karhuwaari said:
In that "tale" there was video footage of P-47 fighters nose where they did shoot the tigers "belly". Its still a heck of amount of .50cal ammunition that they fire there.
It doesn't matter: you could shoot a hail of .22 LR from a gatling gun at a Tiger, doesn't mean it would do anything just because there are a large amount.
I have seen that footage on the internet, and I would like to learn more about the guy talking in teh background about the belly kills.
There is just no way it can be correct though. A bullet hitting a dirt road, like in the film, will either be absorbed by the ground, or break apart. Only a very small percentage would ricochet, of those, only a couple would do so at an angle to hit the belly plate, and of those, none of them would have enough terminal energy left, nor the ballistic shape, to penetrate.
Either that pilot was BSing on purpose, or he mistook seeing crew members abandoning a tank after a strafing run for getting a "kill." Other than war stories, I haven't heard anything about this, nor see any pictures of Tigers destroyed by belly penetrations from .50 cals.
EDIT: Here is something else that is stupid about the whole idea, and yet no one mentions it.
The top plate of the Tiger is also 25mm.
So the pilots recognized that their bullets were ineffective shooting at the top skin of the tank, but somehow ricocheting them off the ground underneath was more effective? It's BS.