WesWorld

The Panzer IIF

With the completion of Rheinmettall's work on the MK-101 for the Luftwaffe, a 30mm autocannon was now available for use on a version of the Panzer II. The Heer was not interested, currently, in putting more powerful anti-tank weapons on the Panzer II chassis, seeing the Panzer II (in it's tank form) as becoming a recon vehicle for the panzer divisions, supplementing the armored cars that would perform long distance recon missions. The 30mm autocannon would increase the vehicles punch while not encouraging commanders to engage targets that they should leave alone. The MK-101 was a heavy weapon for an aircraft gun, but on an armored vehicle, the weight was acceptable, and the 10-round magazines, while requiring frequent reloading, did allow the crew to choose between HE and AP projectiles.

The new Panzer IIF also benefited from the previous year's work on the Panzer II Arg and Panzer II Bel variants. Renk had developed a new transmission, too late for those vehicles, but it's design allowed the vehicle designers to install it and the 240 hp diesel engine from those vehicles into the 4.5m chassis used by the Heer. Combined with the wider tracks and road wheels from the variant vehicles, the more heavily armored turret, and additional belly armor requested by the Heer, the little tank was still able to maintain a weight of 10 metric tons.

In it's trials, one concern was noted: if the vehicle attempted a tight turn at high speeds (60+ km/h), there was a high likelihood of it shedding the slowed track.

It's the opposite approach to Britain which has gone from MGs to 2pdr guns for its light tanks and armoured cars to meet any future threat. Of course the 2pdr is limited these days (but has an HE option the OTL gun did not have) but will deal with any other armoured car or light tank and even some mediums if hit in the right places.

The new PzII is very interesting though and I'm sure Germany will bag fresh export orders.

There were two alternatives to the 30mm autocannon: the 37mm gun and the 42mm squeeze bore. The 37mm offers only mild advantages over the 30mm against hard targets (the main one being that the 37mm will do more damage inside, penetration is fairly similar), and it doesn't offer the ability to fire multiple shots without reloading. The 42mm squeeze bore is certainly a better gun vs armor, but the 28mm HE projectiles are very thick walled and of less effect than the 30mm HE rounds, and again the gun has to be reloaded after each shot. In the future, it's certainly possible that a variant of the 50mm gun will be examined for service on a Panzer II, but not yet (and that will almost certainly require the use of the 4.8m hull and a new turret as well).

Are there any historical examples of vehicles mounting a 30mm autocannon on a tank in this period? The only similar vehicle I can find is the Kugelblitz from 1945, and that's an AA tank; all the other tanks either have a 20mm gun or jump to a 37mm+ weapon. I'm kinda curious because I don't ever recall seeing this concept developed historically until the advent of Infantry Fighting Vehicles.

Obviously, the best use of Germany's limited quantity of tungsten is to shoot it out of antitank guns.

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Originally posted by AdmKuznetsov
Obviously, the best use of Germany's limited quantity of tungsten is to shoot it out of antitank guns.

I'd suggest super hard wearing tungsten soled jackboots...

I'm pretty sure I found a 42/29mm squeezebore projectile last week. The one next to it was definitely a 28/20mm projectile. There also seemed to be a 16" APDS round as well... The curse of not labelling.

There weren't many 30mm autocannon in the period, I can only think of 6 off of the top of my head: the German MK101, MK103, MK108, and the MK303 (the MK213 never reached production), and the Japanese Ho-155 and Type 5. And, in general, the historical trend was to go from a 20mm autocannon to a 50mm cannon if a recon vehicle was upgunned (the VK901/903 projects, late-model Panzer II Luchs, and the Sdkfz 234/2).

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Originally posted by AdmKuznetsov
Obviously, the best use of Germany's limited quantity of tungsten is to shoot it out of antitank guns.

Heh, well, luckily Germany isn't under a blockade, so we can build up ammunition stocks AND still have plenty of machine tools.

The 42/29mm IS being built, but as "heavy" AT guns for the Fallschirmjaegers. OK, there's not many being built, since there aren't many per regiment and the Luftwaffe doesn't have many regiments of Fallschirmjaegers.

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Originally posted by Vukovlad
Buying up large stocks of strategic materials tend to worry the neighbours.

You should see the secret storage sites lakes of oil (and coal, uranium etc.) that Italy has been building.

So Germany is preparing stocks for war.... That should be interesting for the Poles....

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Originally posted by Vukovlad
So Germany is preparing stocks for war.... That should be interesting for the Poles....

Well, I won't deny that Germany building up its stocks is a bit unerving for the Poles. The same could be said for all the small nations bordering Germany, and even the French and the Italians would likely be interested. However, Poland and Romania do supply the oil to run those nice tanks and planes and ships most people in Europe are building, and if the taps all of a sudden turn off...........

Edit: As well, between the PRJ nations, they can muster around 900,000 men, not enough to defeat Germany, but enough to slow down the Germans at the Carpathian Mountains to hopefully give enough time to gain support from one of the Great Powers.

