Premium EU tank destroyers – part II

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Part 1: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2013/09/23/possible-premium-eu-tank-destroyers-part-i/

In part one, we had a look at the ST-1, which was basically the original Hetzer (rebuilt or newly built with the StuK 40) and the plan to rearm it with the 76,2mm A19 gun. Now, we are going to have a look at what the Czechoslovaks did with the StuG III.

stug76

The history of StuG III in Czechoslovak service is not that long – or successful for the matter. As we learned earlier (for details, check the tank destroyers article), post-war Czechoslovakia used captured German equipment en masse, before the Soviet one became available in large numbers.

Directly after the war, the Czech landscape was littered with knocked-out German wrecks in various states. Some were destroyed completely, some could be salvaged. The latter were actually collected by assigned military teams and moved to Přelouč, Vrchtové Janovice and Děčín (sites of former German StuG repair shops), where such vehicles were concentrated, awaiting repairs. These old repair shops were actually available for work, but in the post-war chaos, the question, whether to reactivate them or not, was considered only by the end of 1945.

Most of the StuG III wrecks were Ausf.G (75mm StuK 40). Initially, the idea was to wait for the Soviet vehicles altogether, but as these were not yet available as mentioned before, the decision to ignore the StuGs was overturned. The available StuG’s were designated oficially as ShPTK 40/75N (self-propelled anti-tank gun, model 1940, 75mm gun, German) (1946-1949) and later redesignated to SD 75/40N (SD – “samohybné dělo”, self-propelled gun). These StuG’s were actually no different from the German ones, no improvements were made. The company AZ Přelouč (former military Wehrmacht repair shop) was tasked with repairing several dozen of the wrecks, but its capacities were low and they managed to fix only one vehicle by September 1946. Only after ministry intervention, the company recieved additional resources (for example an old factory hall) from the Ministry of Defense and the project was underway.
The refit of vehicles took place between 1946 and 1950 and by March 1950, 126 vehicles in total were repaired. These vehicles were then transferred to the army and were actually active for a few years – a dozen or so was sent to the Czechoslovak tank training center to serve as school vehicles.

From November 1953, the deactivation of the Czechoslovak StuG’s began and they were gradually being replaced by the SD-100 (Czechoslovak license-built SU-100). Some continued to serve as training vehicles, but since August 1954, pretty much all of them ended as reserve vehicles, mothballed in military warehouses and by 1960, the StuG’s were officially removed from the list of military vehicles altogether. In 1955, 12 were sold to Syria. The rest of the vehicles was used in making various war movies (Czechs were pretty good in making movies with real vehicles – no SU-85-based StuG’s here) and some actually lasted as military vehicles (deactivated, used as target practice, for training infantry assault or for basic driving) by 1970 (as shown on the photo below)

stug_cz_350

As mentioned in the part 1 of this article, there was a proposal from December 1950 to actually upgun the StuG with the Czechoslovak-developed 76,2mm gun A19 (the picture on top of this article shows how such a conversion could have looked, just an impression though). As mentioned in part 1, the gun had following characteristics:

Caliber: 76,2mm
Caliber length: 70
Muzzle velocity: 925 m/s
Shell weight (AP): 6,4 kg
Penetration: 100mm at 1000m (30 deg): in World of Tanks it translates to roughly 150 pen

There was another proposal from June 1951 to upgun the StuG with the 85mm vz.44 gun (ZIS S-53). It would have looked something like this.

stug85

What would both changes do to the driving performance of the vehicle, one can only guess, but the guns were quite heavy. Originally, the StuG III chassis could not carry the L/70 (there was a project of the 75mm L/70 on StuG III chassis, but it required a superstructure), so it is not actually clear how exactly would this rework look (it’s possible the vehicle would have different superstructure).

Still, I do believe it could be fun to have such a Czech StuG driving around. There will be one more part of this article, dealing with the SD-100 and its improvements.

30 thoughts on “Premium EU tank destroyers – part II”

  2. Interesting, I always find what happened in Europe just after the very end of hostilities to be a very facilitating period.

