As the title says:

i want to know if somebody has an idea about the exact thickness and angle of a german panzer IV H frontal glacis plate (sources would be nice)
if you look at this picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PzIV.Saumur.000a5s6s.jpg
iam refering to the part where the chain links are placed (steep angle).
the parts above and below have 80mm thickness and are angled around 10° to 24° but i`ve found nothing about the middle glacis part...
World War II Ballistics: Armor and Gunnery says that it was only 20mm thick and angled at 72° from vertical but this seems a bit thin to me...also it seems to refer to some early war modell.
i`ve always thought that the glacis part remained 50mm and just the part above and below where incresed to 80mm.

anybody an idea?

Panzer tracks #4 shows the thickness as 20mm and angled at 72 for the G and 70 for the H.

Don't forget that 10M long tinfoil is 10M thick at the perfect impact angle. caliber Vs thickness is another story.

Isn't that plate properly called the transmission cover?

thanks for your answer brit44.
well now we have all kind of answers together... question is which one is the right one. i`ve just seen a figure out of WW2 Ballistics: Armor and Gunnery:
D: ..... 20mm "hi-hard" @75°
E: ..... 20mm @ 71°
F1/F2: 25mm @ 73°
G: ..... 25mm @ 73°
H: ..... 20mm @ 72°

iam asking because over at battlefront we have a controvery running because a sherman m4a1 is able to penetrate a panzerIV Hs "transmission cover" at ease at 1500+m distance. seems a bit odd to me if you consider the rest of the uparmored (80mm) hull pretty much safe at this distance...

i wanted to test it in apos but apos does not have any panzer IVs in it ! at least i cannot put up a quick battle with them. can i ?

APOS (at least in the newest version and possibly since the beginning) should have the following pzIV variants:

Panzer IV ausf. G
Panzer IV ausf. G (early variant)
Panzer IV ausf. F
Panzer IV ausf. F/2

In Quick Battle place axis tank platoon on the map + other platoons you want to have. Click Start Quick Battle and you will see the battle area has the flame symbol over it. Now, before clicking the flame symbol and starting the battle, right click the axis tank platoon. This will open up TOE list, where you can modify the platoon(s) by switching their units with reinforcement pool (on the left side of the screen). Choose PzIVs you want from the pool of medium tanks, exit and start the battle!

BTW, you can do the same in the beginning of a campaign - i.e. customize your platoons: add units to empty slots or switch them between platoon and reinforcement pool. However, the pool is very limited and depends on the unit in a campaign.

thank you very much! i have never understand why the PZIVs are in the encyclopedia but are not playable in quick battles! will test it out right now!

thx again!

Depends on what gun the Sherman have. If it is the 75mm or the 76mm gun, on the paper the 76 can pen the front on the pz4 with ease at those ranges, but the 75 can not, it must get closer to 500m to be able to do that. And the upper glacis/transmission cover have a relative armor thickness of ~65mm if 20mm@72 degrees angle and the uparmored one at 25mm@72degrees have ~80mm thickness.

thx for the answer donko. vanir in the bfc forum calculated that the protection for 20mm at 72° is around 70mm at 0° and for 25mm at 73° around 100m so that pretty much confirms what you have said...
the gun used in thee test was the sherman 75 (M3 L/40) and it penetrated (or partial penetrated) the transmission cover at 1500m all the time.

the t-34 in my apos test did not penetrate the pzIV G transmission cover at around 738m but the BR-350a is less powerful than the american m61 according to vanir.
he calculated that the "Soviet BR-350a fired at 612 m/s penetrates 61mm of FHA at 700m. Fired at 655 m/s it penetrates 68mm @ 700m."
(source: World War II Ballistics: Armor and Gunnery by Lorrin "Rexford" Bird and Robert D. Livingston)
according to that its not able to defeat even the 20mm at 72° armor (equals 70mm armor).

are you sure that the shermans 75mm is not able to defeat the transmission cover (even using the 20mm at 72° one) at ranges over 500m ? do you have any sources ? would be much appreciated!
thx in advance

The 75 mm M3 L/40 penetrates roughly 65mm armor at 500yards/450m with standard APC shell. That is worst case scenario. The APCBC on the other hand is close to 100mm at this range.

And here you can find some of that info:
http://www.lonesentry.com/blog/armor-penetration-tables.html

conclusion: M4A1 Sherman with M3 L/40 can NOT penetrate a pz4f/g/h frontally at ranges longer then 500m and with the cheapest M61 APC ammo if we look at the paper. How it was in reality is another question thou And this also means that at ranges 1000yards/1100m and beyond the panzer 4 is almost immune!

That was not his question. He asked if the shell would penetrate a specific plate at a distance. I assumed both tanks are at the same elevation.

At 1500 yards, the angle of impact from the M3L40 would be somewhere around 60 degrees. Gun elevation for shot M72 at 1500 yards is roughly 22.5 degrees. A perpindicular impact at 1500 yarda is over 50mm penetration. It looks like we have a new thread of penetration Vs lethality

thanks for the info brit and donken!

given the penetration ingame it looks like the shermans are using 75mm m61a1 ammo.
does anybody have sources regarding shipment and availability of these shells in the timeframe of the normandy landing (mid 1944) and the invasion of sicily (mid 1943)...

thanks in advance