German vs Soviet Tank Gun Concepts
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- Опубликовано: 14 июн 2024
- The Panzer IV 75mm (short) and the T-34s 76mm were quite different in 1941, yet was the general concept so much different? How did the guns develop over the course of the war? Also what were the benefits of the 75L24 gun?
In this video with Dr. Jens Wehner, we talk about how the Germans and Soviet approached their tank guns. For this we look at some objects from Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr in Dresden permanent exhibition. Additionally, we have some footage from the Panzermuseum Munster.
Disclaimer I: I was invited by Militärhistorische Museum der Bundeswehr Dresden in 2019 & 2021. www.mhmbw.de/
Disclaimer II: I was invited by Deutsche Panzermuseum Munster in 2019 & 2020. German Channel: / daspanzermuseum English Channel: / @germantankmuseum
Cover design by vonKickass.
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I am always amazed by the fact that you two can hold a technical conversation in a second language.
It is not that hard, you can do it !
English is kinda German with spaces
@@fraskf6765 ha ha ha, as a stranger outlander I must appreciate your understanding.
Oh my...
Try thinking in one language, having a conversation in two others while translating for one of your friends (Yes, I get to do that a lot living in a different country. I'm Latvian, my friend is Russian, we live in the UK, but he knows very little of English so only understands Latvian/Russian lol)
Actually, it's often easier to have a technical conversation than a every day conversation in a second language, because the vocabulary is often the same if not very similar.
Smallest HEAT projectile I have heard of in WWII was that of rifle grenades, the smallest for the Kar98 was ~40mm that fit its tail into the 30mm grenade cup.
indeed I completely forgot about those, even though I covered them in a video. ruclips.net/video/daBwCMgOpu0/видео.html
the advantage of low velocity guns is that, since you have less pressure in the gun, you dont have to make the projectile casing as thick. Hence you can fit more explosive charge in your round for the same caliber
Germans pretty much used lower charge for most of their HE throughout the war, with lone exceptions like Tiger's cannon, f.e. Panther's AP went like 900m/s and HE only 700. Kwk 40: AP went 750-740, HE - 550m/s. So it wasn't that much of a problem to make a thinner walled HE for "high velocity cannons", also 7.5cm KwK 37 actually had a smaller filler than the HE round used in kwk 40 or kwk 42.
Low velocity guns were good because their ammo was way more compact, easier to handle and you could carry more. The cannons themselves were also were smaller and lighter as a general rule.
Jens is right that there was a small batch of T-34/57 toward the last quarter of 1941. There also was another small batch issued mid 1943. The difference was that the early batch only had AP ammunition available, but the later batch had APBC ammunition, which had better long-range ballistics.
Explains the 1941 and 1942/43 vehicles in WT 🤔
The 57mm was put in the T34 to have an anti tank gun with proper penetration in the T34. They stopped the production because the effects on the target were not satisfing. It took serval shots to take out a Pz.IV. When the tiger entered the battlefield the 75mm was unable to penetrate on most practical ranges, so they again produced a batch of T34 with 57mm. But at that stage that knew that the T34/85 was coming soon.
@@KilledMind1985 Doesn't sound very plausible. They abondaned the 57mm against the Pz IV but then bring it back against the Tiger which was a very rare tank to begin with?
I think the general believe why they didn't produce them in large numbers was because the 76mm was a multi-purpose gun and more effective vs soft targets than the uncommon tank targets.
The article from Peters tankarchives might also have information about that. I remember vaguely something about not having scopes for the 57mm gun to mount in the tank.
@@KilledMind1985 Innitially 57mm ZiS-2 anti-tank gun entered production in 1941, but production was put on hold after 370 guns, because their production lines could be used for 76mm ZiS-3 which could kill tanks just as well, while being superior in every other way. ZiS-2 was also much more expensive than lighter 45mm ATs, that could still do their jobs adequately. Production of gun restarted in June 1943, when 45mm became clearly obsolete, but was still rather limited compared to 76mm universal guns. When second attempt at fitting 57mm on T-34s was made, it wasn't as much battlefield requirements, as sudden availability of guns so they can be put to test.
57mm also had short barrel life, which is acceptable for anti-tank gun, but pretty damning for any other job.
The 57 was desired only because a smaller, very fast projectile would have better penetration, even though the explosive inside would be smaller. With a 76.2, you're generally killing the crew or crippling the tank with a single penetration. With the 57, a shot through the front might leave enough of the turret crew alive to continue firing, and the extra penetration was unneeded. When tigers and panthers came out, the 76.2 was insufficient. It doesn't matter how much damage your shell does on penetration if it can't get through, and you can't just say "well, the enemy doesn't have many of those tanks" and leave your divisions helpless.
Out of curiosity, I am aware that metallurgical resource shortages affected German armor protection on their panzers to a certain extent near the end of WWII. Did this also noticeably extend to German gun performance as well?
could be, but so far I only saw it mentioned about armor.
I know the Germans stopped using squeeze bore ammunition as a result of tungsten shortages and manufacturing difficulty. There is a bit to read about it under squeeze bores on Wikipedia.
Only in terms of subcaliber munitions relying on tungsten. Their general AP projectiles actually improved all the way till the end, as they didn't lack any materials to make these, and also came up with better metallurgical compositions and heat treatment processes here than the Allies did. Comparative testing of German and Allied AP projectiles at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds immediately postwar would reveal this. The problem the Germans had with armour production in the end was a periodic lack of key resources to make the armour sufficiently ductile, which resulted in brittle plates susceptible to cracking upon being hit. That said it was a problem plaguing certain batches of tanks produced, i.e. not all tanks, some were still being produced with sufficiently ductile armour even at the end. For instance US conducted tests on captured Panthers found that on the late war vehicles it was basically a 50/50 on wether the armour was up to usual German specs or not.
Shortages in materials effect tanks guns a lot. Tungsten core ammunition is only one of the examples. The penetration of went down from Panzergranate 39 to Panzergranate 41. The 5cm KwK was not capable anymore keeping up because without tungsten core ammo there was not enough penetration.
