Faun GT 8/15
The Faun equipment carrier 8/15 (short: GT 8/15) is a military truck from the German commercial vehicle manufacturer Faun and belonged to the 1st generation of wheeled vehicles of the Bundeswehr .
The GT 8/15 was developed at the end of the 1950s to improve the mobility of the light FH 105mm M2 A1 artillery pieces of the German Armed Forces, which until then had been moved in the terrain by type M5 tracked vehicles . For this purpose, a concept was adopted in which the 105 mm cannon was not pulled, but lifted with a hydraulically operated bracket over the rear onto the towing vehicle and then carried by it. The structure and function of the GT 8/15 were similar to a civil skip loader vehicle .
225 GT 8/15 vehicles were built between 1959 and 1961.
description
The vehicle was a two-axle, all- wheel drive front control arm (4 × 4). An air-cooled Deutz V12 diesel engine of the type BF 12 L 714 A with 195 kW (265 hp) was installed behind the driver's cab .
As is typical for many military trucks of the 1st generation of the Bundeswehr, the driver's cab was not closed, but had a foldable fabric top and a front window that could be folded down so that the vehicle could also be driven in a combat manner if required. There was space for up to 8 soldiers in the driver's cab; a winch with 10 t pulling force and 60 m rope length and a clearing shovel with 10 t pushing force were mounted below the cab.
- Technical data (Faun GT 8/15)
| Engine: | V12 diesel engine Deutz BF 12 L 714 A, air-cooled |
| Displacement: | 19,000 cc |
| Power: | 195 kW at 2300 revolutions (265 hp) |
| Drive: | All-wheel drive (4 × 4) |
| Empty weight: | 15,250 kg |
| Perm. Total weight: | 20,000 kg |
| Consumption: | approx. 35 l / 100 km (road) |
| Transmission: | |
| Wheelbase: | 3400 mm |
| Overall dimensions: | 7400 × 2800 × 3220 mm |
| Loading area: | |
| Tires: | 16.00-24 |
| Top speed: | 67.5 km / h |
commitment
The GT 8/15 turned out to be largely unusable in several respects, so that the vehicle was taken out of service by the Bundeswehr after about 10 years. The concept of dragging a gun from the firing position to the equipment carrier in order to then lift and load it was too time-consuming and unnecessarily delayed the change of position of the artillery compared to the conventional method, in which the gun was only attached and pulled to the new position without loading becomes.
Furthermore, the GT 8/15 was technically very vulnerable, so that the failure rates of the vehicles in the chronicle of the field artillery battalion 110 are regularly given as 70%. Firing the 105 mm weapon from the vehicle is said to have been possible, but firing the howitzer put a lot of strain on the carrier vehicle.
variants
The chassis was equipped by FAUN with a 13t O&K crane type ALF 2/13 and used as a 13t (4x4) truck crane by the Bundeswehr.
Received vehicles
One vehicle was in 2013 as an exhibit in the teaching collection of the Artillery School in Idar-Oberstein .
literature
- Lutz-Reiner Gau, Jürgen Plate, Jörg Siegert: " German military vehicles: Bundeswehr and NVA "; Motorbuch Verlag, 2001, ISBN 978-3613021525
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Karl Anweiler, Rainer Blank: The wheeled and tracked vehicles of the Bundeswehr 1956 until today. Bechtermünz-Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-8289-5369-7 , pp. 201, 206, 207.
- ↑ a b Welt / N24 documentation: " Rocket launchers and howitzers - The artillery of the Bundeswehr " (DE), author Guido Schmidtke, Sunflightmedia 2013
- ↑ a b Traditionsverband Rheinisch - Westfälische Artillerie eV January 2003 No. 18 "The history of the field artillery battalion 110"
