Memoirs of a Tiger commander

[clayton]

Outstanding... More, please...

[Chucky]

Superb.I look forward to the next instalment

[Dowly]

I'll post more shortly.

[Dowly]

The Major stopped in today for an update on his Tiger and after showing him the latest pics, I showed him a couple of books that had some photos that I thought he might be interested in. While thumbing through the Concord Panzers in North Africa, he stopped me and said turn the page back, that's me!


Oh Strukt, he said the Stuart had a wrecked motor from a Pak hit. While it didn't burn, the crew bailed and got back to their unit. They drained the fuel out of it, took whatever goodies they could find and left it.
He did say that they were very fond of the British Desert boots because they had crepe soles and kept the heat away from your feet much better than those hi top canvas boots the DAK got issued. He also said that you were better off in sandals than to wear the normal jackboots because they had iron hobs in the soles for traction and the metal conducted heat into the boot to bake your feet.
Whenever possible, they wore shorts, or even stripped down to skivvies in the heat. It did (does) get pretty cold in the desert at night too, which made for quite a mish-mash of uniforms. I guess a lot of guys wore Italian gear too because they had the most comfortable tropical uniforms.

Stankyus asked about ammo load outs;
Lindemann says that they carried 90 rounds of 88mm ammo, usually 30 AP. 30HE, and 30 dual purpose rounds, unfortunately he couldn't remember the actual designations for the round. He also said that since they had ammo trucks following them around that they would trade rounds to get the load out that they thought they would need for any prospective engagement, so, theoretically they could have all AP or HE or whatever mix they wanted. They also carried 40,000 rounds of MG ammo and 4 mp-38 or mp-40 with 8 clips per smg. He personally carried a Walther P-08 with 4 clips and the other crew were allowed to carry handguns if they wanted to.

Schuster and Rdiggety asked what he thought about Allied armour;
Stuarts and armoured cars were used as scouts and the Tiger guys didn't worry much about them except as they might call in support. The 75mm tanks (Grants Shermans etc.) were not anything to worry about either per se. You just had to be careful around them and never let them get position on you. Usually this was not a problem because you always had infantry nearby and artillery to back you up, so as long as you didn't get too far out on your own you were pretty safe. He had a healty respect for the Brit ATGs but not so much for their armour. He said their tankers had a lot of guts and pretty good tactics (mostly) but you could punch a hole in anything they had pretty easily. This meant that they would never engage you frontally if they could possibly avoid it, but would try to distract you while they slipped around on your flanks.
The LRDG were the guys that annoyed them most because they were always sneaking around trying to destroy the Afrika Korps supply dumps, and they NEVER had enough of anything to spare as it was. If a panzer was going to be shipped back for repairs, crews would strip it of any spare parts they thought would be useful.

His last crew (member changed from time to time) were all oberfeldwebels, they tended to get the more experienced crews to serve on the Tigers.
He said that every one of them had Iron Cross first or second class. They all wore the A.K. sleeve ribbons (3 months service in theatre) as well as Panzer badges.

Since I have been working on the figures lately, I spent some time asking about uniforms and what crews might be expected to wear. I had read something to the effect that crews were forbidden to wear shorts or remove their shirts for too long. Obviously the idea was to prevent troops from getting too sunburned to be useful. In fact it quickly became a courts martial offense since you were actually damaging wehrmacht property....
It turns out that this rule only applied to infantry. Panzer crews were allowed to wear shorts and shirtsleeves since the inside of a steel box with a twelve cylinder engine running in the back and a desert sun blazing down at you, is not exactly the coolest of environments...
Ever see that photo series on the guy frying an egg on the hull of his tank?

Something else he mentioned while we were talking about 'damaging Reich property'. The desert was (is) a hard place to live without proper equipment and guys got sicknesses that were untreatable with the early medical set ups that the Germans used in the early parts of the Afrikan campaign. The normal routine would be to fly patients back to German hospitals, sometimes all the way back to Germany.
Jaundice was one of these conditions, and some bright lad found out that if you left a tin of sardines out in the sun all day, you could punch holes in the tin and suck out the hot olive oil which would give all the signs of a jaundice attack. You would then be sent back to Germany for a nice refreshing leave until your 'Jaundice' cured itself. Naturally, the higher ups figured this little game pretty quickly and if you got caught it was considered a courts martial offense. Pretty slick trick for the first couple of guys though....

German prisoners held in Michigan had a fair amount of freedom and were often assigned to work details on farms surrounding the camp. The soldiers who were meant to guard them were usually pretty green and pretty young. When they left camp they were given their lunch in a paper bag, sandwiches and what not usually, and the farms were supposed to supply them with water.
Guard duty was dull and with not a lot else to do and one day both their guards fell asleep over the lunch break. POWs being what they are Lindemann and his comrades decided that here was an opportunity that couldn't be missed and they immediatley stole the guards rifles, disassembled them and hid the various parts in their pockets and nearby trees. Then they all sat back down and one of them bounced pebbles off one of the guards helmet until he woke up. The poor guy immediately noticed he was missing his rifle and woke up his buddy now also weaponless. The two guards knew they were in deep trouble and pleaded with the POWs for their weapons back. Lindemann said "Well, we can probably make a deal here, there is a little store about a mile down the road, go get us a case of beer and four cartons of ciggarettes....." Not having much choice the kid trudged off down the road. When he finally got back, the prisoners handed back the weapons in exchange for the beer and smokes. Except, they didn't give back the ammunition. When the guards objected, Lindemann and the rest of the prisoners grinned at them, Lindemann pointed at the guard who had stayed behind the first time and said "OK your turn to go to the store..."

