Pz.Kpfw.II Weaknesses

 "To Chemistry Chiefs of the 29th and 65th Rifle Corps, 21st Mechanized Corps, 46 [cut off]
July 28th, 1941

The most vulnerable locations on the German light tank are:

1. The open vision port on the right side of the fighting compartment (driver's port). It is fairly wide, but there is no triplex glass in it. The port on the right (the commander's port) has triplex glass.

2. The hatch under the turret next to the commander (on the front left part of the tank's fighting compartment) does not seal well.

3. Slits between the engine deck and engine deck hatches on the engine deck (in the rear).

Give your instructors that organize the use of Molotov cocktails these instructions to ensure more effective combat against tanks.

Chemistry Chief of the 27th Army, Colonel Novoselov"

CAMD RF F.957 Op.1 D.46 L.89

A Shortage of Guns

Practice shows that processes in the army that flow slowly tend to rapidly accelerate after the first combat engagements. This observation applies to the German SPG program. The Germans began working on these vehicles in the second half of the 1920s, but achieved very little by the start of the Second World War. This was in part due to unrealistic expectations, particularly in the case of tank destroyers. The Germans army dreamed of high speed tank destroyers with a fully rotating turret on a halftrack chassis. Such vehicles were even built, but only as prototypes and small production batches. As a result, the Germans quickly had to build tank destroyers out of whatever was available after the war began.

Vehicles of the 128th Tank Destroyer Battalion. The vehicle in the front is the best known conversion of a Pz.Kpfw.II tank carrying a 50 mm Pak 38 gun.

The Fight for Sight

Optics often come up in discussions that compare Soviet and German tanks. The famous "Zeiss optics" are often invoked by those who are not very well versed in the subject matter. The issue was not in Soviet sights. Plenty of them survived to this day, and any who wish can evaluate their quality on their own. German tanks were first and foremost superior in their observation devics. Their visibility was better than that of Soviet tanks, which was often a deciding factor in victory on the battlefield. However, the evolution of German observation devices is an interesting topic for discussion.

The Third Reich's Last Tanks

German tank building was in a difficult state towards the end of WW2. The issue wasn't just in factories damaged by bombers, loss of significant territories, and shortages of resources. The consequences of mistakes in planning and production as well as unscrupulous competition began to crop up. Let's take a look at how the new head of the Panzerkommission tried to bring order back to German tank building and what came of it.

Extra Protection

The tendency to increase armour protection was one of the most notable features of the German tank building school. No nation in the world increased protection without a radical change to the chassis. For instance, the Pz.Kpfw.III more than tripled the thickness of its front armour compared to its initial form. The Pz.Kpfw.IV set a record, quadrupling the thickness of the front hull compared to that of the B.W. This wasn't it, as the Germans still worked on improving protection of tanks that were already build. This article will cover those methods.

Armoured Confusion

Works on Soviet tank building are published with striking regularity. Some are the results of many years of archival research, but many are based on prior works. There is nothing shameful about this, as skillful compilation is an art of no lesser value than writing from scratch. However, an issue with credibility may arise when picking secondary sources, and even primary documents can contain mistakes often caused by a lack of information. As a result, dozens of myths were built around Soviet tank building over the course of decades that live on today. This article will discuss such myths connected to pre-war tank building in the Soviet Union.

Captured Tank Observation

Continued from part 2.

"T-1 tank

The driver's observation devices are located in the turret platform. There are two slits in the observation hatch in front of the driver. For observation hatches are located in the corners of the turret platform. The slits in the hatches on the left side are covered with two layer protective glass. There are no slots in the right side. The driver observes through the front slits and the left slit.

The commander observes through the machine gun sight. Outside of battle, he can use the observation ports above the machine guns. Observation ports without slits are located on the sides of the turret. Two observation ports with slits are located in the back of the turret. The location and range of the devices is shown in figure 15. The observation devices do not protect the observer. It is impossible to observe to the right during battle.

Autocannon Penetration

Due to a shortage of DShK machineguns, the T-30 and T-60 tanks were equipped with the 20 mm ShVAK autocannon. Despite the larger caliber, penetration was not much more impressive than the DShK was capable of.

"

• The muzzle velocity of the 20 mm AP-I round (B-Z) is 796 m/s and 892 m/s for the round with NB-200 (nitroglycerine gunpowder) propellant.
• The precision of the ShVAK gun at ranges of up to 1000 m in bursts of 2-3 shots is satisfactory.
• The TMFP sight scale designed for the 12.7 mm machinegun cannot be used for the ShVAK 20 mm cannon. A new sight scale needs to be applied for the optical and iron sights.

Weak Spots 2

I posted a pretty large collection of flyers showing weak spots of enemy tanks before, but here are a couple more.

First, the Pz38(t).

The symbols are the same: a target with an arrow shows where to throw Molotov cocktails, a target with a bullet shows where to hit the tank with an armour piercing bullet or anti-tank grenade.

The image was included on the back cover of a propaganda booklet, which was generously shared here.

Reconnaissance Cats

The last light tank of the traditional variety produced in Germany, the PzII Ausf. F, was removed from production in July of 1942. Nevertheless, light tanks continued to exist within the Third Reich. These were reconnaissance tanks, similar to reconnaissance armoured cars in function. Even the German term "Panzerkampfwagen" was not used to refer to these vehicles. This article will cover German reconnaissance tanks of WWII: Gefechtsaufklärer Leopard, Pz.Sp.Wg.II Ausf.MAN Luchs and Aufklärungspanzer 38(t), none of which were truly mass produced.

