High wind and rainstorm wrote: ↑03 Oct 2022 09:00
I think the Ⅲ N tank just needs to change its armor to 80mm whole armor (instead of 50mm plus 20mm), at the same time, equipped with HEAT (armor that can penetrate 100mm), it can effectively fight against T34 tanks. Small caliber rounds are bad against tilt-bag armor, 75 mm HEAT is more appropriate(Although firing by a short barrel gun is not a good choice either)
I would personally give the late versions of the panzer 3 an extra 20mm spaced plate on the hull and turret front,or make both external spaced plates 25 and 25mms and have it reach 100mm of spaced armor.I would also change the material from high hardness steel to rolled homogenous for those extra plates.Altough spaced armor is not magical its definitely an easy way to add protection to a tank.They could even dismount it for long marches where no battle is going to take place and with a small crane and some tool add those plates when close to the front.This is the easiest upgrade i can think of without slopping the front,the sides or in general doing rearrangements that require a factory and plenty of time.In the end i believe such a rearranged tank should take the place of the 3 and 4 but not be as big as the panther.Anyway im going off topic.Finaly i believe they should modify the schurtzen on the late panzer 3s to be like on the stuh 42 and on the panzer 4 H were you could have both the ost-winterketten and the schurtzen attached at the same time.I would also probably make the schurtzen double the thickness to not have them fall off on every encounter with a bush or random rock and to offer better protection.Why not even even have 2 spaced (with a small distance between them) schurtzen on each side or both the turret and hull ? No HEAT shell or bazooka is getting through that !
The short 75 of the N and the early panzer 4s with its HEAT shell was good enough for most opponents but you cant expect such a low velocity gun to lob shells at a distance with accuracy.Now were not going to fight at 3 km but a 70-80% hit ratio at 1km should be the standard.Going 75 L48 is viable but you have the panzer 4 for that unless we go down the path were they dont even bother to make that which then leads to possibly the panzer 3 getting it.
We have also talked about the PAW guns in here but theyre late war tech and they would have to prioritize them from a lot earlier to have them accessible within a reasonable timeframe.They also have the plus of being light and easily used as a field gun.
Me thinking all these problems was one of the reasons,it was also my curiosity playing with different ideas,that i proposed a somewhat full auto 50-55-60mm gun (the latter would have to be developed because none at that size existed) with a high enough pen to be on par with the L48 75 and the option for high fire rate in case planes come out of the blue.A field gun of this kind could turn from a tank killer to an AA with the flip of a switch (im imagining some semi auto to full auto switch here) and some cranking.But in no way is it light enough to be moved around easily.