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That's enough for now, just woke up so, need to get me a cup of coffee and something to eat. The next bit will be a big one, the OP went into one of Lindemann's lectures and quite a few stories came out of it.

[Onkel Neal]

Very nice, Downly


Posted on Tanksim News.

Neal

[Dowly]

Dont know how much I can continue this.. kinda fighting over my right to use the signature that Torplexed made for me (the one with me as a ferret flying an brewster buffalo and throwing bombs). Anywho, the moderator is saying the signature has an swastika in it and there's nothing that get's me more ticked that some twut getting the Von Rosen cross & swastika mixed.

I replied to the moderator and explaing what the "swastika" in my signature means, if he doesnt get it, then.... well.. dont think I can say it here what I'm gonna do next.

EDIT: THis is the signature in question:

[Dowly]

Many bad words.... etc

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Very nice, Downly


Posted on Tanksim News.

Neal

Thank you NEIL!

@Puff

I browsed thru the thread, and didnt see anything about the reload times. But what I picked off from some documentary was that some tanks had extra shells on the floor of the tank, making them easily accessable.

[Dowly]

Lindemann, had originally intended to be a pilot and he knew several fellows who later went on to become aces. One of theses was Hans Joachim Marseilles, sometimes known as the 'Star of Afrika'. Marseilles was known as a ladies man and a heavy party boy, even to the point of missing a morning flight by being too hungover to fly. I suppose the Higher ups tolerated it because he brought results on his missions bringing down enemy planes with as few as two or three rounds. He often brought his plane back with multiple kills and left over ammo in the guns. A master of the deflection shot, one of his wing men told a story of him bringing down a Spit V with one single round of cannon in the Spits engine while in a steep turn.
The story Lindemann told me about him was that they were chatting about aircombat during a drunken beach party and Marseille told him he had found a way to turn inside those pesky Spitfires. Marseille said that what he had done was to split the landing gear hydraulic system on his 109 with a pump for each gear. He could then partly drop whichever gear he wanted to in order to turn faster in that direction.

I am certain he knows Carius's exploits, he lent me a couple books on Tiger Aces.
Wasn't Carius SS? I don't remember off the top of my head.
Lindemann seems to have a rather curious attitude toward SS guys. The times he's mentioned them, I get the impression he thinks that they were far too hardcore. People whom it was best to stay away from. He certainly admires the big Tiger aces though.
You know, it kind of feels to me like he regrets not making it out of Afrika and missing the rest of the war. I am pretty sure he would have regretted it if he HAD made it out to rejoin the rest of the Wehrmacht.
I am certain that he still believes that what he was doing was right. He wasn't a fan of the National Socialists and at one point described Hitler as "Crazy as a bedbug!"
Africa was a different kind of war, a 'clean' war if that's possible. Very few civilians were involved. Most of the time troops were out in the middle of nowhere with nothing around for hundreds of miles. Guys depending on each other for their lives everyday for years develope a special cameradery and I think he still misses that. In spite of the blood and death of war I think he still thinks of those times as the best part of his life. It was when he himself had the most impact on the world.
I think he still misses that....

For those guys that asked, unfortunately he never met Von Luck or Knappe or Carius, although he is certainly familiar with them. He has a copy of Von Lucks book he said, so I'm sure he's read it.

Aismov, when I asked about Col. Kriebel, he said yes he met him a few times. As Rommel needed, units were transferred between 15th and 21st Panzer and Lindemann met him a few times at briefings. He said he hadn't read Kriebels book because he hadn't heard about it, but he is going to look for a copy.

His Kreigschule was in fact at Potsdam and afterwards at Doberitz (you German guys don't give any crap about my spelling, I got no umlauts!). What year was Knappe at Potsdam?

Wolf326, when I asked about strafing planes killing tanks, he said he'd never seen any rifle calibre stuff penetrate. He said that they did sweat air attacks though. Planes would spray mg fire around to keep the tanks buttoned up and infantry under cover until the fighter-bombers could drop bombs on 'em. If they were moving, the tankers would just keep moving if they could, the trucks and stuff would catch up later.
When the Brits got the 40mm armed Hurricanes, that really made the tankers sweat. Even if it wouldn't penetrate everything it could certainly break track if the pilots got good hits. (Brit pilots were trained to 'walk' their rounds into a target. It wasted a good bit of ammo though and a lot of pilots didn't like doing it that way.)
He said they really didn't see a lot of enemy air though. The DAK spent a lot of time in the deep desert and you had to find them before you could attack them. When they did get discovered though it meant you were gonna get bombed and strafed just as hard as they could. Then all you could do was wait it out and try to move the unit under the cover of darkness. He did say that their SPAA saved them on more than one occaision. (I have a convoy story that I will relay a bit later.)

HTMD, he said he is from Franconia himself, (is that a county name?) He is still planning on heading home sometime soon, maybe you'll get a chance to meet him yourself!