The great 88

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

Hmmm, interresting. Well, ALMOST always, then...

Christian

[Erik E]

Hmmm, interresting

Yeah! I`m just glad they left us something to research

EE

[Erich]

Your both right about not having much out there on the ammo. Guess I was thinking of the Flak 37 88mm. I knew there was something between the Flak 36 and the 41 guns.......I still search......

E

[gabriel pagliarani]

Sorry Sirs,
but talking about penetration is impossible to avoid the argument MASS of the bullet. The kinetik energy give us the measure of penetration and KINETIK ENERGY OF THE BULLET= 1/2*SPEED*SPEED*MASS. So the speed of the bullet has an importance SQUARED respect with mass but the mass has always its own importance. So, the comparison of guns without the comparison of ammos is a non sense. Probably the wonderful Flak 36 was the best AT gun because used the best massive AT ammo. Simply physics. What about ammos? I don'know the argument.

[Aufklarung]

Also, the Paris Cannon from WWI had the highest muzzle velocity of ANY gun EVER produced: 2000 m/s Christian

That may have held true for a time but these days 2000m/s is slow. I have fired 105mm L7 SABOT which does about 2400m/s and also have many 25mm Bushmaster Sabot rounds fired and they go at about 2600m/s.

One could fire a soft banana at that velocity and do damage

A

[Erik E]

We could probably discuss which gun was best, untill end of days.......
I think the various guns were best in their own way in different situations.
It would be wrong to "pick the best" out of the technical datas....

How about this example:

The typical anti-tank shell for the 8,8 Flak/36 would have these datas:

shell weight:9,5Kg
Muzzle velocity:820M/s
penetration: 105mm at 1000M

Compared to 12,8CM Pak:

Shell weight:28,3 Kg
Muzzle velocity: 1000M/s
Penetration: 230mm at 1000M

EE

[gabriel pagliarani]

Surely! Also a soft banana has a mass. I don't know what evil could be a SABOT but at 2600m/sec 1kg BANANA exerts 6760000 Joules. The equivalent of a light truck at 100km/h weighing 8761 Kg. If you launch 10kg BANANAS the equivalent is a train 87 tons at 100 km/hour. If the banana has been hardened you have a big big big problem. What a difference...I am not joking about.

[Erich]

Found some interesting stats on the 88 and 128 mm Flak pieces so hopefully by Monday I will post this.....

E

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

Also, the Paris Cannon from WWI had the highest muzzle velocity of ANY gun EVER produced: 2000 m/s Christian

That may have held true for a time but these days 2000m/s is slow. I have fired 105mm L7 SABOT which does about 2400m/s and also have many 25mm Bushmaster Sabot rounds fired and they go at about 2600m/s.

One could fire a soft banana at that velocity and do damage

A

Hmmm, I guess my source is old then. It's a book about artillery from 2001, which list a lot of different AT, AA etc. guns as well. I was of course not including rocket ammunition

You're right, 2600m/s is extremely fast - at this speed, you could go around earth in 4 hours... Also, the damaga inflictedby the impact is far greater than any explotion.

The typical anti-tank shell for the 8,8 Flak/36 would have these datas:

shell weight:9,5Kg
Muzzle velocity:820M/s
penetration: 105mm at 1000M

Compared to 12,8CM Pak:

Shell weight:28,3 Kg
Muzzle velocity: 1000M/s
Penetration: 230mm at 1000M

Where did you get those stats? You can find my table with all the common German guns here: http://www.panzerworld.net/APT.htm . This lists the 12.8cm Pa.K. 80 considerably lower...

You can also see the 8.8cm Pa.K. 43 has the greatest penetration power, being 230mm at 100m. This is a lot!

Christian

[Darrin]

I get similar figures for the 88L71 gun but slightly better ones for the 128L55 using APCBC ammo. 230mm at 100m and 265 mm at 100m according to WWII Ballistics. Apparently a steel shell in WWII going much over 1000m/s would fuse to steel armour drastically reducing pen. They had to use tungsten back then for APCR rounds and the first sabots. The ger were experimenting with uranium in place of tungstan at the end of the war. Nowadays all the sabot rounds use uranium.

