Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes
Actual primary sources. Sweet.
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And I have the document now. It adds a bunch of detail, but nothing fundamental.
The PIAT round in production by the time the campaign has reached is the MkIV, which solves the problem of fragments coming back and hitting the firer. They eventually discovered that the fragments were the back of the shaped charge's container, the cap of the tail tube and the head of the cartridge. The shaped change was blowing these back through the tail tube at about 3000 fps. The solution was to add two mild steel discs, one behind the container and one ahead of the cartridge. The increased resistance presumably slows down the fragments a lot.
The MkIV also has the No.426 graze fuze, which significantly improves the reliability of detonation, an improved RDX/TNT filling and a better filling procedure, which restored the original standard of penetrating 100mm of armour.
Separately, I've found in Stuart Macrae's
Winston Churchill's Toyshop that the No.425 and No.426 fuzes were manufactured by
MD1, the organisation that had created the PIAT. This is a close-to-primary source, as Macrae was second in-charge of MD1 for its entire existence. They'll probably be receptive to requests for small numbers of modified fuzes from another "interesting" organisation.