Original German WWII 3.7cm PAK 36 AP Shell Original Items

Original Item: Very Few Available. These are very good condition totally inert BATF compliant PAK 36 37mm Armor Piercing Shells. Each if offered in good condition with German wartime markings. Round measures approximately 13.5 inches in length.

The Pak 36 (Panzerabwehrkanone 36) was a 3.7 cm caliber German anti-tank gun used during the Second World War. It was the main anti-tank weapon of Wehrmacht Panzerjäger units until 1942. Developed by Rheinmetall in 1933, it was first issued to the German Army in 1936, with 9,120 being available by the beginning of the war in September 1939 and a further 5,339 produced during the war. As the predominant anti-tank gun design in the world during the late 1930s, demand was high for the Pak 36, with another 6,000 examples produced for export and the design being copied by the Soviet Union as the 45 mm anti-tank gun M1932 (19-K) and by other nations such as Japan.

It first saw service during the Spanish Civil War in 1936, where it performed well against the light tanks of the conflict. It was first used during the Second World War against Poland in 1939 and had little difficulty with any of the Polish tanks. The Battle of France in 1940 revealed its inadequate penetration capability against French and British heavier tanks, particularly the Char B1, and especially the Matilda II, receiving the derisive nicknames “Heeresanklopfgerät” (“army door-knocking device”) or “PanzerAnklopfKanone” (“tank door-knocking cannon”) from its crews, but it sufficed to defeat the bulk of the Allied armor in the campaign.

In 1941, when Germany invaded the USSR, the gun was next to useless when confronted with Russian T-34 or KV-series tanks. It was successively replaced by larger caliber weapons, like the 5 cm PaK 38, but there were never enough of them, so it was decided to enhance the capability of the PaK 36 by providing it with new ammunition: a large “stick grenade” for the cannon.