Firefly's 76mm 17pdr gun just as effective as tiger's 88 mm?

[Enkpitt]

A firefly could knock out a Tiger at nearly the same range as a Tiger could knock out a firefly despite having thinner armour so basically the infamous 88 was in fact a less powerful gun than the 76mm 17pdr

Is this true?

although was probably due to APDS rounds.

Is this also true?

[Tony Williams]

Quite possibly. The penetration of the 17 pdr APDS was marginally better even than that of the 88mm L/71 in the Tiger II, and much better than the 88mm L/56 of the Tiger I.

I am away from my sources at the moment, but I believe that even firing APCBC the 17 pdr was a better penetrator than the 88mm L/56.

However, penetration isn't everything; the APDS shot was less accurate, and often did less damage when it did penetrate.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion
forum

[Darrin]

Quite possibly. The penetration of the 17 pdr APDS was marginally better even than that of the 88mm L/71 in the Tiger II, and much better than the 88mm L/56 of the Tiger I.

I am away from my sources at the moment, but I believe that even firing APCBC the 17 pdr was a better penetrator than the 88mm L/56.

However, penetration isn't everything; the APDS shot was less accurate, and often did less damage when it did penetrate.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion
forum

Plus the tiger I front was much more weak then the tiger II front. The tiger I front was basically 100mm of verticle arm. The tiger II front was thicker and much better sloped and was almost immune to pen.

The firefly 17 lb gun was a 76mm gun but it had much better pen than the US 76mm and 3" guns. The gun was fitted on the US 75mm shermans. The shermans had various thickness and slopes for the glasic arm. They also had various arm quality flaws in them as well. The worst actual vertical arm equiv res for the sherman glacis would be 90 mm. The best would be over 115mm equiv res.

The shorter tiger I 88 mm gun could pen out beyond 3000m with APCBC assuming no lateral angles. The 17lb gun could pen the tiger I out to the same range using the same type of ammo. With the APDS round the 17lb could easily out pen tha tiger I. Thier were problems with this round when it was first introduced at normandy it was at least inaccurte and may have suffered from reduced pen. These were manufacture problems that were dealt with by the fall.

The problem with this is the tiger Is stopped cons by the summer and it was really the tiger II the firefly primarly fought and against its improved guns and arm I don't think it had an adv. Even against the tiger I the adv onlly happened when using the APDS round which was during the summer problematic. In reality by the time the problems with this round were solved the the tiger Is had already began to vanish.

Of coure if we are talking aboiut side arm thickness there is no comparison bettween the shermans and tigers. The tiger I or II both win hands down in this area that is why they weighed around 60 tons.

[Lkefct]

In terms of comparing guns, I usually make the follwoing associations (for right or wrong) and genrealizations in terms of their relatively capacities against armour. Are these even in the right ballpark?

Russian 76mm L51, German 75 mm L48, US 3"/76mm
Russian 85mm gun on SU and t-34/85's
German 75 mm L70, 17 pdr, German 88 mm L56, US 90 mm
German 88m L71, 128mm L55, Russian 100mm, and Rusian 130mm

[admfisher]

The 17 pdr was an amazing gun, probably the best AT gun the allies had, this includes the Russians.
With the APDS rounds the gun had better performance than the 88 L56 but not the L/71.

One must consider that the APDS were not widely availble and so the 17 pdr used mostly standard AP rounds. When this is gun is compared to the 88 L71 firing the standard Ap round the 88 came out on top.

Grant

[KalaVelka]

17 pdr used mostly standard AP rounds. When this is gun is compared to the 88 L71 firing the standard Ap round the 88 came out on top.

Amen.

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

Lkefct
The 7,5 cm Pak 39 L/48 had about the same penetration ability as the Russian 85 mm. The Russian 76.2 mm. was inferior to both.

Christian

[Tony Williams]

Figures I have for the 17 pdr for penetration at 1,000 yards 30 degrees are: APCBC = 118 mm, APDS = 170 mm

For the 88mm L/56 APCBC = 101 mm

For the 88mm L/71 APCBC = 167mm

APDS was available from mid-1944, but because it did less damage when it penetrated, the first preference was always to use APCBC, switching to APDS for shooting at longer ranges or against tougher targets.

