Quote:
Originally Posted by Panzergranate
The German 20mm. Solothurn HE cannon shell contains a blue coloured semi-explosive incendary content and isn't particularily large. The AP round, like all AP rounds, is a non-explosive solid manganese steel slug that will punch through steel and thin armour plate found on some aircraft.
The Russian ShVAK fires a much larger shell , with a much larger propelling cartridge down a longer barrel at a higher velocity. The shell is APHE (Armour Piercing High Explosive) designed to penetrate tank armour. It could penetrate around 50mm. of steel and 27mm. of armour plate.
The same goes for the British 20mm. Hispano cannons, long barrelled and high velocity. The Hispano will punch through over 75mm. of steel and 42mm. of armour plate.
The German cannons are underpowered because they actually were in real life.
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The shells were not that much different. I've done a diagram.. (to scale)
These are the HE versions
The Germans stopped using AP rounds pretty early in the war because they realised that the high-capacity mine shells (Minengeschoss or M-Geschoss) introduced on the 109 E-4 were far more effective at bringing down aircraft.
(this is the shell that I'm basing my figures on).
The Russian shell was heavier and so was the projectile by a couple of grams, the muzzle velocity of the M-Geschoss was higher than the AP round (585mps) and was 700mps against the Russian 790mps.
The german round contained much more explosive (20g) than the Russian round (6g).