Hi
Well I guess someone better put the con argument for AT shurzen heres what John D Salt has to say at
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.m...tary.moderated
"1. There is no need to hang the outer plates at such a distance
from the main armour (with the attendant difficulty of having
them knocked off) unless one wants to increae stand-off distance;
and
2. There were no 14.5mm ATRs or anything comparable on the
Western or Italian fronts, yet German AFVs continued to wear
Shurzen there.
It also seems to me that, whereas an outer plate struck at an
angle might succeed in reducing the penetration of a 14.5mm APCR
round, it would make little difference with a normal impact. The
performance of the 14.5mm against the 30mm side armour of the Pz
III or Pz IV is so marginal that I would have thought it would
mostly fail at any great angle anyway. While not disputing that
Shurzen might indeed reduce the effect of 14.5mm (though, as
mentioned in another post of mine, it might not), it beggars
belief that anyone would put such engineering effort into a
counter to such a marginal threat when there are plenty of other
things to worry about.
Finally, I have yet to hear any basis for the statement that
Schurzen were intended to protect against 14.5mm apart from a
misreading of a single Spielberger book, which is nicely
contradicted by the same author in a companion volume. Does
anyone have any evidence they can point to of Pz IIIs and IVs
going down like flies to 14.5mm ATR teams, at any time in the
war? I'd be fascinated to hear about them. "
Makes sense to me.
Im sure that plenty of bazooka and PIAT rounds got fired at shurtzen in the brocage etc, now if these weapons could penetrate the plate and the armour behind dont you think the germans might have changed the configuration slightly? or just left them off?
Best Regards Chuck.