Yoozername wrote:The Germans used bolt action rifles through the war also, why? because they had them. And things being the way they are, you go to war and production with what you got.
Except the Germans continued to manufacture and improve on the infantry guns throughout the war and never seemed to lose a preference for them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.5_cm_In ... C3%BCtz_37
Yoozername wrote:
I think this is turning into another one of your threads that does not follow your own OP.
Threads and discussions evolve, if you think I'm the only poster that has threads like that, you clearly aren't paying attention. Are you going to turn this into a thread where you're difficult and start descending into personal attacks?
Yoozername wrote:
Why didn't the Germans make 88mm infantry guns? Answer... why would they? Why 88mm if it does not share at least a projectile with the FlaK or other 88mm weapons? Or 105mm for that matter? As I said before, the 75mm IG fired a very light 12 pound shell at low velocity.
Higher HE content and a weapon that is lighter than a 150mm infantry gun that is still useful for bunker busting, which the 75mm version was not.
Why 88 if it doesn't work with any other 88 shell? You do know that none of the other infantry guns of any caliber shared compatible shells with the other guns of their caliber, right? You make it an 88 or 105 because you already have barrel boring equipment of that caliber, which is why the StG 44/45 used the 7.92 caliber rather than move to a smaller, lighter more aerodynamic caliber with better section density despite research into small arms pre-war proving that it was much more efficient. It was just simply cheaper to make a gun of an existing caliber with existing equipment than having to develop a brand new caliber and boring equipment for it.
Yoozername wrote:
It's accuracy was not very good either. It was a prewar design that fit into a prewar doctrine and most nations, including the Soviets that you put links to, dropped the whole concept due to lack of range, vulnerability, inability to be multi-purpose, inaccuracy and just being obsolete.
Which gets to my question of why the Germans continued to invest so much in them despite those drawbacks; apparently they found them useful enough to continue to make thousands of them throughout the war and continually upgrade them to keep them relevant to battlefield needs. I'd say they probably did that because they couldn't field nearly as many tanks and SP artillery guns as the Allies could; the Soviets seem to have just replaced infantry guns with tanks and SP weapons, like the SU-76.
Yoozername wrote:
The ZIS-3 served in light artillery role. It had a 13 Km range, greater than the 122mm howitzer M1938 (M-30). It fired a larger projectile than the German 75mm IG if you want to compare them. Compare that to many other weapons also. The Soviet infantry divisions were smaller compared to other nations. Generally, after 1942, the Soviet infantry corp had light (76mm), medium (122mm) and heavy (152mm). The ZIS-3 had a high rate of fire and a useful antitank capability. Not every German tank was a Tiger II...
It fired a shell with much less high explosives, though the round was heavier (it had to be given the speeds at which it was fired). So for that range and weight it had very limited HE content; that was exactly the reason the Germans abandoned the 75mm field gun in WW1 and switched to 105/150mm howitzers for division weapons. Later they tried to use PAK40s in the indirect role with poor results.
The Zis-3 was fine against Panzer IIs/IIIs/38ts, but had some issues penetrating uparmored Panzer IVs except at closer ranges. There is a reason the Soviets phased them out during the war for heavier field guns:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/85_mm_divisional_gun_D-44
The 85-mm divisional gun D-44 (Russian: 85-мм дивизионная пушка Д-44) was a Soviet divisional 85-mm calibre field artillery gun used in the last action of World War II. It was designed as the replacement for the 76 mm divisional gun M1942 (ZiS-3).
Yoozername wrote:
Can't use Zis-3 ammo in those.
Ugh, no that was not the point. The many thousands of ZIS-3 could share ammunition with the many thousands of T-34/76 and SU-76 and other Soviet 76mm weapons lik the F-22 and USV.
No, actually the F-22 used different ammo than the Zis-3 and used different ammo than the tank 76mm guns. The actual projectile was similar, the propellant case was different as they were different guns. Just like the PAK40 and German tank guns.
But that is missing the point, the Zis-3 was a division level artillery piece that could double as an AT gun, it was not a regimental artillery piece like an infantry gun; they filled different roles and with the Soviets phasing out their infantry guns, they lost that capability for first support beyond mortars below the division level. Given that their infantry divisions were half the size of the German ones, that wasn't an issue for their doctrine, but meant that a German division generally had as much firepower as a Soviet infantry corps.
Yoozername wrote:
So, you really have no point.
No, you just don't want to see the point. Or can't see it for some reason.