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supertsar · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Jan 12, 2007 Posts: 38

Can anyone tell me when the Americans first used their 57mm ATG in combat? Was it in N Africa after torch? Italy? After D-day?
I know they were being produced long before....

Kurt_Laughlin · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Jan 24, 2006 Posts: 577

I have a compilation of US artillery ammunition expenditures in WW II that lists the first 57mm AP/APC usage in September 1943.

KL

supertsar · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Jan 12, 2007 Posts: 38

Thanks - that would put it in action in Sicily. Assuming the expenditures totals you have do not include training.

claude_GILLONO · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 80

- supertsar

Thanks - that would put it in action in Sicily. Assuming the expenditures totals you have do not include training.

Sicily ended late in August 1943. Salerno begun early in September.
HTH

tankdriver · Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 1:54 pm Post subject: Re: American M1 57mm ATG

My 57mm has a build date of 1942 stamped on it.

mike_Duplessis · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Jan 24, 2006 Posts: 236

I have a soft spot for the U.S. 6 pdr., though I can't imagine why. I have this crazy theory that the U.S. barrel is longer than the Brit so use could be made of machining tools for the Sherman's 75mm M3 gun barrel. Based on nothing more than barrel estimates and my own fevered imagination.

bsmart · Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 4:48 pm Post subject: Re: American M1 57mm ATG

The American barrel is longer then the early British barrels but the same length as their later production. Early british guns were made witha the shorter barrel because that was the limitation of the menufacturing equipment available at the time.

supertsar · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Jan 12, 2007 Posts: 38

Riddle solved.
Picked up Zaloga's excellent title on US Anti-tank artillery (Osprey). Accepted for service in May 1943. Has a picture of one in Oran dated April 1943. Also a great picture of 34th Infantry Division half-tracks towing them in a 4th of July Parade in Rabat Morocco in 1943.
As far as actual combat he noted Patton's Seventh Army was critical of the lack of an HE round for it during the fighting on Sicily.
God bless Steven Zaloga and all his books.

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