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mikemike -> RE: Aberdeen Proving Grounds (6/1/2008 12:25:09 AM)
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Really great photos. I just wish you had been able to take more photos of the artillery. I went through my books and I've got some annotations to make (I like to show off, and this is a splendid occasion!)
Post 41/42: That's a Panzer IV D
Post 51-53: A Panzer IIIM or later: the smoke dischargers on the turret came with that model.
79: JagdPanzer Kanone, correct. Weight 23 tons, 500 hp, speed 44 mph, 90mm gun that fired the same ammo as the M47/48. Was used by the Bundeswehr until late '70s, then converted to fire TOW ATGMs. The design owed its concept to the Hetzer and the JagdPz IV.
80: a US M55 203mm SP howitzer
86: a Sturmgeschütz III, but a late model, you can see the reinforced front armor. The gun seems a larger caliber than 75 mm. From the look of the mantle, I'd say it's probably a 105 mm Sturmhaubitze (assault howitzer) with a short barrel
101: JagdPz IV. Had no official name, but was nicknamed "Guderianente" (Guderian Duck) - Guderian had initiated the design. The gun doesn't have the usual muzzle brake, and the road wheels look more like those on the version with the L/70 gun.
130-132 show a Panzer IV F2
151: in the background left you can see a Soviet 203mm howitzer on a tracked carriage
153: the twin AA gun is not an 88 mm, but a 128 mm twin as used on the flak towers in Hamburg, Berlin, and Vienna.
154: the grey-painted vehicle third from left is an Italian tank destroyer, a Semovente M.41M da 90/53 (Self-propelled 90mm/L53 type M.41M. The gun (which is as powerful as a German 88 mm) is mounted at the front of the vehicle, pointing aft. Set up obviously for shoot-and-scoot. The guns in the background visible between the tanks: the grey-painted gun second from left looks like a German 150 mm K18 gun, the one to the right is a French 155 mm GPF-T, also visible in the background of post 121.
155:the vehicle on the right is a "Heuschrecke" (Locust), not a tank destroyer, as Terminus thinks, but a 105 mm howitzer, a field artillery gun. This was a prototype. In principle this was what the British called a "portee", a vehicle to carry a gun into the firing position and retreat to the rear after offloading the gun. Not really SP artillery.
156:The vehicle in front is a Heavy 150 mm Field Howitzer 13 (a WWI gun) on the chassis of a French Lorraine artillery tractor, a SdKfz 135/1. The vehicle behind is a 150mm Heavy Infantry Gun on a Gun Vehicle 38M (a vehicle derived from the Czech-designed Pz 38t, the version with the engine in the middle - SdKfz 138/1.
171-173: the little tank is a French Hotchkiss H.35
Concerning "Anzio Annie": this was the most numerous German railway gun, with 25 built. An example modified to a 310mm smoothbore barrel fired a fin-stabilized shell and demonstrated a range of 100 miles on trials.
That's all the stuff I could positively identify.
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