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

Where did you get your numbers?

Christian

[Aufklarung]

Nowadays all the sabot rounds use uranium.

Sorry, not true. Most countries these days cannot afford Depleted Uranium Sabot rounds. That and the fact it is proven to be dangerous to friend and foe alike. My Leopard fires tungsten darts as Sabot. Trust me on this as we just finished a firing program. Even the 25mm Bushmaster we use fires Tungsten sabot and not DU. To answer another query on this post; Sabot has no explosive, just a dense metal moving fast. The penetration comes from the Kinetic energy imparted on the round. 105mm in the barrel and when the Sabots fall away the dart is only 35mm! 25mm in the barrel and then a 10mm dart!

reference WW2 german tanks, I get alot from "German AFVs 1926-45" by Dr FM von Senger und Etterlin,1969. and
German Tank and Anti-tank by EJ Hoffschmodt and WH Tantum IV. 1968.

What are your opinions on the data in these books. I find them very complete as far as german makes and models. The graphs and charts for production and stats have some gaps and differ slightly from what is posted elsewhere but not by much. Can I trust these books?
Regards
A

[gabriel pagliarani]

"You're right, 2600m/s is extremely fast - at this speed, you could go around earth in 4 hours..". plus 16 minutes and 24 secs!..
Dear gentlemen please have to be confident about numbers! Comparing them you could be sure about your opinions. The muzzle velocity of 2600m/sec, if Mach speed in air at ground level is about 1220-1250 m/sec means Mach 2.0-2.2. Faster, but not as faster as you had to think. Equator is about 40000 km or 40 millions meters. A bullet never dragged by air friction flying in any direction parallel to ground at low level theorically needs 15384 secs or 4h 16m 24sec to return back. About numbers, inmy previous"banana" post I omitted to divide by 2 the counts of energy and the weights of light truck and train must be halved respect those written.. and Iam a liar! But no one noticed my own fault..otherways the ratio between a truck and a train is the same existing between half-truck and half-train. The meaning of this rambling speech is that ballistics are always a branch of physics. So a gun cannot be "better" than others but "most effective" than others in certain conditions. Exactly as per rifles, carbines or pistols. If you want to compare guns, try to avoid the endless querelle about best rifles in other topics of this forum. For example no one spoke about "straight tightened shooting capability" for any weapon.(not mortars!) A gun able to break thru any armour but having 2000 mt of tight traiectory could be rather insufficient to let crew survival on Russian front, where the horizon on steppen lasts 20 Km. But the same gun could be perfect on italian or bosniac front where there are only 1500 mt of free air between 2 any ground positions. The same concept extended for rifles, carbines ect.ect. obviously. I am not able to discriminate between quality of the gun and quality of ammo, now.

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

Sorry about the missing minutes, it was just an approximate number

The 8.8cm Pa.K. 43 L/71 had an effective range of 20 kilometres.

You can find accuracy tables for the guns here: http://www.panzerworld.net/Cannons.htm

Christian

[Zygmunt]

For so long now, I had drifted along with no ambition, no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Now that I have read this thread, it is all clear. I was put on this Earth to build an artillery piece which can propell a Banana to more than 2,000 Metres/Second...

Aufklarung, your 35mm discarding-sabots, I agree that lots of countries don't use DU for reasons of economy, but I'm curious, is your tungsten pure, or alloyed? Is it Tungsten carbide? Not that pure tungsten seems soft to me or anything, but people are always looking for the last few percentage points of performance. Is the tip made of the same metal, or does it have a hardened cap of some nature?

If I recall correctly, L7 105mm is rifled, but do fin-stabilised rounds for smoothbores have fins which are supposed to break off during penetration, or are they intended to remain intact throughout?