Someone mentioned in an other topic, that the french army "forgot" to use their famous 75mm guns in an anti-tank-role. Well, they had 6000 of the Hotchkiss 25mm ATG, which was a lot compared to the small numbers of german tanks. http://www.questmasters.us/25mm_French_Hotchkiss.html Were these small ATGs useless against even smaller tanks like the 38(t) or the Mk II, which were the majority of the german tanks used during summer 1940? Were they comparable in performance to the anti-tank-rifles used back then (Boys) and if so, why was there a lack of allied anti-tank-capability?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=60801 This might help you. The 25mm was not a bad gun for 1940. However I can only guess that the amount of live fire training on the gun was insufficient. Combined with the general chaos and lack of high speed transport preventing the guns being placed to maximize their effectiveness.
Aha, powerful enough to knock out a PzKpfwg Mk III. These small guns have a bad reputation, probably because they were not tough enough to be towed by trucks. Maybe they are light enough to be towed by horse. And they became obsolete very soon after the french defeat. Similar to nearly all small ATG. So the Allies had enough anti-tank capability in France 1940, the simply didn't used it. But why? The germans knocked out even the well armoured Char Bs with their comparable Pak 36.
They didn't. The army had two versions of that gun. The unmodified had a barrel traverse of under ten degress left and right and was of little use against moving targets but some(no idea how many) got new carriages and had a wide traverse like other field guns introduced after WW1.
That Pak was rebuilt from any kind of M1897. The one I had im mind was the "Canon de 75 mm mle 1897 modifié 1933"(similar shield and wheels as the standard version, but split-trail carriage allowing 58° traverse. Used in the anti-tank role) Wiki.