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Originally posted by Vukovlad
So Germany is preparing stocks for war.... That should be interesting for the Poles....

Uhm, of course Germany is acquiring war stocks? If a new weapon is acquired, it's common practice the world over to buy ammunition for it.. Otherwise you can't even train with it very effectively, and if you DO end up in a war situation, then it's totally useless. This is no different for Germany than it is for Poland (where they've been buying new weapons and ammunition), France (ditto), Italy (ditto), Belgium, etc. Sheesh......

Keep in mind that at this period the classic thought on how to keep the peace is summed up by the Latin saying si vis pacem, para bellum, meaning If you wish for peace, prepare for war. Germany, being in the middle of Europe, is definitely trying to be prepared (after getting very lucky in the Versailles Treaty period).

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Originally posted by TheCanadian

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Originally posted by Vukovlad
So Germany is preparing stocks for war.... That should be interesting for the Poles....

Well, I won't deny that Germany building up its stocks is a bit unerving for the Poles. The same could be said for all the small nations bordering Germany, and even the French and the Italians would likely be interested. However, Poland and Romania do supply the oil to run those nice tanks and planes and ships most people in Europe are building, and if the taps all of a sudden turn off...........

Then we'd have to rely on our stockpiles and the coal conversion processes we have in place until new supplies from overseas or Russia could be arranged. Luckily, the current arrangement of alliances means that Germany is less dependent on oil production within Europe than it was historically.

Quoted

Edit: As well, between the PRJ nations, they can muster around 900,000 men, not enough to defeat Germany, but enough to slow down the Germans at the Carpathian Mountains to hopefully give enough time to gain support from one of the Great Powers.

<shrug> I can't see what interest Germany has in conflict with Poland, given the fact that the Danzig Corridor dispute has been settled for years (the Danzig Railway should be about complete now), especially with a center-left government in power (the main party on the right, previously in power, had some interest, but it's coalition partners had little to none). Neither Rumania or Jugoslavia have a border with Germany, so have very little to fear. Not to mention that I can't see what interest Germany would have in Jugoslavia. Rumania at least has oil, an item of obvious interest, but to get it Germany would have to get a border with Rumania and then invade (after somehow securing Russian neutrality). Nope, it's easier to just buy Rumanian (and Russian, and Dutch, and Italian, etc) oil.

I wasnt primarily commenting on the stocks of ammunition but on your answer to AdmK that you are building up so large stocks of rawmaterials that you can have plenty Tungsten for all requirements. Buying up large stocks of strategic materials tend to worry the neighbours.

What I said was that since Germany wasn't blockaded, it could build up ammunition stocks and still have the machine tools it needs. Ammo stocks only get built up to a point, after that (barring a war) there's no reason to keep producing more, you just have to store it and the politicians won't pay for more. So what's going on is that various German companies are continuing to buy tungsten for their machine tool needs and Krupp and Rheinmettall are buying additional stocks of it to make into APCR rounds for the squeeze bore guns in service. That's not the same thing as the German government buying tons of tungsten for future eventualities.

The Panzer IVF was the first German tank designed from the ground up to mount the new 75mm/48 KwK 38 cannon. Visually, it looked much like the earlier Panzer IVDs with the exception of the long-barreled cannon, re-arranged turret hatches, and the lack of bolted-on armor, but it incorporated a number of improvements over the preceeding Panzer IVD. The bolted-on applique armor had been replaced with thicker plates of armor (not always as thick as the combined thickness on the Panzer IVD, but thicker than the Panzer IVC/B) and thicker deck, belly, and rear plates were used, the tracks were 20% wider to compensate for the increasing weight of the vehicle and the engine was a 330 hp model instead of the older 300 hp model. All in all, the new vehicle weighed slightly over 24.5 metric tons, and could attain a road speed of just over 24 mph.

While the Panzer IVF was the current and latest design of the panzer III/IV series, there was zero chance that the Heer would receive the funds needed to replace all of the already built Panzer IIIs and IVs with the new model. Even if the money was available, which it wasn't, the production of that many tanks would take several years.

Happily, another option was available. The turret developed for the Panzer IVF used the same size turret ring as the existing Panzer IIIs and IVs, so a refit program to replace the old turrets could be put in place at a fraction of the cost of an all-new tank. Upon return to the factory, the older tank (already upgraded to the Panzer IIIE or Panzer IVD standard) would have it's turret replaced, along with the installation of new ammunition boxes for the hull machinegun and new radios. Then the tank would be returned to the Heer.

This upgrade was referred to (somewhat confusingly) as the Panzer IIIH. In theory, it should have been called the Panzer IVE, but the Panzer IIIEs had priority in conversion over the Panzer IVDs, so (for reasons buried in the Heer bureaucracy), it was given the Panzer IIIH title.

The Panzer IIIH weighed just over 23.5 tons and had a top speed of 23 mph on road.