Information about Flakpanzer III

[EdwinS30]

Good day to all, first a small introduction. I am new to this forum and hope it can help me build more realistic models. I build 1/35 scale mid to late war german armour (favorites panzer III/IV and Stug).

A vew months ago i bought the book from nuts and bolds about the wirbelwind / Ostwind flakpanzers. One very small paragraph cought my eye. It seems that the germans allso experimented with flakpanzer III. The history seems to be that the Stug abteilung lacked good mobile airdefence. The reason was that the stug abteilung was placed under the care of the artillery branch of the german werhmacht and not the army branche.

The army branche was building the flakpanzer IV, so there where ideas of building a flakpanzer III based on the wirbelwind en ostwind turrets. They recieved 2 Ostwind and 2 wirbelwind turrets and 4 panzer III's. According to my source they complete 2 experimental panzer III Ostwind (no mention of the wirbelwind turrets) and had ordered and recieved 15 more turrets.

Now i am wondering if someone has confirmation of these flakpanzers III, any pictures and if someone knows what happened to the wirbelwind turrets.

Greets

Edwin

[DonC]

Edwin, welcome to the forum. All I can find about the Flakpanzer III is unfortunately dedicated to "what if" 1/35 scale models:

http://henk.fox3000.com/pz3.htm

Don

[Lloyd I.]

Welcome to the forums Edwin.

I'll check some of my more obscure out of print books tonight to see if I can find something of a picture to post.

[herkules]

Flakpanzer der deutschen Wehrmacht

Hi Edwin,

First of all I'd like to recommend the book :

"Der Weg zum Flak-Panzer Gepard" by Walter J. Spielberger

Give me some time to do some more research...

all I can say for now is that there have been a few further

improved versions of "West - and Wirbelwind" ("Zerstoerer" )

and the improved / newly designed "Kugelblitz"

Best regards

Wolf

[EdwinS30]

Guys, thank you for the responce so far, i appriciate it

DonC, thank you for the link. Gave me allso someother nice ideas

Herkules, the kugelblitz is allso one model i will build based on the new pz iv chasis from dragon and the old kit of the kugelblitz allso from dragon. Plan is to use a wirbelwind chasis and rebuild it with parts from the old kugelblitz kit. Advantage is that i will allso have a "left over" wirbelwind turret for my panzer III M

Lloyd, hope you can find something. I am not a big fan of the so called "paper" panzers, i only try to build panzers that excisted even if there where only one or two prototype build

[herkules]

Flakpanzer der deutschen Wehrmacht

Hi Edwin,

according to "Spielberger" there had been allocated 115 "Wirbelwind" to

the front units (all based on Pz IV chassis / "Fahrgestell") by end of 1944

Interesting that the "Zerstoerer" prototype had a "3cm Vierling" mounted

One of the turrets of the 5 "Kugelblitz" prototypes is on exhibition in a British

museum !

It had a 3 cm Zwilling ( high rate of fire ... also used in the Me 262 )

Thanks for your attention

Wolf

[EdwinS30]

I found some extra information on the i-net. Some Stug formations wrote they had flakpanzers in their unit. Well seeing the didn't get them from the Army branch (they kept them fore them self) i asume they are talking about flakpanzer III's.

So maybe not just paper panzers or experiments at all

[Lloyd I.]

I am not certain of some of the designations as I've never quite done much study of the differences in the flakpanzer, mobilflakpanzer, wirbelwind or the chassis type.

Maybe I should post images?