2cm Flak38

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Thanks for the link, never heard of that cannon before.

100 rounds of 20 mm ammo means ~25 kg, plus empty drum weight. For the Praga V3S, two loaders were required for a 89 kg magazine, full - 50 rounds of heavy 30mm ammo. So one loader should be able to handle a ~ 30 kg drum.
 
1st we'd lift the magazine (laying horizontally) to have it attached to 2 back-facing points, those being maybe 1.20 m high. Then we'd lift the rear side of the mag, rotating the mag around those attachment points, to lock the mag to the forward locking points (now the magazine is laying vertically). This picture might be helpful, it shows two magazines in upward position, and one laying horizontally (under loader's leg):

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/row/vj-praga.jpg
 
1st we'd lift the magazine (laying horizontally) to have it attached to 2 back-facing points, those being maybe 1.20 m high. Then we'd lift the rear side of the mag, rotating the mag around those attachment points, to lock the mag to the forward locking points (now the magazine is laying vertically).
Click to expand...
And you did this while being shot at! Most impressive.

I suspect belt feed would be a lot less work and require fewer crew members. Why didn't they design one for the weapon as Germany did for the 3cm Mk 103 cannon?
 
Sincerely, I was never being shot at while manning the cannon. During my time in JNA, there was only one instance when things almost erupted (in a literate way), when members of Slovene Territorial Defense were aiming AT-4 rocket launchers at our 2 SP AAA vehicles. Our armor was paper thin, maybe 7-8mm at best (open top for gun aimer), each vehicle carrying 800 rounds of ammo. Fortunately, they surrendered after couple of bursts from the 30mm (some rounds self-detonated in Austria).
In Croatian war of 1991-95, I was a mere infantryman; we have had far more trained crews, than weapon systems for them.

Belt feed should save on manpower. The 30mm Pragas were of Czech origin, firing the most powerful 30mm round ever deployed - 430g granate fired at 1000 m/s. 'Crvena Zastava' was designing two 30mm cannons for NN-30 round (Soviet origin, used, for example, in Osa fast attack boats). IIRC the M1986 was single belt feed, the M1989 dual belt feed. One cannon was to be installed in the upgraded BVP M-80 (IFV M-80), two were to be installed in the SP AAA vehicle, either on large 4x4 (BOV - AFV), or on BVP's chassis. BVP was also to receive the Soviet-made SA-13 misiles ('Sava' system). Some pictures can be seen here:

ZASTAVA ARMS Kragujevac | 1970 - 1992

http://members.multimania.co.uk/oklop/bvpm98.htm
 
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Which brings us back to the original topic...

A German flakvierling (4 x 2cm Flak38) required several crew members to be constantly changing magazines. Must have been pretty crowded around that small weapon during sustained combat operations. Why not use belt feed cannon?
 
They did, many MG-151 cannons being arranged as three-barrel Flak. If one really want a belt fed light Flak, maybe the resources are better spent on something more powerful, like 3 or 3,7 cm? The drum-fed 2cm can go a long way too to cut on manpower and/or to increase practical RoF.
 
Late war improvisation. 20 x 82mm cartridge was fine for shooting at aircraft from a distance of 200 meters but wasn't powerful enough for ground use.
 
It seems to me that was an expedient way to bulk up the numbers of light flak weapons, plus to cater for the combat losses.
Using Flak as one of principle was to deal with ground forces seems like a faulty thing to do; AAA is an expensive way to lob HE on enemy, need much more manpower than dedicated HE throwers per weight fired, and it's far less able to be concealed. Need bee, the MG-151/20 can do that better than 2 cm Flak 38. The 20mm AP was useless for M3/M5 and T-70 light tanks anyway, let alone against a proper tank.
 
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There's a problem with this line of thinking. Some of Germany's best soldiers such as Otto Carius considered the flakvierling to be an outstanding weapon for use against ground targets. I've got to assume such men knew what they were talking about.


A bit more on your favorite 30mm AA gun...
30x210 M53/M59 Czech AAA
30mm x 210 cartridge and matching Mk303 AA gun were developed by Germany at Brno during WWII. Gas operated. Belt feed. 400 rpm. Like many other advanced German weapons it didn't make it into mass production before war ended.

