Buff My Tank: T-60

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The T-60 light tank is a fairly new member of the Soviet tech tree, arriving only 2 patches ago. However, according to NoobMeter data, the tank is only in 7th place by win rate and 3rd place by OP rating. How terrible! Let’s see what resources exist to get this thing to the top of the charts, as per standard Russian Bias protocol.

First, the gun. The T-60′s historical gun was the 20 mm TNSh, which is already bad on the MS-1, and is quite inadequate at tier 2. The hilarious DShK machine gun doesn’t really work well when you can’t do mad PzIC-like stunts. The 37 mm ZiS-19 is adequate, but it’s not an autocannon, which goes against the original spirit of the tank. Let’s see what we can do about that. The penetration of the DShK is more or less spot on. I guess using the data from here you can make an argument that since it can penetrate 15+15 mm of armour, that number should be at least a little bit higher, maybe 25 or something like that, but that’s peanuts. Hardly the Russian Bias quality change we’re looking for here.

Enter the VJa! No, not the VJa-23 that is already on the MS-1 (but not on the higher tier T-60, shockingly). This is the 14.5 mm VJa, using a 23 mm case necked down to accept a bullet from one of these bad boys.

ptrs

PTRS 41 elements and penetration, from the “With a rifle, against a tank” article by Lieutenant S. Glyazer

40 is a pretty good number of millimeters, and that’s using the standard 14.5×114 mm cartridge. Increasing the propellant size to the one from the 23×152 mm cartridge increased the penetration to a whopping 90 mm. That sounds hard to believe, but that bullet at 1500 m/s seems to get very good results against a Tiger. Now that’s a force to be reckoned with at tier 2!

14.5 mm bullet penetrating the 82 mm of armour on the side of a Tiger tank (#13).

Now that we took care of the gun, let’s see what else we can do. The armour is a bit lacking, don’t you think? Outside of the slopes, it doesn’t really do much. World of Tanks’ own Wiki article about the T-60 talks about increased armour thickness of the turret to 35 mm (compared to the current 25). Later, 10 mm of spaced armour was added to the front of the hull and turret, for a respectable 45 mm of sloped armour on both. Not bad.

75 thoughts on “Buff My Tank: T-60”

    • Another “let’s poo on Germans” article camouflaged as “let’s buff XX tank” article.

      • If I had left the Tiger picture out, “another let’s poo on the Germans article” would become “another article full of Soviet propaganda, 14.5 mm bullets could never achieve 90 mm of penetration”.

          • Come on, ironic tone aside the data is there.
            Germans had pretty similar guns, although they never reached true mass production due to tungsten shortages.

  3. “14.5 mm bullet penetrating the 82 mm of armour on the side of a Tiger tank”

    And they didn’t believe me when I said it’s not about the size, but the way you use it.

      • Nah, it’s about shell caliber. The propelant quantity is more along the lines of the quantity of cream.

    • It’s usually more of the Aryan hordes who come to shit on EE whenever he hints at something vaguely negative about German tanks.

  5. Talking about Russian bias in these days of KV-1S losing its historical 122mm gun and Tiger II getting buff of all kinds (ground resistance, cupola of gundarium, phantom MG, Murrican-style depression) is even more silly than usual.

    • Gun depression, cupola armor and ground resistance is all historical and long overdue.

      • even its armour falling apart without penetration is historical, when do they implement it?

        • When Soviets start NOT to fake test results (like removing gun mantlet, or battering the armor with 3 dozens of shots)..

          • American and French tests showed the same results, is it all an anti-nazi conspiracy? How terrible!

            • Hardness is one thing. Resiliency is entirely another, and to a degree mutually exclusive – one reason behind the US use of relatively soft but ductile steel was spallation control, and their crews apparently tended to survive tank knock-outs better than average.

          • Prove they did. Also, assuming a well-armoured tank *won’t* take a lot of hits over its service career is ridiculous.

          • ^ lols, hes right, dont u dare question the glorious M4 and peasant driven T-34 slaughter machines!

            • I wonder what you imagine the socioeconomic background of most *German* crewmen to have been…?

          • Lol ground pressure .. That is why the t-34 the tank with the best ground pressure in the war has such terrible mobility in game

            • What model was that? T-34-85 had worse ground pressure than Tiger 1. T-34-76 had better ground pressure but couldn’t capitalize on that since gearbox was garbage.

            • Many many tanks had garbage gearboxes.
              -Mostly this was because the tank was overweight for the gearbox.
              -Bad gearbox overall design
              -Bad materials used in the gearbox
              Well that covers it.

