A13 in German use

It looks like its about to topple over


There is actually a flimsy little bracer at the back folds down to lengthen the plot....but it's not the heavy "plough" type trail that Becker attached to his later confections - in fact it looks for all the world like a modern "wheelie bar" on a dragster or trike

 

They seem to vanish from the historical record in 1941, they were sent East for Barbarossa...

But given that the Lights steered by trackwarping...carrying THAT extra weight they were BOUND to be worn to uselessness in short order!!!

Does anyone know, did Vicker's Lights use exactly the same tracks as Bren Gun Carriers of the same vintage???

 

The Cruiser Mk.IV was certainly faster than any tank in German service in 1940, more mobile in rough terrain, and armed and armoured comparably to the Panzer III until the 5cm L/60 variants appeared.

Not at all surprising Jerry pressed it into service when he could - in 1940 at least he probably captured quite a lot of spares and ammunition - but I'm a bit surprised enough tanks were left recoverable to make it worthwhile.

Interesting box art in the first post - they seem to be driving past a damage Russian Orthodox church, but the Landser by the roadside is showing 'em what looks like a French helmet. And the gunner's wearing bottle-bottom specs.

Regards,
MikB

Regards,
MikB

 

Montefiore makes the point - which I always wondered about - that the majority of anecdotes about British Tommies "incapacitating" their vehicles just involved pulling the sump plug and overrevving them 'til they siezed...then maybe smashed distributors etc....

Maybe its just me, but engineer's produced by a nation that could produce the Tiger and the Me262 would just about be capable of pulling the heads and cylnder blocks on a siezed engine and honing the bores smooth from a quick nip-up...

IIRC he notes that the French did a far better job of permanently ruining their vehicles inside the Dunkirk Perimter than the British did.

 

Looks like a Soviet M36 helemt to me.

http://www.aboutww2militaria.com/October2007/M36_soviet_helmet_small.jpg



Yes, you're obviously right - it just didn't look like the Russian helmet I'm used to... So captured A13s were taken East on Barbarossa. Anybody know what happened to them - anything interesting or were they eventually just abandoned when they broke down?

Regards,
MikB

 

Yes, Phylo, but would it be worth the effort? Mechanically it may involve more than that, like smashed conrod and crankcase bearings, blown gaskets etc, but I suppose we'll never know about this. Recently I had a truck with a seized engine and you wouldn't believe the crate with replaced parts I got in the end. Now imagine entire units. Much easier to simply write them off.

 

Mechanically it may involve more than that, like smashed conrod and crankcase bearings, blown gaskets etc, but I suppose we'll never know about this. Recently I had a truck with a seized engine and you wouldn't believe the crate with replaced parts I got in the end. Now imagine entire units. Much easier to simply write them off


Yes....but think of the 70 years of development there's been since then Alloy engines? Separate cylinderblocks? floating steel liners?

You have to remember that the BEF went to france with the finest of mid-1930's automotive/lorry engineering Think of the majority of vehicles of ALL types left siezed by the BEF, driven off the road into nearby fields as they arrived at the Perimeter, not even given time to unload valuable cargos like ammo that would later be needed by the defenders, food and water for the beaches etc......understressed sidevalve lorry engines, castiron monobloc cases and cylinders stuff that you need a miracle to physcially break!

Here's the liberty L-12-1 for instance...



...the direct ancestor of the Nuffield MkII version of the Liberty in the A13...it's a seriously heavy and robust bit of kit! Drop the 18 gallons of oil out of the sump, pull the core plug out of the radiator...and it'll nip up in the bore BEFORE there's time to even blue up the crank journals.

The OTHER thing to remember is - we would need to track down EXACTLY what happened to the A13s Unlike the BEF's motor transport...I would guess they simply weren't driven into fields and intentionally siezed. The Nuffield wasn't that reliable, there'll be cruisers broken down all over Northern France by the time DYNAMO was finished, let alone any that fought on the Perimeter...

....minimal-impact breakdowns that the Germans COULD put right from captured spares in said lorries in Dunkirk fields, battlefield recoveries etc. And don't forget - any that WERE damaged beyond recovered were "spares mines" for re-commissioning others

 

Yes Phylo, you do have a point there, solidly supported by sound mechanical knowledge. However we're talking about the complement of entire units which magnifies the problem scale. This thread is one of the very rare instances I am aware of BEF tanks being taken to the East Front - trucks there are well known, while spares lasted - and I have to say this A13 in Barbarossa was a surprise for me. Which means that there ought to have been other reasons precluding more widespread use by the master scroungers the Germans were

 

Well, the question arise of just HOW many they captured that they could reuse. One major difficulty with beutepanzers is geting enough to equip a full unit or subunit, to simplify the spares issue as much as they can. "Mongrel" units are a pain in the ass to keep running...

