Agent Sorchus wrote:I might not have said it totally right but you're either strawmaning me or misreading it.
Sorchus, why on Earth would I be 'strawmanning' you? I don't understand.
The 57 was adequate as an anti-field (AT gun) weapon. Unlike the Brit 6 pounder it did have a good HE round.
It really becomes an issue of how often you expect tanks to expend HE versus AP ammunition, I think. You can't make a 57mm HE round as effective as a 76mm one. It can be effective
enough, a hell of a lot better than throwing a grenade, but it can easily leave a lot to be desired. There's a reason practically everyone fighting in the war converged on ~75mm caliber for antitank, field artillery, and support guns by the late war, when they could get away with it.
It's a very practical size for general-purpose guns. The exploding charge of an HE shell is big enough to wreck almost anything except heavy earthworks or reinforced concrete. The ammunition size is still small enough that you can carry a lot of rounds for the gun inside a vehicle, and bring more up from the rear even if you're relying on animal transport or guys staggering through the mud to get the ammo up to the firing position. It's large enough to be effective against light armor, and even medium armor with the right choice of shell design; using it against heavy armor requires a longer barrel that makes it a heavier, more awkward weapon in some ways, but that's all right for dedicated AT and tank guns anyway.
Not a good anti-bunker gun, but the western front rarely stabilized for long enough for heavy bunkers to be to be produced.
No, it generally did not.
But there was a lot of urban warfare. Blasting troops out of rubble eats up tanks and men, but it's even harder if you don't have good weapons for infantry support. Which helps explain things like the SU-76 being so well loved too, though there were a ton of other reasons for that.
And in general, it is vastly better to be able to quickly overrun a slightly hardened position than to be stopped by a machine gun firing from behind thick pile of sandbags and logs, which is a real hazard for WWII infantry advancing without direct-fire guns in vehicles. Poured concrete bunkers aren't the only threat here.
Today, troops with that problem would just blow the improvised field fortification apart with antitank missiles from a thousand yards away or something, but that is now and this was then.
No the only flaw with the 57 is it's high per unit cost, not the bullshit wasn't good enough at chucking HE like the brit gun. (Here is the strawman mind you, you completely ignore the cost issue.)
Sorchus, like six hours ago I just said:
"The Russians had great, logical reasons
not to pick the 57mm [EDIT: meaning in the T-34 tank, just so we're clear], even if it was the gun most effective against enemy tanks. Economics is, yes, one of those reasons, you're right about that."
As far as your second position is concerned, again you are ignorant. As an infantry gun there was no better, for AT. IF it wasn't overcosted as all shit (I believe it cost more than either the 122 or 85mm) it was perfect for the role. AND it still used APCR as it's primary ammo. So I am comparing apples to apples.
...I said nothing specific about its use as an infantry gun. For infantry guns
weight is king over all else, and a well-designed 57mm gun is brilliantly sized to be about as heavy as infantry can handle in a practical way, while being powerful enough to genuinely matter in heavy combat.
how did I live factor.
