.
Compared with the English names, the Chinese names of the three types of ammunition may be more helpful for understanding.
The core of the understanding of HESH (High Explosive Squash Head), the protagonist of this article, is "fragmentation". This has been mentioned in the previous article, so I will not go into details here.
Let’s look at armor-piercing shell AP (Armor Piercing shell). The core of its understanding is “penetration”.
armor-piercing bullet is the simplest anti-armor ammunition, and its Chinese name is almost a direct translation of its English name. The main effect of
armor-piercing bullets is to "penetrate" armor. is a typical kinetic energy projectile. Armor-piercing projectiles use the powerful kinetic energy of streamlined or long-rod projectiles to directly penetrate armor. They rely on high-speed splashing of armor fragments and core fragments to kill personnel and destroy equipment and equipment to destroy targets.
Its principle of action is relatively simple. At present, the main popular ammunition is tail-stabilized sabot armor-piercing projectile .
finally looked at HEAT (High-Explosive Anti-Tank), the core of its understanding is "break". As one of the main types of anti-armor ammunition,
is probably also the most common type of ammunition that most military enthusiasts have heard about. I put it last.
The literal translation of the English name of the armor-piercing bullet is not easy to remember. "High-explosive anti-tank ammunition" does not reflect its characteristics. The Chinese name is more expressive. The effect of armor-piercing bullets is simply to "break" armor. The
armor-piercing projectile uses the energy-gathering effect (Monroe effect) to detonate a cone-shaped hollow charge at a certain height away from the armor. The resulting high-temperature and high-speed metal jet (about 8000m/s, about 1000°C) quickly breaks through the armor and enters the armor. To kill personnel targets and destroy instruments and devices inside the vehicle, needs to maintain a favorable explosive height, so the armor-piercing projectile is generally made into a rod-shaped armor-breaking projectile with a probe rod on the warhead.
armor-piercing bullets have a very significant effect on armor damage, and can be called "tank killers" within a certain period of time.
However, human creativity is endless. Composite armor and spaced armor were invented one after another. Later, the highly targeted reactive armor was invented, causing armor-breaking bullets to lose their highlight moments like armor-breaking bullets.
Traditional anti-armor ammunition currently has not developed much in terms of basic principles, but it is also being upgraded in conjunction with some advanced weapon systems.
Armor is also progressing rapidly under the threat of anti-armor weapons, with material upgrades, structural upgrades, and even developing from passive defense to active defense. It can be expected that the struggle between armored equipment and anti-armor weapons will continue for a long time to come.
