Ersatz M10 tank usage

Thank you, I was looking at pictures, and saw that the i believe 3rd falschirmjager army captured shermans, did this army group have the captured tanks operated by fallschirmjager or were there tank crews that were in this formation?

The Israelis had a similar problem in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Their TCs usually had their heads out of the tank for better situational awareness in combat and as a consequence many were killed by head wounds or decapitation. The bodies would collapse into the turret and in many cases the crews abandoned serviceable tanks. The tanks would be recovered and put back into action with replacement crews, but those crews had a hard time fighting with the residue gore and smell. It was found that cleaning up the interiors with diesel fuel would remove or mask the odor that was the biggest reminder to the replacement crew of the previous TCs fate.

Tankluver, IIRC the whole reason that the Ersatz M10s existed was because they had no captured Shermans available to equip Panzer Brigade 150 with. Yes some operational M4s would be captured by various German units during the Ardennes fighting, but by that point, the mission of Skorzeny and the other SOF elements had already failed. And the captured M4s could not have been transferred to Skorzeny in a timely manner anyways.

T26E4

Hans: if you read Belton Cooper's "Death Traps" he describes this entire process. THey would hose out/clean out as much as possible and then cover everything inside w/a fresh layer of paint -- hoping to extinguish any scent of human debris/fluid.

Ya, I imagine that would be the case, once things were in place, but in the first couple of weeks after the landings, in the thick of the hedgerow fighting,  I'd imagine that facilities for completely refurbishing the tanks weren't in place yet... 

Not saying that guts & gore were still splattered around inside the tank, but more like a bit of matter down inside "something" that was overlooked...  Dunno your background with AFVs, but there're a lot of nooks & crannies in 'em..

Never heard of the book you cite... I'll be looking for it, thanks..

Hans: if you read Belton Cooper's "Death Traps" he describes this entire process. THey would hose out/clean out as much as possible and then cover everything inside w/a fresh layer of paint -- hoping to extinguish any scent of human debris/fluid.

Tankluver: I've never heard of any of the PzBde having any Shermans. I would suspect your picture is mis-captioned.  M4s were used by German units but I don't think any of the "Greif" units used them.

There was an almost endless supply of new and refurbished tanks being pushed forward with an almost endless supply of men to crew them.

I once knew a former WW2 M4 tanker, Nobby Tilges was his name...  He said to me once (during a particular heavy drinking bout in my Dad's bar) that it wasn't uncommon for a crew gettinging a new and refurbished Sherman to get one that still had some "matter" in certain places...

This wasn't uncommon either.. While new tanks were hitting the Normandy coast with ever-increasing  numbers after D-Day, up until the Normandy breakout the tanks that were knocked out in the hedgerow fighting  but fairly easily repaired were done at maintenence levels only one or two echelons removed from the Comapny level,  meaning that they got electrical, optical, and/or mechanical repairs done completely, but were only given a rather hurried "hosing out" before a new crew picked them up and headed back to the fight...

Pretty gruesome when you think about it... 

wbill76

Transport of any kind in North Africa commanded a premium. Both sides used whatever they could capture for as long as they could keep it running.

The Germans were particularly adept at using captured gear although that often created really bizarre and complicated spare parts/maintenance situations. Every campaign saw the use of "beute" gear regardless of country, type, etc. If it ran, they used it for as long as possible.

Using "beute" gear was more of a necessity to Germany than to the Allies. For the most part, the German army was not motorized. They still had a large percentage of their army as horse drawn or foot soldiers.

Therefore, the need to utilize captured transportation was greater than that of the US who have the vast majority of its armies already motorized by the time they hit the African shores and the European mainland.

Likewise, the German industry had a hard time producing replacement armor and transporting that armor to the front lines. They needed to put captured tanks into action to make up for losses.

The US, on the other hand, trained on a set of tanks in the US. Trained on another set of tanks in the UK. Swapped those tanks out for ones they would use in combat. If that tank got destroyed, another tank was coming back from the depot to replace it. There was an almost endless supply of new and refurbished tanks being pushed forward with an almost endless supply of men to crew them.

The Germans would have replaced the white stars with Balkenkruezen when used as their own tanks.. For Greif, I doubt they would have had German markings at all.

I found a picture of an M4 sherman used in operation grief, though this is alittle off topic would this vehicle also have the white stars, or would they have been replaced after the brigade was just used as a regular unit 

From the information that i have, none of the ersatz M10's were used at Bastogne, they were part of Panzer Brigade 150 under Skorzeny (Operation Greif). At least 2 were destroyed at Trois Ponts (damn engineers!). there seems to have been only 10 Panthers disguised in this manner. All employed on the northern shoulder of the Bulge.

Mike T.

Transport of any kind in North Africa commanded a premium. Both sides used whatever they could capture for as long as they could keep it running.

The Germans were particularly adept at using captured gear although that often created really bizarre and complicated spare parts/maintenance situations. Every campaign saw the use of "beute" gear regardless of country, type, etc. If it ran, they used it for as long as possible.

Ive seen that pic before, it was a shocker to see more allied equipment then German. I read that Otto Skorzoney requested allied equipment and ended up with polish and russian equipment.

Anything they could capture.  Probably anything that was used in Normandy and Southern France.  I doubt that they would have shipped stuff from Sicily and Italy, and North Africa after the battle of Kasserine.  There is a photo in one of the old Ballantine WW2 books that shows a German column after Kasserine that has more American vehicles in it than German ones (deuces, jeeps, halftracks).

Do you also know what variant of the M3 half track  panzer brigade 150 used?

Well were they used against bastogne is what I meant, but I read that they were used and destroyed in the malmadey sector 

These few were all used by PzBde 150 with the intent of attacking the Meuse river bridges.  The timetables fell apart and they were just used as normal tank assets.  If I recall, they were used in only one action and all were KOd by American forces.

As for the question: "they decide to incorporate them into the regular battle"  What is your def'n of "the regular battle"?  The area of operation was pretty large and over several weeks.