Report on protection from fragments from HE ammunition
On March 10, 2014 1 Comments
- Source documents
This is a rare (on this blog) report in English, from the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, USA, titled Protection provided by steel and aluminum armor against fragments from high-explosive ammunition (U). To aid potential Googlers in finding it, I’ll list some identifying numbers.
Report No. DPS-67
OMS Code 5510.11.268
D. A. Project No. 548-03-001
The report seems to have ended up in a Swedish archive via official channels; it appears to have been forwarded via the Swedish military attache in Washington DC. Some appendices are missing, presumably removed by the DoD before the report was handed over to foreign hands.
Great post, thanks very much for sharing it. If you find other docs on artillery effectiveness I’d be very keen to see them too.
Note the experiment was performed with the shell upright. This optimises the fragment patten. An artillery shell fired from a gun would give substantially less effective fragments. This means the experiment tells you at what distance an lightly armoured vehicle is safe from fragments. It doesn’t give a good indication of how likely a fragment is to hit a vehicle under operational conditions. The shells’ performance will be worse than indicated