Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video episode on ForgottenWeapons.com.
Today we're out here at the range with this awesome huge piece of hardware.
This is a German Pak-40, or Panzerabwehrkanone. It's an anti-tank gun.
This was in fact the mainstay of German anti-tank guns during World War Two.
These were developed between 1939 and 1941 by the Rheinmetall company
and then produced all the way through the war. They made about 23,500 of them in total,
which is quite a lot for something this size.
This particular one is a 1943 gun, and to the best of my knowledge
it's actually the only live firing Pak-40 in the United States right now.
There's an interesting story behind where it came from, which we'll get to in a minute.
Now this is a 75mm gun, it fires a ginormous case that's about from here about this tall.
Fires about a 15 pound projectile at 2,500 feet per second.
... So primary use of this was as an anti-tank gun, direct fire, like this, aimed with a little telescopic sight.
(Might as well zoom in here, you can take a look at that).
So, not a whole lot bigger than a rifle scope, right there.
And it's got a very simple little German post reticle in it. A little hole in the armour shield so you can see through it.
And you point this straight at a tank, and
this thing was powerful enough to blow right through pretty much any Allied tank in World War Two.
The only things that were able to stand up to it were some of the late war Russian heavy tanks,
but on the Western Front this thing would eat Shermans for breakfast.
... I should say maximum range of this as an anti-tank gun was about a mile.
... They did also use it for indirect fire, so
arcing up and over, had a maximum range of about five miles that way firing a high-explosive shell.
Although really it's purpose and it's effective use is as an anti-tank gun.
It is surprisingly light for what it is, it weighs about 3,200 pounds.
You can see here the armour shield to protect the crew is two pieces of
rather thin plate that are separated by some stand-off bolts.
The idea here was pretty much protection from shrapnel and small arms fire.
Something might go through one of these plates, but by the time it got through
it would have slowed down, it would be going sideways, and it would not penetrate the second plate.
And doing it this way made it easier and cheaper to manufacture,
you know, the light plate's a lot easier to bend and harden,
and it kept the weight of the gun down. This thing is brutal when it fires, you'll see that in just a minute,
throws up a gigantic cloud of dust that completely consumes the gun.
Firing this we actually broke one of the windows in a vehicle right behind the gun.
Really an impressive concussion, you'll get a kick out of that.
It is German, it is overly complex. A lot of the parts in this were made with fairly light sheetmetal,
which made it kind of a beast to rebuild.
When this was purchased it originally came from a VFW hall that had been bought
out by a lady who turned it into an art gallery. She really did not like guns,
she decided to paint this bright pink and cover it in flowers as a statement.
And it was in pretty bad shape. A lot of the sheetmetal was rusted through, rusted away.
About a full year of rebuilding went into this gun to put it into the fireable condition that it's in today.
The lady who did sell this, sold it to an intermediary on the strict condition
that it would never fire again, because it is an evil weapon of war or something.
That intermediary promptly sold it to the folks who own it now, who promptly rebuilt it because it is awesome.
So we have our windage and our elevation hand wheels here, pretty basic stuff, just larger than most.
This button in the middle of the wheel is actually your firing button. You smack that in nice and hard,
it goes through a connector here, to here, fires the gun.
When this fires the whole barrel and breech assembly comes sliding back on these rails.
In actual wartime use it has an automatic ejector that would throw the empty case out the back of the gun.
You have a shield here partly for that, so that you don't get someone
standing here and have part of their leg taken off by the recoiling breech assembly.
Now for shooting today the guys who own this have the automatic ejection system disabled
so that they can keep the brass in good shape because obviously brass is not easy to come by any more,
and it's expensive, and ... they don't want it thrown across on the rocks and broken, so.
The gunner sits over here, you have an assistant gunner on this side to load the gun.
Let's see, what else do we have here?
We have, like, the mother of all muzzle brakes.
Kind of bears a resemblance to some competition AR brakes you might see,
and for the same reason. Quite a significant side blast off of this.
The rings, I don't think these are accurate on this particular gun,
but the rings originally were painted to reflect tank kills.
One thing we noticed manoeuvring around this gun is that this armoured shield is not very big.
This is here more to protect the gun than to protect the crew, because
you have to get really small to hide behind this shield when you're back here firing.
Alright, enough talk. Let's see it shoot.
You guys about ready? Yeah! Alright, fire in the hole!
Thanks for tuning in guys, I hope you enjoyed it. I know this is about the most impressive thing
I've ever seen actually fire off, and we had a ball being out here to watch it.
Tune in again to ForgottenWeapons.com for more awesome German artillery.
Thanks for watching.