M40 recoilless gun
The M40 recoilless gun was a light, portable, 105 mm gun made in the United States . It was primarily intended for anti-tank defense, but could also be used as an anti-personnel weapon with tracer - Flechette ammunition. Mostly it was fired mounted on a wheeled vehicle. The einschüssige, air-cooled breech-loading weapon could only be used for direct fire, was attached to a target device at each weapon. There were two versions, M40A1 and M40A2.
The gun was mainly used during the Vietnam War and was later replaced by the anti-tank guided missile BGM-71 TOW .
The caliber 106 mm is sometimes given for the gun, although it is 105 mm. This was done to avoid confusion with the incompatible ammunition of the unsuccessful forerunner M27 .
functionality
The M40 is an elongated cylinder. The gunner sat on the tripod to the left of the weapon and aimed the gun at the target with the help of the height adjustment wheel (also on the left side of the weapon) and the crank for lateral adjustment (under the weapon on the mount). A quick lateral adjustment by hand was also possible. The target was sighted through a sighting device that contained a reticle. Then the gunner first fired the 12.7 mm target marking rifle , which was mounted coaxially on top of the M40 and contained a magazine for ten tracer cartridges. If the tracer missile hit the target, it fired the gun. A night sighting device could be mounted on a dovetail guide for use at night. This target device made it possible to recognize and fight targets, provided that they were not visibly illuminated by headlights with infrared filters (Swiss designation “B 200”).
ammunition
The M40 gun was loaded with grenades , the cases of which were perforated, so that a large part of the firing energy escaped through the perforations in the case wall and the openings in the unsecured locking position of the gun to the rear. The resulting pressure wave could lead to personal injury, as a result of which stricter safety regulations were introduced in the Swiss Army after accidents in a recruiting school in 1978: The gun crew's loader was only allowed to unlock the gun if the space behind the gun was free. The grenades were shaped in such a way that they fit into the features of the barrel. The ammunition penetrates about 40 cm of steel at any distance up to the maximum range.
Types of ammunition included HEAT , HEP-T and Flechette ammunition.
The ammunition that was used for the target marking rifle did not have the popular 12.7 x 99 mm NATO caliber , but was a custom-made product that traced the trajectory of the 105 mm ammunition.
Carrier systems
In addition to being used on a portable tripod , the weapon system could be mounted on a Jeep Ford MUTT M151 , Willys Jeep M 38A1, Land Rover Defender , HMMWV , Toyota Landcruiser or LKW M274 Mechanical Mule for mobile use .
The truck, M50 Ontos of the US Marine Corps was equipped with six M40. The Japanese Type 60 tank carried two M40s as armament, as did the Pakistani M113 .
distribution
The M40, an inexpensive and relatively effective gun for its time, is still used by the armed forces of Egypt , Greece , Honduras , Israel , Mexico , Morocco , Taiwan and Turkey . The armed forces of Angola , which were temporarily equipped by the USA to fight communist troops, used the M40 mounted on HMMWVs .
The Swiss Army equipped the anti-tank companies of the infantry regiments from 1958 to 1990 with twelve M40 guns each (Swiss designation 10.6 cm rsf Pak 58 for recoilless anti-tank gun 1958 , or just BAT from the US designation battalion anti-tank ). They were replaced by the Panzerjäger 90 with TOW guided missiles .
In the Austrian Bundesheer the gun was in the hunter battalions with the label "10.6 cm RPAK" (RPAK = " r ückstoßfreie P anzer a bwehr k anone") in use, before passing through the system BILL was replaced.
Also used by the German Federal Armed Forces on SPz HS 30 until around 1972 (PzGren Btl), 1 LGS per train.
Technical specifications
- Main function: anti-tank gun
- Gun crew: Gun leader, gunner, loader, driver (= auxiliary loader)
- Length: 340 cm
- Weight (loaded): 209.5 kg
- Firing distance against moving tanks 600–1,000 m
- Effective range: 1,350 m
literature
- John Norris: Anti-tank weapons. Brassey's, 1996, ISBN 9781857531770 [1]
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Armed forces of the Austrian Armed Forces , website www.bundesheer.at, accessed on August 16, 2016