historical questions

[coe]

1. Any accounts about the effectiveness of the

MP44 in combat (ok ok ignoring that Artillery caused most casualties)? e.g. personal combat reports etc.

2. the 88 was originally an AA gun so I can imagine that its available shells were originally all HE...if that is the case how was it discovered to be an effective AT gun without AP shells to initially try out? Was it that the HE shells were effective too? or were there experimental AP shells lying around for its first encounter with tanks?

3. whatever happend to the Luftwaffe 88mm gun battery at Cagny during Goodwood - as accounted by von Luck? did those troops ever get a medal?

C.

[JonS]

1. Yes.

2. Early tanks (~1937) sucked badly enough that a fast moving HE round would KO them.

3. Overun later in the day when the British infantry caught up to the tanks.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by coe:

2. the 88 was originally an AA gun so I can imagine that its available shells were originally all HE...if that is the case how was it discovered to be an effective AT gun without AP shells to initially try out? Was it that the HE shells were effective too? or were there experimental AP shells lying around for its first encounter with tanks?

What Jon said. Also, I do believe that by the Polish campaign, AP shot had begun production and were supplied in modest numbers to the troops. They had ample supplies by Fall Gelb.

Michael

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by coe:

1. Any accounts about the effectiveness of the

MP44 in combat (ok ok ignoring that Artillery caused most casualties)? e.g. personal combat reports etc.

There was a thread in the CMBB forum where some loon prophesied that widespread issue of the Stg44 would have changed the course of the entire war; good reading if you can find it.

[coe]

hmmm well granted that it might not have changed the course of the war, just accounts of the Stg44 as used in ground combat that's all.

As for Cagny - the battery was overrun as in the troops captured/killed or battery abandoned - did the battery ever get some supporting infantry?