[Alex van de Wetering]

Target practice or battle damage?
The other “mystery” around this tank is the number of penetrations on the right hand side. All sources say the tank was put out of action by a Panzerfaust and some of the remaining ammo exploded. The strange thing though is that the tank has around 20 penetrations on the right hand side, that all penetrated into the fighting compartment. I have measured the holes and they are all somewhere between 17-20mm in diameter (they didn't exit the tank on the left). Apart from the penetrations there is also evidence of hits with smaller calibre weapons that didn't penetrate the armour.



Some suggest the tank might have been used for target practice, but to me that doesn't seem very likely. I don't think the Germans would have had the chance, and time, to use the tank for target practice. Allied units using the tank for target practice sounds like food for a court martial to me, especially as a Crab was an important bit of kit and likely to have been recovered for repair or parts. The third possibility for the target practice theory is that it was used for target practice post war........Dutch army? To me that doesn't sound likely as the tank was already moved to the museum in 1946/1947 and the army was still busy rebuilding itself at the time. So, did some youth find a bunch of Panzerfausts and use the Crab as a target?