Most powerful tank guns of WW2 vs. modern armour

How would the biggest tank guns of WW2 perform against today's armour?

Jagdtiger - 128 mm Pak 44 L/55
IS-3 - D25-T 122 mm
T28 - 105 mm T5E1

One would expect none of these three to penetrate today's Chobham-inspired composite armour on modern Western tanks, but what of the lesser tanks, such as the Chinese Type 98 or Pakistani Al-Khalid?
 

Insider

Banned
Given that the armor of an Abrams is the equivalent of around 1,000mm RHA steel not well.

These 1 metre of armour is due to spaced layering designed to stop jets of liquid metal from shaped charge. In monolith block of material, even as hard as steel, these can penetrate very deep. Now said cannons are firing simple kinetic impactors (prehaps with some filling and fuse in the back but still). They are harder to stop than shaped charge.
 
WW2-era guns struggled to penetrate a 100-150mm plate at point blank range when hitting perpendicular. Even an older generation 'modern' 120mm sabot can get through 500mm+ of armour at 2000m.

Against, say, a T-55, with modern ammo it's dead from every conceivable angle. With WW2 munitions you can get through the hull rear and flanks easily, but the glacis (120mm, inclined at 60 degrees) and the turret front (200mm, rounded) are very iffy...
 

CalBear

Moderator
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While the Type 98 may not be the equal of the Challenger 2 or the M1A3 it is still light-years ahead of any tank produced as late as the 1970s. While penetration tables are closely held, it would be reasonable to expect that the Type 98 would be able to survive a forward hull or turret face hit from any WW II tank gun round at 100 yards, maybe less. None of the guns you list has penetration of over 11"/270mm, even at point blank range, and it is reasonable to assume that the PLA design has the equivalent of at least 700-750mm of rolled plate.

Get close enough and there might be shock damage to electronics or to the traverse for the turret, but the chances of a kill are effectively nil.
 
Gun power hasn't changed that much over the years, you could take a 1945 era 90mm HVAP from a M36 TD and fire that from a 1956 M48 Patton main gun.
The big changes in armor punching came from firing HEAT, HESH, and finally long rod DU penetrators, the projectiles, not more gunpowder.

The 120 smoothbore in the Abrams has 60% the powder capacity of the WWII era 120mm rifled cannon, and weighs almost a ton less
 
Up until Nov. 2007 my fellow Canadian's main battle tank was the Leopard C2.

leopardc1.jpg


IIRC, the Leopard I was very thinly armoured, though the Canadian version had some armour upgrades. How does the Leo 1 compare to these WW2-era guns?

I omitted composite type armour in the OP, as these should be more than capable of stopping anything these old guns can throw. But what of tanks without composite or laminate armour? For example, most of the 1970s tanks (M60, FV4201, AMX-30, etc.)
 
IIRC, the Leopard I was very thinly armoured, though the Canadian version had some armour upgrades. How does the Leo 1 compare to these WW2-era guns?
On the hull? 70mm of RHA at 60 degrees over the frontal arc... factoring in the slope that's effectively 140mm of steel the shell would actually need to get through. So, more vulnerable than the T-55, but still requires a relatively short-ranged shot for a WW2 heavy AT gun to get through it.

Of cause, the Leopard I was designed in the heyday of HEAT and HESH ammo, when a monolithic block of steel was either useless because it couldn't keep the bang out or useless because the resulting tank would be almost immobile.
 
Since we're including assault-guns in the OP, why not just go with an ISU-152? Sure, it won't be penetrating a modern MBT, but a hit with a 152mm HE shell is still almost certain to mission kill it.
 
Since we're including assault-guns in the OP, why not just go with an ISU-152? Sure, it won't be penetrating a modern MBT, but a hit with a 152mm HE shell is still almost certain to mission kill it.

I agree. It's my understanding that 152 / 155 mm HE is a serious threat to modern tanks.
 
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