While touring the various internet sources that concern Zimmerit it appears that the obvious question of why the Germans employed it when they did has no obvious answer. The Brits suggested a few AFVs knocked out by zealous Tommies in 1940 inspired the Wehrmacht. Okay. Others simply say that it was to protect the tank against magnetic or sticky devices used by enemy soldiers. (Knowing the reputation of Red infantry, I could well believe that. But why wait until nine months after Stalingrad?) Panzerworld (http://www.panzerworld.net/zimmerit.html : includes very nice diagrams of different Zim patterns) suggests that the Germans developed a small magnetic mine and thus assumed others would do so too and better safe than sorry. They might be right. Last night I watched a Goebbels propaganda film - turned German weapons history - (this volume on half tracks & armored cars) there is a sequence of a German Sd 251 being used during 1944 for magnetic mine training. The weapon employed looked pretty small - a very big grenade that looked a little like a bathroom plunger. One guy popped up out of a hole and jammed the thing attached to a stick on the side of the armored car; another guy popped up and lobbed one a few yards attached to rope - both stuck on with proper German efficiency. (Goebbels films did not regularly show failures.) Anyway, we didn’t have anything like it, although US combat engineers had the materials for all kinds of ad hoc devices that went boom. (American GIs attached wood to tanks during Pacific battles: they had very good reason to worry about Japanese infantry. Never seen one like that from Europe.) Ditto I think with the Rooskies. So it’s very possible the Germans were defending themselves against a weapon only the Germans had. Has a Cold War ring to it really. Good news for Cavalier and ATAK though.
I believe your theory of the Germans thinking that someone else would develop the mine technology and use it against them. The British and the Germans developed radar-blanking aluminum chaff at the same time, but didn’t use it for fear that the other side would use it, but then the British used it in 1943, and the Germans never had the chance to use it offensively.
This comes from Panzerworld. I have no doubt that the Wehrmacht hoped the stuff would foil attacks by infantry armed with home-made gadgets of tank destruction. As noted, the Japanese did exactly this during those horrid island battles (sometimes using themselves in lieu of sticky stuff to attach explosives). What does puzzle me is whether Germans were trying to defend against “sticky” bombs (like in Private Ryan) or whether Allied engineers had some kind of magnetic gadget. I’ve never heard of an American version of the weapon I saw the Germans using on film.
Before the war, the US had developed the first practical shaped charge and put it in a mine and thought about making a magnetic mine out of it, but opted for a smaller device that became the rifle grenade. The larger warhead / mine inspired the bazooka: you had a good warhead but Ordnance didn’t see GIs attaching the thing manually to enemy tanks: thus a delivery system. We gave bazookas to the Soviets very early. By late 43 the Wehrmacht was beginning to reverse engineer the American bazooka - and developed the much better Panzerschreck - and also created the Panzerfaust - a weapon some postwar American officers thought would doom tanks. (Found out that was wrong in Korea.) Wehrmacht in late war was busy making weapons for NATO - of course they didn’t know it. In any case. In any case these weapons made any kind of hand attacking tanks quite unnecessary - as long as something like a bazooka was handy. It certainly happened though. Russian infantry were certainly known to pile onto a German tank and start shooting anything they could - that’s why Wehrmacht AFVs started carrying more light MGs and pistol holes etc. Japanese did the same thing and US tank crews were loath to get ahead of their infantry cover.
I’m reading a very interesting book about late war armor camouflage by a gent named Terence Wise who was apparently a veteran of British armored units in the war. Published in 1979: helped out by Steve Zaloga: and a time when there were lots of WWII vets eager to chat. (It’s got some interesting points that I want to put in a different post.) He claimed that Zimmerit did provide a surface that provided for excellent camo - one subject the Whermacht took seriously.
Thats what i have always found odd about Zimm. The Germans seemed to be the only ones to use magnetic AT weapons. Plus, the risk of the enemy useing these against you is more likely when you are the attack than on the defense. i.e, a guy waiting in a hole and waiting for you to drive past. But by Sept 43 the Germans were more on the Defense than Offense. Seems odd that it was stopped in Sept 44 just 3 months before the Germans last offensive of the war.
Zimmeritt was stopped for 3 very important reasons:
It added time to the completion of tanks at a period in the war when production was already struggling and impacts of the air war as well as shrinking borders made it imperative to get equipment out to the units as fast as possible (see also similar “simplification” developments ongoing at same time).
It consumed resources unnecessarily and added to the overall weight of the vehicle, increasing it’s fuel consumption at a period when that was also becoming a problem linked to #1.
The intended defense benefit of applying it never balanced out in relation to the costs associated with #1 and #2.
I thought it started after a engine - pancake cooking experiment accident. Hiltler walked in after this mishap and the scientist covered their a** by telling him it was a new armor coating.
Zimmerit technology was a direct spin-off from “non-slip gelb” development…the zimmerit used the same “adhesive” ingredients that the gelb did…
However, if you look at the timing of when the Germans began using zimm it came right after they deployed a lot of magnetic charges to their units, particularly during the Kursk battle…after seeing how effective their weapons were, they were pro-active and developed the counter-measure of zimm…
And it also DID have the bonus of creating a subtle “disruptive” look to the AFV’s it was applied to because of the texture it provided…it tends to darken the color of the vehicle as well because of the countless small shadows it creates…
Good reasons Bill, but I thought it wwas discontinued for reports that it could lead to fires when hit. I find that hard to believe, other then it would have to be made up of combustable material.
I think the fire thing may have been one of those myths that soldiers have. Another one i heard was that German paratroopers would only use white parachutes because they thought the dye in the coloured ones would affect the opening on the chute.