40 mm Bofors in AT role

[sultanbev]

All AA guns make good A/T weapons. Most were/are equipped with some kind of AP ammo, even in limited amounts (eg Gepard carries 40x APDS rounds out of something like 360 carried). I have also spoken to a vet from Burma as well who mentioned using Bofors 40mm against Japanese tanks.

As the role is sort of "emergency defence" it is usually at short ranges (under 500m) where you can pretty much point the gun at the target and have flat enough trajectory to hit the target, so sighting isn't perhaps that big an issue.

The British and American 40mm Bofors AP round penetrates 5cm of vertical armour at 500m, 4cm out to 1000m, 1cm less than the 2pdr AP round at comparable ranges. Multiply these by .866 to get penetration against 30 degree from vertical sloped armour. So not sufficient to gaurantee kills of Pz.IIIs and Pz.IV in the western desert, especially the uparmoured versions. But close enough to give them a headache, or penetrate the side easily.

The 3.7" was tested in 1942 in the A/T role in the desert, but the unit that set up never saw any Panzers! It took 20 minutes to get the gun set up ready, far too long to deploy from towing mode to field use in a mobile battle. However pre-set up the gun would have dealt with Tiger I in 1938!

3.7" Mk5T AP (1938) penetrates 13cm of vertical armour at 1km, 17cm at point blank
3.7" APHE (1944) penetrates 15cm of vertical armour at 1km, 20cm at 500m

The best way to stop such weapons being gamey super-weapons is to limit them to 2-3 shots of AP per game, the rest being HE, for British and Americans at least. Soviets, Greeks, Germans, Hungarians, Finns all seem to have given their AA guns a reasonable supply of AP ammo. Indeed, the SOviets issued 85mm AA guns to army level A/T units at different times in the war. Unfortunately for the Greeks they never issued their 88mm Flak guns with AP in 1940, only the smaller stuff.

However as mentioned there will always be historical exceptions where big AA guns were used in the A/T role, so presumably carried a bigger allocation of AP rounds, eg US 90mm at Stoumont versus KG Pieper in Dec 1944. The reason such examples appear in battle reports which FoWgamerexpert.com then takes as normal procedure is because they were exceptional circumstances. Bit like the report of Stuart knocking out a Tiger II. Or 20mm flak guns knocking out Matilda II in 1940. FoWgamerexpert.com takes such examples - "they must be true!" and assumes they happen all the time, then expect their rules to reflect it. Modifying their rules to do so them skews the historical probabilities in the data charts and suddenly 20mm flak30 becomes everyone's best AT gun. Or whatever.

Mark

[Sunray]

Thanks Mark, a lot of common sense in your blog. As stated earlier in the thread, the AA gunners in Burma had the nickname ' the 12 snipers' which indicates that the 3.7 was in use as a ground weapon.

Your modification for the table is neat - what a pity the Germans took the potential to its logical conclusion and adapted the AA gun with sights and a mounting for AT.

Would'ent it be great to limit an 88 to 2-3 shots of AP !!!! 

Sunray Out

[Martyn]

I think history has to be arbiter. The bofors was not a front line weapon. Its an AA gun. Yes it could be in a minority of cases be used in the ground defence role to suppress an enemy but in reality they were deployed to the rear and strategic areas to protect them from air attack. That is was their role was, their command and control centered on and what the crews were trained to do. If they were being used forwards then it shows that there was a) nothing else b) the front had already crumbled and the enemy was coming on. How effective they were in actual combat is open to debate and as I said earlier there will always be the exception but as wargamers I would advise to ignore the exception unless there is an "r" in the month you you like FOW!

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

In 44/5 in Europe all weaposn, if not doing something else would be assigned to a PepperPot,  just balsting an area to annoy the Germans.
Also Alemien - 6pdr were used to cover the silence just before the barrage.


IanS