Editing PAK-40 Anti- (section)

== The PaK-40 in the real world ==

While it may seem impossible to many neckbeards and wargamers, the real world is in fact a thing. And in the aforementioned 'real world,' Nazi Germany went to war with, well, a lot of people. A lot of people with tanks. To kill these people (and blow up their tanks), the Germans came up with several types of AT (anti-tank) gun - first and foremost among these at the beginning of the war being the 3.7cm PaK-36. However, even before the war began, the Germans saw several flaws with the PaK-36 (namely, it wasn't good enough at killing tanks), and started a program to design some extremely technologically advanced AT guns, featuring all kinds of expensive, lightweight materials. 

Following fears about the effectiveness of the then-brand new 5cm PaK-38 right at the beginning of the war, German engineers started making a new anti-tank gun, which would be designated as the 7.5cm Panzerabwehrkanone 40 (75mm Anti-Tank cannon to those of us in the anglosphere). This new gun offered much greater capabilities against enemy armoured vehicles whilst still being small, light and practical enough to be put into service. Furthermore, the gun, carriage and shield were made entirely from steel, a necessary step when the Luftwaffe had priority for all the lighter or more expensive materials needed for the PaK-38. Firing a 6.8kg shell at over 790 m/s, the PaK-40 could go through 132mm of Rolled Homogenous Steel Plate at 500m. 

Whilst originally intended as a towed AT gun, there would, over the course of the war, be a great many vehicles fitted with the PaK-40, or its dedicated AFV-mounted variant, the Kampfwagenkanone-40 (Military Vehicle Gun 40, shortened to KwK-40 - this was designated StuK, or Sturmkanone 40, when mounted in assault guns but was identical to the KwK). These vehicles included assault guns such as the StuG III (Ausfuhrung F onwards), tank destroyers such as the Marder I, II and III and actual tanks such as the Panzer IV (Ausf. F.2 onwards). 23,303 PaK-40s were produced during the war, and it remained a potent and effective weapon right until the end.