Than there is the weight of the gun. Stronger metals in guns usually ment that a bigger gun could be placed in a smaller turret, best example there is the 75mm in the m24 chaffee.
@N Fels for smokeless powder guns chrome molybdenum or tool steel alloys are most commonly due to the very high pressure because mild or simple high carbon steels would be either to heavy or too weak
I love these discussions with you & Jens, as they feel very relaxed and spontaneous. This one was particularly excellent.👍
Glad you enjoyed it!
13:30 Well, the German Sturmartillerie did take the Sturmhaubitze 42 in service with the 105mm howitzer. A vehicle that fired a large HE round and in a greater arc than the long 75. So that version could definitely cover the original role of the StuG.
The high muzzle velocity of for example the long 50mm L/60 creates a better armour penetration but makes it also easier to hit moving targets.
The short 75mm has decent armour penetration, especially with HEAT, but hitting targets at a longer distance is more difficult due to the longer flight time of the projectile and the greater arc. Early StuG's and Panzer IV's did fight tanks succesfully but usually at very short ranges, less than 200 - 300 meters.
Great discussion, really appreciate Dr. Wehner's insights.
There's one thing that always impressed me: the Soviets always managed to put in bigger guns than the Germans.
Panther: 75mm; T34: 85mm
Jagdtpanther: 88mm; Su: 100mm; 122mm; 152mm
Tiger: 88mm; IS2: 122mm
Also, if you think of how frigging big the turret of the Maus was to carry the 128mm and how comparatively small modern tank turrets are despite even higher power. Especially the Soviet tank turrets are so frigging tiny that I have no idea how they manage the recoil dampening (both in space available for recoil, but also where to put the recoil dampener system in such a small turret)
Recoil eh. Well there are two ways to do it. Put strong pneumatic/hydraulic recuperaters on the gun to absorb the shock. Or strap the gun directly to the chassis and let the vehicle suspension absorb the shock. The Soviets would use a little of both.
Hmmm - yes - the Soviets had some bigger calibre guns but these were not necessarily more powerful than the German guns. The Panther's long 75mm was an exceptionally potent and accurate anti-tank gun. It was, if I'm not mistaken, a more powerful gun in that role than the Soviet 85mm. Both the longer and shorter versions of the 88mm in the two Tigers were also formidable anti-tank guns until the end of the war, and the long 88mm on the Tiger B was a particularly huge gun that used a massive cartridge case. The larger calibre gunned Soviet vehicles, on the other hand, were not always ideal to use against other armoured vehicles, although they could do that too if required, but they sure could demolish buildings and fortifications. Even the 122mm of the IS 2 had problems in the anti-tank role. It's separate loading rounds were slow to reload and not much ammunition could be carried. If I'm not mistaken, the German 88mm were also more accurate at range. But those big Soviet 122mm and 155mm guns were very suited to destroying fortifications with direct fire and that's what they were apparently mostly called on to do.
So it's not necessarily all about gun calibre.
Russia didn't care about the crew
German guns had very long and heavy shell for calibre with very high speed. So German 88mm was comparable with Soviet A-10 100mm gun.
@@demonprinces17 what´s the problem is if a crewmember looses a hand or even a Arm. their is lots of conscripts to take his/her place.
Very nice talk and discussion about a lot of topics like 12:58 firing over the infantery.
Lot of topice that can be discussed in the future regarding guns and howitzers.
A fascinating discussion. I truly appreciate the doctor's views. Thank you.
Hello. It is fascinating to see the change from the short stubby barrel to the longer .
TWSS
“I know the comment section.”
International phenomenon
Good video
I am glad the "burn through" slip was corrected :) No opportunity for angry comments is left on this channel :)
The 2 times the caliber penetration capability for hollow charge rounds in the second world war ist intersting. Through better production precision and other measures they were able to take those numbers up to sometimes 8-9 the caliber by the 80s against RHA, as far as I remember from Ogorkoiewiczes Technology of Tanks (Truppendienst Edition)
The figure I remember from his earlier book -- The Design and Development of Armored Fighting Vehicles 1939--1965 -- gave a ballpark figure for a 'generic' shaped charge as being 4.5x the diameter of the charge, but this was dependent on the charge detonating at a sufficient standoff distance to allow the metal jet to form properly, which none of the WWII shaped-charge warheads had. One of the best examples of design changes for improved standoff is comparing the TOW missile variants, from the original BGM-71 to the BGM-71B with its extending probe to detonate the warhead at a proper standoff distance.
Looking dapper and laying out the facts. Love it.
How exactly is caliber defined in this use, like L43 would be 43 times the length of the diameter of the bore?
Yes. Most artillery land and nautical use this proportional measurement.
The length in proportion to the diameter gives a better information about the ballistic characteristics of a gun.
Nowerdays it gets confused a lot with the way it's used in handguns. In handguns .cal 45 is of course 0.45 inches.
In artillery it's 45*diameter.
Caliber is always defined by the diameter of the bore of a gun. 6"/50 for example is a naval cannon of 6 inches in diameter, that is 50 calibers long. So 50*6" = 300" = 7.62 meters.
Calibre length is the measured length of the barrel, from the breech face to the muzzle tip (including the muzzle brake, if one is fitted), divided by the bore measurement.
Wehners smile when the term "Stummel" is mentioned at 0:31 :)
Oooh that's a spicy ending. Everyone watch to the end to watch the start of a new Austria - (rest of) Germany beef.
It seemed like miscommunication but yeah pinpointing where medium tank ends and mbt starts I's always hard.
It seems like the man was talking about the start of the transition though which is generally correct to an extent.
It’s a stupid question, the Bob Semple is the quintessential mbt
@@looinrims I see! New Zealand was going to have just one kind of tank, the best one they could.
We all know the M2 medium machine gun death blossom of doom was the first and best MBT out there. You had a 37mm shotgun...err, I mean cannon and more MGs than crew to share the 2nd amendment with the world!!!
Thank you Bernhard and Jens. Good video.
Glad you enjoyed it!