Pz.Kpfw.II Ausf.J: Heavy Steps of a Light Tank

Rather unusual types of vehicles frequently appeared in WWII. Most of them remained on paper, but some of them made it to production. German tank builders were no exception, creating vehicles whose mere concept boggles the mind. The VK 16.01, otherwise known as the PzII Ausf. J was one such vehicle. It was not as useless as its brother, the PzI Ausf. F, but the concept of a lightly armoured heavy tank raises many questions.

Quantity Over Quality

This penetration table is fairly well known. It appears in several period publications and a translated version was even sent to the USSR. Nevertheless, it gives some information as to how well the guns of the Western Allies performed against German armour.

However, there was one interesting observation made that didn't come along with this table to any other publication. Since hitting a tank at 2000 yards was very difficult, and the 2-pounder could penetrate older German tanks in the front and even newer ones from the side at nearly that distance, what was the point of having a 6-pounder at all?

Pz.Kpfw.II Ausf. G: The Fruit of Unending Labour

The idea of replacing the La.S.100, or the PzII, with a superior vehicle was born in January of 1937. The result was the La.S.138, otherwise known as the PzII Ausf. D and Ausf. E, created by MAN and the famous tank designer Heinrich Kniepkamp. The tank had a progressive torsion bar suspension, but its service did not last for long. It was clear that the story of the La.S.138 was developing poorly by the summer of 1938, before the tank even entered production. The result of this understanding was the development of another tank, which was supposed to replace both the La.S.100 and La.S.138.

The Wasp and Its Sisters

Like other light tanks, the PzII chassis was actively used for the creation of SPGs. Thanks to larger dimensions than the PzI and a more powerful engine, it could mount a larger caliber gun. After conversion, the PzII chassis was ideal for the leFH 18 105 mm howitzer. This article will describe several SPGs on the PzII chassis, including the Wespe, a light SPG that helped a long obsolete light tank chassis remain in production until the summer of 1944.

Marder II: Light Tank Destroyer

By the end of 1941, the Germans began to understand that the time of light tanks was over. This also applied to the PzII tank. By that time, it's main enemy was medium tanks with shellproof armour, against which the 20 mm autocannon was useless. Production of light tanks ended in Germany in the summer of 1942, but that doesn't mean that the PzII chassis was done for. Work on light SPGs on its chassis began in the spring. One of them was a tank destroyer that is best known as the Marder II.

An Aryan From Poland

The Red Army GABTU had a very vague idea about the armoured vehicles of its potential enemy at the start of World War II. The same could be said about the other members of what would become the Allies. For obvious reasons, there was very little available information about tanks made by Germany and its allies. Mainly, it could be obtained from encyclopedias, which were full of errors. The ability to properly study the foreign tanks was only possible after combat began. In this respect, the USSR was ahead of the rest of the world. The first trophies began arriving from Spain: a captured PzI Ausf. A and an Italian L3/35. In the summer of 1939, a Japanese Ha-Go tank was captured in the Far East. The list of trophies grew with the start of WWII. The German PzII Ausf. C was among them.

Pz.Kpfw.II Ausf. F: Third Time's the Charm

There are few cases when a tank that is accepted into service is replaced by a modification that is inferior to it. In Soviet tank building, one example of this is the KV-1S, a necessary measure. It was lighter than the KV-1, and had thinner armour, but as a result of its lower mass and improved gearbox, it was a lot more reliable and mobile. The tank itself received a large number of improvements.

With the Germans, the most clear example of such a paradoxical course of action was the PzII Ausf. F. Here, the Germans returned to an older version of the PzII (Ausf. C, albeit with some improvements) than the one that was already accepted into production (Ausf. D).

Pz.Kpfw.II Ausf. D-E: Unlucky Torsion Bars

Worldwide tank building progressed rapidly in the second half of the 1930s. This can definitely be said about Germany's tank industry, which developed tank suspensions, along with everything else. Various experiments in this area led to widespread use of torsion bars. However, there is a tank in the history of Germany's tank design that was produced in large numbers, but it is rarely remembered. It ended up in a paradoxical situation where, instead of a technically superior tank, a tank with an old suspension returned into production. This was the PzII Ausf. D: a light tank that fought in its initial configuration for only a month.

Pz.Kpfw.II Ausf. c-C: At the Spearhead of Blitzkrieg

The story of the PzII tank was an unusual one. In many ways, it owes its "accidental" existence to the attempts of mounting a 20 mm autocannon in the Kleintraktor (future PzI). Due to issues with production of the Z.W. tank (future PzIII), the PzII was the most numerous front line tank for the first two years of WWII. Germany's most common tank was not even originally included in the armament plans.

Pz.Kpfw.II Ausf.a through b: An Unplanned Tank

The light PzII tank played an important role in the structure of the German tank forces. Despite the opinion born of German generals' memoirs, this was not a training tank. On the contrary: at the time of its inception, the PzII was one of the best light tanks in the world. It appeared almost by accident, but occupied a significant part of the Wehrmacht's order of battle. The PzII remained in production for five years, with some small breaks. What is the history of the PzII, and what did its first versions look like?