Landships II

PDA · Legend

RE: Was there any Mark I beutepanzer?

kieffer · Commander in Chief

Hi PDA, thanks for the correction! Let's hope that the other picture was really taken at Rollencourt...I remembered the caption of the picture, found it in, again, one of these Profile books. I did not even took a closer look at the picture itself, shame on me!

regards Kieffer

Wotan II · Corporal

Yes, that was the one I meant.

CharlieC · Legend

Albert wrote:

�
Juanma wrote:

A question related with the original topic:
How many beutepanzers got the German along the war?

This is a good question. How many tanks were captured and used by Germans, how many of them were lost in battle�and how many were used at one moment?
�

It should be possible to get an answer to this from Hundleby & Strasheim's book - but it's going to take a bit a digging through the text to figure it out. I'm a bit busy at the moment (Landships II) to take on this task.

My ballpark estimate is around 50 captured tanks returned to working condition, lost about 10 in action. The number of captured tanks was much higher but many of these were badly damaged or stripped - German soldiers were paid for recovered items like magnetos.

Regards,

Charlie

�

kieffer · Commander in Chief

PDA wrote:

�

The openings for the track adjusters are the proof for it being a Mark I. They are rounded on Mark I tanks, and squared on Mark II and beyond.

Hi PDA, why did they shift from round apertures to square ones actually?

Back to the photo caption I posted:I think that can be quite misleading sometimes, finding things in books that have a 'solid' appearance and later discover that facts are probably wrong. Especially when a caption not only mentions its source, in this case the IWM but an exact date too.
Well, this source is more than 30 years old...and I cherised that book because it was one of the first books about WW1 FV's I found by sheer luck. One forgets sometimes a lot of research has been done afterwards.
Regards, Kieffer
�

�

Albert · Brigadier

I know two books on beutepanzer:

Hundleby M., Strasheim R. The German A7V Tank and the Captured Mark IV Tanks of World War I
Koch F. Beutepanzer im Ersten Weltkrieg

plus two articles on Landships:

http://www.landships.freeservers.com/on_beute-mkIV_strasheim.htm
http://www.landships.freeservers.com/french_tanks_in_germanservice.htm

Do you know other books or articles on this subject?

PDA · Legend

Regarding captions on 'reliable' sources:

One 'excuse' for getting things wrong might be the use of 'offficial' war photographs. These came from 'official' photographers who took pictures only of what they were�allowed to, and even then the pictures were censored. When those photos got published in the newspapers back home, the captions were believed. Which is why we can see tank attacks from the perspective of a German trench, when really, the scenery looks like a tankodrome and the 'Germans' are using Vickers machine guns. In the intervening years, the information has degraded; now we don't know what shade of paint was used, where or why a tank was buried, where was the first Polish use of A7Vs, why some Mark IV tanks were camouflage painted etc. Little by little the information is warped.

Another source of error is people's scrappy memory; Frank Mitchell's Tank Warfare for example, is a great read, but logic dictates that there must be exaggerations of the truth in there. In Tanks, 1914-1918; the log-book of a pioneer by Albert Stern, he says that Mark II tanks went to Palestine. Little slips like that, and then 50 years later (or however long ago they wrote those statements) the mistake has been taken as fact, and repeated in a dozen new books.

Pictorial History of Tanks of The World, by Chamberlain�& Ellis,�contains many errors; a camouflage painted Mark V tank, and a Mark II�captioned as�a Mark I, amongst them. The book is from people that worked at the Tank Museum! I think that proves the adage about 'assume'. ('Assume' makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'.)

Just a theory of mine!

Regarding the track tensioner aperture changing from rounded to squared: I don't know! But the Mark I hole had no back guard and mud and debris could drop in to the interior, the Mark II and beyond had a liner that prevented that. Maybe it was easier to make squared liners than rounded? Just more speculation!

PDA · Legend

Albert wrote:

I know two books on beutepanzer:
Hundleby M., Strasheim R. The German A7V Tank and the Captured Mark IV Tanks of World War I
Koch F. Beutepanzer im Ersten Weltkrieg

plus two articles on Landships:

http://www.landships.freeservers.com/on_beute-mkIV_strasheim.htm
http://www.landships.freeservers.com/french_tanks_in_germanservice.htm

Do you know other books or articles on this subject?

Steve Zaloga's German Panzers 1914-18 has a section on beutes�I believe. I remember it as being a good read. Easier than the 'haphazard' Hundleby and Strasheim books (I think they suffered in the translation). IMO.

�

Albert · Brigadier

PDA wrote:

Albert wrote:

�
I know two books on beutepanzer:
Hundleby M., Strasheim R. The German A7V Tank and the Captured Mark IV Tanks of World War I
Koch F. Beutepanzer im Ersten Weltkrieg

plus two articles on Landships:

http://www.landships.freeservers.com/on_beute-mkIV_strasheim.htm
http://www.landships.freeservers.com/french_tanks_in_germanservice.htm

Do you know other books or articles on this subject?
Steve Zaloga's German Panzers 1914-18 has a section on beutes�I believe. I remember it as being a good read. Easier than the 'haphazard' Hundleby and Strasheim books (I think they suffered in the translation). IMO.
�

Oh yes, I forgot, I have Zaloga's book - indeed there is a section on beutepanzers. Plus Volckheim's book Die Deutschen Kampfwagen im Weltkriege contains information on them.�

According to this: http://www.landships.freeservers.com/ww1articles.htm�there is two more articles in:

Military Modelling March 1996
Scale Models June 1993

And I found an article in Russian: http://cgi.ebay.pl/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330286250794&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

That's really all books and articles I know of. Of course in some other books beutepanzers are mentioned, but not described in detail.

Mark Hansen · Legend

PDA wrote:

...Regarding the track tensioner aperture changing from rounded to squared: I don't know! But the Mark I hole had no back guard and mud and debris could drop in to the interior, the Mark II and beyond had a liner that prevented that. Maybe it was easier to make squared liners than rounded? Just more speculation!

�Actually it was a very mundane reason for a change. The rounded aperture made it awkward to adjust the track tensioner. The square ended one gives slightly more room. The liners were on all the heavy tanks.

PDA · Legend

Thanks, Mark. Like I said, "I don't know". Guess I proved that! On Bovington's Mark I, I have never noticed anything lining the back of the track tensioner aperture, but then again, I've never been too concerned with studying it. I wonder what Helen discovered when she was drawing up her amazing plans. (Then again; I don't wonder too much about that either!�I will still sleep well, while I can.)

Mark Hansen · Legend

PDA wrote:

Thanks, Mark. Like I said, "I don't know". Guess I proved that! On Bovington's Mark I, I have never noticed anything lining the back of the track tensioner aperture, but then again, I've never been too concerned with studying it. I wonder what Helen discovered when she was drawing up her amazing plans. (Then again; I don't wonder too much about that either!�I will still sleep well, while I can.)

�Most photos show them in place. The ones that are missing seem to be knocked out and stripped tanks or incomplete tanks. 799 (a Mk II) has had its port one removed at one stage (along with anything else that wasn't nailed down.) To see a really good shot of the�liners fitted to a Mk I, check Wingate's photos (esp. Kia Ora) in the E company in Palestine thread.