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Ordnance QF 2-pounder

1936 WORLD WAR 2

History

The rather promising 2-pounder Ordnance QF anti-tank gun suffered losses in past service at a time when tank armor had been improved to the point of being largely obsolete. In any case, desperate British troops used weapons systems to back up their constraints on well-trained personnel and strong firepower until the situation improved.

As a result, the QF 2-pounder gained a rather misplaced reputation as a poor anti-tank gun, despite being a fairly powerful system for a short time in history, as accurate and effective as its contemporaries.

From 1934, British authorities required the use of 40 mm (2 lb) anti-tank guns. Vickers-Armstrong continued to develop, but the British army was slow to move and instead saw the new weapon sold to interested foreign countries. The gun has a barrel mounted on a base, which is further connected to a two-axle wheel system. The wheels are rubber with steel rims, and a split frame assembly is attached to the rear for transport by moving vehicles.

The wagon is fully open and becomes a tripod for a firm seat on hard ground, with the barrel wheels raised on both sides of the barrel. The gun was ultimately intended as a static defensive emplacement and did not follow the mobile-oriented design of the rest of Europe. A seat is mounted behind the armored shield of the rifle crew, and the sighting device is set at eye level of the seated operator. The upper part of the shield is hinged and can be folded forward and down for better visibility (at the cost of exposure to enemy fire).

On the lower right side of the shield is a magazine storage cabinet containing four rows of ready-to-fire 40mm projectiles for the loader to handle. The British Army didn't get its first weapons system until 1938, when war in Europe seemed almost inevitable. After some improvements to the original design, the British Army officially accepted the gun as the "Ordnance, Q.F., 2-pdr" in 1939 and issued the gun parts for the "Carriage, 2-pdr, Mk III" frame assembly.

Despite its promising nature, the final product proved to be a heavier weapon than any comparable product in Europe. The QF 2-pdr guns are operated by specially trained Royal Artillery personnel.

The QF 2-pdr measures 6 feet 9 inches long and weighs 1,848 pounds. The system fires a 2.4 lb 40 mm armor-piercing round at an effective range of 600 yards at a muzzle velocity of 2,626 feet per second. 53 mm (2 in) of armor can penetrate a distance of 500 yards.

The tripod mount assembly provides a full 360-degree traverse (unlike other towed anti-tank guns of this type, which are on a two-arm split mount), and crew-managed elevation angles range from -13 to +15 degrees. Standard operating staff consists of three to five employees.

As the war spread rapidly across Europe, the QF 2-pdr operated with the British Expeditionary Force on several fronts. However, despite its defensive design, the QF-2 soon exposed its inherent limitations.

The fast-moving blitzkrieg of the German army often resulted in the flanking defensive positions being overtaken, forcing the riflemen to leave their guns in place. In addition, the bulky nature of the QF 2-pdr system means it is nearly impossible to move the weapon without the aid of a vehicle. To make matters worse, the chosen 40mm gun proved unable to withstand the heavy armor of German tanks, which required penetration at uncomfortable close quarters. German tank crews almost always have an advantage over QF 2-pdr crews, as their tank main guns and machine guns can usually engage before the QF 2-pdr gets into its own effective range.

The QF 2-pdr was never equipped with high-explosive (HE_) ammunition, which limited its range against "soft" targets such as enemy staging areas and enemy anti-tank gun positions. These qualities quickly showed that the QF 2-pdr was obsolete, and although only British-produced guns were supplied in large quantities, many of the available systems were discontinued after the disastrous Allied withdrawal from the port city of Dunkirk, France Surrender to the Germans.

Despite the poor initial results, at this stage of the war, the British infrastructure to manufacture anti-tank vehicles was still lacking, forcing the QF 2-pdr to fight both on the assembly line and on the battlefield. As a result, the production of this gun continued, and this model fought with British crews in the North African campaign. Again, the results were poor, as the improved German armor and tactics were superior to the QF 2-pdr on many levels. Despite attempts to improve the weapon's field performance, the system simply wasn't up to the task.

The situation in the British army proved so dire that the Ordnance QF 25-pdr field gun was used as a makeshift anti-tank weapon. The QF 2-pdr was withdrawn from front-line service in Africa and Europe as early as 1942, but in the Pacific where Japanese tanks generally had thinner enemy armour, the QF 2-pdr was still able to pierce more successfully than its 40mm shells.

This thinner layer of skin. These Commonwealth units used the QF 2-pdr until the end of the war in 1945, some of which were mounted on tracked undercarriage for mobile support.

Outside the UK, QF 2-pdr is used to some extent in Australia, Belgium, Ireland and Spain. The European system, occupied by the Germans, was brought back into service with a new owner. The Germans renamed their British gun the 4.0 cm PaK 192(e). Captured Belgian sample, designated 4.0 cm PaK 154(b).

A few notable variants of the QF 2-pdr exist, more formally known as "marks" in the UK inventory system. The Mk IX proved to be the main production model, and these were done with an "auto-enhanced" barrel structure.

The Mk IX-A comes online as a simplified form to improve mass production work in UK factories. The Mk X comes with a forged barrel assembly.

The Mk X-A was nothing more than an improved Mk X production model with reduced dimensional tolerances, while the Mk X-B was used as a mobile firing platform on the vehicle.

The carriage came in two different production forms, the first named Mk I, developed by Vickers, and the second named Mk II, developed by the Royal Arsenal.