The Pak 36 is a 3.7 cm / 37mm 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.
A Pak 36 in Northern France, 1944
German soldiers with the 3.7 cm Pak 36 anti-tank gun in Belgium, May 1940.
Five German soldiers of the 89th Infantry Regiment with a 3.7 cm Pak 36 anti-tank gun on a Kharkov street during the First Battle of Kharkov in October 1941. A sandbag barricade is visible in the background.
Stahlhelm-wearing Chinese soldiers deploying a Pak 36.
An anti-tank gun is a form of artillery designed to destroy tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, normally from a static defensive position. The development of specialized anti-tank munitions and anti-tank guns was prompted by the appearance of tanks during World War I. To destroy hostile tanks, artillerymen often used field guns depressed to fire directly at their targets, but this practice expended too much valuable ammunition and was of increasingly limited effectiveness as tank armor became thicker. The first dedicated anti-tank artillery began appearing in the 1920s, and by World War II was a common appearance in many European armies. To penetrate armor, they fired specialized ammunition from longer barrels to achieve a higher muzzle velocity than field guns. Most anti-tank guns were developed in the 1930s as improvements in tanks were noted, and nearly every major arms manufacturer produced one type or another.
French-designed DEFA D921/GT-2 90 mm towed anti-tank gun as mounted on a QF 17-pounder carriage
Two British officers with a captured Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr
German PaK 38 50-mm anti-tank gun
Postwar Soviet MT-12 100-mm anti-tank gun