How much does Vitality help in terms of crew member's survivability?

[HardScript]

Pretty much title. I know Vitality is not part of the "top" crew skills to prioritize but I was still curious as to how much it impacts survivability of said crew members. I tried to look up how much damage the shell's shrapnels deal and how much HP the base non upgraded crew members have but I can't find that information anywhere so im asking here.

I wonder if a crew member's vitality can be upgraded enough to the point where they would not die from certain shell shrapnels, meanwhile they would at base vitality.

[Canadian Guitar]

I'm not sure if there's hard numbers out there for this.

Personally, I do invest in it (though most of my main crews are maxed by this point), but I feel like it's mostly placebo. The best vitality is just not getting hit to begin with if you can avoid it

[Astartes Regis]

Maybe Anecdotal but having expert crew and about 4 bars of vitality for cold war Russian tanks saved me from fuel explosion more than once(leaves crew red)

[Lucky_Star_Fan]

It certainly makes a difference for my pilots. I have not put enough points into tank crews to tell a difference there as yet.

[Chaoslink]

Not massively, it doesn’t do too much for direct hits, pilots or tank crews will typically be taken out by a direct hit by anything bigger than a .50 cal, though crew can sometimes take a .50 cal and survive. What vitality does protect against is shrapnel from explosions or spalling. So a high vitality crew might have the turret get wiped by a penetrating APHE, but the hull crew might survive the bits that get down their way.

It’s not something you should expect to massively change your play, but you might find yourself with fully red crew a bit more often instead of them being knocked out instantly.

[Toblm]

I've only ever really found vitality to make a noticeable difference in Air. A couple points in it make the difference between being pilot sniped with a single .30 cal round vs it taking a .50 cal or better.

[James Bondage]

Limited but not meaningless. You're unlikely to notice a difference between any given increments of the skill, but the difference between nothing and maxed with an expert crew is fairly large.

That said, in tanks a killshot is still a killshot. Vitality tends to affect edge cases like a single piece of shrapnel and machine gun hits. It's for that reason much more of an obvious benefit in air, since a high-vitality pilot can survive an MG hit or two instead of instantly dying.

[French Cat]

I've only ever noticed a difference with a tank and that was MAX with Ace crew. Instead of dying, they just turned tomato red.