Nashorn -Panzerjäger excellente

After the fighting in Russia hade shown the Wehrmacht that the russians also could build heavy tanks, the need for å better and heavier tankdestroyer became clear.

The solution-take an excellent ant-tank gun like the 88cm PAK 43/1 L/71  and place it on a tank chassis. Of course. So the Nashorn (also called Hornet- the 8,8cm Pak43 (L/71) auf Geschützwagen III/IV (Sd. Kfz. 164) was made by a chassis Alkett made  using their recently developed Geschützwagen III/IV which as its name indicated used components of both the Panzer III and Panzer IV tank and a well known 8,8 cm Panzerabwehrkanone 43/1 L/71. (Same gun that was used on the King Tiger later in the war by the way).

1943-1945 almost 500 were built. The Nashorn was a great tool for its job- taking out enemy armoured vehicles from a distance. Due to its weak armour, it was useless in close combat, but with that gun it didnt need to get in close either.... As a mobile version of the 88mm Anti tank gun it was very effective.

 The Hornisse/Nashorn was issued to the heavy antitank battalions (schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilungen), with which six would eventually be equipped: schwere Panzerjäger Abteilung 560, 655, 525, 93, 519 and 88. Each battalion was equipped with 45 Nashorns.
 

It is reported that in early March of 1945, Lieutenant Beckmann from sPzJagAbt 88 destroyed Soviet IS-2 at the range of 4600 meters near Marzdorf.

 The most notable Nashorn ace was platoon commander of 1st company of sPzJagAbt 519, Junior Lieutenant Albert Ernst. On December 23rd of 1943, he destroyed  14 Soviet tanks in a single day using only 21 round of ammunition. The engagement took place near Vitebsk and Albert Ernst received a nickname "Tiger of Vitebsk". In December of 1943, Ernst destroyed total of 19 enemy tanks and on January 22nd of 1944, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross.




Mainsources:
 Wikipedia , achtungpanzer.com

Soldier of 3 armies -WW2 amazing story

It wasnt unusual in WW2 to recruit soldiers from captures forces, this was especially done by the Japanese, the Russians and to some degree Germany. Usually these were used behind the front, or given poor equipment and used as cannonfodder. They were often send to other fronts to avoid them fighting their own. And this is was happened to Yang Kyoungjong - twice after he was first conscripted! Yang was born in 1920 in Korea and was conscripted by the japanese army to fight against the Soviet Union in 1938 when he was 18 years old.  In 1939, during the Battles of Khalkhin Gol he was captured by the red army and send to a labour camp.  As the war on the European Eastern front was weighing heavy on the Soviet forces, thousans of prisoners was send west and forced to fight the germans- and Yang was one of them.

Photo: Yang  in German uniform after being captured by the Americans.

We dont know anything about Yangs skills as a soldier, but we do know he was good at being captured and not killed. In the Battle of Kharkov in Ucraine in 1943 he was caught by the Wehrmacht. He was then send to France as part of a the "Eastern Battalion" - a battalion of Soviet POW`s.

Not surprisingly- Yang was captured again, this time by American paratroppers in June 1944. he was then send to Britain, belived to be a japanese in German uniform. He ended up in a camp in the USA and was released after the war ended.

He settled in Illinois and lived there until his death in 1992. He fought in 3 armies in WW2, on 3 different battlefields and was captured 3 times. He survived.

Kettenkrad - the WW2 german ATV

The German "Kettenkrad" - or Sdkfz 2 or in short-german (lol!!!) " Kleines Kettenkraftrad HK 101" was a light half-track gun tractor originally designed for civil use but in 1939 the manufacturer NSU got a military order. It was used on all battlefields during the war, especially on the Eastern front. It could carry 3 crewmembers and a small trailer. Its big advantage was its capacity to go over difficult and soft terrain, like mud and sand, It could also fit into a Junker 52 transport plane.It main use was to transport small amount of ammo and fuel, as well as being used on airfields to tow airplanes to reduce use of planefuel which was in short demand. Many of them were used by airborne troops, but it was not dropped in parachute. Over 8000 was made during the war, and after the war the production for agricultural use continued until 1948/49. Its a fun little vehicle isnt it, and its easy to draw lines from this vehicle to more modern ATV`s and also to some degree the modern snowmobile.

