Performance
The gun was fed with two-piece ammunition, the projectile and cartridge making up separate pieces. Because of this the gun could be fired using three different sized propellant charges, a light, medium and heavy charge. The light and medium charges were normally used when the gun was fulfilling the role of an artillery piece, where they would launch the ~28 kg projectiles to a muzzle velocity of 845 m/s and 880 m/s respectively. Finally the heavy charge was used when the gun was fulfilling its intended role as an anti-tank gun, where it fired a 28.3 kg APCBC-HE projectile (PzGr.43) at a muzzle velocity of 935 m/s. With the heavy charge, and using the PzGr.43 projectile, the PaK44 was capable of penetrating just over 200 millimetres (7.9 in) of 30 degree sloped armor at 1000 meters, and 148 millimetres (5.8 in) at 2,000 metres (2,200 yd) range.
The 12.8 cm PaK44 ended up becoming the standard main armament for the Jagdtiger heavy tank destroyer, as well as being the planned main armament for most of the future heavy tank designs in development during the dying months of World War II, including the Maus and E-100.
Read more about this topic: 12.8 Cm Pak 44
Famous quotes containing the word performance:
“Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother.... Mothers at present can bring children into the world, but this performance is apt to mark the end of their capacities. They can’t even attend to the elementary animal requirements of their offspring. It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers.”
—Norman Douglas (1868–1952)
“There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)