The Germans welded metal protective screens, in the Union, after a collision with fauspatrons, they began to weld metal anti-cumulative nets, kept up with the holiday of improvisation and the Allies, who landed in Normandy in 1944. The sides, turret and frontal armor of the Shermans were often reinforced with sandbags. In the Pacific Ocean, the Americans also used ordinary boards to increase protection. Question: from what projectile can a wooden board save?
There are many ways to destroy or at least disable a tank. The basis of anti-tank combat in all armies of the Second World War was artillery ambushes. Since the tanks represented the main striking force and the main tool for breaking through to the rear of the enemy defense, they had to face the infantry first of all. The infantry suffered in a predictable way from the activity of armored vehicles, especially when left without artillery support or the protection of their own tanks.
Under these conditions, the infantrymen needed some kind of hand and individual weapon against tanks. It all started with anti-tank rifles, bundles of grenades, Molotov cocktails. In 1942, hand-held cumulative weapons appeared - grenade launchers: the German "Faustpatrone", the British "PIAT", the American M1 "BAZOOKA". However, a very special place in the history of anti-tank weapons is occupied by magnetic mines. The idea of such a weapon is simple: the infantryman must hang a powerful cumulative or high-explosive charge on the tank, after which the combat vehicle will be undermined and disabled. Such anti-tank weapons have been developed since the 1930s. It was assumed that the best moment to use magnetic mines in trench warfare would be the crossing of enemy tanks by those same trenches occupied by infantry.
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But as it often happens, it was smooth only on paper. The idea of magnetic mines was good. However, in real conditions, their use was associated with a huge risk, which is why the effectiveness of this means, and hence the economic feasibility of mass production of magnetic mines, have always been under question. What made the use of magnetic mines most difficult was that the tanks rarely operated in isolation from the cover of their own infantry. However, all this did not prevent the participating parties from developing means to protect armored vehicles from magnetic mines in advance. The clearest example of this is the creation in Germany of the chemical composition "Zimmerit". After creating their own magnetic mine in the Reich, they were afraid that the same one would soon appear in the USSR. That is why they decided to protect their tanks from Soviet magnetic mines in advance. True, in the end, tsimmerit was not useful. Although anti-tank magnetic mines were being tested in the Union, the widespread use of this tool at the front was abandoned due to dubious effectiveness and unjustified risk to the infantryman.
Another thing is the Pacific theater of operations, where American troops had to fight the Japanese on numerous islands. If magnetic mines did not take root in Europe, then in Asia, due to the specifics of the battlefields, they found the widest application for themselves. Even before the war in Japan, the Type 99 magnetic mine was created to destroy enemy equipment. Unlike most European models, it was not cumulative, but high-explosive. One such mine could break through tank armor 19 mm thick. The double mine already coped with 32 mm of tank armor. However, even if the armor could not be broken, most often undermining the Type 99 still disabled the combat vehicle. Actually, to solve this problem during landing operations on the islands, American mechanics began to attach ordinary boards to the tanks. As practice has shown, this was more than enough to ensure that none of the Type 99 magnets grabbed the armor.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about which tank should be called the best in World War II.
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/190422/62753/