Rail wolf

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This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

Rail Wolf (Military Museum Belgrade)
Rear view

A device in the form of a claw that could break the wooden sleepers of a railroad track on its own axles or mounted on a flat car and thus render the traffic route unusable was referred to as a rail grinder or sleeper ripper.

description

The rail wolf consisted of a large claw that was pulled at the end of a train or directly behind a locomotive. The claw broke the wooden sleepers in the middle and bent them out of the fastening with the rails. The steel claw set under the sleepers and tore open the entire track structure. The hook could be lowered and raised as needed.

Another possibility for destruction was offered by vehicles that made it possible to drop explosive charges via lowerable ramps. Due to their explosions, the rails were bent so badly that further use with new sleepers was impossible.

commitment

The Wehrmacht's rail wolf was mainly used during World War II as part of retreat operations in order to hinder the enemy's rail -based logistics. Among other things, it was used by the Deutsche Reichsbahn when retreating from Soviet areas in 1944.

The Red Army used a similar device when they withdrew in 1941. It consisted of railroad tracks bent into a loop and attached to the back of a train. The rails laid in the track bed were unscrewed at one point and the loop pushed underneath. The rails were torn from the sleepers by a strong pull.

Others

Arno Schmidt used it literarily (as the "threshold ripper"; this expression was also used in the German weekly newsreel ) in his 1945 story Leviathan as a symbol of evil .

  • Use of the rail wolf, Belarus, 1944

  • Track destroyed by the rail wolf, Belarus 1944

  • Rail wolf in Italy, 1944

  • Rail wolf destroys tracks, Italy 1944

See also

literature

  • Andreas Knipping, Reinhard Schulz: The Deutsche Reichsbahn 1939-1945. Between the Eastern Front and the Atlantic Wall. Transpress-Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-613-71299-7 .
  • Ron Ziel: Wheels have to roll. Documentation in pictures and reports from the theaters of war in Europe, Africa and Asia. Franckh, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-440-04043-7 ( The Railroad in the Second World War 1), (2nd edition, ibid 1974).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Threshold ripper
  2. ↑ Die Deutsche Wochenschau No. 726, in Min. 8
  3. ↑ Rail wolf in action in The War Heritage of the Railway , Film, Min. 42f
  4. ↑ a b DB Museum (ed.): In the service of democracy and dictatorship: The Reichsbahn 1920–1945 (=  history of the railroad in Germany . Volume 2 ). 2nd Edition. Nuremberg 2004, ISBN 3-9807652-2-9 , pp. 105 .
  5. ↑ German rail wolf in action, historical film footage (viewed on November 5, 2009)
  6. ↑ Destruction of German tracks
  7. ↑ Russian construction rail wolf in action, historical film footage (viewed on November 5, 2009)

Web links

Commons : Eisenbahnwolf  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files