Can someone explain to me what this T-34 wire mesh was for, and does it actually work like intended in the game for whatever purpose?
This is used to disperse the HEAT beam from hand-held anti-tank weapons.
It was used to prevent the infantry with the panzerfaus from destroying the tank.
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Cope cage
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It was pretty much useless 
Btw. The only thing it does in game is adding 1mm armor for your tank. But it’s still nice premium, T-34s are awesome.
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while this is not what what the net armour works it is a similar concept, it was ment to either catch the warhead or deform it
net armor didnt really work and still dosnt, i have seen chainlink net armor stop early cold war era AT weapons
Those pannels are there to protect against shaped charge projectiles. Basically the way a panzerfaust works is you have a warhead with a copper cone with explosive material behind it. When the warhead hits tank armor, the explosive material goes off and turns the copper cone into a molten jet that cuts through armor, but to be effective it has to go off right against the armor of the tank. Those pannels are there to make those projectiles explode at the wrong distance from the armor making the molten jet ineffective. They are not made to and will not stop an AP round fired from a tank or field gun.
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A modern misconception - you can find information around hte net that there is an optimum “stand off” distance of 2-3 calibres
Ironically, given the large calibre of Pzfst they may actually have made it MORE effective - assuming they were strong enough to actually detonate it - which is debatable.
Not that the Pzfst needed any help - it’s penetration was vastly more than the armour being protected in the first place.
Essentially they did nothing useful - except perhaps give the tankies a bit more (unjustified) confidence in their vehicle.
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Is that an informed point of view or are you just giving your opinion on the matter?
It doesn’t work that way. The essence of a shaped charge is that it concentrates conically that molten copper jet on an area of 1 squared cm at a certain distance, afterwards (because by now it’s a liquid) that molten jet spreads back again into a cone due to… physics. It gets concentrated to a point and then spreads back again with the same angle of the initial copper cone. When you detonate the shaped charge before it hits armor, no matter the size of the payload of the shaped charge, the bigger the area of the jet, the less effective it is. A 2 sqr cm area means the jet is 50% weaker, 4 sqr cm-> 25% of the initial effect etc.
Funny to say that since german tanks also used them. And even funnier since they were still used with modern tanks up to recent times. They were eventually replaced with explosive reactive armor but this is sort of recent compared to the lenght of time that they were used by numerous armies.
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(For a completely different reason.)
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I wasn’t talking about the solid skirts
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Schurzen was designed to counter anti-tank rifles, and was originally solid steel sheets. Even hte mesh shown above is obviously significantly more solid than hte soviet “bedsprings”.
Against HEAT weapons the side skirts were much further away, and the allied HEAT AT weapons were Bazooka and PIAT - both with smaller diameters than Pzfst., so it might indeed have been effective vs them than bedsprings vs Pzfst, for rational reasons.
Ther are a few places online that mention optimal standoff distance - eg this one is in reasonably readable language - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA599386.pdf
… and has a graph of penetration vs standoff for various real weapons - the optimum stand-off for HOT is given as >1m!
This one - https://acad.ro/sectii2002/proceedings/doc2020-3/10-Malciu_Pupaza.pdf - is discussion of creating a mathematical model for a specific shaped charge - a PG-7 warhead for RPG-7- and how it interacts with slat armour - there’s discussion of hte exact nature of the shaped charge effects in Section 2, and inteeraction with slat armour in Section 7.
Enjoy
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It would be fair to compare apples to apples. The RPG series has a conductor cone to ensure that the jet remains lineary while the panzerfaust doesn’t.
RPG:
Panzerfaust:
Slat armour was so effective that when the RPG was developed they had to add the conductor cone to be sure that bedsprings don’t render it useless
Slat armour isn’t bedsprings! 
I was sarcastically quoting you
So yes, basically you are right, the MODERN shaped charges you mentioned are impervious to slat armor because they have that nozzle/ conductor cone to keep the jet in a line. They got that cone/nozzle because back in WW2 when they first were used, some pannels attached to the tank could mess up the effectiveness of the warhead
they would’ve been better off using spaced armor.
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Its reactive armor. It can be found on a couple of different tanks in various forms, but ultimately its purpose is to negate/ lessen the effect of a AT launcher shot.
In my experience, it does in fact work in game, but only lasts for one hit and falls off.
Though considering that almost nobody uses AT launchers, instead just throwing explosive packs, its basically useless right now.
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Never happened to me. Plus helper stated earlier that it doesn’t have any special purpose in game.
I disagree with this as well. Since this particular premium is in Berlin campaign where lot of players are using fausts. Fausts are early level unlockable there and very effective.