photos of the sdkfz 222 frequently show triangular shaped plates over the wheel hubs. One paragraph I read remarked that these were armor plate to protect the wheel hubs.
Is this in fact the case?
Mike
Mike-
I don’t know. After reading your post I thought wouldn’t that really make keeping the front-end in alignment hard? Then I thought well yeah, but how are bullets and mines going to help too? Rather imagine that keeping one’s ‘front-end’ in alignment, if done at all, was way low on the priority list! Also, why protect the wheel-hub if all I have to do is shoot out your tires?
Glenn
my thoughts exactly Glenn. One rational being, a tire can be changed, but if I damage the wheel hubs and you can’t change the tire…
These plates appear on all four wheels. Speculation amongst a group of us came up with with some pretty odd ideas:
Mounting plates for rail wheels so that it can travel on RR lines.
Something to do with the drive train (the 222 had 4 wheel steering)
The armor plate idea
Some sort of PTO attachment.
A cursory look on the internet yielded little in the way of info other than the hub protection.
Thanks for the help.
Mike
According to a book I have from the library at the moment, late “the late production model of the sdkfz 222 dispensed with triangular hub plates on the wheels.” Now we just need to find out why they were there in the first place!
Judging from the looks of them I can see no other purpose than as protection to the hubs. They would be effective against small arms fire and shrapnel and as Mike mentioned, changing a tire is a 10 minute job in the field whereas a hub repair is going to take a good part of a day.
They would add weight to the wheels as a traction enhancer (much like the weights you can put on tractor wheels) but that doesn’t seem very likely, they don’t look that heavy to me.
My vote is to protect the hubs. [:p]
Eric