A very curious photo from late summer 1944 exercise.
The StuG there has some kind tubes sticking from the gun. The angle and position would suggest they are smoke launchers. It also has that peculiar command tank antenna, which I haven’t seen in any other Finnish photos.
Update: According to Käkelä & Lärkä, these were indeed smokes.
Also more bushed up StuG from the same day.
That’s some great find! Thank you for sharing it.
I never thought that the cupola add-on was also concrete as it looked so smooth. That makes sense, considering the shape and when it was added to Finnish StuGs. Is there a weight estimate?
If the super structure armor is 50mm and the drivers viewport is 80mm, shouldn’t the gun mantlet armor also be 80mm?
At the moment almost every low caliber AT gun can simply penetrate the armor of the StuG III G and StuH 42 by shooting the mantlet armor.
You can see the weld marks from the top, on the second picture. Looks like a steel plate with concrete sandwitched inbetween.
Well, its metal sheet filled with concrete.
Good question, maybe you write an e-mail to Aus Armor, which have rebuild an StuG III G, sadly they dont answer my emails anymore. :x
Did you spam them with questions? 😂
Maybe, but they do make mesurrments and stuff if you ask, most often Kurt does.
Is there a similar drawing of the right side?
Not that inknow of, the the frontal slope is pretty much identical on both sides, so it shouldnt matter.
This almost vertical part in front of loader interests me. It’s difficult to confirm from photos.
I suppose that is a Finnish modification. While i have seen pictures with additional Plate there, they are pure steel and vertical. Otherwise Track and or concrete addition there too.
Pretty interesting thing to note here, looking at the cupola for the commander you can see the metal wedges which iirc were a later war modification since early in the war they used concrete before they started getting metal sheets, iirc these are some of the stugs captured by the British near the end of the war. Very interesting to just see it was a fairly prevalent problem with the vehicle.
Also, checking through some of the Finnish engineering records there was a mention of track armor being covered in scrap metal over the front hull but so far none of the field reports have anything stating if the concrete ever had the tracks, it could be likely they did or maybe didn’t, really depends on the supplies they had, id need to see if i can find records on tracks to see if they were short, considering the BT and just how many they had i wouldn’t be suprised if they ever cannibalized parts off them for make shift armor.
In mid 1944 BT hulls weren’t needed. Turrets went as static defences and automotive parts for the few BT-42s. Lärka writes that the machine gun shield on the StuGs was cut from certain part of BTs. There was apparently a hole left by an axel or something, which they had to patch shut. The 15mm side add-on armor could well be from BTs as well.
Yeah considering some soldiers journals have some very interesting words to say about the quality of the BT’s and their reliability…I’d say it wouldn’t suprise me if the spare metal armor turned out to be from a BT lol.
In “Suomalaisten rynnäkkötykkien kohtalot”-book it says that these were indeed smokes on the gun mantlet. From V___u on driver’s visor it was identified as Ps.531-14 Vappu. It had the old boxy mantlet. That same vehicle was also used in Tali-Ihantala 1944 (2007) movie. Unfortunately we don’t have any clues how those smokes were attached. The German superstructure corner smoke tubes or any other type don’t appear in other photos of Finnish StuGs.
Two photos of Finnish StuGs with side skirt plates and so far the only ones I have ever seen. The latter is said to be from 1944 and curiously the skirts are freshly painted. Why would they have added the side skirt back for a single tank?
Also a very nice photo of StuGs in a post-war exercise.
Another good find today:
How the roof DT machine gun was mounted on those vehicles without gun shield.
It’s certainly not going to work for anti-anti air, but at least in WT that works for 360.
What is that thing it is mounted on? The round thing in front of loader’s hatch? Is it a closed fume extractor?
Where the 360° Rundumfeuer MG WOULD be mounted. However not all vehicles got it nor aparently this one as such they were simply blocked off, like the smoke/shrapnell Genade launcher some vehicles had in the roof.
