2 pounder HE shot ?

[cbo]

Helm said:
I've noticed that the British 2lber can fire HE AFAIK, it never could, indeed that was possibly it's main drawback in the early years. I recall a conversation with my father who served with 1 RTR during WWII regarding this but he also mentioned it could in the right hands put up a tremendous rate of fire if the loader laid the shells along his forearm and used the arm like a loading rack slamming the shells home with his free hand.

It could definately fire HE - "Shell, HE, Mk 2T", for example. IIRC there was in fact two different HE rounds made, an early one available from the start of the war and a later, and much better one, made for the Australian Army and used extensively against the Japanese. There is a reference to British tanks using HE in France in 1940. In 1944, British armoured car crews also complained that the use of the Little-John squeeze-bore adapter on their 2-pdr guns prevented them from firing HE, which also implies that they did in fact have that type of ammunition available.

There is a number of different explanations as to why 2-pdr HE was rarely carried in tanks, one being that it was not very effective, which I find hard to believe. Even if it wasn't very good, it would clearly have been better than nothing?
A more reasonable explanation is that production of the 2-pdr HE round was discontinued for a while after Dunkirk for reasons of production: The 2-pdr in tanks as well as anti-tank guns was primarily anti-tank weapons, not artillery and with the pressures put on British industry post-Dunkirk, dropping the HE round was considered acceptable.

Claus B