Posts Tagged: 1944
Stridsvagn m/42 on an urban combat exercise, 1944
Stridsvagn m/42 on an urban combat exercise in the streets of Östermalm, Stockholm, April 29th, 1944.
Photo credit: C. Sandels/Försvarsstabens pressavdelning
Memo regarding guidelines for new AFV development (1944)
Original title: VPM med förslag till riktlinjer för planering och utprövning av nya stridsvagnar mm.
This memo (dated 1944-11-29) suggests guidelines for future AFV development. It starts off with discussing foreign developments, and states that the general opinion seems to be that anti-tank weapons have reached such a degree of efficiency that merely building more heavily armored tanks no longer seems cost-efficient. At the same time, the demand for “support tanks” (self-propelled guns and tank destroyers) is on the rise.
With this in mind, the memo suggests a number of new developments, mostly improvements of existing designs, and suggests that using the new “split” turret with an automatic gun rammer (currently under development at Bofors) might be a good idea.
Archive reference: SE/KrA/0062/D/01/016:H/F I/4
Memo regarding the quality of homogenous armor plates
Original title: PM angående kvaliteten i homogen pansarplåt
A memo (dated 1944-03-21) regarding the properties of various types of steel, particularly with regard to the capability of withstanding hits from armor-piercing rounds of various types. Contains a lot of data from test firings with various guns against various armor plate configurations.
Archive reference: SE/KrA/0062/D/01/016:H/F I/3
Minutes of meetings regarding a better gun for strv m/42
Minutes from three 1944 meetings, regarding equipping the strv m/42 with a better gun. The existing 7,5 cm kan m/41 strv has insufficient penetration, and a replacement is clearly necessary considering the tank development seen so far during the war. A 57 mm option is considered, but in the end it is decided to let Bofors fit the 75 mm pvkan m/43 for trials.
This requires a redesigned turret; blueprints for that are attached. These presented my small camera with some problems since they’re huge (they portray the entire tank – 6.2 meters long in reality – at scale 1:5, which means the tank is about 1.2 meters long on the blueprint) so I’ve had to photograph them in parts.
Archive reference: SE/KrA/0062/D/01/016:H/F I/3