Early War Penetration of 37mm Pak

[rexford]

The John Salt site presents excerpts from a 1938 German report where 37mm ATG penetration is given as (angles revised from German to American WW II systems, where Germans treat vertical as 90 degrees and Americans as 0 degrees):

650 yards

33mm against vertical plate

26mm against 30 degrees from vertical

765 yards

14mm against 45 degrees from vertical

1090 yards

22mm against 30 degrees from vertical

If the 37mm Pak penetrated 33mm vertical plate at 650 yards, the 100m penetration would be around 40mm.

The above data is consistent with some reports that 37mm Pak AP had troubles against French tanks during 1940 combat and against Russian T34.

If the 33mm plate were high hardness plate at about 450 Brinell Hardness, the British National Physical Laboratory equation predicts that a lower thickness of 300 Brinell plate would be penetrated.

However, there is a chance that the 37mm AP penetration data is against 450 Brinell Hardness plate since the tankbusche performance is given against 170 kg/mm squared tensile strength plate and the plate thickness is 35mm in one case.

Unless the 33mm plate were face-hardened or high hardness, the 1938 data suggests that early war 37mm AP ammo may have been inferior to the projectiles used for much of the published penetration data for German 37mm AP.

The above data for 1938 performance of 37mm AP was taken from report WO 190/706 presented on site at http://salts.britwar.co.uk/

Browse documents

WW II Weapon Penetration Tables

WO 190/706

[ May 25, 2003, 10:42 PM: Message edited by: rexford ]