Sloped armour was developed as a defensive measure by the French SOMUA (Société d'Outillage Mécanique et d'Usinage d'Artillerie) right before the outbreak of World War II. It was a technological response to the trend of fitting increasingly bigger guns on battle tanks. Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... This article is about firearms and similar devices. ...
The idea behind sloped armour is that shots fired in a somewhat straight arc towards the vehicle will be deflected and simply bounce off. Sloped armour greatly increases the armour's protective effect compared to conventional armour, even though it's thinner. At 30 degrees to the horizontal the effect is about 50%. Consequently, less steel is needed per tank, and the tank will be tougher for the same weight or more manoeuverable for the same protection. A hoplite wearing a helmet, a breastplate and greaves (and nothing else). ...
This effect should not be confused (but very often is) with another effect of sloping the armour: that the Line of Sight (horizontal) thickness of the armour increases also (this gives no weight advantage!). This other effect can be calculated by the cosine rule. At 30 degrees to the horizontal this increase is exactly 100%. Both effects must be multiplied, so a 100 mm armour plate reclined at 60 degrees from the vertical will render a protection equivalent to about 300 mm of vertical plate. Listed single armour protection numbers are often this equivalence value, for knowing only the thickness of the plate is insufficient, one should also know its declination.
The principle itself was well known of old and partially implemented on even the first French tank, the Schneider CA1, but the first tanks to be completely fitted with sloped armour were the French SOMUA S-35 and other French tanks developed at the same time, which had a fully cast hull and turret. It was also used to a greater effect on the famous Russian T-34 battle tank. After the war the principle became very much the fashion, its most pure expression being perhaps the British Chieftain. The latest tank models however use compound or formed armours, trying to deform and abrase the penetrator rather than deflecting it, so they have a more blocky appearance. The Leopard 2 is a case in point. The Schneider CA1 was the first French tank. ... The T-34 is a Soviet medium tank first produced in 1940. ... The Chieftain was the Main battle tank of the United Kindom during the 1960s and 1970s. ... The Leopard 2 is a tank developed in the early 1970s by Germany first entered service in 1978, with versions of it serving with them and other countries in the late 1990s and into the 21st century. ...
Slopedarmour is armor that is mounted at a non-vertical and non-horizontal angle, typically on tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles.
For a given normal to the surface of the armour, increasing armourslope improves the armour's level of protection, while for a given area density of the armour the protection can be either increased or reduced by sloping, depending on the armour materials used.
Slopingarmour can cause additional protection-enhancing effects such as shattering of a brittle kinetic energy penetrator, but in thick homogeneous plates a long-rod penetrator will, after initial penetration into the armour's LOS thickness, bend toward the armour's normal thickness and take a path with a length between the armour's LOS and normal thicknesses.
It hit the stone with a small sound, and by the time he had shaken off his sleepiness and reacted, the horn was already on it's way, sliding across the smooth, sloped surface.
The slope, despite not being particularly steep, was nevertheless quite exhausting.
Panting, he picked himself up in time to see the figure of one of his foes emerging at the hole; with a sudden rush of adrenaline, he drew out a bottle from his satchel and hurled it skilfully through to land beneath the creature.
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