German wooden training mock-up of a T34

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Guys, I found this photo online and thought that I would share it here as I found it interesting. It shows a wooden mock-up of a Soviet T34 built upon a Polish TKS tankette chassis which was used for troop training. Here a Grenadier throws a smoke charge.

Cheers, Ade.

[Steve T]

I'd have chucked a magnetic mine tbh......or at least shot the bugger with a panzerfaust !

Training or not......you should be realistic in your approach

relichunter

[Adrian Stevenson]

Actually, this was a legitimate part of training to deal with tanks at an improvised level. The German realised that often ad hoc measures were called for, as conventional anti tank weapons were not always to hand.

Smoke grenades were used as part of this. The idea being the smoke would irritate the crew and force them to abandon the vehicle, where they could be picked off by small arms fire. The book "Tank Killers" illustrates many different methods to knock out a T34.

Cheers, Ade.

[Steve T]

In which case it's a shame Patrick Kielty or Richard & Judy weren't around back then. Playing recordings by either on an appropriate volume would have irritated the Russians no end........they irritate me enough for me to leave the house when they're on !

[Adrian Stevenson]

i think it might work for me too!

Cheers, Ade.

[packin9]

Great photo Ade. Amazing the stuff they came out with.

[pjm]

There's a great German training film showing the various methods for destroying tanks...includes such thngs as hiding in a tree to drop a charge on a passing tank and the hide in a fox hole with a magnetic mine method.

While living in Germany I stayed on a farm near Uelzen. The farmer had been a Luftwaffe flak driver and told stories of seeing the tread marks where Russian tanks had done a "pirouette" manoeuvre - a full 360 circle on one spot that effectively buried the anti-tank soldier in his fox hole.

Another colleague told me the story of being in a Fahnenjunker Schule in East Prussian as the front got closer and closer. One morning at Appel, his class was divided into anti-partisan and anti-tank units. He was lucky and was assigned to anti-partisan duty. None of the anti-tank group was ever seen again.