"21st Panzer Division Orbats" Topic

starting to build my 21st Panzer Division and was wondering whats the best orbat to go with. I have the Micromark one, Battlefront WW2, Flames of War and Rapid Fire. Looking for historical acurracy.

Any recommended books on the division I should be reading, don't own any at present.

TIA

BF WW2 and Rapid Fire are both scaled down orbats, so are harder to work from if trying to figure out 1:1 units. The Flames Of War list is probably more recent than the Micromark, so would most likely be my starting point.

As for books, it might help if you narrowed down the year and theatre you're looking for – I'm guessing you're most likely interested in Normandy, but you haven't actually said.

Like Dom says, the 21st Pz started life in the desert. The book Panzer Armee Afrika has the Orbats as part of its appendices in the back of the book.

Flames of War probably are based on assumptions. So the units and ORBATS will likely be somewhat standardized. That said, the German units were based on a standard. So, it would be a good starting place. WIKI often has ORBATS so there is another good (and free!) place to look. Micromark is still probably still a very good source since each unit was researched individually.

If you want a higher level look, Rapidfire is a great resource. It will get you down to the platoon level. The nominal scale is 5 vehicles per model and 15 men per figure.

For books try;
"The Combat History of the 21st Panzer Division" by Werner Kortenhaus.
If you are considering buying it go to the Amazon site, and go to the "More buying choices" Dagwood books have it for £29.01 GBP plus postage and packing, Dagwood Books are very good I ordered a book from them last week and had it in a couple of days. There are at least two different ORBAT's in the book, and this from a guy who was in the Division.
With the F&F Battlefront ORBAT read the notes Mark has made they are useful.

If you want desert ob's the Axis forum has some good ones

oops, should have said, its Normandy 1944 I'm looking at

I'll second the book " Combat History of 21st PD" by Kortenhaus. It contains much info on ORBATS, unit locations and the various battles surrounding D-Day and beyond.

Here is a link to an earlier discussion here on TMP about 21st PD. Read through this as it also discusses one or two transpositions of the number of vehicles in particular units.

TMP link

Zetterling's Normandy 1944 is pretty comprehensive, and a bit of a must-have for German OB's for the campaign, Dalglish's Goodwood book is great, has a lot of info on 21st, particularly Beckers SP btn.

I wrote the BF: WW2 orbat.

Note that the original German KStN writer made some critical errors with his own orbat that conflict with personal accounts and after-action reports by officers in the division.

Unfortunately, virtually all the published histories refer to the KStN, so you need to be careful.

For example, the KStN gets the ratios of 75mm and 105mm-armed Hotchkiss StuGs the wrong way round. The KStN states that there were 4x 75mm and 6x 105mm per battery. However, the Goodwood after-action report by Major Becker (the battalion commander) clearly shows that there were two platoons of 3x 75mm and one platoon of 4x 105mm in each battery, plus one Hotchkiss OP vehicle as the battery HQ.

The account of Lt Hoeller of 8th Company, 192nd Panzer-Grenadier Regiment also clearly proves the existence of a mortar platoon in the heavy (4th and 8th) companies of the panzer-grenadier regiments. These platoons consisted of 3x Somua 8cm 'Reihenwerfer' multi-barrelled mortar halftracks. These are in addition to those vehicles held by the regimental mortar companies. The KStN omits these battalion mortar platoons. The total number of Reihenwerfer vehicles manufactured, as well as the OKW strength returns also tend to confirm the existence of the battalion mortar platoons, as there are 12 'missing' Reihenwerfers.

Other strength returns and accounts also point to the existence of ex-French 8cm mortars held at company level.