Oh hey, it's the Italanon again. How's your progress so far? Closed the med? Have the paternal autocrats stopped being fucking autists? Beside assault guns in armored/mechanized divisions, what's your procurement & army organization looking like about now? Finish those pocket battleships?
Have the 2.8cm guns proven themselves as of yet? I really am curious as to what they can do, they're rather novel.
Random question, forgive the tangent; why didn't the Germans adapt solid steel shot APCNR for some of their squeeze bore designs when it became clear they couldn't just shit tungsten rounds out all day long without running into long term supply problems? And for APCR, for that matter? Or if they did, where's the information on them? I've been feasting on this kind of minutiae of late. Trying to get a little more well read.
Tungsten is obviously the best material for kinetic penetrators in the time period, but the Brits did fine enough with solid steel shot AP. A steel core APCNR round with soft iron jacketing would've probably allowed them to keep putting squeeze bores into the field for light AT work, where the suboptimal characteristics for HE slinging don't matter quite so much, as they either won't want to bother casing the poor bloody infantry and risk exposing themselves through the additional shots necessary, or will be covered by infantry in combined arms who probably won't need too much additional anti-infantry support that infantry guns aren't already providing. It is, after all, a glorified heavy AT rifle/pocket doorknocker with an attitude. Probably wouldn't lose too much performance compared to tungsten rounds either, allowing said tungsten reserves to deplete a fair bit more slowly as they find a niche as a specialty rounds' specialty round compared to more ubiquitous solid core APCBCHE and APCBC and/or steel APCR. Additionally, in larger caliber guns- while they're not going to set off fuel, ammo and liquify the crew all at once like the APHE- they will still mulch at least one crew member and result in an abandoned tank. More in the East, where sardine can tanks reign supreme in Soviet design.
I highly doubt this lateral thinking would have saved the larger caliber squeeze bores like the PaK 41, where the low barrel life may matter a fair bit more economically & logistically than for small guns like the sPzB 41, and likewise with the penetration dropoff, but along with an earlier introduction of Gerlich/squeeze bore principal guns in general it might have let them put out a fair number more easily moveable guns that would be easier to retain during a fighting retreat (or roll on in a triumphant advance further East into miserable snow & mud) and relatively efficiently knock out the '41-'42 Soviet tank park compared to the PaK 36, which had to soldier on with either its own subpar performance with native AP & HE rounds or knock out anything with the huge Stielgranate overbore hollow charge at cost of having to use the Stielgranate, a light AT gun-sized rifle grenade with all the impracticalities that might imply for a gun team that might not want to have to leave the cover of their gun shield. At the same time, the partial substitution of tungsten composite rounds for an adequately high penetration solid and/or composite steel round(s) would've let them yet further extend the service life of all guns by letting them punch just a little more above their weight class by pinging things with APCBC first, then following up with APCBCHE on fatigued armor. Low quality steel is cheap, and explosive filler & other combustibles are maybe a bit less so, considering the German propellant crisis in the midwar.
tl;dr why didn't the Germans ever seem to experiment with solid shot that wasn't tungsten? They probably had the absolute best APCBCHE as far as balance of penetration capacity, shatter resistance & explosive effect goes, but considering they still kept tungsten core rounds around for tough targets through the entire war, you would think they might've considered steel substitutes to extend the lifespan and cheapen the supply of earlier AT guns.
