Hello guys,
This summer I acquired two interesting Soldbucher and I will introduce them in this thread
After the Polish campaign the German Panzer staff officers came to the realisation that their armoured divisions lacked a form of close artillery support that could keep up with the tanks, they had to remedy this problem before their next big challenge: the conquest of France were their tanks would face a much stronger opponent, one that had bigger and heavier tanks then them.
The solution was a simple one, they took their standard infantry support canon the 15 cm SIG 33 and placed it on the already obsolete Pzkw I chassis, then they added some basic armour plating so that they ended up with a three side open box.
The design was very basic and simple but it also had his faults, the SIG33 canon was placed complete, thus with wheels, carriage, etc on the chassis, this meant they ended up with a rather high (9 feet), top heavy vehicle, that was difficult to hide in the field.
The armour plating was rather thin and only protect some of the crew from small arms fire and shrapnel, the loaders were fully exposed; the armour plating made the inside space also very cramped and also because of weight issues all the ammo had to be kept outside of the vehicle and still had to be transported with trucks.
But this makeshift vehicle had to do the job for the meanwhile; by February 1940 Alkett had produced 36 of them and they were issued to six independent companies which each got six SIG33(sf) guns, also known as the Sturmpanzer I Bizon.
In 1940 the German army had ten Panzer Divisions, so only six of them were equipped with them, priority wise these six independent companies were assigned to the divisions that had to play an important part in the Ardennes breakthrough.
In the following posts I'll introduce two Soldbucher of men that served with these companies in 1940.
This summer I acquired two interesting Soldbucher and I will introduce them in this thread
After the Polish campaign the German Panzer staff officers came to the realisation that their armoured divisions lacked a form of close artillery support that could keep up with the tanks, they had to remedy this problem before their next big challenge: the conquest of France were their tanks would face a much stronger opponent, one that had bigger and heavier tanks then them.
The solution was a simple one, they took their standard infantry support canon the 15 cm SIG 33 and placed it on the already obsolete Pzkw I chassis, then they added some basic armour plating so that they ended up with a three side open box.
The design was very basic and simple but it also had his faults, the SIG33 canon was placed complete, thus with wheels, carriage, etc on the chassis, this meant they ended up with a rather high (9 feet), top heavy vehicle, that was difficult to hide in the field.
The armour plating was rather thin and only protect some of the crew from small arms fire and shrapnel, the loaders were fully exposed; the armour plating made the inside space also very cramped and also because of weight issues all the ammo had to be kept outside of the vehicle and still had to be transported with trucks.
But this makeshift vehicle had to do the job for the meanwhile; by February 1940 Alkett had produced 36 of them and they were issued to six independent companies which each got six SIG33(sf) guns, also known as the Sturmpanzer I Bizon.
In 1940 the German army had ten Panzer Divisions, so only six of them were equipped with them, priority wise these six independent companies were assigned to the divisions that had to play an important part in the Ardennes breakthrough.
In the following posts I'll introduce two Soldbucher of men that served with these companies in 1940.
