Why did squash head ammo never really take off? I remember 20 years ago people were talking about it being the next big thing in tank ammo and then boom nothing. Why did no one adopt it?
Why did squash head ammo never really take off?
Why did squash head ammo never really take off? I remember 20 years ago people were talking about it being the next big thing in tank ammo and then boom nothing. Why did no one adopt it?
>Developed in the 1940s
>next big thing
Yes it was developed in the 1940s but wasn’t refined into anything serviceable for 50 years and then it just kind of went away after that.
It was never refined into anything serviceable, which is why it went away.
What's there to refine? It's a big metal shell filled to the brim with HE and a base fuse.
---------
To all anons in the thread saying it needs rifled barrels, that's correct, but its worth explaining why:
1. You need the centrifugal force to assist in the mushrooming effect when the shell impacts
2. Fin stabilization only works really effectively above a certain velocity, wheras HESH likes to be going slow to promote the mushroom effect.
Without the mushrooming on the plate, most of the energy little energy is dumped into the target armour.
It's suboptimal against composite and very angled armour. Also needs rifled guns that last far less than smoothbore.
A T-55/62 remover that aged badly compared to shaped charges. Also, you can't tandem against ERA or spaced armor.
As HE-Frag is suboptimal due to its fuse.
Because HE is better at blowing up most targets, and APFSDS is better at penetrating heavy armor. It was originally designed as anti aircraft ammo, but then was shoehorned into becoming tank ammo to make up for the lack of research and development the U.K. was doing into actual tank ammo.
What do you think the HE stands for in HESH?
herbert enfield. Are you stupid or something?
>Why did HESH never take off
>because HE is better
Ok retard
Why did you reply to my post? Are you stupid?
You have no idea what you’re talking about and literally just make shit up. Go back.
>It was originally designed as anti-aircraft ammo
Absolute reddit tier post
Yeah that’s not me. All I did was say HE stands for Herbert enfield and I’m like 60% sure that I’m correct
confirmed fatfinger tard
The SH stands for "Suboptimal you Herb"
HESH is not as effective as pure HE at normal HE roles, if it was, no one ever would have used pure HE again
>The SH stands for "Suboptimal you Herb"
kek
It's a cope which survived past its expiration date due to use in breaching.
HESH = 'we don't know how to pen armor so we'll throw a bunch of explosive and hope it bangs them up'
HEAT = 'we learned about Monroe effect physics so we can perforate 5x thicker armor with 5x less explosive.'
Thanks for the non meme answer
to add to this
spaced armor, sandwich armor, slat armor all very common and help a lot to defeat.
In particular the first two. As phase/material transition is always bad but especially if you want to propagate a shockwave
It's pretty funny that despite HEAT being a huge gamechanger everyone got so good at making NERA arrays that kinetic penetrators are still the number 1 tank penetrator
Barrel calibers restricts a lot the performance of HEAT.
For missiles, LRP never catch up even if they we're developed.
catch on*
>For missiles, LRP never catch up even if they we're developed.
that has more to do with the fact that Kinetic energy penetrators are simply not very compatible with missiles and has nothing to do with HEAT being inherently superior
also never fucking use the term LRP again
either spell it out completely or use KET instead
LRP are LRP...
>not very compatible with missiles
Actually it's very compatible, missiles tends to be very long (you can use the engine section too). LOSAT is a good example of a KE penetrator with not so special steel. The problem is size, a HEAT is smaller.
Yeah
This is a warriortard thread but ill bite as its an intresting topic. HESH was originally developed during WW2 as an anti everything round to give low velocity and larger caliber tank and artillery guns a way to defeat fortifications and armour with the same round but it wasnt seriously developed until after WW2 when the soviets introduced the IS-3 series to the world and current AP performance was found lacking.
The "pikenose" armour of the IS-3 hull consisted of 3 plates of 120mm~ joined together each with an effective angle of 54 degrees from the front, in testing it was found that 120mm HESH could reliably cause a "scab" to form on the inside of a plate of 150mm of RHA at 60 degrees with a 90% probability (HESH is better against angled armour up to 60 degrees, pic related). A "scab" refers to a huge chunk of fragmentation that would ping about the inside of a tank at supersonic speeds, shredding the crew.
Even with the dawn of composite armour almost two decades later it was still an effective round for killing ifvs, infantry and destroying fortifications only really surpassed in those roles by HEAT MP which came much later, which was also quickly surpassed by programmable HE which is all the rage now.
Yeah the HESH is pretty bad
As bad as repairing pallets?
Pallets are scary western technology but no I don’t think these things have anything in common
You can't get it, so why talk about it? Stop being so stupid.
They require rifled barrels and that’s a no go for any competent tank design
Its theoretically possible to make HESH-FS and like HEAT the lack of spin would help control overspread of the splatmark of PE by not having it rotating outwards.