One consideration for selection of barrel length is ammunition commonality with other artillery in service. Once the Soviets decided on 76.2 mm cannon (for mass of shell) there was a choice of the 76.2 mm M1902 (& upgrades), the 76.2 mm 1927 Regt'l gun or some "mountain" of 76.2 mm caliber. Once the choice fell on the standard 76.2x385R mm of the field artillery a barrel length of less than the 1902's L/30 could lead to undesirable effects such as excessive muzzle flash. The US Army chose a L/28.4 barrel length for it's first 75 mn tank cannon (the M2) which chambered the same basic ammunition as the 75 mm field gun L/28.4 M1917. Pity the Nazi logisticians who had to supply different 7.5 cm ammunition for a variety of 7.5 cm weapons - 7.5 cm mountain gun, the field guns lFK 16 & N/A, lFK 18 and the 7.5 cm KwK 37 which all used similar sized (length & rim/base diameters) plus a plethora of "Beute" guns looted from occupied countries (albeit many were similar pre-WW I Krupp 75 mm or French M1897s). At least there was some compelling reason for the75 mm KwK 40 & KwK 42 fir having different ammunition.
Glad you brought up the high trajectory. Fire over obstacles. Also shorter barrel is going to be easier to maneuver in close terrain, like forests and cities. and also should be easier to have greater elevation firing at high targets like in cities.
Valid point you make about the Panzer IV Ammunition Loadouts, companies had way more HE. I feel the small amounts of APCR, is just in case they have to slug it out with enemy armor, rather than saying this gun has also an anti-tank role.
One other inherent characteristics of a short barreled guns id that the shell is shorter. That means easier handling of ammunition which results in a higher rate of fire. By a lot. And you can store more ammo in the tank.
Yeah, I hate when people say "they upgraded to a longer barrel." A longer barrel is NOT some magic that makes the shell go faster. The longer barrel guns come with longer heavier shells with a lot more powder behind it.
@@princeofcupspoc9073 well yes and no. For the transition to the long 75 yes thats a whole new round with far more powder behind it. But longer barrels are still considered an upgrade, for example theres a good reason why the German Leopard 2A6 and a lot of other tanks switched to the new, longer L55 gun over the old L44. They squeeze more performance out of the same round and amount of powder.
Super interesting. Love this sort of format in museums.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Very informative.
The 45mm gun of the Soviets was also quite good and similar to the 76mm in philosophy. It seems to have helped a lot during the Khalkhin Gol battles against the Japanese. And as far as I'm concerned it could counter any German tank during Barbarossa as well. Even armored cars like BA-10 had this gun, by the way. The fixed version of it also got an upgrade, they made it longer. I just don't know if the Soviet had a hard core ammunition for it, like tungsten or something, like the Germans had for their 60mm gun, though.
As for the stummel gun, do you guys know how far it was able to shot enemy tanks with the HEAT ammo? It would be certainly more far than a Bazooka or Panzerfaust I guess, isn’t it? The Italian Semovente and also the Japanese had some kind of HEAT ammo as well, do you guys know the difference from those ones?
Regards!
I've never seen a BA-10 with a 76mm gun. It's always the 45mm gun 20-K.
@@princeofcupspoc9073 yes, I just mentioned the 76mm gun as a comparison. BA's 45mm was enough to pierce any kind of German armor from a significant distance back in 1941.
In the beginning of WW2 soviets had devastating problems with armor piercing ammunition. For example, in may 1941 stalingrad military district (which will become stalingrad front) reported having 3% of their AP shells. So, effectiveness of 45 was hindered by ammo problems. And later, when they were solved, 45 was replaced with other guns, so it neve had a chance to show itself
@Stugbit Fz "As for the stummel gun, do you guys know how far it was able to shot enemy tanks with the HEAT ammo?"
The question is not how far can it shoot with HEAT but what is the effective range to hit a tank sized target under combat conditions. The answer to that is: itdepends.
Most likely the effective range is in the 500 m ballpark. Concidering the v0 is ~450 m/s. The HEAT rounds also where not know for accuracy and they had rather erratic performance.
"The 45mm gun of the Soviets was also quite good and similar to the 76mm in philosophy."
Actually the 45 mm guns where quite bad in reality. They usually where of rather poor quality. With poor optics and laying equipment. In addion the poor ammo. Its ballistic performance is only slightly better than that of the 37 mm guns. The small HE shell is very poor and this is very important for AFV use. The 45 mm guns where basically the same as the German 37 mm weapons performance wise. Only the German guns where much more accurate and the munition was reliable. The 45 mm guns are a good example of a paper tiger. The stats look good on paper but in reality the difference to their smaller kin is to little to matter.
The 75 cm KwK 37 and the Soviet 76 mm where much better all round weapons. With adequate performance against armored targets and very good perfornance with HE. It made as little sense to use the 45 mm for the Soviet as it made for the Germans to use the 37 mm on their tanks.
"It seems to have helped a lot during the Khalkhin Gol battles against the Japanese."
If the Soviet had used 37 mm or even 20 mm guns would have hardly made a difference.
@@user-if4zv5nj5m I see. But I was reading a book about Khalkhin Gol, there at least, according to the author, the 45mm made a difference against the Japanese.
Very good video.
Your videos are the greatest ever made Bernhard!!!
3:30 the Churchill 1 mounted a 2 pounder (40 mm) AT gun in the turret and the 3 inch (76.2 mm) howitzer in the hull. I remember hearing somewhere that some tanks actually swapped the armaments (howitzer in the turret, AT gun in the hull). But apparently the second they ran out of howitzers they just put machine guns in the hull instead due to the howitzers being outdated
Many tanks produced in 1972 are able to fight in modern days with some modernization (not involving chassis, hull or gun) while any tank produced in 1935 would look like a joke in 1945.
Same with rifles. You go from bolt-action to full automatic assault rifles in just 10 years and not much has changed since 80 years ago.
That was a really good point, a low-velocity gun is better at shooting over friendly infantry. But I wonder why they didn't just use HE-shells with less propellant for that, similar to how modern artillery uses shells with varying amounts of propellant based on the range of their target
I think there is a limit.
If your gun is made to fire high velocity AP shells then you can’t lower the muzzle velocity of HE too much or the gun won’t operate with the reduced recoil.