Junker 88 some photos

I recently visitied the Technical Museum in Berlin and toke a couple of photos of the restored Junker 88 they have on display there.

The Junker 88-Ju 88- was a bomber and nightfigher used by Germany in WW2 and it was a very succesfull aircraft. As many as 15 0000 was manufactured, and it is along with the Heinkel 111 the most known german bomber from WW2. It was used in all battlefields where the germans fought, but it is especially as a nightfighter we remember it.  One version even had cannons pointing upwards so it could shot at bombers while hiding under them!

The photos show a nightfighter, take notice of its nose with the radar standing next to the plane.

Messerschmitt bf 110 some photos

The Messerschmitt bf 110 , usually just called ME 110 was one of the most known and used of the german fighters during WW2. It was produced from 1937 and when production stopped in 1945 over 6100 had been produced.  It was originally used as a fighter, but during the Battle og Britain it proved to hard to manouver against smaller fighters like the Hurricane and Spitfire so it was gradually used more for high-altitude escort and as a night-fighter, the last role being the most succesfull. The most notorious of all german night-fighters, Major Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer flew only ME 110 and claimed 121 victories in only 164 combat missions. It was also, with some success, used as a fighter-bomber, mainly on the Eastern Front.

These photos were taken by me in teh Technical Museum in Berlin that have a very nice restored ME 110 on display.

Interesting fact:
The famous and quite impressing "peace-flight" by Rudolf Hess from Germany and far into Britain in 1940 took place in a ME 110

Elefant -with a killing trunk

The Elefant was a german tank-destroyer based on the Tiger-chassis, its official german name was Panzerjäger Tiger (P) called Ferdinand at first, but after modifications it was renamed" Elefant" (german for elephant)

The origin for the Elefant was 100 chassises made for the Porsche-version of Tiger. When this version was discarded, it was decided to use these 100 chassises to build an anti-tank with the new 88mm Pak anti-tank gun. 91 were built during a few months in early 1943.

In action, several flaws were discovered, and in september 1943 the 50 surviving  units were called back for modifications. After the modifications ( which in short was adding a MG, adding Zimmerit and wider tracks) the germans ended up with the version we call "Elefant".

Action:
When the first version was thrown into battle, it was almost without testing, and the battle of kursk sonn showed big problems-they were to vulnerable to infantry! Later, the Elefant saw action mainly in Italy, but even if it had an enormeous firepwer compared to most allied armoured vehicles, its weight and mechanical issues reduced its effect on the battlefield.

Even so-during the Battle of Kursk, the 653rd Heavy Tank Destroyer Battalion (German: schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung, sPzJägAbt) claimed to have taken out  320 enemy tanks, for the loss of 13 Ferdinands. This impressive average ratio was due to its extreme firepower and protection, which gave it an enormous advantage when used in head-on combat or a static defensive role. In fact, most Ferdinands/Elefants were lost due to small problems with tracks, fuelshortage etc which forced the crew to destroy&abondon them.


Surviving units:
Only two Elefants survived the war- one is in the Kubinka Tank Museum in Russia, the other one is at the United Staes Army Ordnance Museum at Fort Lee Virginia USA.

Numbers:
Weight: 65 tons
Length:8.14 metres
 Width: 3.38 metres
Height: 2.97 metres
Armour: up to 200 mm of steel....
Armament: 88 mm PaK or 43/2 L71
Speed: 46 km/h (road)

Eye of the Tiger -Tank ace Kurt Knispel

Kurt Knispel is widely recognized as the number one tank-ace of WW2, he had 168 confirmed kills with his tank, some sources as high as 195-Knispel wasnt known for being to occupied with numbers and didnt quarrel if there was debate around a destroyd vehicle. (Note-kills here do not mean confirmed people killed, but vehicles destroyed!)

