HS 30

Armored personnel carrier (long) HS 30
HS 30 in the Thun Tank Museum
General properties
crew	3 (commander, driver, gunner) + other personnel depending on the version
length	5.56 m
width	2.54 m
height	1.85 m
Dimensions	14.37 t
Armor and armament
Main armament	20-mm automatic cannon HS 820 L / 85
Secondary armament	no
agility
drive	Eight cylinders - V-engine , Otto engine type Rolls-Royce . B81 Mk 80 F 164 kW (198 hp)
suspension	Coil springs with rubber spring plates
Top speed	58 km / h
Power / weight	15.3 hp / t
Range	approx. 270 km

The " armored personnel carrier (long) HS 30 " was an armored tracked vehicle with 20-mm automatic cannon from which the Bundeswehr got 2,176 pieces. In addition, there was the " short armored personnel carrier " ( Hotchkiss ) with the same armament in the German army .

The circumstances surrounding the procurement of the "armored personnel carrier (long)" led to the HS-30 scandal in the 1960s .

history

In evaluating experiences from the Second World War , it was decided for the newly established Bundeswehr to equip the majority of the tank grenadier battalions with fully mechanized combat vehicles. For this purpose, an armored personnel carrier was to be introduced, which enabled combat from the vehicle and also had a certain firepower with a pivoting cannon. The forerunner and first equipment of the Panzergrenadierlehrbataillon was the M39 (tank) , which influenced the successor model HS-30.

The designer was André Fürst Poniatowski , a former French officer of Polish origin who ran a small design office in Paris. After a corresponding specification sheet had been drawn up , the order to develop the vehicle went to the Geneva-based company Hispano-Suiza (Suisse) SA , which had a long tradition in the manufacture of automatic cannons, but had no experience in the construction of armored vehicles. He produced smaller weapon systems as well as tools and at that time in Geneva a. a. also make mopeds of the Velosolex type. In 1953, the Federal Border Police had acquired 20 mm anti-aircraft guns from the Swiss , which were technically obsolete and hardly usable. Poniatowski, who had not completed an engineering degree , had designed a troop transport in the 1930s , but it never went into series production.

On March 28, 1956, Hispano-Suiza presented the Defense Committee of the Bundestag with a scaled-down model of the tank made of wood and cardboard .

The HS-30 design had the following features:

• Low elevator with sloping walls on all sides.
• Chain drive with running and support rollers.
• Engine block in the rear of the vehicle, so the crew in the rear of the fighting compartment had to sit down over the side walls in battle.
• In the bow on the left was the driver's seat, to the right of it was the same rotating turret as in the armored personnel carrier with a Hispano-Suiza 20 mm L / 85 cannon.

The Swiss Hispano-Suiza group commissioned the German companies Hanomag in Hanover, Henschel in Kassel and the British Manufacture and Research Company (BMARC) to build the tanks as general contractors . The BMARC, based in Grantham (Lincolnshire), was a Hispano-Suiza subsidiary and not at all equipped for vehicle construction. Without the knowledge or consent of Bonn, she passed the order on to Leyland Motors , which until then, according to a statement by the magazine Der Spiegel, had only manufactured buses - in fact, Leyland had built Cromwell tanks for the British Army during World War II

On July 5, 1956, the Defense and Budget Committees decided at a joint meeting on a binding authorization for the procurement of 10,680 HS 30 units in the amount of 2.78 billion  DM . Adjusted for inflation, this corresponds to 7 billion euros in today's currency.

At the turn of the year 1957/1958, test drives with the first HS 30 took place, during which considerable technical defects became apparent. There were long delays in deliveries, and the Bundeswehr finally received 2,176 tanks for 517 million DM between September 1959 and February 1962.

Defects and replacement by the marten

1969: HS 30 at a parade on the Nürburgring on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of NATO

Since the tank was hastily put into series production, numerous defects were quickly identified. The eight-cylinder engine - gasoline engine from Rolls-Royce was too weak because he was after originally designed by the performance not just for a weight of 9, but after changing the design of the tank reached a total weight of 14.5 t. There were further deficiencies in the troop operations, which resulted in constant repair work. Particular weak points were the unreliable Rolls-Royce engine, the manual and steering gear and, above all , the running gear suspension and damping. Since the vehicle overall did not meet the requirements of a real armored personnel carrier - for example, fighting from the vehicle under armor protection - and also offered very little space, it was replaced by the Marder armored personnel carrier after a good ten years of service from 1971 . The last copies were withdrawn from service in the early 1980s.

At the end of the 1960s, bribes were paid to several people in connection with the procurement of the HS 30. An investigative committee of the Bundestag dealt with the HS-30 scandal , the largest German armaments scandal to date, from 1967 to 1969 .

Subsequently, all parts of the Hispano-Suiza group with 1200 employees and an annual turnover of 100 million Swiss francs were sold by the sole owner Louis Birkigt in 1970 and the company dissolved.

Versions

In addition to the basic version HS 30 Type 12-3, there was a version with a recoilless 106 mm light gun, which was installed on the deck of the armored personnel carrier, as well as the following variants:

Surname	description	image
Type 21-3	Command and radio vehicle for battalion and brigade staff
Type 51-3	with 81 mm mortar , later converted into Type 52-3
Type 52-3	with 120 mm mortar
Type 3-3	Raketenjagdpanzer 1 (RakJPz 1) with the wire-guided anti-tank guided missile SS 11
Type 81-3	Fire control armor for artillery and anti-tank mortar platoons and companies

See also : List of tank models after 1945  and list of tracked vehicles of the Bundeswehr

literature

• Dieter H. Kollmer : Defense procurement in the development phase of the Bundeswehr. The HS 30 armored personnel carrier as a case study (1953–1961). Steiner, Stuttgart 2002 (= contributions to economic and social history, 93), ISBN 3-515-08077-5
• Peter Blume: Armored personnel carriers short, Hotchkiss - long, HS 30. Tankograd Publishing, Erlangen, 2008.

Web links

Commons : HS 30  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans-Peter Lohmann: Marder armored personnel carrier The technical documentation of the weapon system . 1st edition. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-613-03295-8 , pp. 21 .
2. ^ Rudolf Augstein : HS 30 - or how to ruin a state . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44 , 1966, pp. 8-24 ( Online - Oct. 24, 1966 ).
3. ↑ Federal Government: SGB ​​VI Annex 1 .
4. ↑ HS 30: The Unfinished . In: Der Spiegel . No. 47 , 1967, p. 60-82 ( Online - Nov. 13, 1967 ).
5. ↑ Powder shot . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1970, pp. 167 ( Online - Oct. 12, 1970 ).