At least that’s what I feel like might be the reason.
@@kimjanek646 that and with a lower velocity increase the chance of squib
Interesting comparison of a King Tiger turret with a Panzer I full weight. There's a similar comparison in ships. At the beginning of WW II, a fleet destroyer weighed about 2000 tons. At the end of the war, new ones weighed about 3000 tons. The USS Iowa 3-gun turret weighed about 2000 tons, and the Yamato 3-gun turret weighed about 3000 tons. All rough values, of course.
I went to Dresden and visit that outstanding museum
Proud to be there a must for war buffins.
Which other good German war museums are there? I know there is one un Munster too.
@@ew3612 not a war museum per se but the Technische Museum has a bunch of very interesting WWII exhibits. A shot down Stuka, a V2, a prototype of an anti air rocket or a naval plane for example. The rest of the museum ofc is also very interesting
I remember reading explanation for short barrel HE lobbers was that they couldn't make sensitive enough fuses, so shells from long barrel guns would bury themselves too deep and detonation event would spent too much energy on turning dirt around. But I'm not sure how real this explanation is.
Low velocity HE shells have two advantages.
1. They have bigger fragment dispersion.
2. Allow for indirect fire over obstacles.
The higher the impact angle and the lower the velocity is, the more fragments will be send around the shell instead of just hitting the ground.
You know, if we want to talk about anti-tank Panzers, it would be very intriguing to get a video on the Panzer III Ausf.J Waffe 0725. Or the Panzer IV that also mounted the Pak-41 Squeezebore cannon (obviously only prototypes). Very interesting creations with little videos discussing them.
There are definitely times when plunging fire is more useful than direct. I may be mistaken, but I think that is what hurt the Hood in the battle with Bismarck, engaging at extreme range where the shells have a higher arch. Like tanks, early pillboxes and other fortified positions might have thicker walls than roofs. This would also be good with air-burst rounds, but I have no idea if those were available.
The Hood issue has a lot of debate around it but the range when she was hit was not extremely high for battleship guns (18,210 yards) and the angle of fall at this range would be around 13°. I think the most likely cause is simply that Bismarck shot straight through Hoods armor belt. This would have been possible at this range if Hood was at least half way through her port turn and the wreck of Hood has the rudder in position to be making this turn. It's also possible a shell passed below the water line and missed the belt entirely.
Muzzle velocity of the long 75 wasn’t that much higher than the short 75, when using HE shells, though.
I think it’s 420m/s vs 550m/s, while the velocity for the AP shell basically doubled from 380m/s to 750-770m/s.
That's because the faster you push an HE shell, the heavier you have to build it to avoid it simply breaking up, which means less HE filler and thus less destructive effect.
@@jamesharding3459 tell that 5cm Mineshells, being fired at higher velocity than regular HE shells.
Both Howitzers and cannons use practically the same HE shell, despite a large difference in velocity.
The same 75mm HE shell was fired from L24, L48 and L70 cannons.
@@kimjanek646 Mineshells were of a remarkably different design. Instead of being cast or forged from ordinary steel stock, they were drawn from high-strength steel. Hence, better able to withstand the force of firing.
So you are basically saying that normal HE shells can't handle high velocities unless they are strengthened by reducing the amount of filler but Mineshells with much thinner walls can somehow be fired with even higher velocitiy, because they are made from more durable steel? XD
That's a load of nonsense :)
@@kimjanek646 If you mean a 30mm Minengeschoß they still fly at about 520m/s , not faster .
Interesting
Ha! Another naval counterpart, this time to the lesser muzzle velocity leading to better indirect fire because shells could be directed over friendly troops easier. Battleship ammunition was separate shells and charges, with the Iowa class using six 50 kg bags (memory nay be off). For shore bombardment, they used fewer bags to reduce barrel erosion, but I don't remember how many or whether they ever used just one bag. Tank ammunition is small enough to be a complete round of charge + shell. I wonder if any land artillery ever uses reduced charges, whether to prolong barrel life or to get higher trajectories for better indirect fire. (I am a raw rookie as far as armies go)
It's fairly common for mortars to have augmentation charges -- a bagged split ring of propellant that fits around the shaft of the mortar round to add to the weapon's range. For example, the British 81mm L16 mortar with just the base charge has a range of 170-520m, but with the maximum of six augmentation charges has a range of 1700-5680m. Some field artillery is similarly configured to use varying numbers of propellant charges -- the US 155mm howitzer uses four-part ammunition, with separate fuze, projectile, propellant, and primer, with different quantities of propellant (either different-size single bags or different numbers of 'modular' propellant charges.
How about taking the camera up close to the actual guns you're talking about? And maybe you could point out their features and say how they work? Just an idea.
The best thing about t-34 gun is that it could use absolutely any 76.2 mm ammo you could find around, from three inch imperial guns, regiment howitzers to zis-3 and all other guns. Germans managed to develop completely non-compatible rounds for all their guns, 50mm was incompatible between pak and tanks, they had 5 different types of 75mm ammo, 2 types of 88mm ammo, etc.
Yes I know they do briefly mention this but i'll be a little more exact. At the end of 1941 the Soviets had the longer barrel 76mm gun shown here but before that they went thru some very short barrels. I believe the original T-34 gun barrel, probably the one the first Wehrmacht units would have encountered would have been in 30..5 calibers long or 76.2 mm x 30.5 mm = 2324 mm or 91.5 inches long ( about 7-1/2 feet) so it wasn't actually much longer than the short stubby german 75mm 24 caliber gun. The real difference was that the early war 75mm guns were meant for high explosive work and had very very slow velocities while the russian gun was already more of a anti armor weapon but of course it too had an effective high explosive charge.
If I remember correctly from Peter Samsonov's book those were actually stop-gap solutions, since the gun could not be produced in large quantities yet or something, but this is from memory, so maybe wrong.
Another advantage of short barrels is transport. It's much easier to fit a tank on a ship or a box when it doesn't extend past its track silhouette. This was actually American design doctrine for their early tanks like the Grant-Lee and early versions of the Sherman, before experience in Europe made them realize a longer gun is very useful in many situations, especially against the upgraded German tanks, hence the Firefly, Pershing, Patton and other later American tanks abandoned this philosophy.
