A couple of years ago I came across this color plate on the net.
The information was sparse, and the only reference was to a Russian tank magazine from the late 90's which I unfortunately didn't managed to track down.
The information said that the color plate was depicting a German Sd.kfz 265 Panzerbefehlswagen, captured by the Soviets during the conter-offensive in december 1941, and used during the failed Soviet offensive in April 1942.
The whole thing captured my imagination, and not just because I am a great fan of this type of vehicle. I also thought that it was symptomatic for the difference between the Soviet and the German emphasis when it came to tank warfare. Hear my out on this one.
In general the German armor wasn't technichally superior to the Soviet armor at the beginning of the war. The advantage was mainly tactical, and one crucial aspect of the Blixtkrieg warfare was good communication capabilities. Hence the need for armored command vehicles. The Sd.kfz 265 was also designed solely for this purpose. It was poorly armored and only equipped with a single MG 34. Instead it housed additional radio equpiment that made it possible to function as a command vehicle in the panzer divisions: one vehicle on the company level and two on the battalion level. What I find interesting is the importance of these vehicles in the early part of the war. During the sucessful German campaings in Poland, the Western countries, Balkan and in the early stages of Barbarossa the bulk of the tactical decisions were taken inside these vehicle.To put it short - it was the Germans brains on wheels.
Now, the Soviet armored doctrine was the opposite: it relied heavily on strenght, in number and in fire power. The tactical skills and the cooperation between arms were not that impressive, especially not in the beginning of the war. The communication infrastructure, pretty much on every level, was rudimentary, to say the least. Coordination of the amored forces on a tactical level still relied to a certain degree on the use of signal flags!
Well back to the picture. I think that the captured vehicle in a interesting way represents the meeting of these two different approaches to tank warfare. What the Soviets apparently did when the had captured this German command vehicle was to follow their first impulse - Let's tear out the radio and mount some serious gun on it instead! They turned the vehicle into brawns on wheels.
The gun they added was a Shvak 20mm autocannon, which from the beginning was thought to be used in aircrafts, but where later a tank vesion was developed, that was mainly used in the T-60 tank. Despite the relatively small caliber - but thanks to the high rate of fire - it was acatually a real threat to the German tanks on the battlefield. There are examples of T-60's that penetrated the armor of Pz III's with this gun and even managed to do some serious damage to Pz IV's!
Well, this is the reason why I have planned to build this little monster for a long time, and since I already have finnished the building part, I thought that I atleast could post a PIP-tread (Painting in progress).
A little about the build so far:
The kit is from DML - "Kleine panzerbefehlswagen Sd.kfz 265 "(No 6218). It's a great little kit - pure joy to build.
To that I added some PE from a Voyager set and an aluminium barrel from Barrel depot.
The figure is from an old Verlinden Soviet tanker set.
These are a couple of small modifications and addition that I've made:
1. Some of the moulded weld seems were replaced with PE ones.
2. Pretty much all of the equpiment and tools that comes with the original kit was left out, in an attempt to signal the improvisational aspect of the captured tank concept.
3. On the bow I added a welded armored plate to cover up the entry point where supposedly the tank was hit in the first place.
4. The antenna and even the antenna mount was removed, but I left the antenna cradle still in place.
5. An extra road wheel was added to the front, placed over a welded rod. The wheel will be painted in Panzer grey (together with the inside of the commanders hatch), again underlining the improvisation aspect.
6. The side headlights were removed, and only the electrical wiring is left sticking out of the front glacis.
7. The front of the mudgaurds were removed. From the pics I've seen these parts seems to have been pretty exposed, often damaged and finally removed.
Here's how it looks right now:
Tomorrow, I'll start the painting.
All kinds of comments and suggestians are naturally very wellcome!
/Bultenibo aka Tony