As World War II was approaching, the German Army was taking serious interest in some bunker buster artillery pieces.
They were looking West particularly; the French had developed the Maginot Line series of Fortifications,
and they needed a big gun with which to crack them open.
As a result, contracts were placed by both Henschel and Rheinmetall.
Henschel for two chassis and Rheinmetall for two guns.
Henschel decided to take two of the VK 30.01 vehicles that had been created earlier.
This was the lead up to the Tiger series.
They extended them a little bit, by about two meters.
And that was simply to make room for the very large 12,8 centimeter cannon that Rheinmetall had come up with.
The resulting vehicle was known as the Panzer Selbstfahrlafette Fünf,
more easily said to people like me as Sturer Emil.
The vehicles, two of them were built, saw service, both, on the Russian Front,
and one was destroyed and the other was captured.
So we’ve been kind of lucky, we have a fifty percent success rate.
One of the vehicles still exists and is sitting here, today, in Kubinka.
Now, unfortunately, time hasn’t been kind to the old girl, so there’s nothing inside.
As a result we have another episode of ‘Outside the Chieftain’s Hatch’.
Crew was five people.
You had the driver in the front left, gunner and commander in the front of the superstructure,
and the radio operator and loader were at the back.
The front of the vehicle is extremely sparse.
All you have outside of the final drives are about five centimeters of armor,
and the driver sits sort of semi exposed, but encompassed in an armored hood.
In order to see out, he has a direct vision slit to the front and another one to his left.
Other than that, he is completely reliant on instructions from the TC.
The engine was an 11.6 liter six cylinder Maybach which pumped out about 310 horsepower,
bringing this vehicle along at a blistering 25 kilometers an hour.
Add to it, 450 liters of petrol and you ended up with a wonderful road range of about 150 kilometers,
and cross country that basically halved down to 80.
If you compare the side of the vehicle between Sturer Emil
and the 30.01 you’ll see that Sturer Emil is a little bit longer, and also the road wheels are in a different sequence.
So on the 30.01 the first pair of road wheels, they were together.
The second pair were the separated type.
Well, with Sturer Emil, they reversed it.
They maintained the same interleaved suspension, but you started with the outer and then the inner.
The other difference was that there were now eight pairs of road wheels per side instead of seven.
The sprocket wheel at the front remains the same as on pretty much every other German vehicle of the time.
The tracks are a single pin dry type.
There are 85 links per side, supported by 3 return rollers.
Because of the extra ground contact length of the tracks,
the steering gear had to be modified a little bit with a different gearing ratio
to allow the vehicle to turn just as easily as it would with the shorter 30.01 wheel base.
The eight pairs of road wheels are on torsion bars, on the right hand side,
the road wheel arms are trailing, on the left hand side they lead.
The road wheels all have tires on them, as does the idler wheel,
and they still have the markings on them.
So if you’re curious about the size, they were made by Continental, and they are 700/98-550s.
So who knows, maybe a local tire shop has a few.
Come around to the left hand side of the vehicle,
I can see a vertical line which looks like they added another armor plate just forward of the idler.
But, most importantly, we can see the leading road wheel arm on this side.
All the road wheel arms on this side are in the leading configuration.
Now the US Army did try experiments in the mid-forties on Pershings
as to whether or not that these were a good idea, and the Army concluded, no they weren’t.
What they wanted to do was try and reduce the overhang on the front of their tanks.
There are also bump stops on the first and last arms,
and the suspension pretty reasonably supported the weight of the 36 ton vehicle.
The gun is the 12,8 centimeter K40 L61.
It was developed by Rheinmetall from an Anti-Aircraft Cannon.
Absolutely Lethal.
The AP rounds would go about 880 meters per second and one of the two Sturer Emils named Moritz managed to kill a KV at about a mile,
which actually, all things considered for the time, was pretty good.
Now the other nice thing about an empty interior is that you can actually see the suspension.
So all of the Torsion bars are free for all to see.
The last two are especially strengthened to take the recoil of the 12,8
and you can see because of the strange road wheel arm system that that one last torsion bar system is way at the back.
The other thing that you can see easily are the axels for the idler wheels.
The last two crewmen are at the front of the vehicle.
The gunner on the left has simple hand cranks for elevation and traverse.
Traverse was kind of limited, you had about five degrees to the left and seven to the right,
but, elevation is pretty reasonable at ten and an excellent negative fifteen for depression.
His sight, his only sight, was a periscopic one.
It went up through this slit in the casemate roof.
On the right hand side would be the Commander, and he would have a binocular range finding periscope.
The only other thing you can see in here, because it’s an empty vehicle, is the large frame mounting for the gun.
For a thorough testing, the vehicles were sent to the two way firing range, where they performed generally well,
although there was an interesting caveat.
It was recommended by the reports not to engage targets under a kilometer because,
frankly, the blast from the 12,8 was so huge that you couldn’t spot your fall of shot,
and thus adjust onto your target.
Still despite the positive reports the vehicle was never entered into production.
They ended up deciding was that if you’re going to have a tank hunter with a fixed gun, give it armor.
But, if you’re going to have a lightly armored vehicle,
put it on a turret, make it more flexible, and by the way, it will be nice if you could dismount the gun.
Well those were the Waffenträger series of vehicles.
As a result the vehicles had a very short service life, and the story ends here in Russia.
We’ll see you on the next one.
The resulting vehicle was the Panzer Selbstfahrlafette Fünf. Three, two, one…
The Panzer Selfbs…it’s going to be one of those days…
The Panzer Selbstfahr…Jesus..
The resulting vehicle was designated the Panzer Selbsfahr…selbst…selbst…selpst
Although there was one interesting caveat,
the reports were such that it recommended that, oh you’ve got to be kidding me!