Captured French Canon de 75 modle 1897 field guns converted to Pak 97/38 anti-tank guns

The Pak 97/38 was a German anti-tank gun used by the Wehrmacht in World War II. The gun was a combination of the barrel from the French Canon de 75 modèle 1897 fitted with a Swiss Solothurn muzzle brake and mounted on the carriage of the German 5 cm Pak 38 and could fire captured French and Polish ammunition. Together with light weight, good mobility and sufficient anti-armor performance with a HEAT shell, enough to penetrate T-34s in most situations and the side armor of the KV series could also be pierced. Performance was therefore adequate but it had shortcomings, particularly its low muzzle velocity. Although this did not affect the armor-piercing characteristics of its HEAT ammunition, it meant insufficient performance when firing regular AP shells and - because of difficulties in hitting small mobile targets - its low effective range of about 500 m even with HEAT. The gun also had a quite violent recoil, especially with AP shells.