So - does anyone know how many "Kreuzer Panzerkampfwagen Mk.IV 744(e)" were used by the Wehrmacht???

 

Just to make a liar of myself it appears they WERE in a "mongrel" unit, up to 15 of them were used in 19 Pz. Div, specifically in three units of beute flammpanzers! :mellow: (one of which was Pz.Abt.(Flamm)100) The A13s however were NOT converted - instead they were used as carriers and escorts...

Been doing some trawling acround the net, stand by...

 

It looks as though, at least in the final picture above, the A13 has had its tracks and probably sprockets replaced with the PzKpfw II variety.

 

How fast did the A13's tracks wear out normally, with the Christie suspension?

 

Surely faster enough than the Jerries could capture replacements for

 

Surely faster enough than the Jerries could capture replacements for


Really? Depends what the British left behind in Greece, or lost in Cyrenaica in precisely the right timeframe for them to be available in June '41.....!

One thing to think about is whether the "later" MkIVa's, the ones with the improved/armoured mantlet we can see - were more likely recoveries from the road to (and rapidly back from!) Salonika???

 

What I mean to say and I'm sure you understood is that spare parts supply was not unlimited, and as soon as these began to dry out then it's knacker's yard for them. Or how manyt photos of A13 in snow camouflage can you pull out of your tophat?

I have no qualms about 38(t) variants and the Becker French (f) SPGs because the Jerries held the factories. As for the British ones, well, Seelöwe didn't really come to fruition

 

Or how manyt photos of A13 in snow camouflage can you pull out of your tophat?


Have more - but they're all personal copyright marked and I never like posting up same

Of course the spares supply is not unlimited; ALL vehicles or pieces of assembled technology have one or two parts that wear/fail quicker than all the rest, it's the nature of the beast....which of course means that eventually ALL vehicles of a specific type sit idle for want of a thrunge grottler sprocket if it's not being made any more or there are none to be got. You can ONLY keep a numbers-limited group of vehicles running just SO long by cannibalisation, because sooner or later even THOSE "spares mines" get stripped of those few particularly vulnerable parts

It's been a while since I read it, but I've seen comments that the Christie suspension setup was particularly prone/vulnerable to wear; I think it was Lidell-Hart who recounted seeing all those Soviet BT-5s that foreign observers saw being driven through walls and over drops in Soviet pre-war manouvers...requiring days of repair afterwards!

Hence my comment earlier about there being a MINIMUM number of captured tanks etc. necessary to field a cohesive unit made up of ONLY those tanks...you need to have OTHERS sitting ready to strip out Period tanks and aircraft needed a HUGE amount of maintenance, and certainly of consumable spares....so to field a dozen of something would mean having EITHER have a gurt big spares source - French tanks and trucks could be kept going for some time with the French Army spares kits etc. seized in depots as part of the Armistice settlement....or a big wreckers' yard full of battlefield recoveries!!!

A13 tracks - like Bren Gun Carriers and Vicker's lights - used tracks made up of a LARGE number of small links....begcause the track-warping on one class and the Christie suspension on the other class...required a built-in degree of flexibility and play...just NOT TOO MUCH. As discussed elsewhere, Carrier tracks and I presume Vickers' Light tracks were adjusted by removing links like a bicycle chain as they wore! But there's an "UN-economy of scale" at work - the more small links, the more contact points/pins/joints to abrade/wear.

And in the East...add the dust of a summer and autumn on the Steppe into the grinding/abrading "wear factors" :mellow: Probably every bit as bad as desert sand, which as we know DID do quite quickly for Cruisers. Hence very likely the reason for the replacement with German items we can see in some pics

As for re-sprocketing, that's actually quite simple, sprockets are at heart just toothed wheels with the centre cut/drilld to suit Obviously that's very simplistic, but sandcasting or forging then gearcutting/toothcutting isn't a black art, we've been doing THAT for a couple of hundred years. There's actually a MAJOR saving to have been made here IF the rest of the track run allows you to fit German tracks off the shelf. Means you just have to produce two new sprockets per A13 - 15-20 pairs??? - not thousands of suitable ickle trackplates and pins