Triple SG 6
The Trippel SG 6 was an amphibious vehicle of the Wehrmacht .
history
The pioneer in floating car construction, Hans Trippel , began in 1935 with the construction of all-terrain floating car prototypes . With the support of the Heereswaffenamt , Trippel built a factory hall in Homburg in 1936 for the series production of an all-wheel-drive all-terrain swimming pool.
Instead of equipping a commercially available chassis with a floating vehicle body, Trippel built a streamlined swimming pool into which the vehicle technology was fitted. The resulting floating car SG 6 (SG for floating off-road vehicle) was also intended to find civilian customers, for example for expeditions, but it was clear from the outset that the manufacture of the vehicle could only be economical if military customers ordered the floating car in larger numbers. So the first order (20 vehicles) was received from the Wehrmacht . This version of the SG 6 was manufactured from 1937 to 1940.
At the end of September 1938 Trippel went on a promotional trip with an SG 6 from Homburg to Naples and then crossed the 28 kilometers of waterway to the island of Capri with the SG 6 swimming.
At the request of the Army Weapons Office, a purely military variant of the SG 6 with an enlarged interior for the transport of up to 16 soldiers was built. This military variant of the swimming car was manufactured from 1939 to 1943.
In 1940, Trippel had revised the civilian version of the SG 6 for water travel in terms of flow technology and optically upgraded the vehicle for the civilian market. This floating car was given the designation SG 6 Colonial Pioneer , of which only a few copies were made due to the war.
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Based on the experiences with the swimming properties of the colonial pioneer , the military version of the swimming car was revised. Among other things, the two doors were now missing from the roofless vehicles, which improved the leak resistance, and the bow was designed similar to a ship to reduce the water resistance. This vehicle rolled off the assembly line at the Bugatti works in Molsheim in Alsace from 1941 under the significant code SG 6/41 . When the war began in September 1939 ( World War II ), Bugatti was no longer able to sell expensive luxury vehicles, and after the defeat of France in June 1940 ( Western campaign ), Bugatti signed a lease agreement on August 12, 1940 with the Trippel-Werke, which at the same time relocated their headquarters to Molsheim .
From 1942 a variant of the SG 6 was also produced, which had a folding sunroof. Starting in 1943, production of the SG 6 was shut down and in 1944 it was discontinued in favor of the Volkswagen swimming car , the much lighter and cheaper Volkswagen Type 166 to manufacture . A total of about 800 SG-6 floating cars were produced.
Technology Trippel SG 6/41
Four-wheel drive buoyant off-road vehicle; Length 4.77 m, width 1.80 m, wheelbase 2.50 m, track width 1.45 m, ground clearance 26 cm; Empty weight 1660 kilograms, payload 500 kilograms; 55 hp, 6-cylinder 4-stroke petrol engine, top speed on land 95 km / h, top speed in water 14.5 km / h, a screw for locomotion in water.
literature
- René Pohl, Rüdiger Haack: Go swimming in the car. HEEL Verlag, Königswinter, no year, ISBN 3-89365-702-9 , pages 26–31.