Of course, an 88mm L/71 with APDS would have been best of all, but the Germans were unable to use such ammunition due to the shortage of tungsten for the AP cores, so APDS was a clear advantage held by the British.

Tony Williams

[Johan Björklund]

If the firefly was better than the 88, how come the allied lost three times as many tanks when engaging german tanks in battle?
The truth is that british/canadian and americans suffered badly due to lack of radiocommunication between units and poor leadership (not guts or moral mind you)in battle.
The german panzerunits suffered more from allied airattacks than ground combat.It was due to the fact that the allied could replace their losses that they pushed the germans backwords.
Nor did the allied have any panzeraces like Michael Wittman.

[domi]

Just to add to this the 17pdr had a noticable disadvantage.

In its early days it had problems with HE rounds, someone else can tell you the exact problem but the simple fact is tanks armed with the 17 pdr did not have HE capability as well as AP. (I believe the problem was sorted eventually)

For this reason as well as other logistacal problems 17pdrs rarely ever made up more than a 1/3 of any unit.

HE for anyone who doesnt know is High explosive and it should be noted that AP rounds are almost useless against such things as soldiers,buildings,bunkers etc.

Oh one other thing on a sherman a 17pdr looks massive and so sticks out like a sore thumb its widely reported that german tankers would allways go for a "firefly" first in a choice of targets as clearly it would be the most dangerous opponent.

[admfisher]

Ok here are a couple of things that need to straightened out.

The Fire Fly was a good tank killer but there was only a few of them that were only with the British on D day.

The Canadian Army did not get Fire Fly's till much later. The Polish had them before the Canadian did.

In a fight against the Pz IV the standard allied tanks could kill them on D Day. The Panther and Tigers were another story they were a generation ahead of the other tanks fielded.

The problem of the long gun barrel led to many good paint jobs to try and hide it but the Germans still managed to pick them out usually, when it comes to the gun itself it had to be mounted with the breech block facing the wrong way I believe.
The other problem that is mentioned already is the lack of a HE round till later.

What is it we end up with when we talk of the Fire Fly? Not bad tank, to lightly armored a fine gun, once the full range of ammo was available. But still not an equal to the Panther!

Grant

By the way we have to 17 pdr's AT guns on display around me and they are something when you look at them. They seem to radiate the power they possessed.

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

Tony, it's not in my place to lecture you about ammunition types, but as far as I know, the Germans didn't have any APDS at all, only APCR/HVAP (even though there isn't really much difference, other than the time the high-density core is seperated from the shell).

Christian

[Tony Williams]

Just to add to this the 17pdr had a noticable disadvantage.

In its early days it had problems with HE rounds, someone else can tell you the exact problem but the simple fact is tanks armed with the 17 pdr did not have HE capability as well as AP. (I believe the problem was sorted eventually)

The problem was that the very high pressures generated by the high-velocity cartridge meant that the shell walls had to be strong and thick, so there wasn't as much room for HE as in the lower-velocity 75mm shells. The problem was solved by downloading the HE ammo so that it was fired at lower velocity.

Tony Williams

[Tony Williams]

Tony, it's not in my place to lecture you about ammunition types, but as far as I know, the Germans didn't have any APDS at all, only APCR/HVAP (even though there isn't really much difference, other than the time the high-density core is seperated from the shell).

Actually they did play with discarding sabot ammo, but didn't take it any further presumably because of the tungsten shortage. And while they did develop APCR, its use was curtailed for the same reason - the little they had was reserved for smaller calibres which were useless without it. So the 88mm L/71 never got any anyway.

Tony Williams

[Darrin]

The 17lb gun was very good but so was the US 90mm gun which first appearded on the M36 TD. Delayed and maybe in less quanity than the 17lb firfly perhaps but they had it. The M36 had less arm protection then the sherman firefly.

The firefly although present in limited numbers on Dday by the end of the war half of all shermans mounted the 17lb.

While the disappearence of the Tiger I the tigerII and panther were both almost impertable all guns and ammo. This made the firefly sherman fitted with the 17 lb guns less important and sig. The 76 mm shermans and TDs could easily pierce the side armour of the tigers and panthers. The 17 lb still pocessed a sig adv here as well. But the 76mm gun could easily pen the sides of these vehicles esp at most normal combat ranges and this was good enough.