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Projectile Piercing Armoured Plate

B

Buster

Well-Known Member
Ordnance approved
Premium Member
I have been asked for information about the piece in the pictures (which are the only ones I have). It does not look quite right to me, not a fake as such, but a put together piece. The projectile diameter is 3.54cm, and listed as you can see as 3.5cm. The driving band does not look to be correctly engraved to me. Can anyone ID the shell or provide anymore information about the exhibit. Thanks.

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The projectile may be completely a reproduction:

-35.4 mm is to small for a 37 mm shell
-calibre 35 mm at this time is unknown at least I don't remember ever heard of it.
-on the picture it looks like the shell is missing a bourrelet? (a real shell should have one)
 
I would agree with Alpini. Also, I would expect a cannelure on this size projectile.

A possibly explanation is that it is a 'representative projectile' to compliment a genuine piece of pierced plate.

TimG
 
REME in Bordon in the welding bay before they closed down had blocks of armour with AP hits in the plate, some clean through some with the projectile still there, from thicknesses from 20mm to 10 inches etc, great exhibits, not sure where they are now.
 
How thick is the plate and what is the diameter of the hole? The hole diameter might indicate what actually was used to penetrated the plate. The projectile looks to be just for show.
 
Yes, there isn't any of the 'squeezing' over the driving band profile that always seem to happen.
 
spotter said:
Just for interest theres some nice photos of 2pdr and 6pdr in armour plate in post no 3 of the following link
http://www.bocn.co.uk/vbforum/threads/54794-Fort-Nelson-Royal-Armouries?highlight=armour+plate
Click to expand...


Hee, hee. There were two plates there that had used for plating trials that had been been shot at (respectively) by APDS and HESH projectile. The plaque for each stated it was a 20-pdr AT gun that had been used in the trials.

Anyway I measured the dimensions of one core that was embedded in the APDS plate and it was from a L15-series APDS-T projectile.

For the HESH plate, as far as I was aware HESH was never issued for the 20-pdr, though I'm not sure if it was every experimentally developed? Anyway, the scab size married up with that produced by a L31-series HESH projectile.

I emailed the results to the curator, he checked my findings and eventually concurred. Soon afterwards the plaques were amended.
 
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