German artillery pieces with low HE penetration
 

Doing some more delving into the German arsenal, I found a couple of artillery pieces that had HE penetration ratings that seemed slightly lower than usually seen for guns of given caliber. These were the following:

Weapon 036: 7.62cm FK288(r) - HE pen 1
Weapon 053: 7.62cm L41 F-34 - HE pen 1
Weapon 063: 8.76cm FK280(e) - HE pen 1
Weapon 069: 10cm K18 - HE pen 1
Weapon 070: 10cm leFH 30(t) - HE pen 2

Based on other similar weapons, I would have expected the first three weapons to have HE penetration of 2, and the last two weapons to have HE penetration of 3.

Re: German artillery pieces with low HE penetration
 

I've put this on the list to look at this winter but looking at the first example there is a descrepancy between the German FK288(r) and the Russian Zis 3 which I will need to investigate

Don

Re: German artillery pieces with low HE penetration
 

Checking the Soviet OOB, there is also a discrepancy for the second gun on the list (7.62cm L41 F-34, main weapon on T34), which has HE penetration of 2 on the Soviet OOB.

8.76cm FK280(e) also seems to be a German designation for the 25 pounder, which on the UK listing has a HE penetration rating of 2, so there is also a discrepancy with that.

As fpr those 10 cm weapons, I am not entirely sure what to compare them with. Were they original German designs, or did they come from Czech factories?

Re: German artillery pieces with low HE penetration
 

10cm seems to have been a popular Austro-Hungarian calibre.

See e.g http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoda_100_mm_Model_1916

Post Imperial breakup then they of course ended up with all the former constituent states and others, under umpty-five different designations for what was the same thing.

Cheers
Andy

Re: German artillery pieces with low HE penetration
 

Hmmm, for some reason I did not think about the possibility of Austro-Hungarian designs - makes sense. A bit embarrassing, considering that I have even spent a day visiting the impressive Austrian military museum in Vienna.

Taking a look at the OOBs, there certainly are a lot of 10 cm howitzers of various types in usage by different countries around the former Austro-Hungarian empire. This also means that the Germans could have ended up with captured 10 cm howitzers from a lot of sources (eg. Austria, Czech, Poland and Yugoslavia) - and a plenty of work for the ordnance officers trying to keep track of all of the different guns in the inventory.