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    World War 2 In Review No. 28: German Fighting Vehicles
    World War 2 In Review No. 28: German Fighting Vehicles
    World War 2 In Review No. 28: German Fighting Vehicles
    Ebook269 pages56 minutes

    World War 2 In Review No. 28: German Fighting Vehicles

    By Merriam Press

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    About this ebook

    Merriam Press World War 2 In Review Series

    2023 eBook Edition

    Coverage of these German AFVs of World War II:

    (1) Panzerkampfwagen IV Medium Tank (SdKfz 161)

    (2) Jagdpanzer IV and Panzer IV/70 Tank Destroyer (SdKfz 162)

    (3) Panzerwerfer Rocket Launcher Half-track (SdKfz 4/1)

    (4) German Armored Fighting Vehicle Production During World War II

    436 B&W and color photos and illustrations
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateNov 11, 2017
    ISBN9781387361762
    World War 2 In Review No. 28: German Fighting Vehicles

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      Book preview

      World War 2 In Review No. 28 - Merriam Press

      World War 2 In Review No. 28: German Fighting Vehicles

      F:\Data\_Templates\logo.jpg

      Hoosick Falls, New York

      2023 eBook Edition

      ISBN 9781387361762

      Copyright © 2017 by Merriam Press

      All rights reserved.

      Additional material copyright of named contributors.

      The views expressed are solely those of the author(s).

      This work was designed, produced, and published in

      the United States of America by

      Merriam Press, 489 South Street, Hoosick Falls NY 12090

      •

      For details on all the issues of World War 2 In Review, go to the World War 2 In Review Facebook page here.

      •

      Merriam Press has published numerous titles on historical subjects, especially military history, with an emphasis on World War II, in print and eBook formats.

      Also available are previously published works, including out-of-print and hard to find manuals, unit histories, journals, magazines, reports, campaign and battle histories and other materials on historical topics, some in printed form with many as PDF files.

      For details on all the titles that are available visit:

      Merriam Press

      ( https://www.merriam-press.com/ )

      E-mail: merriampress@gmail.com

      Panzerkampfwagen IV

      The Panzerkampfwagen IV (Pz.Kpfw. IV), commonly known as the Panzer IV, was a German medium tank developed in the late 1930s and used extensively during the Second World War. Its ordnance inventory designation was Sd.Kfz. 161.

      Designed as an infantry-support tank, the Panzer IV was not intended to engage enemy armor—that role being allocated to the Panzer III. However, with the flaws of pre-war doctrine becoming apparent and in the face of Soviet T-34 tanks, the Panzer IV soon assumed the original role of its increasingly vulnerable cousin. The most widely manufactured and deployed German tank of the Second World War, the Panzer IV was used as the base for many other fighting vehicles, including the Sturmgeschütz IV assault gun, Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyer, the Wirbelwind self-propelled anti-aircraft gun, and the Brummbär self-propelled gun.

      Robust and reliable, the Panzer IV saw service in all combat theaters involving Germany and was notable for being the only German tank to remain in continuous production throughout the war, with over 8800 produced between 1936 and 1945. Upgrades and design modifications intended to counter new threats, extended its service life. Generally, these involved increasing the Panzer IV's armor protection or upgrading its weapons, although during the last months of the war, with Germany's pressing need for rapid replacement of losses, design changes also included simplifications to speed up the manufacturing process.

      The Panzer IV was generally succeeded by the Panther medium tank introduced to counter the T-34. The Panzer IV was the most widely exported tank in German service, with around 300 sold to Finland, Romania, Spain and Bulgaria. After the war, Syria procured Panzer IVs from France and Czechoslovakia, which were to see combat in the 1967 Six-Day War. Some 8,553 Panzer IVs of all versions were built during World War II, with only the StuG III assault-gun/tank destroyer's production number of 10,086 vehicles exceeding the Panzer IV's production total for Germany's and other Axis armored forces.

      The Panzer IV was the brainchild of German general and innovative armored warfare theorist General Heinz Guderian. In concept, it was intended to be a support tank for use against enemy anti-tank guns and fortifications. Ideally, each tank battalion in a panzer division was to have three medium companies of Panzer IIIs and one heavy company of Panzer IVs. On 11 January 1934, the German army wrote the specifications for a medium tractor, and issued them to a number of defense companies. To support the Panzer III, which would be armed with a 37-millimeter (1.46 in) anti-tank gun, the new vehicle would have a short-barreled 75-millimeter (2.95 in) howitzer as its main gun, and was allotted a weight limit of 24 tons (26.46 short tons). Development was carried out under the name Begleitwagen (accompanying vehicle), or BW, to disguise its actual purpose, given that Germany was still theoretically bound by the Treaty of Versailles ban on tanks. MAN, Krupp, and Rheinmetall-Borsig each developed prototypes, with Krupp's being selected for further development.

      The chassis had originally been designed with a six-wheeled interleaved suspension, but the German Army amended this to a torsion bar system. Permitting greater vertical deflection of the roadwheels, this was intended to improve performance and crew comfort both on- and off-road. However, due to the urgent requirement for the new tank, neither proposal was adopted, and Krupp instead equipped it with a simple leaf spring double-bogie suspension.

      The prototype required a crew of five men; the hull contained the engine bay to the rear, with the driver and radio operator, who doubled as the hull machine gunner, seated at the front-left and front-right, respectively. In the turret, the tank commander sat beneath his roof hatch, while the gunner was situated to the left of the gun breech and the loader to the right. The turret was offset 66.5 mm (2.62 in) to the left of the chassis center line, while the engine was moved 152.4 mm (6.00 in) to the right. This allowed the torque shaft to clear the rotary base junction, which provided electrical power to turn the turret, while connecting to the transmission box mounted in the hull between the driver and radio operator. Due to the asymmetric layout, the right side of the tank contained the bulk of its stowage volume, which was taken up by ready-use ammunition lockers.

      Accepted into service as the Versuchskraftfahrzeug 622 (Vs.Kfz. 622), production began in 1936 at Fried. Krupp Grusonwerk AG factory at Magdeburg.

      The first mass-produced version of the Panzer IV was the Ausführung A (abbreviated to Ausf. A, meaning Variant A), in 1936. It was powered by Maybach's HL 108TR, producing 250 PS (183.87 kW), and used the SGR 75 transmission with five forward gears and one reverse, achieving a maximum road speed of 31 kilometers per hour (19.26 mph). As main armament, the vehicle mounted the Kampfwagenkanone 37 L/24 (KwK 37 L/24) 75 mm (2.95 in) tank gun, which was a low-velocity gun mainly designed to fire high-explosive shells. Against armored targets, firing the Panzergranate (armor-piercing shell) at 430 metres per second (1,410 ft/s) the KwK 37 could penetrate 43 millimeters (1.69 in), inclined at 30 degrees, at ranges of up to 700 meters (2,300 ft). A 7.92 mm (0.31 in) MG 34 machine gun was mounted coaxially with the main gun in the turret, while a second machine gun of the same type was mounted in the front plate of the hull. The Ausf. A was protected by 14.5 mm (0.57 in) of steel armor on the front plate of the chassis, and 20 mm (0.79 in) on the turret. This was only capable of stopping artillery fragments, small-arms fire, and light anti-tank projectiles.

      After manufacturing 35 tanks of the A version, in 1937 production moved to the Ausf. B. Improvements included the replacement of the original engine with the more powerful 300 PS (220.65 kW) Maybach HL 120TR, and the transmission with the new SSG 75 transmission, with six forward gears and one reverse gear. Despite a weight increase to 16 t (18 short tons), this improved the tank's speed to 39 kilometers per hour

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