The karabin przeciwpancerny wz. 35 (abbreviated kb ppanc wz. 35) is a Polish 7.92 mm anti-tank rifle that was used by the Polish Armed Forces during the 1939 Polish Campaign of World War II and later by several Axis armies. It was designated wzór 35 for its design year, 1935. It was also known by its codename "Uruguay", after the country (kb Urugwaj or kb Ur) and by the name of its designer, Józef Maroszek.
Secrecy The weapon was a top secret project of the Polish Army, and was also known by various codenames. Until mobilization in 1939, the combat-ready rifles were held in sealed crates marked: "Do not open! Surveillance equipment A.R." or "Optical equipment". Another of the rifle's cover names was "Uruguay" (Polish: Urugwaj) or Ur in short, the country to which the "surveillance equipment" was supposedly being exported. This name however was never used by soldiers in field, and was popularized in postwar publications. The secrecy was efficient and neither German nor Soviet intelligence was aware of a relatively numerous anti-tank rifle. It was widely believed in postwar literature, that the utmost secrecy prevented most of rifles from being used. Newer research however proves, that majority of rifles distributed to units were used in combat. On 15 July 1939, an order was issued to present the rifle to selected groups of sworn marksmen from all infantry and cavalry units, with a short training. There are estimates, that some 2,100 marksmen should have been trained then. The rifle itself was simple to operate and not much different from a standard issue Mauser rifle, and there was a manual in each crate. After the fall of Poland, the German army captured large numbers of the kb ppanc wz. 35 and gave it the designation "Panzerbüchse 35 (polnisch)" (abbreviated "PzB 35(p)"). The Italian army later received 800 of the captured weapons, designating them "fucile controcarro 35(P)". Both names translate roughly as "anti-tank rifle model 1935 (Polish)". In early 1940, one of the rifles, its stock and barrel sawed off, was smuggled out of Poland across the Tatra Mountains into Hungary for the Allies by Krystyna Skarbek and fellow Polish couriers. The rifle never saw service with the Allies, however. The drawings and specifications had been destroyed by the Poles when it became clear that defeat was inevitable.
Description It resembled a rifle with a longer-than-normal barrel supported by a bipod at the front of the wooden stock. It was a Mauser style, bolt-action rifle, fed from a 4-round box magazine. The barrel had a muzzle brake to limit recoil. It absorbed about 65% of the shot energy, and the recoil was comparable to a standard Mauser rifle, even though the cartridge carried more than twice the amount of propellant. It had iron sights fixed for a 300-meter range. Unlike contemporary anti-tank rifles, it lacked a pistol grip and fired a bullet with a lead core rather than an armour-piercing round with a hard core. The full metal jacket bullet weighed 14.579 g and, due to a high muzzle velocity, was effective even under shallow angles, as instead of ricocheting, the bullet would "stick" to the armour and punch a roughly 20 mm diameter hole. Calculated kinetic energy, by shot, before brake was about 11,850 J. The high energy was due to the relatively long barrel, and nitro powder giving a muzzle velocity of 1,275 m/s.
History
Background In the late 1920s the Polish General Staff was looking for a light antitank weapon for Polish infantry. In 1931 Dr. Tadeusz Felsztyn, a major at the Central Rifle School in Toruń, came up with the idea of a high-velocity, low-caliber antitank cartridge, inspired by reports of new German Halger hunting cartridges designed by Hermann Gerlich. Tests of a purchased Halger 7.1 mm rifle in October 1931 showed the idea to be promising. The General Staff's Armament Department ordered work to start immediately at the State Armament Factories (Państwowa Wytwórnia Uzbrojenia) in Warsaw and a state powder factory at Pionki. Initially it was envisaged that a final caliber would be 10-13 mm with a muzzle velocity of over 1,000 meters per second. An experimental 1932 design by Captain Edward Kapkowski, firing 7.92×92 cartridges from a Mauser rifle barrel, was unsuccessful but showed that a rifle caliber was enough to perforate armor plate. Further team work was coordinated by Lt. Col. Tadeusz Felsztyn, working at the Armament Research Institute in Warsaw. After a series of tests, a new 7.92×107 DS cartridge was proposed.
Ammunition
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