The short-barreled Sherman 75 was considered a more useful weapon than the 76. The latter had better armor-piercing capabilities but the short 75 had a better explosive round.
75mm M3 was not that short... it was still L40 gun... If anything, i would say it was a medium length gun..
The main reason it was better was that they could carry more ammunition, had better RoF and Germany had so few tanks anyway, that the 76mm wasn’t needed most of the time.
There’s only so much a few tanks can do but, if you overrun the enemy with a great number of tanks and cut off their supply of fuel and ammo, even the best tanks turns into worthless piles of junk.
Same happened with the M26 in Korea where the heavier tank with more armor but lower RoF and number of rounds carried ended up being less effective than the lighter Sherman.
Ich weiß leider die Quelle nicht mehr, aber nachdem die kurze 7,5cm aus den Kampfpanzern ausgebaut und in die Spw/ Aufklärungs Panzer montiert wurde, stand auch überarbeitete Munition zur Verfügung, um die Fahrzeugen der Zeit vernichten zu können.
Very good, thank you. I have read that the HEAT ammunition for the German 75mm L/24 kurz was subject to improvement during the war. So it got to the point that that the Germans figured that they should use the gun to replace the 50mm L/60 gun on the Panzer III, which had acceptable anti-tank capability but a poor HE round. Hence the Panzer III Ausf N, the last of the Panzer III models, being equipped with 75mm kurz. Interesting that some of these Panzer IIIs were integrated into some of the heavy tank battalions, which had no integrated infantry, at Kursk and in Tunisia. I am not sure how well that arrangement between Panzer III N and Tiger worked, but it doesn't seem that it lasted very long. Maybe an interesting subject for a future video? 🙂 From pictures, it would seem that the German army in Norway ended up with quite a few Panzer III Ausf Ns and, if I'm not mistaken, some were used for training purposes. Best
60 mm? On the Panzer III? What model had that?
As I understand, the Pz III was used as a command vehicle (radios and scopes) for the Tiger tank company.
@@jacktheonion5052 - ah my apologies, not 60mm but 50mm L/60. I have corrected that thanks.
@@graemes813 Ah, I see. I do wonder why it's called the L60 though.
Edit: Oh wait, I think that is the length in barrel widths if I remember correctly.
@@princeofcupspoc9073 - the earlier heavy tank battalions had integrated Panzer III (mostly Ausf Ns I understand). According to Wiki, the heavy tank battalions "were initially planned to be composed of two companies, each with four platoons of two Tigers and two Panzer IIIs. Each company commander would have an additional Tiger, and battalion command would have another two, for a total of 20 Tigers and 16 Panzer III."
Aloha; well done! Mahalo
Isn't the shorter barreled gun faster firing with smaller ammo casing? The tank can hold more ammunition because you need less propellant for the same explosive power.
That also may help with using a tank as an artillery piece.
Yes that's generally true on both counts. However, in the case of the Pzkpfw-IV, as discussed here, the Germans actually increased the number of rounds carried when they upgunned from the 75mm L/24 to the much longer 75mm L/43 & L/48 -- from 80 rounds to 84 rounds.
Is there any reason, to your knowledge, why German ww2 guns were so much heavier than contemporary counterparts? The 7.5cm KwK 40 for example is more than twice the weight of the OQF 75mm, about 300kg heavier than the M3 75mm, and from what I can tell, the disparity remains with the F-34 gun.
The disparity is even greater when looking at the 12.8cm Pak 80 used in the Jagdtiger, and the D-25T used in the IS-2 and ISU-122, the Pak weighing in at some 7000kg, whereas the D25T weighs in at a mere 2500kg.
Interesting point, my first guess (and have several more) is that maybe the gun weight was determined differently, e.g., with / without breech, muzzle brake, etc.
I will ask around (sent one email already) and also keep that in mind.
German guns were massiv and sometimes made out of 2 parts , to easy change the barrel and not the whole gun . The M3 75mm is just a small pipe if you look at it , compared to the German 75mm . This other guns were more made to throw away if they are done , easy and cheap .
@@5co756 From the limited reading I could do on the subject, the only split barrel weapons used for tanks seem to have been the Kwk 36 and Kwk 43, though the 43 used a monobloc design in its early days and was later changed.
The other weapons, using monobloc designs, are still grossly over weight. In particular the Pak 80 12.8cm gun, weighing in excess of 11 tons in its towed configuration, while the comparable Soviet gun of the era weighed around 8 in its travel configuration. Sure, the 122mm A-19 was designed from the grund up to be a much lower pressure gun, but it was still more than capable to serve as an anti tak weapon.
When compared to the 100mm BS-3, whose anti tank capabilities surpassed that of the A-19,the disparity is even worse. Comparing what I can find about the IS-7s 130mm S70 gun, it still remains Light er, despite supposedly equal performance.
@@MatteV2 Lighter is not better if you want to say that , more mass can handle the recoil better . If you shoot a .50BMG for example and this rifle would be light as a pistol , it would break your arm if you pull the trigger or it snaps out of your hand . More stress for the tank , turret ring and so on .
The 122mm is only L46 5,6m long while the 128mm is L55 6,6m long , it's not the same gun so it wheight a little more .
There are also different breech types if you compare 75mm KwK40 vs 75mm M3 , the Germans got a semi automatic breech with this spring tubes on the gun were the recoil opens the breech and ejects the shell .
The 75mm M4 got this system later as far as I know and is heavier than the M3 , so there are many little differences that make the gun heavier .
The 12.8cm PaK is much more powerful than the 12.2cm D-25.
It fires a heavier shell at higher muzzle velocity. It’s nearly 12MJ of energy vs. 7.6MJ.
Likewise is the KwK 40 longer and more powerful than the 75mm M3 and M4.
Best comparable guns would be the 8.8cm KwK 36 vs the 8.5cm ZiS-S-53, which produced roughly the same energy.
