the last one at 1000 meters (in position The engineer captain Eugen Burlacu was in charge of the firing with the "b" variant of the prototype no. 2. These were nine (the first shot on the shield at 1000 meters did not reach the target) and they lasted a total of one minute and twenty seconds. The performance of the cannon was as follows: complete destruction of the first four shields at 300 meters, complete penetration of the three at 500 meters and penetrating the one at 1000 meters. However, this high muzzle velocity came at the cost of a very short barrel life, only 500 rounds, compared to the 6000 of a Pak 40. Its ammunition combined features of shells used by the Pak 40 and the Vickers/Reșița Model 1936 anti-aircraft gun, although this raises the issue of exactly how the Reșița Model 1943 achieved such velocities. The Pak 40 had a muzzle velocity of when firing the light-weight, tungsten-cored Pzgr 40 shell, but the only data for the Reșița give a shell weight of , which is roughly equivalent to the Pak 40'''s full-sized Pzgr 39 shell that was fired at a mere . Unfortunately detailed specifications for the Reșița's ammunition haven't been discovered so that question will have to remain unanswered. The 75 mm Reșița Model 1943 had a maximum elevation angle of 35 degrees, which allowed it to also be employed as a field gun. This was almost as much as the 37 degrees of the Soviet ZiS-3, a dedicated field gun, and significantly more than the 22 degrees of the German Pak-40 anti-tank gun. It could also depress slightly more than both (-7 degrees compared to -5 degrees of the other two guns). This made the Romanian gun arguably the most versatile in its class during World War II, outperforming its Western, German and Soviet equivalents. Operational use The first twenty-four guns were issued to the 1st Armored Division in the spring of 1944 and later two independent anti-tank regiments with thirty-six guns apiece formed from the artillery regiments of the disbanded Frontier Division. Most of the cavalry and infantry divisions began to receive some guns during the summer of 1944. A total of 372 pieces were produced by early December 1944: 210 at the Reșița works, 120 at the Astra Works in Brașov, and 42 at the Concordia Works in Ploiești. However, the gun