At present, modern armies are equipped with 12.7 mm large-caliber sniper rifles, which should be anti-materiel rifles to be precise, such as the American Barrett and the Chinese Type 10 models. Influenced by movies and computer games, many netizens believe that large-caliber sniper rifles can do everything on the battlefield, they can hit helicopters on the top, tanks can be hit under them, people are broken at the waist, and tanks are shot with a hole.
In many films that depict the fierce battlefields of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, the power of the Soviet-made large-caliber anti-tank rifle is also vividly expressed. For example, the old Soviet film "They Fight for the Motherland", and the newly filmed Russian blockbuster "Panfilov 28 Warriors". Near the Duboshekov Station, 28 brave soldiers of the 4th Company Anti-Tank Fighter Group of the 1075th Regiment of the 8th Infantry Division gave their lives to block the attack of German tanks, all of which died heroically, in this battle, the Soviets claimed that 28 brave soldiers used anti-tank grenades and anti-tank rifles to destroy 18 German tanks.
However, on a real battlefield, are large-caliber anti-tank rifles really as powerful as in the movies?
Absolutely nothing. Relative to light anti-tank guns, due to the small caliber of anti-tank rifles, the power is very limited, usually can only effectively strike light tanks weighing a few tons or more than a dozen tons, as well as paper paste-like half-track armored vehicles. In fact, anti-tank guns were introduced as early as the First World War, but by the early days of World War II, the vast majority of anti-tank rifles could no longer penetrate medium-sized tanks from the front. Thus, during World War II, the infantry units of the United States, Britain, and Germany all eliminated anti-tank guns, but the Red Army used anti-tank guns to fight all over the field.
It was a 14.5 mm tracer armor-piercing bullet, a Soviet B-32 type 14.5x114 mm machine gun cartridge, the standard bullet of the Soviet ZPU-4 quad 14.5 mm anti-aircraft machine gun, and also the bullet dispensed with anti-tank guns. The B-32 was developed by the Soviet Union before World War II for anti-aircraft machine guns and anti-tank guns. The tracer armor-piercing projectile uses a carbonized steel core capable of penetrating a 32 mm thick vertical armor plate at a distance of 500 meters. Due to the equivalent of the 20 mm shells in the West, excellent ballistic performance and good armor piercing performance, the B-32 machine gun cartridge was extremely powerful and has been used since the war. The B-32 14.5 mm armor-piercing shell has also become the standard for NATO's class IV protective kinetic energy bomb, which can withstand the firing of B-32 armor-piercing shells at a distance of 200 meters. The frontal armor of the vast majority of tracked and wheeled armored vehicles is the same.
Later, the Soviet Union also expanded the caliber of the projectile into a 23 mm aerial artillery shell. The 14.5 mm caliber shell was re-stamped and flared to 23 mm, the shoulder of the bottle shell was removed, and the standard projectile of 23 mm was installed, which became a new 23x114 mm shell, and the initial speed was reduced to 700 m/s. Later, China also introduced localization, the imitation model is the 23-1 aircraft gun, equipped with a domestically produced J-5 fighter. Later, China developed a 23-3 double-barreled gastor cannon with a rate of fire of 4,000 rounds per minute with a 23x114 mm shell. And the 6-23 type 6-tube Gatling gun, with a rate of fire of 6000 rounds / min, the working principle is the same as the American M61A1 "Vulcan" 20 mm 6-tube aircraft gun. At the end of the 1990s, China also developed a 23 mm chain cannon using 23x114 mm shells for airborne troops as a vehicle-mounted gun for airborne combat vehicles. Later, China developed a new aerial gun for helicopter gunships based on the chained automaton of the 23 mm chain machine gun, equipped with z-10 gunships.
In the European battlefield during World War II, the main tanks of the German army were not Tiger and Leopard, in fact, the most used was the Panzer IV, which produced more than 9200 medium tanks, which was the largest number of medium tanks equipped by the German army. The frontal armor of the Panzer IV was constantly thickened, from only 30 mm thick in the earliest days, to 50 mm thick in the Iv F, and finally to 80 mm thick in the G IV.
The Red Army was equipped with two anti-tank guns during the war, one PTRD designed by Teggarev and the other PTRs designed by Simonov, both of which were 14.5 mm calibers, the former a single-shot bolt-action rifle and the latter a semi-automatic rifle with a five-round magazine. The power of these two anti-tank rifles is actually not strong, and they can only penetrate 25 mm thick armored steel plates at a distance of 500 meters, and even if the high-power improved B32 armor-piercing incendiary bomb is used later in the war, the power can reach the level of breaking through 32 mm steel armor.
Therefore, anti-tank guns could not compete head-on with enemy medium tanks in the middle of World War II. However, at this time, the side armor and walking system of tanks in various countries are still very weak, and the general side armor is only 15 to 20 mm thick, and the use of anti-tank guns can be penetrated on the side. Tracks and walking systems can also be destroyed with armor-piercing incendiary bombs. For this reason, the Soviets kept anti-tank rifles during the war, and the Soviets produced 400,000 ptrd-41 anti-tank guns alone.
There are many netizens who are interested in the effect of this large-caliber anti-tank rifle on the human body, believing that after the large-caliber bullet hits the human body, it can break the human body into pieces or break the waist. This is not necessarily true, because the anti-tank rifle only fires armor-piercing bullets, compared to the armored steel plate, the human body is very weak, armor-piercing bullets will definitely pass through the human body at high speed, forming a bullet hole, certainly will not tear the human body or break the waist. The current armament of the 12.7 mm anti-materiel rifles of the American Barrett and the Chinese Type 10 usually fires ordinary machine gun shells, or long-range sniping, but rarely use armor-piercing shells. 12.7 After the ammunition hits the human body, it will roll over to form a cavity or fragment, and the damage effect is much better than that of the 14,5 armor-piercing bullet, which can cause huge lacerations, and even really break the human body into pieces or break the waist.
This was the No. 231 Tiger tank of the German 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion, which was subjected to intensive Soviet fire during the battle in Rostov-on-Don, hitting a total of 252 places by 14.5mm anti-tank guns and 57mm anti-tank guns.
During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army had a divisional anti-tank rifle battalion under each infantry division, each consisting of 4 anti-tank rifle companies, equipped with a total of 36 anti-tank rifles. The infantry battalions were also equipped with an anti-tank rifle company with 16 anti-tank rifles. The Soviets usually deployed anti-tank guns on both sides of defensive positions during combat, so that german tanks could be struck from the flanks using crossfire. The Germans also captured a large number of Soviet anti-tank guns, and the Germans found that the performance of these Soviet-made anti-tank guns was better than the German anti-tank guns, so the Soviet-made anti-tank guns were also re-equipped by the Germans for their own use.
The U.S. and German armies also loved anti-tank rocket launchers, due to the advancement of solid rapid-fire rocket technology and hollow concentrated charge armor-breaking shell technology in the United States and Germany, so during World War II, the United States and Germany were equipped with anti-tank rocket launchers in large quantities, quickly replacing bulky and inefficient anti-tank rifles. Because of the relatively weak basic technology, the Soviet Union was unable to equip a large number of anti-tank bazookas, and anti-tank guns were still used until the end of the war.