Two new pages of Western Desert images

Originally posted by Gunner
I would be very interested in learning more about the subject as it is a huge gap in my knowledge of artillery technology.

Indeed solid tyred as is evidenced by the typical view seen in this picture. Perhaps its a problem of national nomenclature !! To us, a tyre is anything affixed to the circumference of a wheel and typically might be steel, solid rubber or indeed pneumatic.

I'm told in general the Wehrmacht did keep to solid, and in a few cases pneumatic, tyres for motorised towing and simple steel for horse-drawn artillery; however, when needs must, it is likely this didn't always occur.

There is a further complication with the scale and scope of captured pieces, sometimes in quantity, being absorbed into the inventory as almost standard items. Thus you can readily find German guns on captured mounts and vice versa, plus the wholesale use of captured pieces apparently as-is but often with the barrels re-worked to standard German calibres; Russian pieces especially.

As an aside, not only did the T34 come as a bit of a shock to the Wehrmacht standard "indoctrination", but the power of Russian artillery too, which often well out-performed a similar calibre German piece. This led to urgent re-design of shells and propellant arrangements in many cases with an attendant re-think of recoil systems. The up-rating of ordnance of course thus opened a whole can of worms and led to many battlefield problems with the artillery as can be imagined.

It is a complex and often confusing subject in its own right I think.

R.