"shortened stug barrels" Topic

I have seen a few pictures with stugs that do not have a muzzle brake. I am not talking about the stug IIIA. They seem to be stuh 105mm without a muzzle brake. Is it because of barrel wear or to cut out the cost of adding a muzzle brake? At the end of the video you can see two such stugs.
thanks!
YouTube link

The muzzle brake had to do with ammunition used. The 105mm being basically an infantry support weapon I am making an educated guess that to have a really effective AT capability too you had to have a muzzle brake. It also had to do with manufacturing problems and as the war heated up the Germans needed everything they could possibly have and then some. You are right about to cut costs but add to that cutting time saved getting the gun to the field. I recently read in one of the USA Official Histories The enormous losses in material the Germans suffered in the first SIX MONTHS of the invasion of France. Mention was made of cutting manufacturing times from war production.

The muzzle brake is there to reduce the recoil. It would not, of itself, help to make the gun more effective as an AT weapon. (However, what does make it more effective is high velocity, which would make a muzzle break desirable. So the muzzle break is a result, not a cause, of effective AT capability.)

As for why some guns didn't have one, maybe they had been damaged, and therefore removed, so they wouldn't get it the way of the round exiting the barrel. Just a guess.

Yes, more likely to have been damaged and removed.

105mm-armed StuHs would normally be fitted with a muzzle brake. However, one was photographed at Arnhem without a muzzle brake, so such vehicles definitely existed.

I think the muzzle brake was deliberately omitted from late models ( some time in 44 ).
I can't find a reference to the order though.

Without the muzzle brake, the gun couldn't safely fire supercharge. Seeing as the idea was close support of infantry, you might think this wasn't much of an issue.

Just to complicate things, some crews got hold of muzzle brakes and retro fitted them on late models.

There's some mention here:
link

IIRC the vehicle 151 had part of the barrel cut off for testing.

Pictures show some late vehicles have no thread on the barrel and some do.

Maybe they figured they could use hollow-charge rounds for AT, so no high velocity capability was needed?

For many years a lot of armor historians accepted that there was a version of the StuG built in limited numbers in 1942 with a mid-length L33 75mm gun with no muzzle brake. It was thought to be an interim step between the L24 and the L43, or perhaps a production expedient until sufficient supplies of the StuK 40 L43 gun became available. It was referred to at the time as the StuK L33.

IIRC Schiffer even did a profile of the StuG L33 with photos in one of their "Armor" series books. It seems there are enough photos (and, as seen in the OP, videos) that show some version of the StuG with a mid-length barrel and no muzzle brake to keep this story alive.

However it is now pretty well settled that this was an incorrect interpretation of German wartime propaganda photos from the 1942 period, fueled by later photos of StuHs with no muzzle brake fitted. Originally German censors air-brushed out the last 1/4 of the barrel, and the muzzle brake, on photos of StuG units using the new up-gunned StuG Ausf. F to disguise it's AT capabilities. British intelligence saw the photos and named the unknown gun the StuK L33. It seems pretty clear now from German archival records that no StuK L33 gun was ever produced, and no StuG variant with a mid-length 75mm gun of any type was ever produced.

So I believe that any images of StuGs with mid-length barrels and no muzzle brake are most likely StuHs, which apparently were not always fitted with muzzle brakes and in some cases not even threaded for them. 3 such StuHs (with no muzzle brakes) were captured by the US Army and displayed at Ft. Sill, Ft. Knox (Patton Museum), and Aberdeen Proving Grounds for many years.

It is also possible that a few StuG Fs or Gs had the ends of their barrels cut off as field expedients, to keep damaged guns in service. This might or might not appear in unit records, but records of many German units in the late war period were lost.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

thank you everyone! Mark what don't you know about wwii?

Well, you learn something new every day.

Yep. Some of it is even useful.

Sawn-off weapons are typically associated with criminal activity.
I'd check for armed robberies in the vicinity of Stug-equipped units.

Really, really heavily-armed robberies.

I'm not about to go smawing the muzzle brakes off my StuH, but it is interesting to know it is an option.