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Landships II -> Landships WW1 Forum -> References -> The Sokol Conundrum Resurfaces: The So-called Sokol
Post Info TOPIC: The Sokol Conundrum Resurfaces: The So-called Sokol
James H


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The Sokol Conundrum Resurfaces: The So-called Sokol
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In the bad old days before Landships, those less informed than ourselves would often state that certain guns carried by the A7V Sturmpanzerwagen went under the name of "Sokol," supposedly a Russian armaments manufacturer. The problem was that no such manufacturer could be shown to exist. The nearest anyone could get was the shield and wheeled carriage for the Russian 1910 Maxim machine gun, allegedly designed by a Colonel A.A. Sokolov. Again, proof positive of this is hard to find.

However, for some years now the accepted wisdom has been that the problem is one of translation, not from Russian but from German. As Hundleby and Strasheim explain, 57mm Maxim-Nordenfelt guns captured by the Germans in Russia and Belgium were installed in the A7V. They were mounted on either a framework called in German a Bock (trestle) or on a Sockel - the German equivalent of the English socle: a pillar, plinth, that sort of thing. It appears that this was misinterpreted as meaning that the gun was a Sockel/Sokol. A homophone. And there never was a Sokol.

But wait. Tank Encyclopedia offers us an image of a Russian armoured car of 1915:

Sokol.jpg

And what is that inscription on the side?

It's Сокол II. Pronounced "Sokol."

And it's a Russian word. It means "falcon." What we don't know is what happened to Сокол I.

I don't want for one second to rekindle the debate about whether there was a Mister Sokol. I just thought I'd point it out.

 

 



-- Edited by James H on Wednesday 2nd of June 2021 04:10:51 PM

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Tony I


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I for one don't read Russian, so never would have seen that connection. I stay away from anything 'wiki' and only use that cite you reference for the nice artwork. and initially I used it to gather vehicle identifications I wanted to further research.  

As I am somewhat new to WW1 info in general, this was another driving force for me to get information from primary sources. But I am not blind to German tech from after that period, so also luckily, I already had several books that covered designs starting in the late 1800s through early 1900s to build on information for the WW2 tech. Now I find myself going back through those books, many with primary sources cited, to verify data.

I already new that 'Bock' was considered trestle-type mounts, and that 'sockel' was short for 'sockellafette' and figured pretty quickly that 'sokol' was an incorrect spelling being said over and over. I also know that the A7V 'sokel/sokol' as incorrect. The A7V wasn't a 'pedestal mount' it was a tank that had a gun that was on a pedestal.  

This reminds me of one of my favorite authors, Mr. Tom Jentz, that always pointed out the inaccuracies of information that keeps being regurgitated because of an initial translation error, or just plain lazy data gathering, or though a model maker incorrectly adding a part or a name to something. One thing that was always hitting his nerve was when people would say 'Hetzer'. I am sure all WW2 armor buffs have heard 'Hetzer' before, and automatically think of that little turret-less tank made an updated/modified Panzerkampfwagen 38(t) chassis. But the actual name for it was 'Jagdpanzer 38 (Sd.Kfz. 138/2' The Germans never gave it the 'Hetzer' name, but someone said it once, and now it seems hard to forget.

Picture (red = gun / yellow = pedestal mount (sockelafette)

Tony I  

 



-- Edited by Tony I on Friday 18th of June 2021 03:09:56 PM



-- Edited by Tony I on Friday 18th of June 2021 03:11:51 PM

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Leander99


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My gut says it's an interesting coincedence.

As far as I know, there is just one picture known of the Garford-Putilov with the inscription "сокол II" and its from February 1920, Petrograd. 

Also, the socle mount used on the Garford-Putilov is a bit different.



-- Edited by Leander99 on Friday 18th of June 2021 09:15:15 PM

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James H


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Leander99 wrote:

My gut says it's an interesting coincedence.

 Absolutely. What are the names on the other vehicles in the photo?



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Leander99


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The center vehicle is named "Враг капитала". This translates to "Enemy of Capitalism". This particular vehicle became legendary as the armored car of Lenin, but he could never have used this vehicle in 1917 since this specific vehicle was built in 1919.

The vehicle to the right is named "Стенька Разин", Stenka Razin, the cossack leader who led an uprising against the tsar and nobility in the 17th Century.

It's an interesting question, because both of these names are directly related to the Bolsheviks, unlike "Falcon". It could be that the name "сокол" was retained from a pre-1917 context, or it was supposed to refer to something else than just falcon. I don't read Russian, so I wasn't able to properly investigate the name, but I've seen that the name Sokol has been used for several movements, it is also a surname, and the name for a village founded in the early 1920s to the northwest of Moscow. 



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Leander99


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Ok, so there was another Sokol. Interestingly, not deployed by the Bolsheviks but by the Don Army in 1918. No idea if the two could be connected in some way, explaining the II.

Yandex has an article about it.



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