The appearance of anti-tank missiles in World War II, although this epoch-making ** did not have the slightest impact on the war, but its idea is in line with the development of military technology, it provides another more reliable long-range anti-tank **, lighter and cheaper than artillery, suitable for equipping infantry combat units. After World War II, related technologies ushered in a peak period of development, and countries began to light up their own technology lines.
D-40 was originally a missile program of the U.S. Navy, a kind of ** developed for submarines, possibly used in anti-ship operations, the U.S. Army Ordnance Department took over the project in 1952, changed it to an anti-tank missile, research and development work continued until 1956, and achieved certain results.
D-40 is a different missile, the anti-tank missiles we usually see are cylindrical, using a tail rocket engine as a flight power, the front part is a warhead, and D-40 is a spherical missile, yes, it is really a huge sphere, the D-40A type has a diameter of 58 centimeters and weighs about 140 kilograms, at first the missile was guided by radio command, and later changed to wired guidance.
The missile is powered by 3 pairs of solid-fuel rocket engines, which are installed in different positions of the sphere, in which the main rocket is oriented at an angle of 45 ° below the tail, which both pushes the missile forward and provides upward thrust for the missile to maintain the trajectory, and other inclined rocket engines provide thrust in different directions for correcting the missile attitude. The shooter observes the missile through a pair of telescopes and uses a joystick to control the missile, and the spherical missile has a maximum flight speed of about 220 kilometers and a maximum range of about 3,000 meters.
The D-40 could carry two types of warheads, a 50-pound (23 kg) HEAT (hollow-charge armor-piercing projectile) or a 65-pound (29 kg) HESH warhead (armor-shattering projectile), and the missile appeared to use a collision fuse, both of which were capable of destroying all tanks in service at the time.
Following the A type, the B type and the C type were developed, the B type was mainly improved for the A rocket, using a new solid fuel, which can reduce the generation of tail flames, and is more conducive to the shooter's accurate aiming, but the disadvantage is that the combustion efficiency is low, the effective range of the missile is reduced to about 2500 meters, and the overall size of the missile has also been reduced, with a diameter of only 50 cm and a weight of 69 kg. There are two types of Type C, one is the same size as Type B but slightly heavier, and the other is a smaller version with a diameter of 38 cm for individual use.
Before the project was stopped, the United States built and tested a total of about 50 missiles, and it is not clear the specific test effect of the missile, but there are so many live-fire tests, it should not be too bad, and there are two reasons for the termination of the project, one is that the missile is too complex and expensive, and the other is that the huge spherical missile is difficult to be used in actual combat, even if it is a single soldier miniature version, it is not small, which infantry goes out to fight and carries a "ball" with a diameter of nearly 40 centimeters?