Talk:25 mm APX modèle 1937

Operational Rôles are Reversed

Hey!

The introductory material reverses the operational application of the existing variants of the 25mm AC. It has the older, heavier, and less-robust SA.34H being "intended" for motorised units and transport, and the newer, lighter, SA.34m.37P "intended" for infantry and horse-transport units. Also, the SA.34m.37P was not "too light" to be considered reliable. It was an excellent carriage for the time and the vehicles towing it, and it proved capable of deployment anywhere any other gun of the era could be deployed. This is tarring with too wide a brush. The same criticism applies to the power of the 25mm AC overall.

That assertion might seem sensible, but it is counter-factual, and certainly not based on any of the many widely-available sources on the French Campaign of 1940---nor on the primary sources of the French Army.

The SA.34H was built for employment via horse-team—a team of four dray horses normally pulled one gun. The carriage was very heavy—as is noted—but also relatively poor. In addition to being very heavy—and very heavy for its size—it was prone to breakdowns because of its weight, making it difficult to place the gun in rough terrain. As the French Army expanded it's motorisation efforts, the SA.34H gun proved to be even less suited to motor transport than it had been to horse transport. The SA.34H was known to simply come apart if towed above brisk walking speeds (no more than 16 k/h or 10 mph). As the French Army had in the meantime decided on the revolutionary step of transitioning its motorised units to organic transport, this was particularly troublesome.

The result was a redesigned gun—not a new gun or even a new design. The Puteaux works undertook to redesign the SA.34H to produce a gun and carriage that could be towed by motor vehicle or horse team. Assemblies were lightened, the carriage completely redesigned and significantly strengthened, and the whole made "ready" for modern mass-production techniques when and if that radical concept should come to France. The result was a gun with a significantly different parts tail, but firing the same ammunition.

I have seen the Puteaux gun designated "Canon de 25mm Semi-Automatique Modèle 1934 Modifié 1937 Anti-Char Puteaux (25mm SA34m37P AC), and the Hotchkiss gun "Canon de 25mm Semi-Automatique Modèle 1934 Anti-Char Hotchkiss (25mm SA34H AC)", but I am unsure if that is, in fact, accurate—I do not have access to Stephan Ferand's book on the field armaments of the French Army in 1940 at the moment. I have not seen the Puteaux weapon listed as 25mm SA.37P in any reliable sources, but again, I do not have immediate access to any right now. It should be an easy question to track down, and it isn't life-or-death to the article (though it is historically important, I agree).

The introduction ought thus to be put round about: The SA.34m.37P gun (your SA37), designed for motorised transport, was deployed first with the the motorised or mechanised infantry, where it was towed by motor vehicles. The SA.34H gun, unsuited to transport by motor vehicle, was deployed with the regular infantry divisions, where it was drawn by horse-teams.

Ranya (talk) 18:27, 9 May 2020 (UTC)