Last I checked the longbarel panzer 4 and shortbarrel both use the same he round so I highly suspect that trajectory was the benefit you were talking about
shorter barrel, slower muzzle velocity.
I don't think so.l/48 had a longer cartridge case.panther round is different as well
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized I know, I'm saying they both use the same shell, as in the same design of the shell, not the cartridge that propells it.
Many I've seen who only know American tanks think that just because you increase barrel length and velocity that the inner workings of the shell must be strengthened. This however is not always the case.
There is no way that the HE round were the same. The heavier gun needed thicker walls around the HE explosive to survive the increase in force. Also also I really doubt the shorter barrel had APCBC, which was the main anti tank round for the heavier 75mm's.
@@princeofcupspoc9073 The HE projectile for the L/43,48 actually has over 100G more filler than the L/24. L/24 has 524 grams, whereas L/43 had 660 grams.
Better HE?
Makes sense. The faster you send it down range, the stronger the shell needs to be. The stronger the shell, the smaller the internal volume. The smaller internal volume, the less HE you can pack in there.
I'll buy it. Make sense to me.
I've not actually thought of it as a generalist gun versus specialist gun perspective.
I think I've got some reading to do, check a few things out. I like the argument on a few levels. The question is more the doctrine and how people developed guns for them. If you have tank killing tanks, you put your best tank killing gun on it right? If you tank is meant to be lobbing HE over infantry heads? You choose a very different gun, layout, even technology, right?
As with many things, context and what you're expecting to do with it.
Him explaining the meme to the guy was the most awkward moment I've ever seen.
i think short 75mm L24 is the most underrated gun of WW2... and it was used practically whole war, either on PzIIINs, or later on armored cars.. with good HEAT ammo, it could still deal a lot of punch at typical combat ranges (majority of tank engagements happened at distances up to 500m anyway), while having good HE capability...
It is often forgotten that the Panzer IV was originally made as an assault-support tank for the Panzer Grenadier units. Seeing that it would be demanded by normal infantry to support their troops. Seeing this demand brought about the development of the STuG series of assault tank for the infantry divisions. However as history unfolded all this became very blurred. Finally leading to the Panzer IV swapping roles with the Panzer III with the P4 model F2.
Barrel length impacts on round velocity. Basically the longer the barrel the faster the round as it leaves the barrel. This impacts on high explosive rounds. Again basically the faster the HE round is the thicker its casing must be to prevent the casing from breaking up mid flight. This means you lose more of the internal space for explosive. An example can be found with the Sherman tank. The preferred version was the 75mm gun over the 76.2mm gun in the armoured divisions by the troops.
The high velocity 76.2mm tank gun when firing its HE round had to have a much thicker outer casing to the point where it was less than half effective as the round fired by the lower velocity 75mm gun. On the other side of the argument the longer the barrel generally an increase in armour penetration of an armour piecing round.
So I propose your comparing apples and oranges. Both guns were developed and optimise for two different purposes. The German 75mm is optimise for high explosive rounds for devastating exposed infantry, light bunkers and or light AFVs. The Russian 76.2mm on the other hand had higher velocity and optimised for main AFVs while being less effective in HE work that the German 75mm was optimise for.
It was quite an interesting video providing much thought. Perhaps a comparison between this model of 76.2mm with the long 5cm of the Panzer III. However the types of rounds fired by these guns must be considered for a more complete and better comparison.
The 75mm. L.24 KwK.37 had the widest choice of ammunition for any gun, in WW2.
Cannister
Smoke
HE
K.Gr.Rot.Pz. = APHE
PzGr.39 = APCBC-HE
PzGr.40 = APCR
HL/A = HEAT (Lightest weight / long range / low performance).
HL/B = HEAT (Medium weight / medium range / medium performance).
HL/C = HEAT (Heaviest weight / short range / maximum performance).
Maybe someone else will correct you but most of what you wrote is just nonsense
@@kimjanek646 Source?
@@kimjanek646 “i have no idea why but you’re definitely wrong”
@@kimjanek646 yep, definitely no APCR round for L/24 gun...
@@JaM-R2TR4 neither cannister nor Pzgr. 39
Did the 75 L24 ever use a cannister shot?
Nope. Only HE.
I can’t think of a single gun that used cannister shot apart the US 37mm.
Cannister was probably not that effective compared to large caliber HE and even small caliber HE is more effective vs soft cover.
The Russians had 76mm Shrapnel shells but I’m pretty sure they also stopped production in favor of HE.
In 1941 Panzer IV was proven design while T-34 was just being introduced. So, on Panzer IV was added more armor and bigger gun stretching design to maximum. In '43 it was Soviet turn to add bigger gun on proven T-34 while Germans had to deal with imperfections on new Panther tank.
the T34 is just barely younger than Panzer IV.
Both started developement around 34.
Both Vehicles had combat service in 1939 and 1940 (PzkW IV in France and Poland, T34 in Finnland)
The Production numbers also show a very interesting picture: Pzkw.IV end of 41: 991 Vehicles. T34: 3379 Vehicles
@@zhufortheimpaler4041 Panzer IV was used in Poland, Fance and all other campaigns 1939-1941 while T-34 was barely used before war and whole 1st batch was lost to Germans, mostly undamaged. And BTW, Panther was used in larger quantities at Kursk on summer 1943, so 2 years after T-34.
BTW, Soviets relocated most of tank production in summer of 1941 and still outproduced Germans at start of 2942.
@@mladenmatosevic4591 the soviet production facilities were relocated in 1940. In 41 that was already more or less done.
The first batch of T34 (about 700) were not lost undamaged to the germans, but made up 2-3 divisions wich were major problems for the germans.
The early encoundered T34 were mostly destroyed in combat.
And Panther never reached near the production numbers of T34.
At Kursk for every Panther on the field there were 2-3 T34
Looking at latest bottom 5 tanks i have to agree to a concept: "why did no one say that is a stupid idea". By that I mean the short 75mm german gun. Everybody knew that higher velocity = better penetration so why not just create longer barrel 75mm in 1937 or so. They even wasted precious tungsten to keep 37mm "relevant" with tungsten ammo and using door knockers partially cost them the war. Did they really lack ability to think ahead more than 2 months?