Kurt Knispel was from Czechoslovakia but enrolled in the german army in 1940. He received basic training with Panzer I-IV before being sendt to action in summer of 1941. He took part in Operatin Barbarossa-the attack on the Soviet Union and variuous other campaigns on the eastern front. In 1943 Knispel was sendt back to Germany to train with the new Tiger tanks, at that time he had "only" 12 confirmed kills, but Knispel soon felt very familiar in the new Tiger, which many allied tanks would experience...

Allied tanks was soon being blown away from the map by Knispel and his Tiger-and later King Tiger, one soviet T-34 heavy-tank was destroyed from a distance of about 3000m-while driving..... Knispels skills as gunner was unparallelled.

Unfortunately for Knispel-his behaviour was not up to the same standard-at least not from the Nazi-point of view. Long hair,goatee- beard, unwillingness to obey orders he disagreed with was one thing, refusing to take part in attacks on civilians was another. On one occiasion he attacked an officer from a "Einsatzgruppe" when he saw him mistreating soviet POW`s.

Even if he received the Iron Cross I and II class, the Panzer Badge and the German Cross in Gold he never got the same honours as many of the other german war-aces-not that he cared, by his fellow soldiers he stood in the highest regards.

Knispel was killed ten days before the war ended in a battle with overwheliming soviet forces near Wostitz. In 2013 his body-still with the dog-tags- was  recovered behind a  church wall in Urbau in Czechia.

Post-war Panthers

I`ve earlier wrote about the german Panther tank and whiole doing so, I found some interesting facts about the post-war use of the Panther tank, which was bigger than I knew before.

Red Army-Russia:
The Red Army captured many german tanks in the later years of the war, and the Panther was especially "popular" with the russian forces, who used them alongside their own tanks.  The Red Army had several Panthers also after the war ended, but they did not (as far as I have been able to find) se active duty after spring 1945.

Photo showing captured "russian" Panthers, probably 1944


Bulgaria:
Bulgaria received 15 captured Panthers from the Red Army spring 1945, these were used for training purposes. Many of them ended up dug down as pillboxes on the Bulgarian-Turkish border already in the late 1940`s. The exact fate of these are unclear, but they were probably scrapped in the 1950`s.

Romania:
Romania received 13 Panthers from the USSR in 1946, who formed the 1.st Armored Brigade but but in 1947 the equipment was ceded to the Soviet-organized "Tudor V. Division" which was transformed from a volunteer infantry division into an armored one. The Panther tank was officially known as T-5 in the Romanian army. These tanks were in bad shape and remained in service only until about 1950, when the Romanian Army received T34-85 tanks from the USSR. All of the Panther tanks were scrapped by 1954.

Sweden:
Sweden picked up a Panther i France in 1946, this was used in Sweden fopr training and testing until 1961.

France:
France had the largest number of Panthers after the war, and they actually equipped the 503e Régiment de Chars de Combat with fifty-yes 50- Panthers after the war! These remained in service until 1950

Not good quality photo but as far as I have found, this is French Panthers with the 503.th around 1947



Great Britain:
After the war a few (some sources indicate 9 total) Panthers were in fact built- under allied control of course. Two (one PAnther and one Jagdpanther) were sent to Britain for testing and trials. They are now both at the Bovington Tank Museum, Dorset.

