Piercing Metal

Smashing through : In concept armour-piercing shot is exactly the same as the very first cannon balls : solid lumps of metal using kinetic energy to smash through a target.The faster and denser the projectile the more effect it has.
1 : Armour-piercing shot is solid , very dense and heavy and fired at a very high velocity.
2 : The shot simply smashes through armour like a battering ram sending razor-sharp metallic fragments through the interior of the target.

Burning through : The shaped-charge effect relies on creating a jet of molten metal which burns through a targets armour into the interior.Penetration increases dramatically with a wider projectile carrying more explosive behind a bigger cavity
1 : Shaped explosive projectiles consist of an explosive charge with a cavity in the nose.They travel much more slowly then Armour-piercing shot.
2 : On detonation the shape of the cavity means that a large part of the explosive power is concentrated into a single high temperature jet.

The effectiveness of anti-tank guns depends on the velocity at which they can fire projectiles.Before the war standard armour-piercing shot was a solid chunk of very hard steel which used kinetic energy to punch through armour plate.The faster shot could be fired the better and with the heavier the shot the more enemy armour it could penetrate.During World War II new harder and denser materials began to increase penetrating power.The most effective rounds utilized tungsten.As the war progressed German industry was increasingly constrained by shortages of wolfram the ore from which tungsten is extracted.Old-style steel shot was not a dense or as effective so the military engineers began to look at alternatives.The most promising was the hollow or shaped charge projectile.This used the Munro principle in which an explosive covering a hollow metal cone was detonated.The collasping cone produced a jet of extremely hot gas and molten metal which burned through armour.Unlike most conventional rounds hollow charge projectiles worked most effectively without spinning and as a result they were mostly used in slower moving rocket propelled weapons.