Blitzkrieg by Len Deighton

Author:Len Deighton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007549511
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-02-20T16:00:00+00:00

Half-track Vehicles

The weight of the artillery pieces and the way in which they had to be towed and positioned in the field were reasons enough why artillery needed tracked vehicles rather than horses. And the artillery had used tracked vehicles since long before the tank was invented. Yet, while the British Army returned to heavy-wheeled vehicles for this task, the Germans preferred the half-track.

The idea of combining wheeled front steering with tracked drive was that of M. Kegresse, a Frenchman working in the Russian Tsar’s garage, who had made a vehicle for use in snow. He adapted an Austin car, using his own method of suspension. The result was later to become the Austin-Kegresse armoured car, used by the Red Army and, after some were captured in 1920, by the Polish Army too. It was the suspension system of Kegresse that the Citroën company used for five half-tracks that crossed the Sahara desert in 1923.

During the 1930s, the German Army provided its panzer divisions with half-tracks. These ranged from the 5-ton Leichter Zugkraftwagen (light prime mover) that was used to tow antitank guns and light anti-aircraft guns, through the middle-size ones for howitzers and pontoon-bridge sections, to the huge 18-ton Schwerer Zugkraftwagen (heavy prime mover) that could winch a damaged tank out of the mud onto a trailer and tow it back to the repair shops.

In spite of all the expensive refinements, the half-track remained cheaper than any fully tracked vehicle because it was steered by the front wheels, like a motorcar, instead of by a complex system changing the speed of either track, as in tank steering.

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