Hello
My question is in the title.
Have you seen some brass Pak/Kwk 43 cases ?
Personally I think these cases have always been made of steel.
regards
There was indeed some confusion on those giant cartridges. There was competition on who would make the next generation 88mm gun, Rhinemetal or Krupp. As you might know, BOTH produced a decent upgraded cannon, but which one was mounted in the King II tank was the winner. I have a Flak40 round here, and that was mounted for Africa Corps anti tank & maybe flak uses. The Pak43 was the steel reliable case, and the Flak 41 NEEDED a brass case due to barrel swap out joint pinching steel cases where the threaded joints for barrel replacement happened, jamming them in the chamber. So the Flak40 African model absolutely needed brass cases, which were a devil to make as well. They were some ot the longest cases ever made,n and German tool makers told me they cursed having to tweak in those final shapes the engineers demanded.
So this is how to recall: Steel Case won the competition and was used widely in towed 9 ton behemoth anti-tank guns, and was also mounted in the King II as the L71 gun.
The Flak 41 was a very similar design, but because of case jams, was discontinued after North Africa, and always needed brass cases. They might as well could have
needed to be made from Platinum, so rare was the copper to make the brass, but they were a decent weapon except for the pinching of steel cases in the Flak40 barrel joint parting line for swapping out worn out barrel sections, so they needed brass cases, which was VERBOTEN!!!
It was a genuine headache for German factories, and in honesty, I am probably in the right ballpark for giving you the info, but I don't know offhand which company won the competition for the L71 caliber King II gun that became standard, and the Flak41 which was very similar, but was close but no cigar.for getting the contract. I also could not find out which company won the contract....Rhinemetal, or Krupp. They were both superbly brilliant design and R&D experts, but who won that contest I do not know,.
Here's a picture of the Flak41 cannon as deployed to Africa, where it was found wanting and was captured. It, like all German equipment of size, needed time to perfect.
You can see that the shells no longer needed to be lifted high overhead like the first version. You could handle it much easier around waist high due to brilliant design.