Post war Czech government continued development but switched to magazine feed. Why the switch? Did they foresee that men like you would need the upper body workout from lifting 89kg magazines into position? :)
 
We'd need to find out just a what kind of ground targets Mr. Carius was thinking about? Be it as it is, no MBT, not in ww2 nor after, was ever conceieved with auto-cannon as a main armament, so other people must have knew what they talk about, too.

Many thanks for the link :)
I don't know why the Czech switched the feed mechanism. God knows the full magazines were quite heavy for us youngsters :)
 
If Germany had gotten Mk303 cannon and 30mm x 210 cartridge into mass production things might have been different. I think that weapon would chew up Sherman and T-34 tanks.
 
Think again. Just because an weapon is full automatic does NOT mean it can penetrate more armor. Repeat hits ONLY weaken certain types of armor and even then the hits have to be close to each other. 30mm hits several feet apart are totally on their own. There IS NO chew through effect unless you are at a ridiculously close range.

The German 30 X 184B round with conventional AP Ammo (not tungsten cored) was good for 32mm penetration at 300 meters at 30 degrees impact angle. Even a 50% increase is going to have a hard time against a Sherman or T-34 at 300 meters and at long range it gets worse. Larger rounds of the same basic shape have better sectional density and retain their velocity better. A 30mm round with 50% more penetration than the 30 X 184B round is no better, if as good, as the short 50mm gun in the Pz III at 300-6000yds and while it may hit better at longer ranges it's penetration will get steadily worse than the short 50mm.
Tunsten cored ammo will improve things, again mostly at short range, but if the Germans had a decent amount of tungsten to begin with they wouldn't need a tricks like MBTs armed with full automatic guns.
 
davebender said:
How close does the A-10s GAU-8 cannon get when it chews through MBT armor?
Click to expand...


Just in case you didn't actually read the article.

"Accuracy: 80% of rounds fired at 4,000 feet (1,200 m) range hit within a 40 feet (12 m) diameter circle"

Which also means 80% of rounds fired at 2,000ft (600 meters) hit within a 20 ft (6 meter) diameter circle. A WW II tank is how wide???? 10 or 11 ft for most? Or how high? 10ft?

which means that only 25% of those 80% rounds will even hit the whole vehicle let alone land within inches of each other.

How about this part.

"Armor penetration:
69 mm at 500 meters
38 mm at 1,000 meters"

Which is worse than a 50mm Pak 38 firing normal ammunition.

Granted the 30 X 210 round is more powerful than the 30 X 173 round used by the GAU-8 (but not by much, 2-3%, modern powders and modern metal in the guns)

And then we have the DU core.

pgu14b.jpg


Which means even if you copied it in tungsten you are lucky to get a 20mm hole.

Killing armor does NOT depend on making holes in the armor. It depends on destroying what is BEHIND the armor. Like crew, engines, ammo and equipment.

And the GAU-8 even on slow rate of fire (2100rpm) fires over 4 times faster than a single M53.

AN M53 weighs about 200kg for the bare gun (no feed system ?) and is about 3 meters long. It is about 170mm longer than a 5cm KwK 39 (L/60) but is lighter. the 5cm gun going about 305 KG according to one source.
 
The M-53/59, gun mounted in Praga V3S vehicles was 272 kg (one bare gun), I don't remember anymore whether the empty box weight was counted there (~35 kg). The barrel itself was 78 kg.

Even though we were firing live rounds vs. a 3 x 2.5 m target (a 'tank' head-on), we were told by instructors that there is zero chance to kill a tank with our cannon fire.

added: in the same time, the JNA was using T-12/MT-12 towed anti tank cannons, 100 mm smooth bore wepons, firing APFSDS and HEAT. Capable to pierce some 450mm of armor with latest APFSDS, less with early rounds.
 
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From M-60, Leo-1 up to M-1 and Leo-2 - typical NATO 'threat' of late 1980s. We were stationed in Ljubljana, Slovenia, some 100 km from Italian border.
 
According to "Jane's Armor and Artillery" the API round for the M53 was good for penetrating 55mm of armor at 0 degrees impact angle at 500 meters. This may or may not be correct but should be close. A T-34 had 45mm of armor at 60 degrees on the front which will give protection equal to 90-135mm depending on projectile type. Gun mantlet on a T-34/85 was 90mm and turret sides 75mm (?).

The Performance of the M53 is very good for for a 30mm weapon but no amount of wishful thinking is going to turn it into an AT weapon for use against even WW II Medium tanks.

I would say that Tomo's instructors were giving excellent advice. :)
 
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