Good Shaped-charge Maker In World War 2 (other than USSR and Germany)?

[dy031101]

Recently I've been having fun putting 17-pounder and KwK 42 into Inter-war period heavy tanks......

The thing is that those two guns would likely be low on availability during World War 2 unless you are either a British Commonwealth member or a neighbouring ally of Germany.

Bofors has a 75mm AA gun that was copied and then made into a tank gun by Japanese, but it seemed closer to American 76mm gun; it did become comparable to the 75mm gun on the AMX-13 when the Swedes did their own conversion post-WWII for their Strv 74 programme.

Which leaves shaped-charge projectiles that don't need the kind of velocities possessed by the 17-pounder or KwK 42.  Finland went down that path, and the result (114mm HEAT projectiles used on BT-42) ended up rather useless- which comes as a surprise to me since Finland copied a German design, and Germany seemed to be an avid user of shaped-charge projectiles precisely to deal with the likes of T-34 and KV-1.

So...... what did it take to make a good HEAT weaponry in World War 2?  And who, other than Germany and Soviet Union (which is said to believe in anti-tank capability for their howitzers via HEAT projectiles, too), could be relied on to create serviceable shaped-charge projectiles?  Thanks in advance.

[tahsin]

Allow me repeat what I was about to say in Beyond the Sprues, it is a question to much debated but the Americans lacked the know-how in the WW2.  And when they did, everything was HEAT for them.

(Just noticed it today.)