Tag: 6pdr

Confusion of British 2pdr & 6pdr HE in WW2 Addendum

Over the years there has been a lot of confusion around British HE for 2pdr and 6pdr guns – especially in the early part of the war. This is my follow up to my original post on this subject.

Further to my post in 2022 about The Confusion of British 2pdr & 6pdr HE in WW2 I finally acquired a copy of Firing Now! Tank, Anti-Tank and Self-Propelled Artillery Ammunition UK & USA 1939-1945 by Dick Taylor in late 2023 which I had been looking for for some time (the limited amounts of second hand copies were extortionate prices, but there seems to have mow been a second printing or a new POD edition). My copy of A15 Cruiser Mk. VI Crusader Tank – A Technical History by P.M. Knight had also arrived several months earlier in 2023 and has added to the information. The effect is these have added some data to my research in the original post.

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The Confusion of British 2pdr & 6pdr HE in WW2

Over the years there has been a lot of confusion around British HE for 2pdr and 6pdr guns – especially in the early part of the war. e.g. The 2pdr didn’t have HE, yes it did originally in 1940 but they stopped making it, no it didn’t, yes it did and they even had 11,000 rounds of it siting in storage at the outbreak of World War II – they just never issued it to the troops! Anyway I thought it might be useful (for my sanity and anybody else’s) to collate the facts as known (at least as I now know them), given a lot more information has come to light in the last 10-15 years on the subject. This was partly sparked by a recent YouTube video I watched (on the Matilda) that quoted quite inaccurately the claim that the British had 2pdr HE (in storage in 1939-1941) and never issued it, either through incompetence or criminal negligence!

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