8,8cm Pak 43 Project - New Acquisitions - Inside Track | Renault TSF Tank Kent

A major effort over the past year during the pandemic has just concluded. This was to repatriate number of key components of the Foundation’s 8,8cm Pak 43 back to the UK before the Brexit deadline of December 31st. These items have been gathered over the past years and will help bring our Pak 43 project to fruition. The newly arrived parts include breech components, internal and external shields. The breech items will allow us to complete the gun itself into a working example to the same standard as the main gun of our “Jagdpanther 411”. Our guide throughout this endeavour has been the various manuals for the 8,8cm L/71. This ensured we were always on the right track in sourcing the parts required. The parts secured are shown alongside with the breech separately. Next is one section of the internal shield (see attached image). Thereafter is the external shield through which the gun is fitted as seen in the main image. . The breech ring of our gun has yet to be cleaned to remove corrosion. We have resisted the temptation until we have sufficient time, to conserve the surfaces to avoid corrosion returning. We really want to discover the R number that would have been originally stamped on the Breech face as this will allow us to position our Pak 43 production period and where it sits within the other few of these remarkable anti-tank guns that have survived. The 8,8cm Pak 43 gun and the barrel is the same as that found on the Jagdpanther. But of course, the major difference is the lack of the two recoil cylinders mounted above the gun on the version designed for the Jagdpanther. The two Pak 43 recoil cylinders Wiege mit Rohrbremse Vorholer und Rücklaufverstellung are positioned beneath the gun within the prefabricated shroud. It is interesting to note that the 8,8cm Pak 43 is electrically fired Elektrische Abfeuerung in the same way as the Jagdpanther example, which is designated as the 8,8cm Pak 43/3. We are still awaiting a few final items that have been secured but which have not yet been brought back to the UK due to the pandemic. These include two original Pak 43 limber wheels with good rubber tyres. The rubber will require some attention given that there are several the usual chips and fragments that have been lost around the outer edges. When compared to our own current set of four wheels these are magnificent in comparison. We will inform you as we manage to recover these items individually.

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