In the village where I live there was an incident (pretty well known and seems to be reasonable from what I could find out) where after american soldiers put the local NSDAP "chairman" in a tank wagon and shot at the wagon.
whikle some claim they did it to kill him/ would have been totally okay with killing him, others said that they were opting for the loud noises created inside to traumatize him.
So my question is, how much harm does an average WW2 assaut rifle do to a WW2 tank wagon, which answer seems more reasonable. Also if there are sources of similar happenings, Id be thankful too.
The M1919A4 .30 caliber machinegun could penetrate 7 mm of armour with armour piercing bullets. The DTM 7.62 mm machinegun could penetrate 8 mm. There was no tanks produced during WWII with armour this thin, the point of these bullets was to knock out vulnerable components like optics and get stuck anywhere they can in order to jam up components. In some cases, if you aimed for gaps in the armour (outside of the gun mantlet, for instance), the bullets could ricochet inside and harm the crew. However, just by firing at the side of the tank, these rounds would do no damage.
The impact of shells against armour can also injure humans inside with the blast, but the projectile has to carry a significant amount of energy in order to create a pressure wave that is strong enough to cause even temporary damage. A rifle caliber bullet is not even close to enough.
Both of these machineguns fire full length rifle rounds, which have a lot more energy than an intermediate round of an assault rifle or a pistol round of a submachinegun. Also it's very unlikely that an average infantryman would even carry armour piercing ammunition in the first place. It's highly unlikely that this kind of attack would do anything to the man inside except frighten him.
Sources:
P. Samsonov Tank Machinegun Comparison
P. Samsonov Under Pressure, Part 2
It is almost impossible for an average WW2 assault rifle to destroy an armored WW2 tank. If anything, there really was no average WW2 assault rifle since the only assault rifle to see wide usage during the war was the German Stg 44, and it only appeared later on.
The average US soldier was armed with the M1 Garand, a .30 caliber rifle. This would stand little to no chance of doing any damage to a tank. It could perhaps damage certain parts of the tank and indeed kill the crew if fired through an open vision port or hatch, but just blasting away at the tank's armor would be more dangerous to the soldier himself than any occupant of the tank due to the possibility of ricochet.
I suppose in this incident if they wanted to just kill him they indeed would have just done so. If the tank was operational in any way then putting him in there and firing at him could have been very dangerous for the Americans themselves! My guess is that if this happened it would have been more likely an attempt to fuck with him or let off some steam than to actually murder him.