Tank Chats #94 | Kettenkrad and Springer | The Tank Museum

if you do like these tank chats do please subscribe to the tank museum's YouTube channel this tank chats about the vehicle next to me the SDK F said to or for most of us what we know is the kettenkrad now obviously it's not an armored vehicle it is tracked and it's one of those oddities we've got here at the Tank Museum now many of us know about the kettenkrad because an awful lot survived and if you go to a military vehicle show you quite often will see one of these driving around they're small they're manageable they'll fit in a garage and lots of people seem to like them so it's actually quite a popular vehicle and this particular kettenkrad was captured in North Africa but the story of the kettenkrad starts way back in 1938 when what was going on was the NSU company that made motorbikes out in Germany what they were looking for is they were looking for a new project and they wondered about putting together a vehicle that could be used by people like the Forester the industry it had to have good mobility off-road relatively small so it could get down sort of things like forest paths and between - it was dragging out lumber between forest rides etc and they looked at that and they used an engineer called Heinrich neat camp now he had been involved in a number of half-track vehicle developments he was influential in the overlapping wheels that were used on half-tracks and he got a number of theories about where you should put your wheels on half tracks whether they should be further forward and further back and in the archive here at the Tank Museum we've actually got an interview with neat camp that was done at the end of the war where he explains his involvement in the 20s and 30s with the Germans weapons programs and his theories about how the best configuration for a half-track vehicle should be so NSU use him their project number for this vehicle they look at in 38 39 is HK he's initials HK 101 and they actually patent a vehicle in the summer of 1939 and and this is for civilian use now the war starts the German military does have a look at this vehicle which they end up calling the Kleiner's kettenkrad the small track vehicle is at once what that means in German and the idea first of all they're not over impressed by it because it hasn't actually got that much of a load carrying capacity and it can only sort of pull behind it something like 450 500 kilograms so in a trailer so they're not sure they've got a use for it but they come back and have a further look and for many of us we always associate this vehicle with the german paratroopers we know it can fit in a Ju 52 Yonkers airplane to be actually air transported but originally the German military are looking at it and they see it as a potential tug for pulling around light howitzers and anti-tank guns mainly for mountain troops because of this off-road ability it's got and in the end it actually goes into service and it sees service throughout the German army the german paratroopers do use it and that's where it gets a lot of publicity of course when it's especially used in the invasion of Crete but it's used for quite a number of different reasons sometimes liaison mainly for signalling work because what you could do is you'd have a guy or a bracket on the back of the kettenkrad that can spool out cable for using on your radios and telephone communications and because of its tremendous off-road ability you only have to think of Eastern Front in the winter the mud the snow etc that use of the vehicle was really very very sensible and practical to be able to get around in these conditions that other vehicles just weren't being able to cope with normally you might have used a kuba Vulcan for this thing can go places a kuba volume couldn't have got too so the Germans look at it they like the idea of it they all the first of all in the spring of 1940 they do an order of about 70 test vehicles they then go back in the summer and order 500 those vehicles ended up being tested all over the places some mainly used in Russia during the winter of 41 42 and they like the vehicle it's officially accepted for service in the summer of 1941 and they look at over the courses production mainly used by NSU they in the stoical company as well they actually start making it they even look at simcha out in France whether they'd be able to make the vehicle they don't actually make any but it's a popular vehicle as ever with the German ones you might look at it and say in some areas again it's a little bit complex they use very sensible engine they get the pre-war Opel Olympia car engine you're looking at there about a 36 horsepower 4-cylinder petrol engine that they put in the middle of the vehicle that gives it its power they used own - leaving road wheels so there's four sets on each side different wheels on the outside different wheels on the inside and that helps that interleaving system is to spread the weight of this is just over a ton vehicle spread the weight over those tracks and these have got needle pin tracks in they've got a bearing in each of the joints they're rubber tracks on the outside now a vehicle like this on the road it could go up to about 250 kilometers cross-country a lot less maybe about 160 and but the idea Wars again you'll see photographs of these vehicles on the back of trucks it's not really meant for long marches you actually carried these forward on trucks if you could or on railway wagons etc and their operational use again like most track vehicles you try to limit the track knowledge to when it's really necessary now it can carry three soldiers you've got the driver who sits in what's almost like a bucket like structure it's almost a tub around him and that tub shape means it can actually fall through water up to about 40 centimeters deep on the back there's a seat where you can take to further soldiers so on the actual vehicle you can carry about 350 kilograms of weight and that's about three soldiers worth with maybe a couple of extra drums now they did a couple of variations they did an STK have said two / ones and then / - these were really just variations on a theme of being able to carry extra cable drums on a structure on the back so you could lay more cable than you would have been able to do if you just been on the standard vehicle driver sits on a motorcycle seat and this idea that what looks so cute about the kettenkrad this idea you've got a track vehicle with a motorcycle wheel from NSU obviously motorcycle manufacturers on the front with steering handlebars and the idea here is that you turn the handlebars for a gentle steer using that front wheel if you turn them farther more sharply that it then engages the track brakes on either side so you'll slow the track down on one side the other side keeps going so it's like a traditional tank the way it would steer that way and you can actually drive this vehicle without the front wheel in fact in the manual they say in certain conditions you should take the wheel off particularly thick mud thick snow etc and you will see again photographs of this vehicle driving around without that from wheel one it's not essential to the mobility of the vehicle and like so many German vehicles