Panther at museum

German Panzers in WW2 with numbers

Even if Germany made some of the best tanks in WW2, they (luckily) never stood a chance against the combined production rate of allied tanks and anti-tank weapons. Russia alone produced far more T-34`s than Germany produced tanks all together. I think its interesting to see what tanks Germany had- and maybe even more-how many they had of each type. The list starts with the earliest tank and ends with the last produced

1. Panzer 1 

Produced: 1934-1937

Number built:1493 

In service: 1934-1945

2. Panzer 2

Produced: 1935-1943

Number built: 1856

In service: 1936-1945

3. Panzer 3

Produced: 1939-1943

Number built: 5774

In service: 1939-1945

4. Panzer 4

Produced: 1936-1945

Number built: 8553

In service: 1939-1945 (Germany) up til 1967 other countries

5. Panther

Produced: 1943-1945 (some sources include up till 46- for British forces)

Number built: 6000

In service: 1943-1945 (Germany) also post-war by other countries

6. Tiger

Produced:1942-1944

Number built: 1327

In service: 1942-1945  

7. King Tiger

Produced: 1943-1945

Number built: 493 

In service: 1944-1945

Sturmtiger - the bigger the better?

Sturmtiger or to be more precise - the "Sturmmörserwagen 606/4 mit 38 cm RW 61" was a assault gun built on a Tiger chassis and equipped with a rocket launcher. It was designed to be used as infantry support, especially in urban areas. It looks absolutely insane with that launcher, kinda like a tank that where the cannon is cut of.... The need for such a weapon was clear to the germans after the loss at Stalingrad, the main purpose of it being destroying buildings and fortifications. The gun is actually taken from the Kriegsmarine- and was a depth-charge launcher...the shells are rocket-propelled!

Only 18 was produced, and they was mainly used in the defense of Germany in the late part of the war, being produced from late 1943 until the end of the war.

It was mainly used in three battles- the Warzaw uprising, the Battle of Bulge and the Battle of the Reichswald.


Numbers:
Weight: 68 tons
Length: 6.28 metres
 Width: 3.57 metres
Height: 2.85 metres
Armour: up to 150 mm of steel....
Armament: 380 mm RW 61 rocket launcher L/5.4
Speed: 40 km/h (road)

Surviving units:
There are three Sturmtigers in museums today, located in Kubinka Tank Museum in Russia, Bovington Tank Museum in the UK and one in Germany currently at loan to Deutsches Panzermuseum in Munster.


Sturmtiger firing, I belive this is in the Warzaw uprising.

Captured Sturmtiger

Sturmtiger at museum-look at that insane projectile!!!

Jagdpanther -killer from afar photos and info

Jagdpanther-the "hunting Panther" as it was nicknamed was another one of Germanys big tankdestroyers towards the end of the war.  Its original name in german was ""8.8 cm Pak 43/3 auf Panzerjager Panther" but even though that really rolls of your tongue....Hitler himself changed it to Jagdpanther. The Jagdpanther was based on the Panther chassis and the Tiger gun-a fierce combination indeed....

Production started in february 1944 and lasted pretty much until the end of the war, the total number built being around 415.  It never had any significant impact on the war, but if you were in a tank- that 88mm gun was not something you wanted to see pointing at you...

Survivors:
There are actually three running Jagdpanthers today, two in Germany at Deutsches Panzermuseum in Munster and at Wehrtechnische Studiensammlung (WTS) at Koblenz, the third is in England at the SDKFZ Foundation in the UK-who are currently working on getting a second one running as well!

Besides these four there are at least 7 other surviving Jagdpanthers in the largest tank/war museums around the world like Kubinka in Russia and Bovington.



Numbers:
Weight: 45 tons
Length: 9.87 metres
 Width: 3.42 metres
Height: 2.71 metres
Armour: up to 100 mm of steel....
Armament: 88 mm PaK 43/3 or 43/4 L71
Speed: 46 km/h (road)

Thats just massive isnt it?

Two Jagdpanthers back-to-back  in a street in Normandy 1944

This uniqe photo shows the production of Jagdpanthers next to the Panther whos chassis it used.

Jagdpanthers up to no good....

The crew with umbrellas..thats just bizarre....

