Guesstimates on Captured Tanks in Service?

I don't have any hard numbers, but it's a pretty common practice, particularly with wheeled vehicles. Japan used a few M3s captured in the Philippines against U.S. troops later in the war, U.S. forces are always enthusiastic about using the other guy's stuff. I know during Desert Storm our Battalion Maint. Sergeant spent more time trying to get a captured Land Rover running than anything else. We didn't need a Land Rover, but he thought it was cool. The Germans captured thousands of Soviet vehicles, specially during the early part of the war, I'd guess it's safe to say they used them extensively.

I think the capture of Soviet tanks early in the war was more along the lines of what happened with French tanks, more than in later situations. The USSR was caught in the middle of a major military transition, ammo production halted to work on a new gun, and the purges still fresh so a lack of leadership. Large numbers of Soviet tanks started off with limited ammo and fuel, and were simply abandoned when the crews slipped away after dark making them easy for the Germans to repair and operate.

The KVs get kind of a bum deal, now often looked at as kind of also rans (T-34 is armor's P-51 Mustang) but in 1941 the KV-1 & 2 were way more tank than anything the Germans had, and there are many examples of single tanks holding up the German advance for hours until they ran out of ammo / fuel.

In North Africa enough Italian tanks were captured to outfit an entire Australian unit (I think it was around 100 tanks).

During the Ardennes offensive (Battle of the Bulge) the German's tried to field a unit of US vehicles, but could only come up with about a dozen tanks and armored cars and had to use disguised German vehicles to fill out the rest. With the priority given to this, I would guess that indicates they simply didn't have many.

I know there are a few photos of captured tanks with Japanese markings, but I've never read anything suggesting these were used for much beyond evaluation or local opportunistic use of individual vehicles.

Use of "beute Panzers" by the Germans was quite extensive. No precise numbers are available on quantities as it varied by location and circumstances. Generally speaking, "beutes" were used by police units and/or rear-echelon forces against partisans or similar activities vs. front-line duty as the norm, however there were exceptions as with the Ardennes situation as well as individual units here and there capturing gear and putting it to local use.

Captured gear also was often sent back to the rear for evaluation and then can/did end up in the hands of training units so you also see some unusual stuff (like the captured KV-2) that pops up again towards the end of the war as the deteriorating situation made expedient use of odd-ball stuff from all different countries and types of gear.

The Russians also used captured German gear as well for what it's worth...they created some interesting conversions using captured Pz III and StuG III chassis for example to create their own SP guns and it wasn't uncommon for them to also press normal captured German vehicles into service. The problems you mention around ammo supply and parts/maintenance of course usually kept those types of events limited to various units and for restricted periods of time as well.

Hundreds...

Manstein's revenge

Hundreds...

And that's just the ones that Manny personally captured!

From what I've read,at the time of it's defeat,85% of vehicles in us by the Afrika Korps were captured Allied equipment.

Now that we are on the subject,I don't believe I've seen many photos of Axis vehicles in Allied service.A Russian Panther and an American 251 halftrack are all that comes to mind.

Use of captured vechicles may be okay for a short term solution, but long term its a logistics nightmare.  Too often, we have parts shortages for our own domestically manufacture vehicles.  Imagine some poor kampgruppe supply officer/NCO trying to get parts for French, Czech, Russian, and Lord knows what else. 

Even with standardized inventory high use parts tend to be unavailable.  Think how difficult it was after Kursk to get a replacement Panther D final drive unit.  If you think life's a female dog, try being an S4.

TD4438

From what I've read,at the time of it's defeat,85% of vehicles in us by the Afrika Korps were captured Allied equipment.

Manstein's revenge

 

TD4438:

 

From what I've read,at the time of it's defeat,85% of vehicles in us by the Afrika Korps were captured Allied equipment.

 

Most of that 85% you cite (a little high IMO) were soft-skins, which were highly prized by us when we could get our hands on 'em...

 

Yep, they'd pay through the nose for anything with soft skin...

Certainly true that anything with a motor was valued. WWII was an era when cars & trucks were simple, at least compared to our time. (Once worked on a Model A: it was easy to understand the whole thing simply because everything was so easy to see and reach.) And in the Depression you didn't pay someone to fix an old car or tractor unless absolutely necessary. As the US was the only really motorized country in the world, that was a huge advantage. We had millions of young men that knew how to fix cars: little training and they're doing any vehicle: more training and they can handle a radial. Enemy wasn't so lucky: Japanese ground crew were famous for defective "by the book" work because many trainee mechanics didn't really understand engines.  Anyway, a clever gent in the early 40s could have gotten almost any truck to run if there were a couple of wrecks around for parts and probably kept it running. A tank would not have been so simple. (My old friend said his platoon's Panther just died and they left it after a week or so. They'd captured it intact stuck in a ditch. Simply had run out of fuel. Nobody could figure why the Germans didn't at least blow the motor. Maybe in a hurry.)

Of course there was one of the US Armed Forces favorite sports - stealing jeeps, trucks and gasoline. There were so many of these things floating around that savvy drivers soon learned it was very smart to at least grab a spark plug if you were leaving a jeep unattended for an hour. Ditto with trucks but on a lesser level because they were more valuable and you could get caught. If someone swiped your jeep an obvious remedy was to swipe a jeep from someone else. As for gasoline, the stuff was like currency in Europe. A few gallons of petrol in France or Italy could get you ... wine, women, song and other commodities you could trade for other commodities. (There wasn't a real economy - cigarettes in postwar Europe were like money too.) The Army doesn't like to discuss it, but there's no question one of the reasons we had trouble getting fuel to our spear heads in France in late summer 1944 was that so much petrol was ending up on the black market in France. Soldiers tell stories like this with glee and perhaps exaggerate. Supply officers that took the job seriously were not amused. But what do you expect? Think of the US Armed Forces as a 13 million person city made up almost entirely of young males with guns with no tradition of fear of authority. (Joseph Heller of "Catch-22" always claimed that Milo was based on a composite of real supply officers. And there were always rumors of trade going on between shady supply officers across enemy lines. I doubt it but we do know that the German government tried to set up some illicit deals with the allies via Switzerland. All refused, or supposedly so.) And we were fighting for free enterprise. 

Eric

EBergerud

...Anyone ever stumbled on such trivia. We talking dozens? hundreds? a thousand?...

438.

Of course there was one of the US Armed Forces favorite sports - stealing jeeps, trucks and gasoline. There were so many of these things floating around that savvy drivers soon learned it was very smart to at least grab a spark plug if you were leaving a jeep unattended for an hour. Ditto with trucks but on a lesser level because they were more valuable and you could get caught. If someone swiped your jeep an obvious remedy was to swipe a jeep from someone else.

They didn't take out sparkplugs as that required tools.  You took the rotor out of the distributor cap as the cap was held by clips.  The US military was powered by gas fueled vehicles of probably to the tune of 97%.  All nearly had point ignitions.

I myself have no numbers to give you. However numbers must have great enough that the german army came up with a gun/ammo of their own using the 76mm Russian gun and adapting them to their own vehicles (Marder). My avatar/photo is of a 152mm that was captured in France, a long way from the eastern front.

Good site with some great stories of T-34s in specific German Panzer divisions.

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/panzerkampfwagen-t-34r-soviet-t-34-in-german-service.htm

Jack