Anti-tank warfare

[1] The first developed anti-tank weapon was a scaled-up bolt-action rifle, the Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr, that fired a 13.2 mm cartridge with a solid bullet that could penetrate the thin armor used by tanks at that time and destroy the engine or ricochet inside, killing occupants.

In the Soviet sphere of influence the legacy doctrine of operational maneuver was theoretically examined to understand how a tank-led force could be used even with the threat of limited use of nuclear weapons on prospective European battlefields.

The use of the tank was mainly based on the assumption that, once they were able to eliminate the German trench lines with their machine gun and infantry support gun positions, the Allied infantry would follow and secure the breach, and the cavalry would exploit the breach in the trench lines by attacking into the depth of German-held territory, eventually capturing the field artillery positions and interdicting logistics and reserves being brought up from the rear areas.

Hull and track engineering was largely dictated by the terrain—the need to cross wide trenches—although the relationship between ground pressure and soil-vehicle mechanics was not resolved until the Second World War.

They judged that large numbers had to be employed to sustain an offensive despite losses to mechanical failure or vehicles foundering in intractable no man's land terrain.

Stick grenades were used to destroy the tracks by individual pioneers, however this required accompanying machine-gunners to first separate the supporting Allied infantry line from the tanks, which proved difficult.

In Spain, the anti-tank defense of the Nationalists was organized by the Wehrmacht officers, and the anti-tank guns were incorporated into a system of obstacles that were constructed with the intent to stop an attack by tanks by slowing it down, separating them from supporting infantry (advancing on foot) with machine-gun and mortar fire, and forcing tanks to conduct deliberate head-on assaults with engineer support, or seek a less-defended area to attack.

Ironically, in the early 1930s until the Spanish War, German officers were conducting secret testing of a new way of employing tanks, infantry and artillery offensively in the Soviet Union with the cooperation of the Red Army.

The successful test of the latter was during the Battles of Khalkhin Gol although the Red Army foundered on the Mannerheim Line in 1940, largely due to the purge in the Officer Corps, claiming many of the senior proponents of the new doctrine.

Anti-tank artillery would be included in mobile tank-led Wehrmacht and Red Army units due to the possibility of encountering enemy tanks in a meeting engagement.

This created a greater chance of causing a direct impact on the thinner top armor of the tank while also having the ability to damage track and wheels through proximity detonation.

In order to penetrate vehicle armor, they fire smaller caliber shells from longer-barreled guns to achieve higher muzzle velocity than field artillery weapons, many of which are howitzers.

The higher velocity, flatter trajectory ballistics provide terminal kinetic energy to penetrate the moving/static target's armor at a given range and contact's angle.

This meant that, if the TD became immobilized due to engine failure or track damage, it could not rotate its gun to counter opposing tanks, making it an easy target.

Late in the war, it was not unusual to find even the largest and most powerful tank destroyer abandoned on the field after a battle, having been immobilized by one high-explosive shell to the track or front drive sprocket.

With rotating turrets and good combat maneuverability, American TD designs generally worked well, although their light armor was no match for enemy tank cannon fire during one on one confrontations.

Although the AT rifle performance was negated by the increased armor of medium and heavy tanks by 1942, they remained viable against lighter-armored and unarmored vehicles, and against field fortification embrasures.

This became particularly true later in the war when the Red Army assumed an almost constant offensive, and anti-tank in-depth defensive deployments were used for protecting flanks of the operational breakthroughs against German tactical counterattacks.

The HEAT warhead was retroactively used to give more power to smaller calibre weapons such as in the conversion of the otherwise limited German 37 mm PaK guns to fire a large shell, called Stielgranate 41, that fitted over the barrel rather than down in it, to a greater range than the Panzerschreck could manage.

In addition to the inherently short range, they required careful aim to be effective, and those that relied on explosive force were often so powerful that the user had to take cover immediately.

Anti-tank guns were usually deployed to cover terrain more suitable for tanks, and were protected by minefields laid at about 500 meters to 1 kilometer from their positions by combat engineers.

Later tanks' slits had thick glass, and sights and periscopes which could still be damaged with powerful small arms such as anti-tank rifles and heavy machine guns, hampering the crew.

The British had developed the High-explosive squash head (HESH) warhead as a weapon for attacking fortifications during the war, and found it surprisingly effective against tanks.

Increasing use of combined arms tactics allowed the attacking infantry to suppress the anti-tank crews effectively, meaning that they could typically get off only one or two shots before being countered or forced to move.

In one form, a shell bursts in the air above one or more tanks and several shaped charge (HEAT) or high-explosive dual-purpose (HEDP) bomblets or grenades rain down.

The development of the wire-guided missile, or Anti-Tank Guided Weapon (ATGW) systems came into use in the late 1950s and 1960s that could defeat any known tank at ranges beyond that of the guns of the accompanying infantry.

[41] Rather than developing specialized anti-tank artillery, some nations, including South Africa and Israel, grafted obsolete tank guns onto towed carriages for use in that role.

However, the aging RPG-7 has evolved to the even more potent RPG-29 which has proven its worth in conflicts in the Middle East, damaging the Merkava IV,[43] Challenger 2[44] and M1 Abrams[45] main battle tanks.

The most profound anti-tank technology has been the guided missile, which when coupled with a helicopter can mean that tanks can be engaged beyond ground line of sight (LOS), and at one of their most vulnerable aspect, the top armor.

One of the first lessons of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict is the effectiveness of portable rocket propelled grenades, in particular, Russian-made RPG-29, and Metis-M, Kornet and European MILAN anti-tank missiles.