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Brown · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Nov 26, 2014 Posts: 2

Can anyone tell me why they used 2 different designs? The American 57mm towed AT gun used a vertically sliding breech, but the 75 and 76mm used in the Shermans had a horizontally sliding breech. On the other hand, the German towed ATs had horizontally sliding breeches, but the tanks had vertically sliding breeches.

Any particular reason why they did this?

JG300-Ascout · Last edited by JG300-Ascout on Fri Dec 05, 2014 9:23 pm; edited 2 times in total

Typically space considerations and operating environment. It's not unusual to see the same gun in both vertical AND sliding breechblock arrangements depending on where it's installed. (The orientation of the recoil apparatus can dictate this if fitting in a tank turret). German 88's and some Brit/U.S. tank weapons were mounted differentially for these reasons. (look at some images of the 88 in a flak mount and inside a Tiger for example...the recoil cylinder is on top with sideways breech in the flak mount where space is not an issue...in the tank, the whole thing is effectively rotated 90 degrees to keep the turret roof shorter)

piney

another factor between the 57 MM AT gun and the 75 and 76 MM was that the 57 was originally a British design and the US bigger bores weren't. maybe different design philosophies at work

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