PaK 40
Encyclopedia
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
7.5 centimetre anti-tank gun
Anti-tank warfare
Anti-tank warfare was created by the need to seek technology and tactics to destroy tanks and their supporting infantry during the First World War...
developed in 1939-1941 by Rheinmetall
Rheinmetall
Rheinmetall AG is a German automotive and defence company with factories in Düsseldorf, Kassel and Unterlüß. The company has a long tradition of making guns and artillery pieces...
and used during the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. PaK 40 formed the backbone of german anti-tank guns for the latter part of World War II.
History
Development of the PaK 40 began in 1939 with development contracts being placed with KruppKrupp
The Krupp family , a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, have become famous for their steel production and for their manufacture of ammunition and armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th...
and Rheinmetall
Rheinmetall
Rheinmetall AG is a German automotive and defence company with factories in Düsseldorf, Kassel and Unterlüß. The company has a long tradition of making guns and artillery pieces...
to develop a 7.5 cm anti-tank gun. Priority of the project was initially low, but Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
in 1941 and the sudden appearance of heavily armoured Soviet tanks like the T-34
T-34
The T-34 was a Soviet medium tank produced from 1940 to 1958. Although its armour and armament were surpassed by later tanks of the era, it has been often credited as the most effective, efficient and influential design of World War II...
and KV-1
Kliment Voroshilov tank
The Kliment Voroshilov tanks were a series of Soviet heavy tanks, named after the Soviet defense commissar and politician Kliment Voroshilov. The KV series were known for their extremely heavy armour protection during the early war, especially during the first year of the invasion of the Soviet...
, increased the priority. The first pre-production guns were delivered in November 1941. In April 1942, Wehrmacht had 44 guns in service. By 1943 the PaK 40 formed the bulk of the German anti-tank artillery.
The PaK 40 was the standard German anti-tank gun until the end of the war, and was supplied by Germany to its allies. Some captured guns were used by the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
. After the end of the war the PaK 40 remained in service in several European armies, including Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
, Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
and Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
.
About 23,500 PaK 40 were produced, and about 6,000 more were used to arm tank destroyer
Tank destroyer
A tank destroyer is a type of armored fighting vehicle armed with a gun or missile launcher, and is designed specifically to engage enemy armored vehicles...
s. The unit manufacturing cost amounted to 2200 man-hours at 12000 RM. A lighter automatic version, the heaviest of the Bordkanone series of heavy calibre aircraft ordnance as the BK 7,5 was used in the Henschel Hs129 aircraft.
Performance
The weapon was effective against almost every Allied tank until the end of the war. The PaK 40 was much heavier than the PaK 38, decreasing its mobility to the point where it was difficult or impossible to move without an artillery tractorArtillery tractor
Artillery tractor is a kind of tractor, also referred to as a gun tractor, a vehicle used to tow artillery pieces of varying weights.-Traction:...
on boggy ground.
The PaK 40 debuted in Russia where it was needed to combat the newest Soviet tanks there. It was designed to fire the same low-capacity APCBC, HE and HL projectiles which had been standardized for usage in the long barreled Kampfwagenkanone KwK 40 main battle tank-mounted guns. In addition there was an APCR shot for the PaK 40, a munition which eventually became very scarce.
The main differences amongst the rounds fired by 75 mm German guns were in the length and shape of the cartridge cases for the PaK 40. The 7.5 cm KwK (tank) fixed cartridge case is twice the length of the 7.5 cm KwK 37
7.5 cm KwK 37
The 7.5 cm KwK 37 L/24 was a German 75 mm tank gun used during World War II, primarily as the chief weapon of the Panzer IV tank....
(short barrelled 75 mm), and the 7.5 cm PaK 40 cartridge is a third longer than the 7.5 cm KwK 40.
