On November 24, 2016, Russia released a military blockbuster film that cost only $2 million, "Panfilov 28 Warriors".
"28 Warriors" tells the story of General Ivan Penfilov leading infantry and 28 men who swore to die against the Germans and successfully snipped German tank units during the Defense of Moscow in World War II.
In the film, the plot of Soviet soldiers blocking enemy tanks with PTRD-41 anti-tank rifles is impressive.
Could this be a Russian anti-German drama? Chinese hand tearing devils, fighting national rifles to fight tanks?
In fact, "28 Warriors" is definitely a conscience film, and the film won the Best Director Award at the Panda Award at the "2017 Chengdu BRICS Film Festival in China" on June 27, 2017. While the story of 28 Soviet soldiers fighting German armored forces is indeed exaggerated, rifles hit tanks during World War II was real.
Anti-tank rifles played an important role in the defense of Moscow and Stalingrad. Although the Soviet Union was the last of the great powers to be equipped with anti-tank rifles, its production of anti-tank guns far exceeded that of all the great powers combined. The production of the PTRS-41 and PTRD-41 anti-tank rifles reached a staggering 470,000!
Why didn't the Soviet Union equip itself with lighter and more powerful bazookas, but preferred such a chicken infantry weapon, the anti-tank rifle?
To answer this question, we may wish to first understand the development and characteristics of anti-tank rifles.
As early as the early stages of World War I, In order to deal with the light armor targets of the Allies, Germany already had the idea of penetrating armor with rifles and put it into practice.
Due to the thin armor of the weapons in the early stages of World War I, the German army did not make a fuss about the "gun" for the purpose of armor piercing, but only changed the copper core bullet to a steel core bullet, called a K-type bullet. Because steel is harder than copper, it has a better armor piercing effect than copper, but it also damages the rifling. The bullet can be used directly on the 98k's ancestral Gew-98 and Maxim heavy machine guns.
But by the middle of World War I, on September 15, 1916, the British sacrificed an artifact at the Battle of the Somme, the tank. The Germans found that their K-type bullets would be directly ejected when they hit the surface of the tank, and it was impossible to penetrate the tank. The advent of tanks upset the balance of trench warfare. In order to regain its balance, Germany, which did not have tanks, needed to develop an anti-tank tactic.
Initially, the Germans wanted to use cannons against tanks, but this idea was opposed by artillery officers. They believed that the use of precious field guns against tanks would weaken the power of the artillery; and the cannons were incapacitated and easily destroyed by the other side.
So the German High Command wanted to deal with Allied tanks with anti-tank rifles. Although anti-tank rifles were much less powerful than cannons, tank armor during World War I was only 13-15 mm, and anti-tank rifles could easily penetrate them.
For weapons with physical damage, their power depends primarily on kinetic energy. The kinetic energy of a bullet depends on its speed and mass.
As long as you have studied high school physics, you will not be unaware of the above formula. From this formula, in order to increase the kinetic energy of the bullet E, it is only necessary to increase its mass m and speed v. Since kinetic energy and velocity are proportional to the quadratic square, increasing bullet speed is more effective than increasing bullet mass.
It should be noted that increasing speed than increasing mass does not mean that quality can not be disregarded. If the mass is too low, even if the bullet has a higher initial velocity, it will decay too fast due to air resistance, resulting in the kinetic energy of the bullet hitting the target far less than the kinetic energy when it is just out of the chamber.
The first way to increase the initial velocity of a bullet is to increase the amount of bullet charge. Anti-tank rifles during World War II were charged three times as many as regular rifle cartridges of the same caliber. However, too much charge can lead to problems such as barrel cauterization and shell deformation.
The second option is to increase the barrel length so that the bullet has a longer acceleration distance. However, the barrel cannot be extended indefinitely, otherwise it will also burn the barrel and affect the service life. The Polish Wz.35 anti-tank rifle multiplier ratio reached 151! This also resulted in a barrel life of just over 200 rounds.
At the same time, the barrel is too long to carry by infantry. Generally speaking, it is reasonable to control the diameter ratio of anti-tank rifles below 100 times.
