KwK39 (50 mm)

Description

Built from experiences of the French front when used against tanks that pinged the KwK L/42 (50 mm) harmlessly off such as B1 bis made it clear to the German military that a newer and more powerful cannon was in order. Thus the long gun that had been thought of not fitting the turret well was fitted on the tank with good success and served the Germans well in the Eastern Front.

Vehicles equipped with this weapon

KwK39

• Pz.III J1
• Pz.III J1 TD
• Pz.III L
• Pz.III M

KwK39/1

• Sd.Kfz.234/2
• Sd.Kfz.234/2 TD

General info

The KwK39 is best described as in lineage with the earlier KwK36 (37 mm) with not much damage per hit often requiring multiple shots to take out a tank, but with relatively good penetration and fast reload allowing for it to keep enemy modules offline if the first shot it gets off flies true.

Available ammunition

Penetration statistics
Ammunition	Type of warhead	Penetration @ 0° Angle of Attack (mm)
		10 m	100 m	500 m	1,000 m	1,500 m	2,000 m
PzGr 39	APC	106	101	83	65	50	39
PzGr 40/1	APCR	130	121	90	62	43	29
PzGr 40	APCR	137	126	88	56	36	23
Sprgr. 38	HE	12	11	9	7	6	5

Shell details
Ammunition	Type of warhead	Velocity (m/s)	Projectile mass (kg)	Fuse delay (m)	Fuse sensitivity (mm)	Explosive mass (TNT equivalent) (g)	Ricochet
							0%	50%	100%
PzGr 39	APC	835	2.05	1.2	9	28.9	48°	63°	71°
PzGr 40/1	APCR	1,130	1.07	-	-	-	66°	70°	72°
PzGr 40	APCR	1,180	0.9	-	-	-	66°	70°	72°
Sprgr. 38	HE	870	1.82	0.4	0.1	217.6	79°	80°	81°

Comparison with analogues

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Usage in battles

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Pros and cons

Pros:

• Fires at a high velocity, making sniping or shooting at moving targets easier
• Really quick reload rate, allows for quick follow-up shots
• APCR can penetrate heavy tanks

Cons:

• Small calibre - little post-penetration damage
• APC shell with explosive filler cannot reliably penetrate common tanks at this battle rating such as the T-34, M4 Sherman
• Need to aim for important modules to deal more damage

History

Examine the history of the creation and combat usage of the weapon in more detail than in the introduction. If the historical reference turns out to be too long, take it to a separate article, taking a link to the article about the weapon and adding a block "/History" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/(Weapon-name)/History) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to reference text and sources by using <ref></ref>, as well as adding them at the end of the article with <references />.

Media

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See also

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• reference to the article about the variant of the cannon/machine gun;
• references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.

External links

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• topic on the official game forum;
• other literature.