A little bit German artillery and anti-tank defence history

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The German army had a serious anti-tank defence problem back in 1940-1945. It's today possible to guess the ideal mix of material and organisations* to cope with their anti-tank problem, but they didn't do a good job back then.

The problem surfaced during the short campaign in France 1940 for the first time. Both French Char B-1bis and British Mathilda tanks had thick enough armour plates to withstand the German standard AT guns (3,7 cm Pak 36; a commercially very successful and often-copied model that had nevertheless outlived its usefulness before the war. The gun was good in comparison to foreign counterparts, but not good enough by far).

The later camapaign in Russia confirmed the problem when the Russian T-34 and KV-1 tanks proved to be too well-protected as well. The German standard AT gun was performing well only against the huge inventory of old and new Russian light tanks (T-26, BT-5 & BT-7, T-60, T-70).

The roots of the problem date back by many years.

Tanks weren't "shell-proof", but only "bullet-proof" back in the 20's. New tank designs began to reach good speeds (30 km/h) only at around 1930. The increased speed meant that normal artillery (field howitzers with muzzle velocities of about 500 m/s) was increasingly reduced in its ability to hit those new tanks at long ranges (a flight time of about 2.2 sec was later considered to be OK for AT purposes by NATO).

The first shell-proof (at least against frontal hits) tanks appeared in the mid-1930's and shell-proof tank frontal armour wasn't standard until about 1942.

So the 30's were a phase of rapid technological and conceptual change. The German dedicated motorised anti-tank units (Panzerjäger) were planned to be equipped with 3.7 cm guns - and this plan was carried out with bureaucratic momentum despite the growing obsolescence of the gun.

Critics of the German anti-tank effort in WW2 usually point at this failure; the failure to replace the 3.7 cm gun early with a 5 or 7.5 cm AT gun. (This failure is actually explainable by the pursuit of squeeze-bore technology guns. This technology was unusable in wartime because of its consumption of rare tungsten.)

The anti-tank effort wasn't only an effort of the Panzerjäger, though. The Soviets used their artillery in concentrations to break German armour attacks and the French had similar, initially promising efforts in the later phase of the 1940 campaign.

Why wasn't this possible for the German army?

Anti-tank fires require a rather high muzzle velocity. This improves the hit chance against moving targets at long range and it also gives the shell more kinetic energy. Cannons (lower maximum elevation, higher muzzle velocity and smaller calibre for same gun weight than howitzers) were therefore better suited for anti-tank defence than howitzers. Gun-howitzers (a mixture of both categories) were satisfactory until about early 1943.

Germany's light field artillery began to move from cannons in the 7.5-8.8 cm range to 10.5 cm howitzers even before the First World War, a few years after the quick-firing gun revolution. This trend towards heavier shells and higher angle of fire (and thus shell descent) had intensified during the war. 7.5 cm light field cannons were still in use during the Weimar Republic's Reichswehr time, but they finally dropped out of favour during the army build-up of the 1930's and were considered to be obsolete (although they were kept in service due to a generally inadequate production output.

There were good reasons for this from the artillery branch's point of view:

* The higher maximum elevation made howitzers more useful in forest terrain.

* The higher angle of fire and thus shell descent created a superior fragmentation pattern of the shell.

* Light field cannons had only small explosive effect per shell.

* Howitzers were able to penetrate overhead cover of field fortifications in direct hits.

* Artillery had to use indirect fire (without line-of-sight) most often for its own survivability, and howitzers were more suitable to this in general.

The howitzers retained shields and were thus easily capable of disposing enemy tanks back in WWI and up to the mid-30's. It seemed as if dropping the 7.5 cm light field cannon out of production in favour of more 10.5 cm light field howitzers was a smart move.

So it happened - the newest 7.5 cm light field cannon design - 7.5 cm WFK L/42 with a long barrel (unusually high muzzle velocity of 701 m/s and thus a good range of 13.500 m), a good max. elevation of 42° and a barely tolerable weight of 1625 kg wasn't put into production.

The 10,5 cm leFH 18 became instead the standard ordnance of the light artillery detachments of German artillery regiments.

The Russians introduced an even better light field cannon (76,2 mm Pushka obr. 1936g) with 1.350 kg deployed weight, 706 m/s, 13.6 km and an incredible 75° max. elevation in 1936. (German artillery desigers had a reputation to be a bit on the heavy side while Russians had the reputation of being a bit on the light side.)

This 7.62 cm gun was later captured in1 941 in great quantities and adopted by the German army as Pak 36(r) because it was one of the greatest anti-tank guns of the war.

The Russians later introduced a lighter (1120 kg deployed) gun with less max. elevation (37°) - the ZiS-3 gun. The most incredibly fact about this gun was the insane production quantity. It was also very popular (once captured) in the German army and was adopted as Fk 288(r). It was lighter than the German 7.5 cm Pak 40 of the time and almost as easy to handle in the field as the German 5 cm Pak 38.

The British had also an anti-tank problem in WW2, but this was concealed until 1942 by its fine standard field artillery piece, the 25 pdr (8.76 cm) gun-howitzer. Its muzzle velocity of about 532 m/s wasn't good, but it was still capable of being used in an emergency anti-tank role until early 1943.

Well, what had happened? Much of the German anti-tank defence problem of WW2 has its roots reaching back to the 1900's, before the invention of tanks. The artillery branch had optimised itself for its core role of indirect fires and not paid attention to the emerging threat of shell-proof armour. The German artillery was therefore not as effective in the German anti-tank effort of WW2 as it would have been necessary. Attempts to correct this (such as the use of captured guns and 7.5 cm anti-tank guns in German artillery units and the creation of assault gun detachments as part of the artillery branch) were signficant, but obviously not enough.

The German artillery branch failed to meet wartime expectations (in WW2) because it wasn't versatile enough due to its pursuit of maximum effectiveness in its core mission.

This didn't influence the early Bundeswehr much. The early Bundeswehr had to use foreign Western ordnance and didn't pay much attention to an anti-tank role for the artillery until the 1970's with the rise of dual purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) and after the war the "smart" SMArt155 guided AT munition for 155 mm howitzers.

Sven Ortmann

*: My take on this:

Panzerfaust for all troops, Panzerschreck at Platoon (or infantry in defence: Squad) level, enough AT bar mines, motorised 7.5cm AT guns in divisional Panzerjägerabteilung, one 7.5 cm field cannon leichte Abteilung in divisional artillery regiment, assault gun battalion (Sturmgeschützabteilung) with 7.5cm casemate gun AFVs (assault guns) for Army Corps and several of the same directly available to Army (2-4 Army Corps) Commander with a move from 7.5 to 8.8 cm calibre beginning in 1943.

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