Flames of War Late War: Soviet Heavy Tank-Killer Company (SBX71)

This ZIS-2 57mm anti-tank gun was a very long-barrelled gun with excellent armour penetration. It was available in 1941, but was cancelled in December 41 because of the lack of heavy German tanks (it was felt that the weapon was over-powerful against the thinly-armoured German tanks of 1941), and also because of the expense involved in its manufacture. The initial production batch was very inaccurate as the calculations for the rifling inside the barrel were botched. By the time this had been rectified and production restarted it was cancelled in favour of the 76mm field gun. The 76mm was felt to have adequate armour penetration and also fired a much better high-explosive round. The power of the 57mm was needed when the new generation of German heavy tanks appeared in 1942, and the weapon re-entered service in 1943 on a modified gun carriage. --- The mainstay of the Red Army artillery arm was the 76.2mm ZIS-3 gun. Officially accepted into service in early 1942, the ZIS-3 replaced the previous 76.2mm gun - the M.1936. The M.1936 was an excellent weapon, but too heavy, complex and expensive for Soviet needs. The ZIS-3 was created by mating the gun from the M.1939 with the carriage of the 57mm ZIS-2 anti-tank gun. The ZIS-2 carriage couldn’t stand the power of the recoil from the 76.2mm gun so a muzzle brake was fitted. The ZIS-3 became the first Soviet field gun to be equipped with a muzzle brake. The ZIS-3 was very well designed and simple to produce. It took 2034 hours to construct an M.1936 gun, 1300 hours to construct an M.1939 gun, but only 909 hours to make a ZIS-3. Over 48,000 ZIS-3 guns were produced during the war, and it was a mainstay of many countries artillery forces for a long time afterward. The ZIS-3 was a very lightweight gun for its size, and was used in a direct fire role about as often as it was used for indirect fire. The weapon served as a dual-purpose gun - capable of being used in an anti

• The 57mm ZIS-2 anti-tank gun fired a powerful round that could slice through German medium tanks with ease.
• The 76mm ZIS-3 gun could be used as a direct fire weapon, where it was not as powerful as the 57mm, or an indirect fire weapon, making it very versatile
• Contains 4x plastic 57mm or 76mm Gun Teams