I think you lack some understanding.
It’s easy to think and say: Why didn’t they do this or that. Or: Should be so obvious.
Well it wasn’t. Just because we have some information and understanding over the past doesn’t mean those people did or could predict what was going to happen.
7:42 8.8 cm (88 mm).
👍👍
Isn't it is great how they take earliest German 75mm gun(75mmL24) as example but use later Soviet one(F34 76.2mmL41.5) and not early(L11 76.2mmL30)...
send a L11 76.2mmL30 to the museum, pretty sure they take it, although considering that the whole showcase had to exactly measured and approved by engineers and more, I doubt they will change it.
The L11 is also mentioned.
You just have to see how "tiny" the panzer I II and the 35(T) and 38(T) were, compared to the panzer III and IV the germans introduced shortly after and then take the american lee and russian t-34.
the escalation of tanks was as crazy as the escalation of wooden byplanes to multi engine heavy bombers. just instead of 30-40 years it took 10-20 years max.
Seeing what's in the background, it looks like you're standing in the standard American basement rec room.
Is it a Christmas tree in the middle ?
The philosophy of gun design in both countries are very similar due to the facilities run in Kasan during the mid 1929ies to early 1930ies by the Reichswehr and the Red Army f.e. 3.7 cm Pak German an Russian were nearly clones
"burn through the armor " ?
I think the lower Muzzle Velocity would allow for thiner Granades and therefore more Explosives 🤔
I think that's just a myth. I used to think the same but it contradicts the existence of thin walled 5cm Mineshells that had a muzzle velocity of 920m/s and contained ~350g explosive compared to 5cm HE shells fired by long barreled 5cm guns with just ~200g explosive and ~550m/s muzzle velocity.
@@kimjanek646 sample size one
@@comentedonakeyboard The 8.8cm Flak 41 fired HE shells at 980m/s containing 1kg of explosive while shells for the FlaK 18/36 only had 900g explosive and 820m/s.
Also, if you can fire Mineshells at +900m/s velocity, there is no way that the explosive filler is a limiting factor for HE shell integrity.
You are basing your opinion on assumptions, like I did in the past, but that assumption doesn’t hold considering these facts.
@@kimjanek646 Different steels can vary in their strength by a factor of 10 or more; an ENORMOUS amount of research went into steel metallurgy over the course of the 20th century (see e.g. Karl Bosch's Nobel prize, for which he had to use new steels to create the reactors he needed to upscale the reactions he was working to industrial levels. And also developments in face-hardening armor, etc.). But, and this is a very big but, just because it is possible to build a "thin shelled" high capacity HE shell, this doesn't mean it is practical to do so at the large scale. Speciality steels also tend to be very very expensive steels, and consequently in short supply. And the one thing you absolutely do not want to be in short supply in a land war is HE shells for you most common artillery pieces... So in general, thinner shell casings do indeed mean lower muzzle velocities, and vice versa. Yes, there are exceptions to this as you note - but that is the general trend.
@@kimjanek646 This Flak guns don't use Minengeschoß , it was a HE with a time fuse .
This channels make you think WWII soldiers were all busy with fighting each other with the newest high tech weapons. On of my grandfathers spend basically the whole war with guarding POWs because he was not fit for the battlefield because of an injury, the other one was in a veterinary division taking care of horses and mules. Only one of both fired once a gun during the whole war. As he said only loosly in the direction of the enemy and spend the rest of his live praying that he did not hit anybody. :)
Stuk 's where still produced alongside L43/48 lHV stug variants.The german approach to arming Pz.III,Pz.IV does help out with why the M3 became a concept.Armed with 57mm anti 75mm howitzer it mirrors the numbers and roles being considered as optimum by both sides at that time.
I wonder how many casualties would Panzerwaffe inflict to Red Army if they have long barrel gun in '41.
Did they switch to english for us monolingual folks or because Berhard's high german/austrian dialect isn't intelligible in saxony?
1
Weapons development in peace time always misses the mark in some way. The weapons borne of total war are always gonna be superior. This is all to say good weapons come after politicians fail to keep the arguments in the halls of the UN or League of Nations then. Dont take this as support of detante, deescalation, or appeasement. To reign in an opponent create alliances that would make conflict suicide only for the opponent. So not support of MAD either. I believe politicians need to be dynamic, bold, and productive. Productive means solving the problems you charge yourself to fix.
I'm surprised ,with everyone being cash-strapped in the 30s, that they kept making different guns for special purposes instead of a gun and different shells for all the special purposes. Even then the rounds you hunt wolves with was different than what you hunted deer with. So the same rifle would do both and your bullet weights were simply different. I could definitely see for infantry support a vehicle with a true high angle howitzer mounted to get indirect fire. You could even adjust the velocity by adjusting the powder charge and burn rate so the AP is faster and the HE is slower and lobbed more.
I know the history and they didn't , it just seems odd to me.
Hindsight. Looking back we see it as a waste, but only if they dropped the ones that were not successful. In other words, technology was moving so fast that everyone was trying to keep up, and the next version was not obvious.
When labour is cheap and materials are expensive you get a lot more optimization for roles in order to save material rather than standardized manufacturing across roles.
Different design organizations
It's mainly because tank was a new weapon and people were still trying to figure out what they wanted from a tank and how to use it (hence a sh*t ton of machine guns on American tanks). Most countries went to a small caliber gun for anti tank and large caliber gun for infantry support. Of course as tank armor got thicker small caliber guns were abandoned
In 30's (and in WWII, and even today - if we count IFVs as light tanks) you could kill a tank with a rifle, so giving an anti-tank gun crew a 76 mm cannon would not be only an overkill but also would harm their mobility (45 mm cannon is twice as light as 76 mm one - 540 kilos vs 1200).
And, of course, you can't make proper artillery with two inches of a caliber and round speeds making indirect fire impossible.
(meme) Soviet tank philosophy be like:
Machine gun in front, in back, in left, in right, above and under the tank.
Tolya: So how do we call the machine gun under the tank?
Ivan: Anti-mine machine gun, maybe!?