    • Fascinating ? x)

      But yeah, the most interesting developments in engineering occur when people are tasked to do things with a limited scope and resources. They have to work around issues, find innovative ways to get around problems and generally come out with interesting things, instead of relying on fancy technology and shit to do the work for them and design bricks with large guns in a largely lazy, arrogant and compensatory fashion.

  4. IMO copy/pasting tanks is ridiculous and doesn’t add anything interesting to the game. This would work as captured tank (some kind of premium) but those are low priority.

      • How many even knows that Czechoslovakia produced tanks. Before WoT I didnt kew that (in general I knew just like 7 tanks – and only 4 names of those).

          • I used to call Pz.4 “That little one” because I didnt know what model it was and somewhat similar looking to Panther and KT :D
            And yes – there was a lot of tanks I had no clue of (especially prototypes and modifications of same/other nation).

  5. SS, is there any chance that we get any of Yugoslavian (not fucking Yugoslav) tanks in WOT? All this Serb’s talks make me feel like we will have EU tree made out of all EU nations, but without any YU tanks :( :( :(

        • Yugo, the car, was produced in factory Crvena Zastava in Kragujevac. Yugoslavian tanks were produced in other factories, but lots of hand guns were made in Crvena Zastava and were just great, so how they did it? Simply, you make two different plants in same town, the Kragujevac, you give them both the same name “Red Flag” and in first one you employ every single soul you find and let them make Yugo, the car. In the second one, you let army organize everything, bring top notch experts and the best machinists and in the end you have “Red Flag” producing useless cars and great weapons :) :) :) This technique is very useful when you want to confuse all the enemies, since they will NEVER bomb you shit car factory and will only attack the place where you make weapons, so in the end you’ve outsmarted everyone, even your self :) :) :)

          As SS wrote few days ago, in Czech language, I have to add in my own Klingon retard language: “Izvini brate za kenjanje po Guji, ali me je mucio 10 godina te ga mrzim :) :) :)”

          Thank you YugoManiac for the YU tree, I’ll investigate it and cry a bit :) :) :)

          Thanks SS for the answer, as always, you know how to make me calm :) :) :)

          • :) :) :) That’s what i wrote, “Zastava” even changed it’s name, but still got bombed in nato aggression, that’s showing that we outsmarted everyone, even our self’s :) :) :)

            All in all, YugoManiac you use Allionol and rays from camera can kill your engine :) :) :)

  6. (Czechs were pretty good in making movies with real vehicles – no SU-85-based StuG’s here)
    .
    THIS. We need more of this…
    .
    This is what makes history interesting, real tanks in reel movies. (see what I did there?)
    .
    So… nest question what happened to all of the Czech vehicles as it sounds like they had several hundred German Panzers and TDs. Because there seems to be a limited supply for collecting… a very very limited supply.
    .
    Majority scrapped?

    • Scrapped, shot to pieces on shooting ranges, some were given to the moviemakers (in 60′s or 70′s, they actually took a real Panzer IV and really destroyed it – it burned out – to make the movie realistic), a lot were sold to private collectors (especially the OT-810, which was an improved copy of the German halftrack, almost all “German” halftracks you see in any newer movies are OT-810), some were sold abroad as real fighting equipment (for example the Syrian Panzer IV, that fought as late as 1967).

      • It is sad that they were scrapped… But to burn out a Pz IV for a movie… thats just wrong… Its almost as bad as crash landing a de Havilland Mosquito for a movie, which they did… sadly.

    • It would be an interesting tree. We could have also 4 Italian line in the Euro tree (some of them being smaller sublines) it would all fit in a Euro tree if done right. Maybe even connections between similar vehicles between different nations in the euro tree.

      SS is not bored but passionate.

      • Without lobbying there wouldn’t be anything about any smaller nation in WOT, hence I cry for my Yugoslavian tanks…

  8. The book “Sturmgeschütz III – Rückrad der Infanterie” mentions a proposal to replace the L/48 with the L/70 in the normal Stu.Gesch. without a new superstructure (at least it makes no mention of a massive redesign so I think it was a different project than the well known one). The proposal was rejected because of the following reasons:
    higher weight (+500kg)
    higher engine strain
    less maneuverability
    lower rate of fire due to formation of dust
    complicated gun mount
    easy deadjusting of the gun

    One would assume some or all of those problems would have effected the Czech proposals too.