2.8 Cm S Pz B 41 - Service

Service

Squeeze bore guns saw only limited use in World War II. Manufacturing of such weapons was impossible without advanced technologies and high production standards. The only country except Germany to bring such weapons to mass production was Britain with the Littlejohn adaptor which, although not a gun in itself, used the same principle. An attempt of Soviet design bureau headed by V. G. Grabin in 1940 failed because of technological problems. In the US, reports about the sPzB 41 inspired a series of experiments with 28/20 barrels and taper bore adaptors for the 37mm Gun M3; the work started in September 1941 and continued throughout the war, with no practical results.

sPzB 41 combined good anti-armor performance at short range and high rate of fire with small, lightweight (for anti-tank gun), dismantleable construction. However, it also had several shortcomings, such as:

• The barrel was hard to manufacture and had short service life (about 500 shots)
• Very weak fragmentation shell
• Use of tungsten for armor-piercing shells
• Short effective range
• Relatively weak behind armour effect.

Some authors that criticize the sPzB 41 concentrate mainly on short service life of its barrel. However, a chance of survival after 500 short-range shots was slim anyway. It should also be noted that high-velocity guns with "normal" barrel construction also had short service life, e.g. for the Soviet 57-mm ZiS-2 it was about 1,000 shots. In the end, the factor that brought the production of sPzB 41 to a halt was the shortage of tungsten.