The longer cartridge case allowed a larger charge to be used and a higher velocity for the Armour Piercing Capped Ballistic Cap
APCBC
The armour-piercing capped ballistic cap is a type of armor-piercing shell introduced in the 1930s.-Development:The APCBC munition type was an evolutionary development of the early war armour-piercing capped shell, itself an evolution of the more basic AP and APHE shell types...
round to be achieved. The muzzle velocity was about 790 m/s (2,591.9 ft/s) as opposed to 750 m/s (2,460.6 ft/s) for the KwK 40 L/43. This velocity was available for about one year after the weapon's introduction. Around the same time, the Panzer IV
Panzer IV
The Panzerkampfwagen IV , commonly known as the Panzer IV, was a medium tank developed in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and used extensively during the Second World War. Its ordnance inventory designation was Sd.Kfz...
s 7.5 cm KwK 40
7.5 cm KwK 40
The 7.5 cm KwK 40 was a German 7.5 cm Second World War era vehicle mounted gun, used as the primary anti-tank weapon of the German medium tank the SdKfz.161 Panzerkampfwagen IV and the SdKfz.142 Sturmgeschütz III assault guns ...
L/43 gun and the nearly identical Sturmkanone (StuK) 40 L/43 began to be upgraded with barrels that were 48 caliber
Caliber (artillery)
In artillery, caliber or calibredifference in British English and American English spelling is the internal diameter of a gun barrel, or by extension a relative measure of the length....
s long, or L/48, which remained the standard for them until the end of the war.
In the field, an alarming number of L/48 cartridge cases carrying the hotter charge failed to be ejected properly from the weapon's semi-automatic breech, even on the first shot (in vehicles). Rather than re-engineer the case, German Ordnance reduced the charge loading until the problem went away. The new charge brought the muzzle velocity down to 750 m/s, or about 10 m/s higher than the original L/43 version of the weapon. Considering the average variability in large round velocities from a given gun, this is virtually negligible in effect. The first formal documentation of this decision appears on May 15, 1943 ("7.5cm Sturmkanone 40 Beschreibung") which details a side by side comparison of the L/43 and the L/48 weapons. The synopsis provided indicates very little difference in the guns, meaning the upgrade had little if any benefit.
All further official presentations of the KwK 40 L/48 ( "Oberkommando des Heeres, Durchschlagsleistungen panzerbrechender Waffen") indicate a muzzle velocity of 750 m/s for the gun. As for the PaK 40, the desire for commonality again appears to have prevailed since the APCBC charge was reduced to 750 m/s, even though case ejection failures apparently were never a problem in the PaK version of the gun.
For reasons which seem to be lost to history, at least some 75 mm APCBC cartridges appear to have received a charge which produced a muzzle velocity of about 770 m/s (2,526.2 ft/s). The first documented firing by the U.S. of a PaK 40 recorded an average muzzle velocity of 776 m/s for its nine most instrumented firings. Probably because of these results, period intelligence publications ("Handbook on German Military Forces") gave ~770 m/s as the PaK 40 APCBC muzzle velocity, although post war pubs corrected this (Department of the Army Pamphlet No. 30-4-4, "Foreign Military Weapons and Equipment (U) Vol. 1 Artillery (U) dated August of 1955-this document was originally classified).
In addition, German sources are contradictory in that the Official Firing Table document for the 75 mm KwK 40, StuK 40, and the PaK 40 dated October, 1943 cites 770 m/s on one of the APCBC tables therein, showing some confusion. ("Schusstafel fur die 7.5cm Kampfwagenkanone 40").
General characteristics
- Caliber: 75 mm L/46
- Rifling: 32 Grooves, right-hand increasing twist, 1/24 to 1/18.
- Length with the carriage: 6.2 metres (20.3 ft)
- Length: 3.45 metres (11.3 ft)
- Width: 2 metres (6.6 ft)
- Height: 1.25 metres (4.1 ft)
- Weight (combat ready): 1425 kilograms (3,142 lb)
- Traverse: 65°
- Elevation: -5° to + 22°
- Rate of fire: 14 rounds per minute
- Muzzle velocity:
- 933 metres per second (3,061 ft/s) (Tungsten cored round)
- 792 metres per second (2,598 ft/s) (Standard armour piercing)
- 550 metres per second (1,804 ft/s) (HE)
- Engagement range: 1800 metres (5,906 ft)
- Indirect range: 7678 metres (25,190 ft) m (HE shell)
- Projectile weight: 3.18 kilograms (7 lb) to 6.8 kilograms (15 lb)
- Armor penetration (at 90 degrees) at 500 metres (1,640 ft):
- 132 millimetres (5 in) (Standard armour piercing)
- 154 millimetres (6 in) (Tungsten cored round)