Flame armor
In flame tanks is armored whose main armament a flamethrower is. In most cases it was a modification of existing tanks. The main task of such tanks was to fight bunkers and fortified positions with the flamethrower.
history
During the fighting in an urban environment in World War II , it became clear that soldiers equipped with flamethrowers were preferred targets for enemy defense, as several soldiers in the immediate vicinity were injured or killed by the explosion of the tank they were carrying. Attempts were made to counter this by mounting flamethrowers on tank chassis. One of the first tanks of this type was the German Flammpanzer III , which was based on the Panzerkampfwagen III . The cannon was removed and a 1000-liter flame oil tank was installed instead of the ammunition supply. This enabled the flame armor to deliver 70 to 80 bursts of fire lasting two to three seconds over a range of 35 meters. Despite high losses, the use of the Flammpanzers III was portrayed as highly effective in Nazi propaganda.
“In the fight against a strongly fortified group of houses in Stalingrad, 22 of whose 24 districts are in German hands, another weapon, namely our flame thrower tank, had a devastating effect. This weapon has a tubular steel head that can be swiveled in all directions and can hurl its flames over the tallest five and multi-story buildings. Its own heavy armament protects the flamethrower tank from enemy attacks. Fog shells fired from inside the tank mean that it can escape view in seconds. After a short attack by these flamethrower tanks on a large building complex of the Bolsheviks, the whole fortification, which had been tenaciously defended for days, stood in bright flames with all enemy weapons and the crew.
After the failure of Operation Jubilee , the Allies switched to converting the standard M4 Sherman and Churchill tanks into flame-throwing tanks. The operational doctrine specially created for this purpose stipulated that these flame tanks should advance together with the infantry securing them while the enemy was kept under heavy artillery fire . After defeating opposing field fortifications or bunkers, the infantry advanced and cleared the position of any remaining defenders. The attack was then to be repeated in the manner described until the decisive breakthrough occurred. Flame tanks were used in the Pacific and on landings in Normandy .
After World War II, flame tanks were used in the Indochina War and by the American forces in the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Here, too, it was not a matter of new designs, but merely improvisations on existing tank chassis. The use of the flame tanks against lightly armed guerrilla troops was very effective and these could destroy entire forest areas under certain circumstances, but over time it turned out that the tanks were against individually deployed, well camouflaged soldiers equipped with portable anti-tank weapons ( anti-tank weapons ) were severely vulnerable. For this reason, among other things, flame tanks are no longer used in modern warfare.
literature
- Wolfgang Fleischer: 1000 tanks and military vehicles ., Naumann-Göbel-Verlag, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-625-12224-1
- Shelford Bidwell: Land War in the 20th Century. History, technology, strategy. , Gondrom Verlag, Bayreuth 1978
- Hilary Doyle: Flammpanzer German Flamethrowers 1941-45 , Verlag Osprey Publishing, 1995, ISBN 1855325470
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ quoted from Berliner Lokalanzeiger from November 25, 1942 by Janusz Piekalkiewicz, "Stalingrad - Anatomie einer Schlacht", Heyne Verlag 4th edition, Munich 1992 pp. 434-435.
- ↑ Excerpts from Googlebooks