I agree. But some of these trains were clearly geared towards anti-aircraft artillery. One legendary battle took place between low flying American B-24 Liberators using the railway to guide them to Ploesti oil refinery in Romania, and a German “flak train.” I believe the ball turret gunners managed to knock it out. But some planes were lost…
The german armored trains main objetive was to killing tanks and fight off partisans, I think against tanks those were more succesful, some carried old french tanks to unload and get the fight outside the rails.
8,8 cm Flak 41 kill marks , this was mounted in a car agregated to the panzerzug 24 in 1943.
Note also the aircraft killmarks painted over the gun barrel.
How effective was the panzerzuge attacking partisans ? is hard to say.
A running battle between a flaktrain and a formation of B-24´s… who´d expected that …the stuff cartoons are made of:D
The german armored trains main objetive was to killing tanks and fight off partisans, I think against tanks those were more succesful, some carried old french tanks to unload and get the fight outside the rails.
Would have expected a train to be too large and predictable a target for use against tanks, and enemy (tanks) and any train a bad mixture:confused:
Is an obvious target but a hard nut to crack unless you have a direct hit in the locomotive or the towing vehicle, and still it can fire at you. But yea we definately need some info about Tank vs train fighting. :rolleyes:
One bad thing to me off the top would be if your train was hit hard enough with enough velocity, say, a 150+mm shell, the train could fall over… Sure this sounds unlikly, but it could happen if the shell was big enough and flying fast enough… But it still sounds hard to believe…
Hmm, I dont think so, probably you destroy only one wagon, but the rest could keep fighting…if the crew is not demoralised or something like that.
Video , Flak train in action against ground targets in the East:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZqnkDemE_M
The guns are the 2cm Flak 30 and two 88mm Flak 36, looking this armament is not to hard to imagine his antitank use.
And this is excellent!!
Die Deutsche Wochenschau No. 685. October 20, 1943. A German Armoured train behind Army Group Center is prepared for action. Armoured scout cars are outfitted for rail way duty to precede the train in partisan territory. The enemy is spotted by the scout cars and the armoured train is alerted. The train opens up on the partisans. Under cover of artillery fire, grenadiers head out to assault the position.
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBmESAmLQ9s
So if the video is accurate the armored cars was usually send in the front and it called the panzerzuge whe find some trouble. Interesting the use of dismounted infantry, I tough all the crew was for manning the guns inside.