German AT gun proportions and "88s"

Hi all,

The following question floated through my head today at lunch: has anyone been able to come up with the numbers of different calibers of anti-tank guns the Germans were able to field in northwest Europe? Particularly, what percentage were still 50mm or smaller?

I was also wondering if Allies tended to conflate 75mm Pak 40s with 88mm guns on account of them both being higher caliber and very dangerous. Or would they have sounded sufficiently different for men to distinguish?

 

Here are some, but I’m not sure how many of each was built of each type, and only 6 on this list were 50 mm or smaller. And not all the guns below were carriage mounted AT guns, some were mounted on as SP’s

• 2.8 cm sPzB 41, 2797 produced

• 3.7 cm Pak 36 9,120 being available by the beginning of the war in September 1939 and a further 5,339 produced during the war

• 4.2 cm Pak 41, 313 produced

• 4cm kanón vz. 36

• 5 cm Pak 38

• 7.5 cm Pak 39

• 7.5 cm Pak 40, over 20,000 produced

• 7.5 cm Pak 41

• 7.5 cm PaK 42

• 7.5 cm Pak 50 produced in limited numbers by Germany

• 7.5 cm Pak 97/38 2,854 pieces were delivered in 1942; 858 more followed in 1943

• 7.5 cm PjK 42

• 7.5 cm StuK 40

• 7.62 cm Pak 36(r)

• 7.92×94mm Patronen

• 8 cm PAW 600

• 8.8 cm Flak 18/36/37/41

• 8.8 cm Pak 43

• 12.8 cm Pak 44

• 4,7cm KPÚV vz. 38

 

The question will be hard to answer: Basically, between 3.7-cm to 12.8-cm, pretty much everything available was used for anti-tank purposes.This includes flak, AT guns and field guns, German models and captured weapons.
How many of these were in use in each case can hardly be reliably determined, as both variety and battle-related fluctuation were simply too great for that.

To give you an idea of what is meant by "variety", here is a list of types used on the Atlantic Wall:

source: Gander/Chamberlain, Enzyklopädie deutscher Waffen

 

Wouldn't the best starting point be German war establishments? There's scope for a nice comparative diagram of A/Tk assets at the different levels of the different armies. I don't know off the top of my head if they had significant non-divisional units like, say, our corps anti-tank regiments.

The fun bit will be deciding where to squeeze the fag paper between panzerjagers and jagdpanzers.

 

There were indeed lots of non-Div anti-tank units in the German Army, there's a good list on Lexikon-der-Wehrmacht

Lexikon der Wehrmacht

From memory, the only Divisional units with the 8.8-cm in widespread service were the Flak Battalions of Panzer Divs, which started to appear during the latter half of 1942. I know the German orbat was full of exceptions to every rule, however the 7.5-cm and 7.62-cm guns remained the most common armament for Divisional anti-tank units in the later war years. There was also the towed Pak43 (see the Army Anti-tank Battalions 8.8cm in the above link) and the SP 8.8-cm (in various forms, see the Heavy Anti-tank Battalion in the above link).

Gary

 

The short answer is yes and no... There are lots of ways you could come up with some numbers - but whether they mean anything is a different matter. Are you interested in the number of different calibres? That is easy just count the number of different calibres...

Or the numbers of equipments (Guns/barrels) of each calibre deployed, which is different. What do you mean by deployed? With combat units? Or including reserves available to combat units. How do you want to treat replacements? X Division loses 12 guns in Normandy. These are replaced by 12 more. Is this 12 guns or 24?

The answer to the second question is easier to answer. It was very difficult to distinguish between 75mm and 88mm inbound rounds. If in doubt the allies were engaged by 88s

 

I can't ever recall having seen a breakdown of AT guns by type and front anywhere before, but in terms of total numbers for the 'usual' types these are the figures for the Total Stock held by the Germans for each type on the 1st February 1944.

5cm Pak 38 - 2,802
7.5cm Pak 40 - 6,170 of which 4,995 were towed
7,62cm Pak - 460 of which 251 were towed
8.8cm Pak 43 - 749 of which 471 were towed
8.8cm Raketenwerfwer 43 - 4,302

And for comparison they had

8.8cm Panzerbusche 54 - 65,349

 

Panzerjäger (sfl) = any type of AT-gun on any type of vehicle
other than:
Jagdpanzer = tank chassis with casemate superstructure and KwK

The real problem (besides the lack of meaningful documents) was the merciless confusion:

Each division had a Panzerjägerabteilung
This Panzerjägerabteilung had a number of AT guns in the KStN. (OoB)
Which type this was, was usually not exactly specified - in practice, EVERYTHING that was somehow suitable for this was used
And whether the actual number of AT guns corresponded to the number in the KStN was a completely different story.

Should I also mention that the 8-8 Flak in the Army anti-aircraft units were mostly used for anti-tank - but were not in the KStN as dedicated AT guns?
The same with the 3.7-cm Flak, which were then used with mounted "Stielgranate"
And the field artillery with its 10.5-cm guns used concrete grenades for this purpose when needed, which were actually developed as bunker busters...
a.s.o., a.s.f.......

As a rough rule of thumb, one can assume that calibers between 5.0-cm and 8.8-cm were used in the main.

 

Ahh, I see, published 1979... I can look at a library reference copy Thanks! I was really just wondering specifically about what portion of their anti-tank arsenal was still smaller weapons (<75mm) and it seems "not many".

 

Another question would have been whether anyone counted the number of penetrations of allied armour and by what calibre of gun - which is not the same as counting the number of guns.

 

I know this started as a AT question……but I have been doing some research on the 11th Cdn Armoured Regiment (Ontario Regiment) and In their War Diaries for May 1944 I just found this document, thought it was interesting so posting here

 

Just came across this in the 1 Cdn Armoured Brigade War Dairies for Jun 1944……..you don’t need AT guns or Tanks necessarily to do great damage, 12th CAR took heavy tank casualties from German infantry which had NO AT guns or tank support, but were armed with “Bazooka” (as the writer of this report called it)…….and the writer of this WD reports says “lessons learned MONTHS before were not observed by infantry” (meaning supporting infantry)

Also, note that the 11 CAR on the same day knocked our or “brewed” enemy Mk IV tanks, captured 120 prisioner’s and inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy throughout the day.

 

Those are very good questions, but I suspect you would need to do a lot of digging to get answers. NWE could be tough, because you are dealing with a large number of German divisions moving in and out, being destroyed and reorganized, etc. Plus the German forces used many different TOEs and types of guns. You might want to begin by narrowing it down to a specific engagement or period, say Rommel's army group as of 6 June or some other point in the Normandy campaign. You'd also need to take account of the Luftwaffe OOB, because the LW controlled the majority of the 88s, of which many must have been deployed well away from the ground combat front in their proper AA role.

To take a single engagement...according to C.E. Lucas-Phillips, 86 88mm guns were available to 19th Flak Division and 109th Fla Bn at the time of Second Alamein and the German anti-tank units of DIPA had 95 76.2mm Pak 36 (r). Some at least of the 88s must have been in the rear and on the LOC in their proper AA role, but even so it seems clear that a very respectable percentage of DIPA's anti-tank guns were heavies.

 

An Army Operational Research Group did some such studies. Laurier published a chunk of their reports as Montgomery's Scientists. I think it's now available as a free download.