    • It may or may not lose that gun. It all depends on whether SerB gets his way or not. If he does, the gun stays. If not, it gets removed.

  6. I have to admit, this article is at the end difficult to read and understand. Seems there are some sentences missing?
    Maybe its just too late… :)

  7. Are those full penetrations through the Tiger side armor? Or just deep craters? When you supercharge an AP projectile to 1500 m/s and hit hard, overmatching armor (thickness of armor exceeds diameter of AP) you tend to induce shot-shatter.

      • Your story is higly unlikely EnsignExpendable, GAU-8 with DU API can only penetrate 60-70mm at 500.meters.So having a 14,5mm tungsten round penetrating 90+mm of armor is….well not that likely.

        But I think its so cute, that you belive every thing you read.

          • Um Zarax… you should know better. DU is soft compared to tungsten. You need to add hardeners to make it better. Tungsten is 7.5 on the Mohs Scale and 3.43 on the Vickers hardness scale. Uranium is 6.0 Mohs Scale and 1.96 on the Vickers hardness scale.
            .
            Considering DU it “almost” does not matter what type of armor it is being used against. Unless it is something modern that is not a pure sheet of steel but made up of layers of different materials.

            • Oops, should have read better :)

              I meant that modern penetrators have pretty similar performance anyway, plus GAU-8 would face something better than WWII era RHA, which in itself would influence test results.

              That said, during GAU-8 development they found out that germans used uranium rounds in their airborne AT guns given the very similar round properties.

            • No, modern shells don`t have some probeties. In 1940´s core of the shell consisted of Tungsten carbide. What was good at “normal” shell velocitys, for example Pzgr. 40/42 had muzzlevelocity of 1100-1150m/s tungsten carbide core really helped.

              But when we are talking about higher velocitys, like 1500m/s, then tungsten carbide isn´t that good anymore.In 1950′s brittish tested WC (carbide) APDS shells (roughtly 1400m/s at muzzle), and it turned out that WC round was susceptible of braking up on impact. APDS core had diameter of roughtly 60mm and weight more than 2kg,. So Tungsten Alloy (WA) was developed.

              If 14.5mm shell penetrates 90mm+, it´s 6x its calibre. Modern 30mm APFSDS round can penetrate roughtly 2,5X of its calibre, 120mm gun 4X up-to 5X of its calibre. So article is non-sense

            • Please note that these would be APCR, not discarding-sabot, projectiles. Not sure if that makes a real difference though…

              More to the point, Mario, the comparisions you cite are basically all “normal” guns insofar the cartridge-to-projectile ratio goes. The necked-down little nastiness discussed here is NOT; to oversimplify a bit you’re trying to argue against rifle-bullet specs on the basis of handgun-round ballistics.

        • This ammunition has 1.5 times muzzle velocity of GAU-8 rounds. Explains the penetration.

          • …and that velocity is behind a projectile half its diameter, or probably less assuming these were APCRs (ie. with sub-caliber tungsten core).

            Barrel wear oughta been nasty though…

            • Considering the handle on top the barrel was likely removable. Plus the 90mm penn would be at a decently close range so you could get a large number of shots off at 100m before barrel wear would become an issue.

            • That’s a carrying handle, the PTRS weighed a metric buttload – some 20kg more specifically. (Still better than the 20mm monster jobs which tended to really push the “man-portable” part at typically over 40kg…) Not that barrel wear of a slow-firing rifle would ACTUALLY be something anyone else than the supply guys worried about, nevermind now tactically, just thought I’d point it out.

        • Maybe because the GAU-8 was not tested against obsolete WWII era armor? Seriously, think before you post.

  9. No, modern shells don`t have same probeties. In 1940´s core of the shell consisted of Tungsten carbide. What was good at “normal” shell velocitys, for example Pzgr. 40/42 had muzzlevelocity of 1100-1150m/s tungsten carbide core really helped.

    But when we are talking about higher velocitys, like 1500m/s, then tungsten carbide isn´t that good anymore.In 1950′s brittish tested WC (carbide) APDS shells (roughtly 1400m/s at muzzle), and it turned out that WC round was susceptible of braking up on impact. APDS core had diameter of roughtly 60mm and weight more than 2kg,. So Tungsten Alloy (WA) was developed.

