Quote:
Originally Posted by Pibwl
Quote:
Originally Posted by Griefbringer
That said, many of the tank designs from Japan, Italy, Poland and France were designed less with tank combat in mind, being armed with lower velocity guns.
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Well, as for Poland, the only produced tank (not counting tankettes) received a state-of-art AT 37mm Bofors. Other designs also were to be armed with newer AT guns. Even the tankettes started to be fitted with 20 mm gun before the war. |
I would say that by 1939 pretty much all major countries (and many smaller ones) had realized that a tank should be able to destroy other tanks, except possibly Japan. For Japanese the Khalkhyn Gol battles seem to have been the wakeup call (in many ways actually, but that's outside the scope of this discussion).
Some countries, most notably France had large numbers of tanks designed in the early and mid-1930, which did not have high velocity guns, but at least the French did their best to upgrade those with new AP ammunition. Plans called for upgrading the guns as well, but they run out of time.
As for Italy; they managed to field only one new tank design* by June 1940 (the M11/39), which in fact did have a sort of high velocity gun (actually more like medium velocity), even if it was very poorly placed in the vehicle. They also realized that the design was obsolescent and production was switched to the more modern M13/40 as soon as possible.
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The previous Italian tank design (not including tankettes) was the FIAT 3000B (later L5/30), which was and upgraded FIAT 3000 (L5/21) designed in 1929. The FIAT 3000 in turn was originally an upgraded FT-17. Some FIAT 3000B tanks were in fact armed with the 37mm L/40 Vickers-Terni gun (as in the M11/39), although the main motivation at that stage seems to have been destroying enemy strong points like machine gun nests and the like. Nevertheless, AP ammunition existed for that gun from the beginning.