History
From the invention of tanks through to the Second World War, tank armour increased in thickness to resist the increasing size and power of anti-tank guns. A tank with sufficient armor could resist the largest anti-tank guns then in use.
RHA was common use during this period (combined with other plate alloys and cast steel armor), and the measure of the power of an anti-tank gun was the thickness of RHA it would penetrate. This measure of tank gun effectiveness has remained in use because it is a useful universal measure for the comparison of increased anti-tank gun effectiveness. Different types of armour, some of which do not use steel or even metals, have come into use but depth of penetration of RHA is still used to compare anti-tank weapon effectiveness.
RHA was in common use as the primary armor system until after World War II. A new generation of anti-tank rounds had come into use during World War II which did not use a heavy, tough, high-velocity projectile to defeat steel armour but instead used an explosive charge called a shaped charge to overcome the strength of the steel. The strength, toughness and hardness of RHA was no longer protection against this threat.
Read more about this topic: Rolled Homogeneous Armour
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)