I was playing Moscov recently and it made me wonder. I was looking for some explanations online but found literalry nothing.
I have some suspitions but I’d like to know for sure.
The most simple explaination panzer 3 series initially thinked for infantry support and enemy supression and panzer 4 for be anti-fortification/tank, those thing changed wen they encounter the russian behemot with the pz3j series and panzer4f2 series
Wasn’t PzIII supposed to be AT tank and PzIV infantry support though?
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Pz4 was supposed bring down maginot
More like Karl Gerat was supposed to atack maginot
Yeah, and PzIII was AT. So why 2 coax?
Engagement distance changed. At first, there was cute tiny vehicles like pz1 whose only purpose was to support infantry as a mobile pillbox. Then the German army started encountering enemy tanks armed with better anti tank canons. So they had to engage from a bit safer distances and start working on better guns themselves.
And so on.
Eventually, 2 coax lmgs became superfluous, as the Engagement distance was too big anyway, there was no need to spray lmgs as before.
So basically a relic of the past.
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KV1 PTSD
Happy 8,8 noises
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Stug became the assault gun
Because the pz3 was designed to be a main battle tank, to engage and destroy infantry and tanks at a closer range, while the pz4 slinged HE and smoke
But there was also that the pz3b + models were intended to be equipped with the 5cm kwk but they did not have the funds or time to trial, test and build the guns at the time, thus leaving more space in the turret then it needed untill they did
And by the time they had designed the gun for it, the pz4 had became the mainstay, even thou the pz3 was still very used in large numbers
As others have noted - the 37mm AT gun wasn’t very good vs infantry.
The same thinking goes into why the British didn’t issue HE for hte 2 pdr - MG’s would be the main anti-infantry weapon.
Why 2? Why one was not enough?
Because the pz3 was designed to be a main battle tank, to engage and destroy infantry and tanks at a closer range, while the pz4 slinged HE and smoke
But there was also that the pz3b + models were intended to be equipped with the 5cm kwk but they did not have the funds or time to trial, test and build the guns at the time, thus leaving more space in the turret then it needed untill they did
And by the time they had designed the gun for it, the pz4 had became the mainstay, even thou the pz3 was still very used in large numbers
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So “we have some place left, put a MG there”?
it was there to begin with, following the designs of the american tanks made at the time following idea of MG rule the battlefield (the reason why the pz1/2 both had MGs for the main weapon(and also trying to copy the success of the PZ1 with its two MGs) , as to “fill the space” and no point in changing somethink producion line to somthink that is going to be phased out
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Because more is better.
Lots of tanks of the era had 2 mg’s - Italian, Russian, American are some obvious ones.