LIght AT gund (less then 50 mm)

While checking armour schemes (take a look at this interesitng web site :http://www.onwar.com/tanks/index.htm, I was quite surprised to find out how thinly armoured most medium tanks were (side and rear armour).
My favorite tank Comet :
ARMOR PROTECTION

Hull
64mm@90°(nose) Side 14mm@90° Rear25mm@90° Top(bottom n.a.
Superstructure
32mm@17°(glacis) 76mm@90° (Driver)
Side 29mm@90° - Top/Bottom 14mm@0°

Turret
102mm@90° Side 64mm@90° Rear 57mm@90°
Top 20&25mm@0°
Mantlet 102mm@90° -

This left me wonder if light anti tanks guns (37- 47 mm) still had some chance of disabling a medium tank post 42, especially in fights like the 'Bocage' and street fighting, being easily man-handled and easy to conceal.
These guns were also used by paratroopers, light tanks and armored cars etc.

I know even Tiger 1's fel victim to 6 pounder AT guns.

Whats your opinion and are there any reliabke accounts of light AT succesully defeating medium tanks ?


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I don't know about 40 or 37mm guns, but I have seen several pictures of destroyed Shermans whose sides were pockmarked with 20mm impacts, none of which managed to penetrate the armour. This led me to believe that post-42 the small-calibre AA guns like 20mms were useless against most armour.

 

The 6-pder was a hell of a gun, very powerful for it´s calibre, because it had a large case with much space for the “propelling charge(?)”.

This is a picture from Tony Williams page:

The 40*304R is the shell of the 2-pdr, the 57*441R is the 6pdr ammo.




edit: IIRC the Tigers were hit in the flanks from a small distance.

 

COuld be but on the 6lb.er thing I agree with the pictures

 

25mm

while not WWII the 25mm chain gun on the bradley has killed T-72s by hitting them at the turret ring and setting off the ammo in the loader

 

The 6pdr was a very potent gun, but should be excluded from this discussion as its calibre was more than 50mm ( 57mm ). Comet fan asked for guns less than 50mm.

I don't have any specific examples, but I would guess that a number of guns of calibre less than 50mm, like the Soviet 45mm AT guns or even the Japanese 47mm Type 1, would be capable of knocking out most medium tanks from ranges at 500m or less by penetrating their side armour.

 

Japanese 47mm AT guns certainly knocked out a few Shermans in the Pacific. Italian 47mm hv guns were also well respected by allied crews.

 

The germans used some taper bore guns wich were small (2.8mm and one of 41mm) and capable of penetrating armor of tanks....until they ran out of tungsten to make core shells!

Don't know if other countries used taper bore guns during WWII?

http://users.belgacom.net/artillery/art ... tml#230098

 

British atleast tested them. I believe Tony will give you all the answers you want.
http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/sgun.htm

 

Thank you for your answers.

Does anybody know if the brits and americans achieved any success with their ligth tanks and armored cars with 37 or 40 mm guns post 43? (including vehicles with little john adaptor for 37/40 mm guns).

I have been searching the internet for an answer, but not yet found anythink

 

I found some data about a russian 45mm L/66 gun that penetrated up to 80mm at 500m. Even keeping in mind the different ways of testing thats still an impressive performance. The standard 45mm gun of the Red Army was the 45mm/L46, but given a muzzle velocity of 985 m/s(APCR) a Pz.III should be careful when encountering a 45mm-AT gun.

 

Don't have the penetration tables handy however as I recall the 37mm on the Stuart would have been capable of taking out most medium tanks with a close range flank or rear shot.

 

Hi.

The british 2 pdr AT-gun was able to destroy all japanese tank models serviced against Commonwealth-troops as their armour was mainly developed to stop infantry AP-ammunition.

The standart medium tank type 97 had a maximum armour of 25 mm. There was a version of the type 97 Shinhoto Chi-Ha with an additional 25 mm armour plate. Even the type 1 Chi-He and the type 3 Chi-Nu had a maximum armour of only 50 mm.

Yours

tom!

 

Can anyone talk about the worth of the british 2lb AT gun. I play Steel Panthers World at War and whilst obviously not 100% accuarate of the situation I do get the impression that it would be more fun, and possibly more effective to throw eggs at the approaching panzers.

The lack of HE rounds is also disconcerting given that simple infantry attacks have a tendancy to over run them quite quite quickly.

Was it really that bad?

 

It was one of the best AT-guns in 1940, but when the Pz.III got 30mm add-on armour in 1941 it was obsolete. Plans to replace it with the much better 6-pdr were delayed by a year because of the huge loss of weapons at Dunkirk.

 

The 2lber was used in the Crusader (a13) and the Crusader II (a15) before the 6lber was used in the Crusader III(a15 also I think). It was also used in the Daimler, and the Mattilda MkII infantry tank.

Tomba