Official nomenclature for the Pak36

[Simon O.]

Has anyone any wartime documentation refering to the Pak36 as either Pak 36 or 3,7cm Pak36?

If anyone has i'd apreciate a scan. I'm trying to prove to someone that the '36' was used by the Germans. Not just 3,7cm Pak.




regards

Simon

[Matt L]

Hi Simon,

Well, all the ammunition cases I've looked at are stamped '3,7cm Pak' only, as well is the transport cannister for the Stielgranate marked 'Mun. 3,7cm Pak (Stiel-Gr.)'. So, as far as the ammunition is concerned, the weapon was simply the '3,7cm Pak'. As a comparison, all other ammunition of larger caliber DID have the number designation of the weapon- Flak18, KwK42, KwK43, etc. Even the 3,7cm Flak cases were marked '3,7cm Flak18'. This does seem to suggest that the 3,7cm Pak was known simply as that.

Matt

[Simon O.]

Thanks for the reply. I have been sent scans from some German documents dated March-April 1945 with the weapons clearly named as 3,7cm Pak 36. I wonder if the '36' was only a late war addition?


Regards

Simon

[Matt L]

Hi Simon,

If you've got images of authentic documents referring to a 3,7cm Pak 36, then I would think you have pretty irrefutable proof that this was indeed the proper designation for the weapon. As for it being a late-war change, I wouldn't think so- I can't see any sense in making such a change late on, especially since there was only one 3,7cm weapon so it wouldn't have been necessary, for example, to distinguish it from another gun of the same calibre. My main reference, produced by the US Army just after the war, simply refers to it as the 3.7cm Pak, and apart from the 7,5cm KwK (short), it appears to be the only German weapon without a date designation. I think that you can at least be sure that your document isn't referring to another 3,7cm anti-tank gun.

Matt

[cbo]

Originally posted by Simon orchard
Thanks for the reply. I have been sent scans from some German documents dated March-April 1945 with the weapons clearly named as 3,7cm Pak 36. I wonder if the '36' was only a late war addition?

The German army used a number of different 3,7cm anti-tank guns:

3,7cm PaK [the German gun - aka PaK 36 or 35/36]
3,7cm PaK M37(t) [a Czech design]
3,7cm Pak 39/40 [improved version of the Czech gun]
3,7cm PaK 36(p) [Polish, a Bofors design]

A couple of other 3.7cm guns are listed as Fremdgerät:

152(f) [the small French 37mm trench gun]
145(r) & 146(r) [Soviet 37mm infantry guns]

Ther could have been others, several nations used the Bofors design, including the Danish Army, but IIRC the Danish guns were built as Madsens.

The references I've seen to manuals shows that up to 1940, the guns was simply called the 3,7cm Panzerabwehrkanone (PaK). That is, up to 1936 it was actually called the 3,7cm Tankabwehrkanone (TaK), a designation that was apparently found in some of the documentation up to the late 1930ies.

So there might have been a good reason to start qualifying the designation at some point in the war, as "3,7cm PaK" could have referred to a number of different guns.

The 5cm PaK was always referred to by the full name "5cm PaK 38", so another suggestion would be that the "36" or "35/36" was added to the 3,7cm PaK designation at the time when the 5cm PaK entered service in the latter part of 1940.

Claus B