pzjgr
EOD - bombs and bullets
German 7,5cm KwK Sprenggranate Round
So, I have had a German 7,5cm KwK HE round since the middle 90's probably...bought off eBay when ordnance was plentiful there, and bought from Europe where it was relatively cheap, and had no problem getting things delivered. Thus was the Golden Age of German ordnance collection, really. A ton of stuff was surfacing, literally, there. Most of it water or ground recovered from large wholesale disposals at the end of the war..,pits dug and ordnance and ammo bull dozed in, or just dumped into lakes and such. As there was a good market for it, it was being recovered, demilled, and sent wholesale around Europe and to the states. All over eBay, dealers with vast inventories.
Now it was never "Cheap", but it was reasonable, and if you ordered lots of stuff with the same vendors, you built a rapport, and got unlisted stuff.
Never had an issue with stuff coming in, until 9/11, then the spigots shut off. So difficult to get shipped now, with a loss rate of 50% or better, and crazy prices...getting stuff from Europe is tough on many levels now.
Anyway, got a round, looked water recovered. The projectile was great...the steel case, not so much. Perfect for display on one side, rather rusted/pitted/perforated on the other. So being a relatively unskilled kid, I sort of did my best with body filler, sandpaper and impatience, and did a mediocre job at fixing the one side, sprayed it with brass spray paint, displayed it with the good side out, and called it good...
The case never really sat right with me, then a buddy from up north called a few weeks ago, and asked what this big case was...why, its a KwK 40 case, what are you going to do with it...sell it to you he said. So we agreed on a price, and he sent it off, got it Saturday.
An upgrade to say the least.
So I pulled the projectile from my old case, (which I will likely re-work, do a better job on the bad side, figure a way to paint it so it looks decent, and likely put it up here for sale), took some detailed pics of everything, re-seated the projectile in the new case, and Bob's your Uncle, a really awesome finally complete KwK 40 round!
The KwK 40 gun was an AFV gun (Kampfwagen Kanone) in the 75mm flavor, which supplanted the short barreled KwK 37.
The KwK 37 was also 75mm, but the barrel was L/24, or 24 calibers in length, or roughly 70 inches in length. It used a short cased, straight walled round. These are the guns mounted in the StuG III Ausf. A-E, and the early short barreled Pzkw IV tanks. They were relatively low velocity, short range weapons developed mainly for infantry support, as the early Stug's and Pzkw IV's were intended.
Of course being low velocity, they were relatively anemic against armor (the main contemporary anti-tank gun was the 5cm, but was quickly found lacking too), so a more powerful 75mm gun was needed. The KwK 40, L/43 and L/48 guns were developed, with a much longer bottlenecked case. This greatly increased the velocity of the projectile, and had a huge increase in lethality against armored targets.
These new guns were used on the long barrel Stug III's, Ausf F-G, and the Pzkw IV Ausf F2 and beyond...Technically if the gun was mounted in a Stug, it was the StuK 40, but the ammo is the same.
Here are pics of the KwK 37 HE round, and the KwK 40 HE round...same type of projectile in both, you can see the KwK 37 case is about the same length as the case, while the case on the KwK 40 round is more than twice the length of the projectile.
More to come later...
So, I have had a German 7,5cm KwK HE round since the middle 90's probably...bought off eBay when ordnance was plentiful there, and bought from Europe where it was relatively cheap, and had no problem getting things delivered. Thus was the Golden Age of German ordnance collection, really. A ton of stuff was surfacing, literally, there. Most of it water or ground recovered from large wholesale disposals at the end of the war..,pits dug and ordnance and ammo bull dozed in, or just dumped into lakes and such. As there was a good market for it, it was being recovered, demilled, and sent wholesale around Europe and to the states. All over eBay, dealers with vast inventories.
Now it was never "Cheap", but it was reasonable, and if you ordered lots of stuff with the same vendors, you built a rapport, and got unlisted stuff.
Never had an issue with stuff coming in, until 9/11, then the spigots shut off. So difficult to get shipped now, with a loss rate of 50% or better, and crazy prices...getting stuff from Europe is tough on many levels now.
Anyway, got a round, looked water recovered. The projectile was great...the steel case, not so much. Perfect for display on one side, rather rusted/pitted/perforated on the other. So being a relatively unskilled kid, I sort of did my best with body filler, sandpaper and impatience, and did a mediocre job at fixing the one side, sprayed it with brass spray paint, displayed it with the good side out, and called it good...
The case never really sat right with me, then a buddy from up north called a few weeks ago, and asked what this big case was...why, its a KwK 40 case, what are you going to do with it...sell it to you he said. So we agreed on a price, and he sent it off, got it Saturday.
An upgrade to say the least.
So I pulled the projectile from my old case, (which I will likely re-work, do a better job on the bad side, figure a way to paint it so it looks decent, and likely put it up here for sale), took some detailed pics of everything, re-seated the projectile in the new case, and Bob's your Uncle, a really awesome finally complete KwK 40 round!
The KwK 40 gun was an AFV gun (Kampfwagen Kanone) in the 75mm flavor, which supplanted the short barreled KwK 37.
The KwK 37 was also 75mm, but the barrel was L/24, or 24 calibers in length, or roughly 70 inches in length. It used a short cased, straight walled round. These are the guns mounted in the StuG III Ausf. A-E, and the early short barreled Pzkw IV tanks. They were relatively low velocity, short range weapons developed mainly for infantry support, as the early Stug's and Pzkw IV's were intended.
Of course being low velocity, they were relatively anemic against armor (the main contemporary anti-tank gun was the 5cm, but was quickly found lacking too), so a more powerful 75mm gun was needed. The KwK 40, L/43 and L/48 guns were developed, with a much longer bottlenecked case. This greatly increased the velocity of the projectile, and had a huge increase in lethality against armored targets.
These new guns were used on the long barrel Stug III's, Ausf F-G, and the Pzkw IV Ausf F2 and beyond...Technically if the gun was mounted in a Stug, it was the StuK 40, but the ammo is the same.
Here are pics of the KwK 37 HE round, and the KwK 40 HE round...same type of projectile in both, you can see the KwK 37 case is about the same length as the case, while the case on the KwK 40 round is more than twice the length of the projectile.
More to come later...
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