unidentified vehicle-mobile bridge

[Radcollector]

Hello,

I was wondering if someone could tell me what the name of this vehicle is-it looks to be a tracked mobile bridge-I dont recall ever seeing pictures of a similar german vehicle.

[predax]

It looks like a Panzer IV bridge layer... You view the vehicle from behind. It's a Pz IV hull without a turret, modified.

[Rich G]

Interesting pic. Looks like they've broken the left hand track as the track is lying on the ground and the rear guide wheel is bear.

Rich

[werner geier]

richard, what you are referring to cant be the tank´s rear idler wheel, cause it is mounted on an extension to the chassis. must be part of the bridgelaying mechanism.

[Kai-Steffen M.]

hallo werner, nein das stimmt schon dass die kette ab ist und das hintere linke rad freiliegt- es ist nur nicht das hell beleuchtet "zweispurige" rad das etwas über grund zu sehen ist und sicher zum legemechanismus gehört sondern es liegt im bild darunter und weiter im hintergrund...

I think i saw one of those mentioned in some publication i have to look for.. it has a name i forgot- the short article was about bridgelaying panzers in the german army from ww1 to today.
i will look for it and post the info as soon as i found the article..

Gruß,
KSM

[werner geier]

sorry, of course you and richard are right, thought the wheel in question was the one of the legemechanismus. der kettenschaden links ist eindeutig.

[Akira Takiguchi]

This is one of the four <b>Br&uuml;ckenleger IV c</b> built by Kruppe in 1941. Jentz says that these were used by Pz.Pi.Btl.39 of 3.Panzer-Division. Is this from 3.Panzer-Division photos?

[Kai-Steffen M.]

ok- the one that i saw was the BrüPzII pprototyp B of 1940- on the base of the PzII-- which is not the one seen here- bridgelaying tank never really were established in the wehrmacht- the plan was to blitz the enmy and take streets, bridges and infrastructure as intact as possible- in 1940 there wasa total of 20 bridgelayer in the entire wehrmacht (on 4 different vehicle bases) and 2 of those went to the east after france...in 1941 it was decided that all the theoretically planned bridgleaying platoon of the tank companies in the wehrmacht structure were absolete and to be disestablished...there were no vehicles for them nor were there vehicles to be expected (bigger problems than that)
so thats the reason why you see so few pictures of these things

Gruß,
KSM

[Radcollector]

Hello,

I was out of town for the weekend and was supprised by the reponse this thread recieved-being that there were so few built would expalin why i never saw a picture of one before!Akira-Im not sure of the unit- this was one of those photos with the etched negatives that was part of that large lot of Russian front armor photos lot that i bought and posted previously-I think that the etched numbers are different on this photo and on one other of a 37mm flak gun in action-the ones i showed you before are etched in white numbers in the lower left corner-this and the flak gun picture have black numbers etched in the lower right corner-Im pretty sure that these 2 are from a different picture grouping ie different units than the ones you identified in my previous posts(18th panzer division photos)I thought it was a interesting photo so i grabbed it.thanks everyone for the info-I knew someone here would be able to tell me what it was!

regards Yancy

[Akira Takiguchi]

Yancy, now that you have shown this bridge layer, I have to admit that I could have been wrong in identifying the former photos as from 18.Panzer-Division.

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...threadid=18333

In fact, those could also be 3.Panzer-Division. Out of Panzer-Divisionen under Panzergruppe 2 in June/July 1941, 3rd, 4th, 10th, 18th are known to have Tauchpanzern.

To make up my mistake (!?), I will show you an equally rare animal, <b>Br&uuml;ckenleger IV s</b>, also called a <b>Sturmstegpanzer</b>, also from the same unit.

[Radcollector]

Hello Akira,

Thanks for the added info regarding Pz.Pi.Btl.39-Kai mentioned there were only 20 mobile bridgelayers in the entire wehrmacht-how many other units besides (Pz.Pi.Btl.39) were actually equipped with mobile bridgelayers?also do you know what happened to these vehicles(the 4 bruckenlager IV c)-did they last a while?-were they lost early in the campaign ?etc.Akira thanks also for your picture of the Bruckenlager IV s -very interesting photo!

regards Yancy