Originally Posted by fitz

L23A1 and the APDS round that preceeded it were Tungsten core rounds. CHARM used Depleted Uranium penetrators but came after ODS.

The British preferred to carry HESH as a general purpose round post-war while most other NATO nations went for a combination of HEAT and HE. Up until the advent of APFSDS penetrators in the 1970's HEAT rounds generally had better armor penetration than KE rounds. Then composite armors and eventually ERA came into play and APFSDS really became king.

HESH works great as an anti-armor round against vehicles not equipped with advanced composite armors or ERA. It is also a great bunker buster but a lousy general purpose HE round due to the poor fragmentation effect it produces. The UK hung onto rifled guns and HESH probably a bit too long and are now of course looking at retrofitting NATO standard smoothbore guns to the C2 fleet.