How did the Germans and really general armies in WW2 repair battle damage? Was it possible without replacing the entire plate? Or were patches a temp job until a heavier field repair could be done?
Pretty sure you just lay down weld until its full and then paint over it
I've heard that they scraped off the splintered bullet holes, stuffed them, and patched them up. However, since they couldn't be heat-treated, they probably never regained full defensive power. This may be one of the reasons why replaceable mantlets and sloped armor that deflected shells and didn't get pierced were preferred.
Shells don't hit twice the same spot.
>>64576588Exactly, why even bother to fix it?
>>64576523You could do a real ad hoc heat treat in the field with what could be expected at a forward repair depot if you knew that alloy's proper coloration.
>>64576644a lot of the time they just didnt, which is why tanks in musuems are still covered in divots and impact craters if they werent damaged enough to impact their performance, they would just go into battle and pray that a shell didnt hit the same spot twice, and that was usually a gamble that payed offfor shells that did penetrate, but didnt damage or kill anyone inside, then they would just stuff the hole and weld it shut as mentioned here>>64576523>>64576502obviously, not as good as a proper weld job, but still better than having a hole in the tank>Or were patches a temp job until a heavier field repair could be done?this was the ideal, tanks couldnt be maintained at the front indefinitely, and they would eventually have to be rotated out then Lt Col Abrams went through 5 different tanks in europe, when one tank got damaged enough to need a repair, he would send it back and get a fresh one while the damaged one was fixedthat being said, there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solutionas mentioned above, a lot of the tanks were just forced to keep going without major overhauls, resulting in them collecting a lot of battle damage until the war endedno point in repairing them after the war, they were obsolete and due to be replaced anyways, so they were sent as-is to the musuems
>>64576465>>64576523Imagine being inside when that strikes.
Is this Zimmerit coating-like pattern a patch designed to prevent peeling, or is it just a trace of careful welding?
>>64576688It's a paste designed to prevent magnetic mine attachment, and was almost completely unnecessary.The cross hatch pattern was to save weight, you only need peaks instead of a uniform surface to disrupt magnetic attraction.
>>64576709Fugg, I'm dumb.
