armour-piercing discarding-sabot

In 1944 Britain perfected “discarding-sabot” projectiles, in which a tungsten core was supported in a conventional gun by a light metal sabot that split and fell free after leaving the muzzle, allowing the core to fly on at extremely high velocity.

…more- effective antitank ammunition with armour-piercing, discarding-sabot (APDS) projectiles. These had a smaller-calibre, hard tungsten carbide core inside a light casing. The casing fell away on leaving the gun barrel, while the core flew on at an extremely high velocity. The APDS, which was adopted for the 83.8-mm gun of…