Maverick, I said that my data is 10 years old. Maybe Rheinmetall engineers could invent a cannon that fires 3000m/s rounds duuring that 10 years. And believe me - if a tank commander in the US knew it - we had to know it too.
D-81 fired a standart sabot antitank projectile at 1800m/s. AFAIK it was the fastest projectile in a cannon built in large series in early-90s. It was a late-60s design, and when we asked if there were better cannons designed later - our professors said "what for?".
I can admit that you can reach higher muzzle-velosities if you use a lighter projectile. But 3 km/s - it's a joke. 3 km/s is a speed of a detonation wave. There is a way to detonate a charge of a ballistit powder in a cannon chamber - but it will be the one and the last shot.
No offences please, but we were taught to design projectiles for such cannons.
What was the resourse of this cannon? How many shots?
What about the recoil?
Or maybe it was a kind of a magnetic cannon? I simply can't imagine how this thing works...
NB: I do not want to get any classified information from you. Just curious how did the things change since I left college
As for T-34 - it's still used in many African countries like Angola, in Iraq and some other Arab countries, in Yugoslavia etc. AFAIK it's mobility, armour and firepower was no worse then some US tanks used in Vietnam. The main problem must be reliability (they are OLD!) and motor resourse.
You can laugh, but IS-2 heavy tanks were used for the last time at the maneuvers of the Odessa Military District in 1982, and were assigned off-duty only in 1994!!! I wonder if there remained any of those that were in the streets of Berlin in 1945... There were rumours that old T-10 and even IS-3 tanks are sill on duty on Chineese border, in some fortified posiions.
------------------
With respect,
Pavel Pavlov,
Commissar 25th IAP WB VVS