    If 14.5mm shell penetrates 90mm+, it´s 6x its calibre. Modern 30mm APFSDS round can penetrate roughtly 2,5X of its calibre, 120mm gun 4X up-to 5X of its calibre. So article is non-sense

    Shell velocity is one factor of armor penetration, but not the only one. Yes 1500m/s is 50% higher muzzel velocity than GAU-8 30mm, in the same time shell of the GAU-8 is more than 6X (600%) heavyer and has roughtly 3.3X higher kinetic energy. But it was easyer for 14.5mm round to penetrate armor than 30mm, because smaller calibre.In the same time, 30mm DU shell has roughtly 33% higher density than WWII era WC (tungsten carbide) shell (WWII tungsten carbide had density of 10gm/cc -12gm/cc, modern tungsten alloy and DU has density of somewhere 17gm/cc-18gm/cc).

    I would say maximum penetration of the 14.5mm would be around 60mm at short range. It would be so burnt-out by than, it would have no after-armor effect.

      • I personally cant care less about Tiger armor. And secondly I can only see dents, not penetrations.Penetrations are observed inside the armor.

        So why I am writing this. Info about the Blum (ПТР Блюма) has been around for years, and it is getting prettier by the day. When info first came out, it stated that Blum had penetration of 55mm@100m (so it could penetrate lower side plate of the Tiger, but not consistently).20mm “RES” had better performance.

        If copeled with other info I wrote, it is evident that “14,5mm penetrates 90mm of armor” is not that correct.

    • “It would be so burnt-out by than, it would have no after-armor effect.”

      Right, because the metal would just up and disappear? Bollocks. More likely the damn thing will have *melted*, as will any material of the armour plate itself it drags along – not really something you’d want whizzing around the fighting compertement (or a fuel tank) I daresay.

      Behind-armour effectiveness is a valid concern though and a fundamental universal problem with antitank rifles under the autocannon calibers – you pretty much had to get the shot on a spot with something important behind it to achieve much beyond installing a new ventilation hole, AFAIK. Add to the rate at which an automatic weapon spitting out these kinds of hypervelocity rounds would go through barrels and such relatively light projectiles’ problems with energy retention over distance and angled surfaces and it’s not hard to see why the project remained little more than a curio footnote – if I understood the AA article correctly Stalin himself pretty much told the engineers to stop fiddling around with this autocannon bullshit and just build the T-70, armed with a proper (if small) cannon, instead.

      • As we know, 14.5mm AP shell was incendiary round, so yes “burnt-out” (why?figure it out).

        To keep it simple, 14.5mm is just to small calibre and materials were inferior to penetrate 90mm. You could shoot it at 2000+m/s, but it still would’n penetrate that much, at 60-70mm it would have been only tungsten dust and littlebit of melted metal.

        • Whatever, really – I doubt anyone seriously considered trying to take out a Tiger with one of these things, and in game terms the thought exercise is about a *Tier 2* tank. The penetration ought to be entirely sufficient for about anything it runs into.

      • Stalin cancelled the T-60 project before this gun was made.

        As for the penetration of the armour, the document clearly states that the Blum rifle penetrated the side of the Tiger tank. If you don’t believe it, well, that’s your problem.

        • Not really my problem, you are the arhcive guy, 55mm@100m also comes from fireingtest result (I think the same one).So theres conflicting result,for some reason you publiced unrealistic ones.

          • 55mm@100m and 50mm@300m is allready exelent by any standard, it’s 3,7x of it’s calibre.The fact that theres only slight drop in penetration at range, suggests that it isn’t speed that is keeping penetration back, shell just isn’t strong enought.

            I think 20mm RES AT-Rifle (20mm shell probelled by shortened and necked-down 45mm).Would be much more potent weapon.

          • Sorry, not the same document, some result probably can be found august 1943 Выстрел documents.

            Has I understand you are talking about test result late april/early may 1943.Where exactly its say that it penetrates 90mm or even 70mm. I can only find ” Блюма пробивает 62 мм броню танка T-VI с дистанции 100″ What, I belive means “Bluma penetrates 62mm armor of T-VI at 100.meters.

            And in what order the weapons was tested?

            • I already linked to the 90 mm result. Obviously it won’t be in the tests against the Tiger, as the Blum rifle was tested against the Tiger, not the VJa-14.5. The data for the Blum rifle is from ЦАМО РФ 38-11377-13, page 50. “Борт, 82 мм, №13, сквозная пробоина” (side, 82 mm, #13, complete penetration).

              The order of the weapons was also given in the document. The Blum rifle was tested against a clear section of the armour, so there’s no cheating by pummeling the plate with shells beforehand. You would know all this if you had read the links in the article.