The Soviet managed to have their 76mm Zis 3 field gun only 1.1 ton, and their huge 100mm anti tank at 3.6 ton!
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The Soviet managed to have their 76mm Zis 3 field gun only 1.1 ton, and their huge 100mm anti tank at 3.6 ton!
Strictly speaking it was classified as field gun and used in corps level artillery. Sure it was used for AT but its just too damn heavy for that.
Given that the 100mm and 17-pdr seem to have had similar performance, this wouldn't seem surprising.
The 17-pdr however must be put within the context (as with everything the Western Allies used) of an army which had the ability to fully motorize its support weapons. Something weighing 3 tons is a much bigger problem for an army reliant on horses and manpower than it is on trucks, or indeed, on simply sticking the thing in a TD.
The barrel is always the lightest part of a 3 main parts of a gun. The breech is usually the heaviest 'mandatory' element. The middle element is usually the body and mounting points at the base of the barrel, which the breech is affixed to.
Then you get the really heavy stuff:
A gun carriage (if needed - substittute mantlet and turret mounting equipment for a tank gun)
Recoil dampening springs or other means of dampening recoil (if fitted - more or less mandatory for a tank)
gyroscopic stabilization (if the gun is mounted on something that can potentially move in between firing rounds- mandatory for all modern tanks, fitted to some degree on most WWII tanks)
aiming and training mechanisms (if the gun can't be handled manually, or if it's too heavy for this to be done by hand on all but the smallest and lightest tank guns)
Each of these 4 elements required to make a gun effective can individually outweigh the gun itself, so it's easy to take 'a gun' and double, triple, or quadruple it's weight to make it functional for a specific platform.
AFAIK ZiS-3* is a gun more akin to Sherman's 75mm M3 which weighted 893 pounds to compare with the tank gun weights I gave on last page (but less than half as massive as 17 pounder, for one). ATG of that power for bit over a ton does not seem particularly unusual.
*ZiZ-3 fires slightly thicker ~5% lighter projectile from bit longer barrel at ~6% more muzzle velocity.
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Yes Zis 3 innovative is the lighter carriage. Now I realize the carriage can be a big improvement for artillery too!
It was a field gun but used mostly in tank units to double as anti tank gun. For long range and heavy artillery the infantry has other guns that are much more powerful!
Absolutely. The invention of recoil mechanisms to keep the carriage from moving was THE key to accurate and fad firing artillery and a very difficult problem to solve too. Without it, making the gun itself accurate or easy to point is almost worthless - after the first shot you have too put the gun back in position anyway. And if it’s going to take you a minute to reposition the gun between each shot there is no benefit to being able to load and shoot it quickly either. The German application of these technologies to large field guns effectively won them the Franco Prussian war, in spite of the French having the advantage in nearly every other field of technology.
Yeah, but we are talking about 20-25% reduction in weight compared to similarly powered field guns from '30s (e.g. Japanese Type 90). Not 65% reduction in weight compared British 17pdr which was an entirely different kind of beast, more akin to Soviet 100mm gun in anti-tank performance as Doombunny noted.
I think you're incorrect about the Franco-Prussian War here. The German artillery was equipped with breech loaders, but as of yet they were not equipped with recoil systems. That was a later innovation and one which turns the artillery into the truly monstrous killing machine it was in the First World War. As of 1870 the Prussians still had the advantage, but it was the advantage of being able to breech load after respositioning the gun for recoil rather than simply blazing away.
Could be - that was off the top of my head.
Yep - totally wrong. I was thinking that artillery recoil systems were introduced in the Franco-Prussian war, when in fact that was a late 19th century development, particularly with the 'French 75mm gun' of 1897, which was one of the first really practical field guns which combined breech loading with an effective recoil dampening system, to allow it to fire accurately as fast as it could be loaded. You are correct - the Prussian advantage in 1871 was indeed breech loading heavy guns. Added to this were developments in propellants and aiming making long range indirect fire possible, granting the Prussians tremendous advantages in siege operations.
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IIRC, French artillery mostly consisted of rebored bronze pieces. Guns like this were tried in ACW decade earlier but ditched when possible as they did not keep the rifling well. That sounds dated for 1870 on any scale. I don't think that breech loading in this period, without recoil systems and with dirty burning propellant (meaning the field guns needed to be repositioned and often cleaned after firing) was large advantage in itself. And in similar vein shipborne artillery was restricted by rate of ammo supply for the large guns.
One has to understand, of course, that to retrofit an entire army with a new kind of equipment means re-tooling the factories that made the old system, slowly phasing out production of the previous equipment, re-managing logistics, and so on. It may have been a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rather than try to implement disputed or uncalled for equipment.
Dont be such a smartass. German AT guns grew bigger and biggger and more and more impractical. You could have introduced such a system instead of a batshit crazy 12,8 cm pak or even the 8,8 pak.
The point here is that it can be moved around by its crew without towing it to a vehicle which is an incredible usefull trait for ATguns. This thing weights less than half of the Pak 40.
Sorry, I didn't mean to come off as condescending. And it was more pointed at the dispute between the 6pdr/17pdr/77mm debate going on. I actually agree with you on the usage of simpler but potent light AT over huge cannons, it would have saved them an immense amount of work and trouble.
Doing the 88 was sensible if only because the gun, and it’s ammo were already widespread. Putting it on a different mounting (sometimes and using it for another purpose was a rational decision. The 128 mm antitank gun probably wasn’t. It was a rushed decision based on the assumption that bigger is better.
Of note though the Germans weren’t the only ones who put together massive antitank guns. The Russians went up to 122 mm even faster than the Germans did. BUT: the Russians realized this was a stopgap measure. They rather swiftly replaced them with a purpose designed 100 mm gun which was used on tracked antitank destroyers, or as towed antitank guns. In this role, they were incredibly useful as anti- tank guns and as fast moving hard hitting direct fire support. The Russian 100 mm antitank guns developed near the end of WWII stayed in frontline service until the 1980’s and still serve in armies worldwide. The 122 mm guns stayed in service but in heavy tanks only where their size and weight were maneagable.
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The 122 mm was also always intended as a breakthrough gun - that is to say its primary job was engaging and destroying fortifications and hardpoints. The fact that it was reasonable as an AT gun (largely due to the sheer mass of its shell) was mostly a bonus. Whilst the Soviets did experiment with 100mm guns on tanks they made the sensible decision that a brakthrough tank like the IS-2 needed a breakthorugh gun and generally only mounted the 100mm gun on tank destroyers.