AA guns in the AT role

From AA Artillery on

http://www.worldwar2.ro/organizare/?articl...e=8&language=en

QUOTE

In some cases the soldiers of the 4th AA Regiment had to engage the Soviet tanks with the 75 mm Vickers/Resita guns.

To what extent were Romanian AA gunners trained in the anti tank role?
I am obviuosly thinking of the example of the German use of their 8.8cm Flak guns in this role.
Am I correct in assuming armour piercing shells or shot was provided? If so to what extent was this typical?

They were only used in times of crisis and Stalingrad was one.
An example would be the two batteries: one of 75 mm Vickers/Resita model 1936/39 and one of 37mm Rheinmetall at Kapovka airfield, which, together with the Bf-109Es raised on barrels to be able to fire horizontally, managed to repulse several tank assaults. The 7th Fighter Group eventually got away. As the last airplanes were taking off under shelling, they saw the gunners firing until the last moment at the Soviet tanks approaching them.

Any stats on the 75mm AA guns armour penetration ?,

No, but we can compare the muzzle velocity with some AT guns:

75 mm AA Resita: 750 m/s
7.5 cm Pak 40: 792 m/s
7.5 cm Pak 41 (squeeze bore): 1,230 m/s
7.5 cm Pak 97/38: 570 m/s
Ordnance QF 75 mm (tank gun): 610 m/s

The 7.5 cm Pak 40 could penetrate 132 mm at 90 degrees at 500 metres so I'm guessing that the Resita AA has some ~100-110 mm armour penetration based on the muzzle velocity. But I'm just guessing here, the barrel length and the shell were different.

The Resita AA wasn't really suited to AT role (heavy, tall, lacked the shield, could not fire from the carriage and was slow to deploy). Nonetheless, 30 000 AP shells were made by Costinescu for this AA gun. (source: Third Axis, Fourth Ally).

This post has been edited by Mircea87 on March 14, 2011 11:31 am

That is very helpfull data Mircea, I have been searching for ages to find some info on various 75mm AA guns in the Anti-tank role, because the 75mm was the most used calibre in various european countries before and during ww2.
Thanks Yan.

couldn't find a topic for Vickers Resita AA gun so here it goes:

http://www.dockmuseum.org.uk/archive/index.asp

Go for Armament -> Field Gun and then browse. There are quite a few photos of the Vickers 75 mm AA gun there (including some photos taken from Romanian trials). Some photos are dated 1930, any idea why this gun is commonly known as 1931?