>HESH was primarily a UK design so it was primarily used in UK rifled tubes
>US called it HEP-T (HE Plastic - tracer) in 105mm but it was also used in 106mmRCL
You have it completely ass-backwards, my dude. HESH could care less whether it's coming out of a smooth or rifled tube (besides the accuracy aspect). HEAT loses almost all effectiveness when spinning and demands a smoothbore gun or some other mechanism to de-spin the warhead. Tank barrels are predominantly smoothbore precisely because it permits a wider range of ammunition options (HEAT in particular), albeit at the expense of accuracy. The Bongs clung to their accurate rifled barrels for the longest time, which meant HESH was the only half-decent anti-armor round they could make use of. This put them at a disadvantage against heavy armor, but was still adequate for merking T-72s and offered them longer effective range than smoothbore-barreled tanks.
>I remember 20 years ago people were talking about it being the next big thing
Are you posting this from the year 1960 or what?
ah a warriortard thread, with him samefagging and all. brilliant.
kek this anon hates that people don’t respect the squash head rounds
It's primarily a doctrinal thing. Bongs use MBTs as heavy infantry support in a far greater capacity than most other forces, so the versatility of HESH (mainly for breaching compounds, concrete walls etc, whilst still shredding light armor) is prized over other shell types. For a time British tanks even carried inert concrete training rounds (in Afghanistan iirc) because they could knock holes in compound walls without causing too much collateral.
>Bongs use MBTs as heavy infantry support in a far greater capacity than most other force
Source this or be disregarded entirely. Don’t reply without backing this statement up completely
>Concrete training round
No such round exists
>Challenger 2 in Afganistan
Also never happened
Everything you said you made up.
>No such round exists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Ordnance_L30#Projectiles
NTA but it does and a cursory search online confirms it, the L32 SH-P. It's a training round ballistically matched to the HESH rounds used, only difference is that the HE filling is replaced with an inert substitute. There's also a smoke round that matches it's ballistics too.
How do you cope with the fact that isn’t concrete
>the inert filling is a slightly different inert filling
You're getting desperate now warriortard
Sorry but when you spew inaccuracies you are going to be called out every time
>is available as a completely inert form, or can be filled with an inert HE substitute (a composition of calcium sulphate and castor oil) or an inert HE substitute plus a live fuze and a flash pellet for spotting purposes.
Concrete is not mentioned at all retard
>rounds turned out not be concrete
>challenger 2 turns out was never in afghanistan
The only 2 points you brought up and both were wrong. Why did you make that post?
tryna get me summa dat squish head ya feel me
Come on guys, HESH does not require a rifled barrel. The idea of needing centrifugal force to spread the explosive seems a bit dubious to me but there are other ways to spin a projectile: fins or rockets. Chinese VT-4 can fire HESH from 125mm smoothbore gun.
Its not impossible obviously, a HESH is simple enough to fire out of anything. Its just suboptimal. And for a round which already has pretty poor performance in its primary role, why settle for suboptimal.
Don't underestimate the effects of spin stabilization. A rifled projectile is spinning in the hundreds of thousands of RPM.
>I remember 20 years ago people were talking about it being the next big thing in tank ammo
who the fuck were you listening to?
fuck off warriorturd
you literally eat shit
If HESH were any good a lot of countries would use it. The market has spoken loud and clear and it’s beautiful
>I remember 20 years ago people were talking about it being the next big thing in tank ammo
No you don't, the only people who were holding onto it 20 years ago were the bongs and that's just because they'd rather die than let an idea go.
>Why did no one adopt it?
It's ineffective against modern MBTs equipped with spaced+composite armor and spall liners, and almost everyone moved on to smoothbore guns to better accommodate APFSDS.
>I remember 20 years ago people were talking about it being the next big thing in tank ammo
This did not happen.
HESH is a failed experiment. Even the British are ditching it when they rebuild their new tanks with a smoothbore gun. German supremacy in tank design rears its head once again
*BRAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPP * snifffff
>German supremacy in tank
>checks leopard 2 export numbers
I am so fucking SMUG right now
>Why did squash head ammo never really take off?
Because it doesn't perform well out of smoothbore guns which are preferred for their performance with APFSDS. They have some advantages against structures which is why they were most commonly seen in engineering vehicles but the use case is too niche to warrant engineering a smoothbore replacement. HEAT and regular HE are "good enough".
It kind of survives in specialty anti fortification ammo that is multi-modal or is considered HEDP. Programmable HE can do some of the same niche but has useful modes like airburst that HESH does not.
It just never panned out.
It has trouble with spaced armor and when used in just HE applications it is much weaker than a standard HE shell. It also suffers from major accuracy issues and destroys barrels. It was widely rejected by the international military community
HESH was used for quite a while as a demo round I assume due to it imparting explosive power in a more directional impact than a traditional HE shell which is more dispersed letting it make some nice holes.
However the move to smoothbore barrels makes HESH harder to use without modification and advances in HE equals the playing field.
Bongs went for their HESH as they foresaw more use against soft targets, I assume they are moving towards smoothbore for cost savings because all other NATO users have as I don't think the increased pen smoothbore brings is necessary based on tank on tank battles becoming evermore rare and russian armored prowess being overstated.