PaK 97/38

[cbo]

Originally Posted by redcoat2

The Polish book Wydawnictwo Militaria 258: Panzerabwehr Artillerie (publ. 2006) features a table that shows ammunition production for German anti-tank guns during WW2 – including the Pak 97/38:



The ‘HL’ refers to HEAT. ‘SpGr’ is HE. I think the ‘PzGr 40’ is AP.¹.

PzGr 40 usually means a subcaliber HVAP-type round, which sounds rather odd for this weapon - nor have I ever read anything about subcaliber ammunition being used with this gun.
There was a PzGr 40 W (Weicheisen) round, which was a full caliber AP round made of soft steel and had quite low penetration but did a lot of damage due to spalling and plugging. May have made a bit more sense for this gun, but I have never seen any refences to that either.

Also, the fact that some 400.000 were made in 1944, when few, if any PzGr 40 were made due to tungsten shortages also suggest that there is something fishy with those figures.

I doubt whether the Germans palmed off all of their AP rounds to their allies. The captured technical data sheet I posted earlier shows that they were using them in the Summer of 1944.

I wouldn't put too much faith in those "technical sheets" - they were put together by the German ministry of armaments in an attempt at making a complete catalogue of German weaponry in 1944 and it also lists obsolete stuff and ammunition and weapons that were only available in small numbers.
These sheets also contain their share of errors.

I got the complete catalogue as published by the German Waffen-Journal many years ago.

cbo