Jagdpanthers destroyed, probably at the Battle of Bulge

Jagdpanther today-notice the damage on the side

Video: King Tiger restored

I found these great videoes on youtube of restored King Tiger tanks - what a massive piece of machinery it is! Cudos to the people who take of their time to keep history alive like this!


Photo: King Tigers lined of for the german newsreel 1944

 Video-restaured King Tiger

Video-restaured King Tiger

Panther - the tank that changed the battlefield

The Panther tank-or the Panzerkampfwagen V Panther as its full name is in german ment a crucial change in the design anmd size of tanks. After the invasion of Russia in 1941, the germans were suprised by the resistance from the largest russian tanks, the notorious T-34 in particular. This led to a change in the way the germans designes and built tanks- leading to a necessary change for everyone else as well. The Panther first saw combat in 1943, being rushed inti the largest tank-battle in history- the battle of kursk on the eastern front. Being used to soon it didnt have a big impact on this battle, but the tides of the tanks had changed. Tanks now were getting bigger, stronger and deadlier.

The Panther proved a great success for the germans, even if it was used only after the war had turned on the germans, fighting defensively for the whole career of the Panther. About 6000 units were produced, and it was so well designes and successfull that many captured vehicled were overtaken by allied forces, especially the russians who even had the manual translated into russian. It was even produced for the british army up til 1949...



Numbers:
Weight: 45 tons
Length: 6.87-8.66 metres depending on type
Width: 3.27-3.47metres
Height: 2.99 metres
Armour: up to 80 mm of steel....
Armament: 75 mm KwK
Speed: 34 km/h (road)



Panther in the background, soldiers in the front- probably from 5th SS Panzer "Wiking"

Panthers on the way from factory

Panthers overtaken by russian troops

Panther

Wrecked Panther, battle of Kursk

Panther captured and put into service by British troops

Panther in a museum

Jagdtiger -hunter of the plains

The Jagdtiger-or as the Germans so easily called it "Panzerjäger Tiger Ausf. B" was a tank destroyer that was based on a lengthened King Tiger chassis. It was the heaviest armoured vehicle used in combat in WW2. It had a MASSIVE 128mm gun that could flatten any allied vehicle from a distance of over 3500 metres!  The Jagdtiger was only produced in small numbers-around 80 was built, and many of them was destroyed by one crew due to mechanical failure or loss of fuel supplies.

Due to its enormeous weight, it ha problems with gear, engine and of course-just simply driving forward on most terrain types...

Only two heavy antitank battalions (schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung), numbered 512 and 653 were equipped with Jagdtigers, with the first vehicles reaching the units in September 1944. One Jagdtiger was even destroyed by the handheld Panzerfaust by own Volkssturm (Volkssturm was at the end of the war often involved in battles they werent ready for) , as the Volkssturm have never seen a Jagdtiger before...

The Jagdtiger never saw much of the action it was bulit for- tankbattles where it could take out enemy tanks from a distance, but at one occasion it proved that at least the gun worked properly- During April 1945, s.Pz.Jäg.Abt.512 saw a great deal of action, especially on 9 April, where the 1st company engaged an Allied column of Sherman tanks and trucks from dug-down positions, and took out 11 tanks and over 30 soft-skins,  some of the enemy tanks having been knocked out from a distance of more than 4,000 m. The combat unit only lost one Jagdtiger in this incident as Allied ground attack P-47appeared

 Numbers:
Weight: 72 tons
Length: 10.65 metres including gun
Width: 3.6  metres
Height: 2.8 metres
Armour: up to 250 mm of steel....
Armament: 128 mm PaK
Speed: 34 km/h (road)

Surviving units:
There are 3 Jagdtigers in museums today- these ale located at the museums in England (Bovington Tank Museum), USA (National Armor and Cavalry Museum) and Russia (Kubinka Tank Museum)




That jeep looks like a toy doesnt it...

Massive gun...

Jagdtiger captured by the americans

Another spoil of war (Sorry for  the swastika...)

Jagdtiger today at Bovington Museum