"panzer 3n. 75mm?" Topic

when the last version of the panzer 3(the n) was equipted with the short 75mm, what was the thinking behind it?
what i mean is: besides having a bunch of the short 75mm guns left over, what were the suppose to do? the tank, i mean.
the germans also equipt some halftracks and 8 rads with the short 75mm, and for the life of me, i can't figure out why…
was the gun at all useful as a anti-tank weapon? the germans were on the defensive by the time they started to do this, so attacking dug in positions was rare.
were the 3n's suppose to attack tanks? i'm sure there was a heat round for the short 75, but i wonder…

Infantry support vehicles

Even on the defensive, some offensive action is required. Otherwise, how are you ever going to regain the initiative and, having won the initiative, how are you going to go onto the offensive if you've purged offensive weapons from your orbat? The Germans were forever attacking, even on the defensive. Any successful Allied attack on a German position would inevitably be followed by a German counter-attack, as sure as night follows day.

The SP 75mms such as Sdkfz 250/8, 251/9, 233 and 234/3 were more intended as battalion-level 'pocket artillery', in a similar manner as towed 75mm infantry guns. Thus they were also useful for firing defensive fire missions.

The short 75mm L24 had excellent HE charactersitics – far better than the 75mm L42/48/70s.

it could also fire indirectly (though I'm not sure the tank had the elevation needed).

See machine gun
Kill machine gun

The shift occured when the supply of tungsten for the special AP shot needed for the 50L60 gun to reliably take on the T34, Sherman etc started to run out. The burden of AT work fell to vehicles fitted with long barrelled 75mm guns such as the PzIV and Marder which didn't need special ammo to be effective.

The factories tooled up to make PzIII installed the short 75mm into the last model as an HE support tank as lower velocity guns are more effective against soft targets than high velocity guns and most of the time you are firing at soft targets.

As the war went on the factories coverted to making StuGs instead.

German tactics emphasised the use of direct firepower to suppress and destroy critical enemy positions before assaulting from a flank to finish them off. If forced out of a defensive position they would counterattack almost immediately in order to catch the enemy before they could consolidate their position. Thus german formations had lots of small units of infantry guns, assault guns etc and conventional artillery tended to get farmed out in penny packets.
The Western allies had more emphasis on co-ordinated indirect fire thus even infantry guns and assault guns tended to be used for indirect missions.
The Soviets of course loved direct fire but generally without the flexibility of the germans.

PzIVs were being upgraded with the longer 75s and there was a need for the, as noted, superior HE capabilities of the L24.

The original 1942 PzVI heavy companies had platoons composed of two Tigers and two PzIIIn.

High velocity guns for AT work, low velocity for more precise HE application.

Similar concept to the original mixed companies where the PzIV with the L24 supported the PzIII gun tanks.

US added the 105mm howitzer to Shermans as support tanks at company level and the 75mm howitzer to M5 companies for similar reasons.

Also better at applying smoke – which is why the UK had CS tanks at squadron level throughout the war.

The original idea was the pz3 would take on largely tanks and the pz4 largely infantry.
At that time the pz3 had a 37mm high velocity gun and the pz4 the low velocity 75mm gun.
As time went by, the size of high velocity gun required to take on armour went up and up.
Eventually a 50mm gun wasn't considered up to the job and so a tank which could take at least a 75mm high velocity gun was considered necessary for taking on tanks.
That long 75 didn't fit in the pz3 so well but it did in the pz4.
Or a pz3 modified into a stug3.
So it's a sort of role reversal between the marks in one way.

They still had some capacity to make pz3 and that anti infantry capability was still considered useful so they stuck a 75mm l24 in there.
Quite a few went to heavy tank units which had Tigers.
A lot of tank combat is tank vs infantry so a tank with a good he round (and a lot of them) is a good thing.
Unless you're in one and meet an enemy tank of course.

It's actually one of Jerry's better moves.
Germany was facing multiple enemies on several fronts.
They needed more kit and they needed it fast.
Better to stick to churning out proven designs with a minor twist than stop making stuff and try something different.
Sticking a short 75 on a pz3 was actually a lot better use of resources than developing a Tiger IMO.

The short 75mm also had a decent HEAT round later in the war with good AP capability. The early HEAT rounds were a bit rubbish though.

But as above, essentially all the various 75L24 mounts were to provide mobile , armoured infantry guns, like ersatz stugs. Guns weren't only for shooting at tanks.

the germans also equipt some halftracks and 8 rads with the short 75mm, and for the life of me, i can't figure out why…

Give a German engineer a gun or other new widget, and he will try mounting it in the closest halftrack. No wonder that there were over 20 different variants of Sdkfz 251 alone.

More seriously, one purpose for the introduction of the 75L24 gun on the halftracks seems to have been to replace the halftrack-drawn 75 mm infantry guns that were present in the armoured panzergrenadier battalions. Actually mounting a gun on the halftrack rather than hauling it around would improve the mobility and eliminate the time needed limber/unlimber the gun.

Very late in the war the Germans also tried mounting a longer 75L46 anti-tank gun on halftrack for some more serious anti-tank work.

thanks, boys!

I would like to add that when the Pz IIIn came into use in somewhere in late 1942, Germany was not in a strategic defensive. Rather, they had just completed a summer/autumn offensive towards Caucasus. And they would try to launch another offensive in the next summer.

Not to mention that the tank designs themselves would have left the drawing boards some months before the tanks themselves would be rolling to the front lines.

(Not to mention that as previously mentioned, Germans were quite fond of local counter-attacks even when on a strategic defensive.)

No matter what Hollywood shows the vast majority of fighting was infantry, not tanks. Tanks get all the press. PBI just carries on, with more and more stuff built to kill it.

My understanding was that they were intended to support the new Tigers. The intention being that they were ideal infantry killers to mix in with the Tiger battalions to keep infantry away from the Tigers, leaving the tigers free to do what they were indented to do.

However, my sources are tertiary at best, and maybe mistaken in that assumption.

The original Tiger tank battalions formed in 1942 had a pretty even mixture of Tiger tanks and Panzer III. However, next year the battalions moved to a new organisation, consisting only of Tigers.

I am not sure about the original reasons for sticking the Panzer III to the heavy battalions, but apparently the Germans did not find it worthwhile in the long run.

Another issue is that in 1942 Tiger tanks were in limited supply, having just entered production. Could the inclusion of the Panzer III have also been a partial stopgap solution until sufficient numbers of Tigers became available?

The early Tiger Bns were fleshed out with Pz IIIs as there weren't enough Tigers and also to do things which Tigers weren't very suitable for (like recce).

Useful history here:

link