during its production run it tends to get simplified it starts off with these idle wheels and the sprocket wheels with eight strands as it were eight ribs on them those are then knocked down to six to simplify production the last production vehicles they get rid of the headlight on the front and you'll see those subtle changes going on throughout the production run of the the NSU variants of the kettenkrad that are being made again looking at it features you can point out petrol tanks on either side of it there's little pockets around the place as a first aid kit on the front there there's a little another little area for keeping a tool set on you could actually keep tools under the rear under the seat there was an area there for a tool set as well there's brackets on this one there were structures you could put on the top and just behind the drive of the engines behind in you've got two containers battery on one side you keep other things like spare you can put chains on the track to help in snow etc and they could be stowed in there so you can see this as a vehicle that they particularly like and again when you're towing a wheeled vehicle the weight is less of a problem unless you're really going up hills so that's when you start to see this vehicle being used sometimes you'll be singing it carrying or towing a standard three point seven anti-tank other times as well that's when you'll see other things like the loo for forgetting to use them from 44 onwards sometimes you'll see them even to pulling out things like in a rod Oh 2 3 4 Ballmer and the idea there was they were the Germans are so desperately short of aviation fuel why not use a vehicle like this to get the airplane on the right position on the runway before it starts its engines don't waste any fuel taxiing around beforehand so again you'll see this vehicle being used in quite a number of different combinations I mentioned about eight and a half thousand of these were made we think we don't have the figures production figures for 1945 but the interesting thing is NSU carried on making them after the end of the war they were made until 1948 and again so people like vineyards forestry workers etc were using them and they were still sometimes in commercial use into the 1960s which is another one of those reasons there's quite a number of them around so an interesting vehicle a bit different to the usual sorts of things you see again with that German engineering perhaps slightly over engineered in a number of places but something that was very popular with the troops because of its tremendous off-road ability that was where their success lay with the kettenkrad this one I mention was captured in North Africa it was part of a paratrooper unit hence the are on the side Heinrich Bernard rancor he was a German paratrooper general major and he ended up putting together paratroop unit that was sent out to North Africa various different combinations in there some anti-tank troops and paratroopers just ground fighting in the ground roll they fall to Alamein were not a hindrance in certain when this vehicle was picked up but there are on the side actually crosses over we think it may have had an earlier youth with the fifth Panzer Division this particular vehicle it was returned with help from a benefactor to running order a couple of years ago so we actually take this one out on a regular basis brought back from North Africa to the UK for evaluation and again in the archive we've got a number of reports they like the engineer on it they think it's very clever vehicle and they think there's some good ideas with this but it's one of those few vehicles Western Allies we didn't really have an equivalent for we never went for a tug like this at that sort of combination of tracks and wheels but an interesting vehicle nonetheless now here at the Tank Museum we've actually quite lucky we've got yet another vehicle that we don't often associate with the kettenkrad but actually it's built around the same running gear and the same engine is a kettenkrad and that's a demolition vehicle called the springer now the Germans in the Second World War they had three different types of gemination vehicles we've done a tank chat on the Goliath fairly small one the springer is almost like the medium weight demolition vehicle and there's another vehicle called the borg fold and that bog world for i was the one that went into production they started the bald walled was the idea was gonna be an ammunition carrier to almost think like a bit like a Bren gun carrying away on tracks take ammunition around the place and actually they then designed it so it could drive up to a position drop a charge and they said with a borg world it was a big charge about 450 kilograms of explosive and drive away and there was actually a man's position in it the guy could drive off and the Goliath we know was unmanned and that would explode once and it was why I did and sent towards the target the springer was a peculiar combination actually had a driver who would drive it as near as he could to where the action was where it was needed and don't forget you're driving in a mobile bomb in essence was just about 10 millimeters of armor plate on you so not a lot of protection and then he'd stop that vehicle and exit the vehicle and finish the drive by using wireless control or wire-guided and with wire guiding you could even go out to about two kilometres while guiding it onto a target when then you could detonate it and the whole vehicle would explode now they use their the kettenkrad engine track system they add another couple of wheel stations it's slightly longer vehicle only about 50 of those Springer's are actually in late 44 early 45 and were not sure any of them actually saw any action because again when you think about it number one is what is the target at that stage of the war the idea behind these demolitions basically it was a German army in 1940 when they were attacking the Maginot Line or fortifications they liked that idea of some sort of protection to be able to take an explosive demolition charge close to a vehicle close to a building and then be able to deposit it or blow it up from a safe distance that was a theory behind it so these Springer's two of them still exist we've got one here there's another in another museum you know we're not too sure they actually saw any use but it's another one of those peculiar world war ii german vehicles that gets a lot of interest and again in this day and age where we're looking at unmanned vehicles so again when we look back these are some of the vehicles that are looked at as part of that pedigree if you like these films please do subscribe to 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Channel: The Tank Museum

Views: 342,529

Rating: 4.9606752 out of 5

Keywords: the tank museum, tank museum, bovington tank museum, david fletcher, david willey, military tank, david fletcher tank chats, tank chat, tank chats, tank chats david fletcher, tank museum bovington, the tank museum tank chats, #david willey kettenkrad, #kettenkrad the tank museum, #tank museum kettenkrad, #ww2 kettenkrad, #german kettenkrad, #german ww2, #ww2, #ww2 armour

Id: o2ZiUihdXf8

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2020