"Panzer 3 50mm in Normandy?" Topic

Any of the long 50mm guns left by Normandy or had they all been relegated to command tanks and the short 75mm?

About 30 Panzer IIIs in Normandy of various models.

116 PD had seven with long 50mm.They weren't authorised vehicles so may have been awaiting issue to other formations.

Appreciate it!

Is that 30 including ones that had been converted to the short 75?

would a pz3m(long 50mm) be a match for a sherman?
I always thought so…

If it hits at point blank range, it probably has a chance but its pretty slim.
At 500+ meters, I'd say they're toast.

You think the shermans armor is strong enough to defeat the 50L60?
I would'nt think that…

As has been said, there were a few 50mm (long and short, plus short 75mm) Pz IIIs knocking around Normandy – mainly in Regt and Bn HQs, though Panzer Training Unit 100 had at least one that was used in a fighting role.

At least one Sherman with 4/7 DGs was knocked out north of Nijmegen by a short-barrelled 50mm gun carried by a Pz III of Training Company 'Mielke' (which had fought at Arnhem Bridge, then moved down onto the 'Island' after the bridge fell). The Sherman's commander commented that it proved that 'anything could knock out a Sherman'.

Wiki says 67mm penetration at 100 meters, 57mm at 500.

For a Sherman, for the earliest models, it says 64-76mm on the turret and 51 on the front hull.

That's without factoring in slope. It says 93mm effective (which I'm assuming factors in the sloping).

So possible but long shot. Some of the fancy tungsten rounds would do better but those were in short supply.

Certainly the Sherman isn't safe, but its got a good chance of bouncing.
On the flank or a good shot, it seems it'd punch through pretty well.

Indeed. The KO at Nijmegen was during confused fighting in close terrain (the village of Oosterhout), so was probably a flank-shot at very close range.

A quick reading of the numbers suggests to me that the 5cm L60 would have little chance of frontally penetrating a late version Sherman (ie 47deg glacis) with any type of ammunition, excepting a "lucky" shot placement. However, a reasonable chance of success would be expected out to about 1000m for either a flank or rear shot using APC, and of course a better chance with APCR.

As above, when Sherman's appeared in the desert, they were immune to frontal hits from Pak 38 at pretty well any range. Which was a bit depressing for the pak crews.

Flank hits are another matter of course.

The Sherman had relatively flat armor on the sides but incorporated sloped armor on the front. I'd bet many of the Shermans taken out during the war were hit in the flank.

There are examples of 5cm L60 fortress guns taking out Shermans frontally down village streets on D-Day, though the ranges were invariably short.

I guess we have all heard the story of an M8 armoured car taking out a Tiger with its 37mm so anything is possible.

There's a story of a T70 knocking out two or three Panthers as well, so if you got nowhere to go, take the shot and hope for the best :-)

would a pz3m(long 50mm) be a match for a sherman?
I always thought so…

No. The Sherman was better armored, had a more powerful gun, had comparable speed, and was more reliable.

It was a beast when it first appeared in North Africa, only the PzIV F2s with long 75s could stand up to it.

"It's a beautiful tank!"

Tracks, boggies, turret rings, gun mantlets all are still vulnerable even to reletively small calibre weapons. Even a grazing hit to the gun barrel could prevent the gun from firing effectively putting that tank out of the fight.

Tanks are surprisingly vulnerable, as an example – Bruno Friesen in his book Panzer Gunner tells of two KOs he suffered: one in a Panzer IV where a glancing hit "bent" the gun barrel and one another occasion in a Jagdpanzer IV his gun banged against a wall and broke the mounting effectively rendering the whole thing useless………..

Freak accidents, neither of which changes the fact that the Sherman was a generation ahead of even most upgraded Panzer III by every metric. The Panzer IIIs are equally vulnerable to such lucky shots/freak occurrences, so that's a wash.