On 19 January 1918, Mauser delivered an anti-tank rifle from the German War Department. The gun fires 13.2mm × 93mm rifle cartridges, charging up to 4 times the amount of ordinary bullets, a full 13 grams.
In fact, this gun is an enlarged version of the Gew-98, referred to as the T-type anti-tank rifle, which can penetrate 25mm armor at a distance of 100m and 10mm armor at a distance of 200m.
There are two members of the T-type anti-tank rifle gun crew, the main shooter is responsible for carrying the anti-tank gun, gun oil and 20 rounds of ammunition, and the deputy shooter is responsible for carrying 112 rounds of ammunition.
Although the T anti-tank rifle is powerful compared to ordinary rifles, it also makes this rifle have two disadvantages. The first is size and weight, with German soldiers using the term "elephant rifle" to describe the T-type anti-tank gun. Due to their large size, the T-type anti-tank rifles were mostly fired in a recumbent position.
Second, the recoil was too great, and german soldiers liked to call it a "three-shot weapon.". That is, when the first shot is fired on the right shoulder, the right shoulder is destroyed; when the second shot is fired, the left shoulder is destroyed; when the third shot is fired, the whole person is directly destroyed.
Does the T-type anti-tank rifle work well on the battlefield?
From the Allied point of view, they did not consider this anti-tank gun to be a threat, and even became a joke for Allied soldiers, who collected T-type anti-tank guns.
From the perspective of actual combat, although the rifle can penetrate the tank armor, its stopping effect is too poor, as long as a shot can not hit the engine or fuel tank, the tank can still continue to fight, so it needs to continuously shoot at the tank to make it lose its combat effectiveness. However, as mentioned above, the T-rifle has a huge recoil, resulting in its poor continuous shooting ability.
In addition, when shooting, the bullet needs to be close to the vertical shooting to the armor, otherwise it is difficult to penetrate, which has higher requirements for the shooter's shooting angle. Moreover, in the subsequent war, some Allied tanks added additional armor, so that anti-tank gun shooters must shoot at a closer distance and a more vertical angle, and the corresponding shooting timing is more difficult to grasp.
From a German perspective, German soldiers had mixed reviews of the T-gun. The Infantry Instruction Regiment, which was part of the German Imperial Army Group at the time, submitted a report to its superiors after testing the T-type anti-tank rifle:
Opinions on the 13 mm T were widely divided, with some praising the T's power and others calling the gun useless. The main reason for this discrepancy is the difference in the way the forces perceive and use their might.
Obviously, the idea of paralyzing an enemy tank with a single bullet piercing through the armor of an enemy tank is very unrealistic, requiring multiple bullets to be hit in a row and killing the occupants of the enemy tank, and destroying the engine and weapons to achieve the basic goal of paralyzing the enemy tank... Only by familiarizing the anti-tank gunner with the conditions for penetrating the tank armor and carrying out targeted training can the effectiveness of the anti-tank gun be maximized.
From the above three aspects, although the T-type anti-tank rifle had a certain role in World War I, it was definitely not a good anti-tank weapon.
By World War II, many countries were equipped with anti-tank rifles. Such as the German Pzb-39 anti-tank rifle, the Japanese Type 97 anti-tank rifle (gun), the British Boyce anti-tank rifle and so on.
Due to the limited anti-tank capabilities of anti-tank rifles and the fact that tank armor during World War II was much thicker than in World War I, while anti-tank rifles were not greatly improved, none of the above countries had a large number of anti-tank rifles.
But the Soviet Union was an exception. While other countries began to phase out anti-tank rifles, the Soviet Union produced 470,000 at full capacity. Of course, this is not because the Soviet top brass did not realize the defects of the anti-tank gun, the main reason is twofold.
The first reason was that in the summer of 1941, the Soviet Union was overwhelmed by the German armored forces, the whole line collapsed, and it was in urgent need of a large number of anti-tank weapons, and the anti-tank guns could be mass-produced in a short period of time compared to other anti-tank weapons to meet the Soviet anti-tank needs.
The second reason is that in 1941, the armor thickness of German tanks was average, and shooting at the side with anti-tank guns could effectively counter German tanks.
With the upgrading of the German armored forces and the soviets dragging down the German offensive to ease up, the anti-tank rifle was also relegated to the second line.