Flamethrower
It got worse in 1944 due to loss of critical ores needed to improve toughness and disruptions due to bombing, but the Germans had issues with brittle armor from day 1.
I’ve seen tests done by UK, and USSR as early as 1940-42 on Pz1- Pz4, Stugs, and armored cars that revealed significant cracking and spalling due to over-hardened armor on SOME vehicles. It’s clearly evident in many photos with the same ammo and firing conditions that some rounds failed to pen or made clean holes and other hits broke huge chunks of armor out even in vehicles made in the same timeframe. The issue was not consistent and varied a lot from one vehicle to the next. May be partly an issue with some mills using improper quenching or other QC issues while other mills did better. Plates were made in several places even on the same vehicle model. Even at the end some plates were very good quality while others were bad.
That’s not really true.
German plate hardness depended on plate thickness and thickness determined protection against different calibers.
High hardness has the best protection when the armor is thicker than caliber but the opposite is true when the shell overmatches the armor.
30mm high hardness plate offered protection against calibers up to 20mm.
If you shoot does plates with 40 or 45mm guns, they will easily shatter but even the best 30mm armor won’t stop those larger rounds anyway. Soft 30mm armor on the other hand can be easily defeated by 20mm cannons or AT rifles.
The Polish were able to take out early Pz IVs from the side with 20mm AT rifles, because they only had 15mm of armor on the sides. The Pz. III had 30mm all around, making them practically immune against them.
True, but from what I've read, it was primarily a problem with large RHA plates such as the Panther's and King Tiger's glacis. They had higher quality and lower inconsistency with smaller RHA plates sizes, like the above mentioned lower front hull plates.
Russians realy love the number 762
The smallest calibre HEAT round was 47mm., by the Italians.
On the Breda? We need to be careful, because HEAT changes can be strapped to the tank with magnets by a suicidal engineer, or fired from grenade launchers/mortars.
The Germans had a 30mm HEAT round for their Rifle grenades, but found it to be lackluster so made oversized ones that had much better performance.
Smallest HEAT round I can think of is the 20mm Minengechoss X Shaped Charge variant. Wasn't put into service (unlike the normal Mineshell X), but was tested.
@@ThatZenoGuy Never heard of something like that.
There’s even doubt that the 2cm Minengeschoss X with higher capacity ever entered production.
There’s pretty much no point for HEAT ammunition for low caliber high velocity guns.
@@kimjanek646
Over one hundred thousand Mineshell X were built and sent to Italian Luftwaffe units from a single factory. (DWM factory at Lubeck). The shaped charge version, I do not know how many were made, likely not many. But enough to be put on official EOD paperwork.
The hungarian 44M Kézi Páncéltörő was also 60mm
ruclips.net/video/oFuGskLjUTU/видео.html
Soviets: *c u r v e*
Germans: *b o x*
How superior were German optics compared to everyone elses Bruce from combat dealers said that if the Germans had had late war panthers earlier they would have wrecked allied units due to accurate guns with superb optics.
Aka skill vs spam
Without the gun, the tank can't defend itself.
Without the armor, the tank is not safe.
Without the engine, the tank won't even leave the factory.
Reminded me of The Beast(1988):
"Out of commission, become a pillbox.
Out of ammo, become a bunker.
Out of time, become heroes."
"Specialists" AKA "nitpicking pedants"
The movie _Kelly's Heroes_ has (I think) a scene where a long-barreled Tiger gets knocked out from the rear because it can't turn the turret it a narrow European street, while the American M4 can turn it's turret and shoot the Tiger.
As long as they don't try to shoot it with paint! (Have to see the movie to get it.)
They drove up behind the tiger
German concept: Lose
Russian concept: Win
Panzer III was "upgraded" into a Stug.
FINALLY! I've been noticing that short barreled 75mm for so long. The thing is, that was the perfect weapon for the Panzer IV and StuG as originally conceived. The US Army M8 HMC and 105mm M4 medium tanks used similar guns to great effect. The problem on the Eastern Front was that the Soviets just had SO MANY TANKS.
Sorry but as an American I can't help pointing out the "8.8MM" error. No wonder we haven't adopted the metric system since you guys are still having a hard time with it.
Everyone seems to forget that before 1941 75mm gun was considered as heavy tank`s gun, so having 75mm in medium tank was something like having 152mm in MBTs today
@@Oppen1945 think so since from my exprience from talking to a bunch of American they all have foot fetish
may be a bigoted question, but how in the absolute heck were germans not able to build better engines for their tanks when the soviets were? bmw, vw, mercedes, porsche, audi, opel and maybach are the ones that came to my mind, were they all unable to build bigger and better engines? that can't be, right?!
lack of funding? lack of skilled workers due to the whole hatred for certain groups of people?
I don't think that Germans saw their engines as falling behind. But one problem was the availability of high grade steel. Also keep in mind that the Russians built a lot of ALUMINUM lightweight engines. The Germans had no good supply of aluminum.
The German engines needed more maintenance
German engines were some of the most compact and powerful in the world. What more do you need them to do? Have nuclear reactors?
In deutscher Sprache! Bitte
If you want to see the final end result of the Soviet tank gun development, I believe you should visit Eastern Ukraine in the next few months.
What a dumb comment
@@More_Row I know, that was the point. Thank you for taking the time to reply.
Good point.
@@More_Row It really is. He should have said days.
Ukraine is part of Russia anyway
Nazi was such a disaster for Germany. All these technological fine tunings and sacrifice helped Germany lose what, 20% of its territory? And a big chunk of its population received immorality until they influenced the rest since unification, Angela Merkel the former communist cadre for example. It is a geopolitical disaster for Western Europe as well. Imagine Germany today still have East Prussia and Poland its eastern territories. And Finland could have had 10% more territory without joining Germany in WWII. Now, all those population in those lost territories have to live under the Byzantinian criminal influence of Russia. Cherish what you have, for you can lose it altogether.
Soviets...Build enough
Nazis.......Fanaticism
Both are shit. They both are the bad guys.
Dr jens is very bad at explaining i wish he had a little bit more)))i know he knew but he cannot express it out IMO
Russia bigger is better