Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video episode on ForgottenWeapons.com. Today we're out here at the range with
this awesome huge piece of hardware. This is a German Pak-40, or
Panzerabwehrkanone. It's an anti-tank gun. This was in fact the mainstay of German
anti-tank guns during World War Two. These were developed between 1939
and 1941 by the Rheinmetall company and then produced all the way through the
war. They made about 23,500 of them in total, which is quite a lot for something this size. This particular one is a 1943 gun,
and to the best of my knowledge it's actually the only live firing Pak-40
in the United States right now. There's an interesting story behind where
it came from, which we'll get to in a minute. Now this is a 75mm gun, it fires a ginormous
case that's about from here about this tall. Fires about a 15 pound
projectile at 2,500 feet per second. ... So primary use of this was as an anti-tank gun,
direct fire, like this, aimed with a little telescopic sight. (Might as well zoom in here, you can take a look at that). So, not a whole lot bigger than a rifle scope, right there. And it's got a very simple little German post reticle in it.
A little hole in the armour shield so you can see through it. And you point this straight at a tank, and this thing was powerful enough to blow right
through pretty much any Allied tank in World War Two. The only things that were able to stand up to it
were some of the late war Russian heavy tanks, but on the Western Front this thing
would eat Shermans for breakfast. ... I should say maximum range of this
as an anti-tank gun was about a mile. ... They did also use it for indirect fire, so arcing up and over, had a maximum range of
about five miles that way firing a high-explosive shell. Although really it's purpose and it's
effective use is as an anti-tank gun. It is surprisingly light for what it is,
it weighs about 3,200 pounds. You can see here the armour shield
to protect the crew is two pieces of rather thin plate that are separated
by some stand-off bolts. The idea here was pretty much protection
from shrapnel and small arms fire. Something might go through one of
these plates, but by the time it got through it would have slowed down, it would be going
sideways, and it would not penetrate the second plate. And doing it this way made it easier
and cheaper to manufacture, you know, the light plate's a
lot easier to bend and harden, and it kept the weight of the gun down. This thing
is brutal when it fires, you'll see that in just a minute, throws up a gigantic cloud of dust
that completely consumes the gun. Firing this we actually broke one of the
windows in a vehicle right behind the gun. Really an impressive concussion,
you'll get a kick out of that. It is German, it is overly complex. A lot of the
parts in this were made with fairly light sheetmetal, which made it kind of a beast to rebuild. When this was purchased it originally
came from a VFW hall that had been bought out by a lady who turned it into an art
gallery. She really did not like guns, she decided to paint this bright pink
and cover it in flowers as a statement. And it was in pretty bad shape. A lot of the
sheetmetal was rusted through, rusted away. About a full year of rebuilding went into this gun
to put it into the fireable condition that it's in today. The lady who did sell this, sold it to
an intermediary on the strict condition that it would never fire again, because
it is an evil weapon of war or something. That intermediary promptly sold it to the folks who own
it now, who promptly rebuilt it because it is awesome. So we have our windage and our elevation hand
wheels here, pretty basic stuff, just larger than most. This button in the middle of the wheel is actually
your firing button. You smack that in nice and hard, it goes through a connector here, to here, fires the gun. When this fires the whole barrel and breech
assembly comes sliding back on these rails. In actual wartime use it has an automatic ejector that
would throw the empty case out the back of the gun. You have a shield here partly for that,
so that you don't get someone standing here and have part of their leg
taken off by the recoiling breech assembly. Now for shooting today the guys who own
this have the automatic ejection system disabled so that they can keep the brass in good shape because
obviously brass is not easy to come by any more, and it's expensive, and ... they don't want
it thrown across on the rocks and broken, so. The gunner sits over here, you have an
assistant gunner on this side to load the gun. Let's see, what else do we have here? We have, like, the mother of all muzzle brakes. Kind of bears a resemblance to some
competition AR brakes you might see, and for the same reason. Quite
a significant side blast off of this. The rings, I don't think these are
accurate on this particular gun, but the rings originally were
painted to reflect tank kills. One thing we noticed manoeuvring around
this gun is that this armoured shield is not very big. This is here more to protect the gun
than to protect the crew, because you have to get really small to hide behind
this shield when you're back here firing. Alright, enough talk. Let's see it shoot. You guys about ready? Yeah! Alright, fire in the hole! Thanks for tuning in guys, I hope you enjoyed it.
I know this is about the most impressive thing I've ever seen actually fire off, and we
had a ball being out here to watch it. Tune in again to ForgottenWeapons.com
for more awesome German artillery. Thanks for watching.
"How's that tiny shield going to protect us?"
Holy shit that thing is huge. I think they make it look smaller in the game. Massive blast too. Cool vid!
Whenever you see someone complain in game about how slow the Pak 40 moves, just show them this video lol. It's a big fucking gun XD
All hail gun jeebus!
mad lad
Really cool, thanks for sharing!
Awesome video.
Deary me, it looks a lot smaller in-game. I thought this was the one that is used as a stationary gun by the okw fortifications doctrine at first!