The 37 mm turkish conecction

[MiguelMaxim]

Got this 37 mm in Turkey some years ago and after a long,long,long way I have them with me here in Spain. In the 30`s the Turkish Army bought some german Pak 35/50 (yesterday I posted pictures of the original german optical sight in "The gun" forum)and tons of 37 ammo, but one day this ammo finished and they begun to produce it in the Kirikkale Ammunition Plant, close to Ankara. I think the first three rounds from the left are rounds for the Pak and the fourth is one 37 mm Flak without fuze. The first is HE with dummy base fuze and the two others are solid steel rounds. The markings As.Fab. are for Askeri fabrikasi, that means Military Factories in turkish, 940 and 37 or 39 are the years of production and the T means Top, in turkish, gun. The Turkish Army marked the guns with a code number. The TC mark is for Turkiye Cumhuriyet, that means Turkish Republic. All this is just a theory, because in 1948 the turkish joined the west and received 37mm antitank and AA american guns in big quantities. The case is the only one I could get there, very similar to the cases we had here in the spanish civil war 1936-1939 from the germans and the Kondor Legion.

 

[StielGr]

The pictures are really interesting. I have seen pictures of a 3.7cm Pak case that has a star outline on the base. There is a theory these cases may have been for export and possibly for Turkey.

Are the first three projectile all the same length and what length are they please?

Many thanks
PC

 

[MiguelMaxim]

First, the HEAP is 108mm long and the two others are 103mm long. In the base of the rounds are some kind of letters or marks remembering M, K, 39 and a hearth, but no idea of the meaning. Not sure about nothing because in Turkey all thing related with the history were secret from the 20`s to the 40`s and they bought a lot of weaponry from the URSS and maybe some 37mm russian antitank guns also, together with german PzKpfw III, IV, MG-34 and thousand of things, like canteens,binoculars,etc. Sorry about my lack of knowledge.

 

[MiguelMaxim]

As an example of my reply, here you can see some MG-34 optical sights ZF-34 discovered in Turkey from these weaponry programs of the 40`s but no records, no lists of the material they bought.