"German use of captured tanks" Topic

I have seen many pictures of British Mk IV tanks captured and used by the German Army. Did the Germans also use captured Whippet tanks? Any French tanks? Post pictures if you have seen them please.

YouTube link

Have a look.

Some info in the comments.

Going from memory, as my books are in storage, they had but did not use Whippet tanks in anger in WW1 – too few and their resources were already stretched to add another limited set of captured vehicles to their inventory (ditto FT-17s etc).

This webpage basically says no -- they only used Mk IV tanks in combat (perhaps a solitary Schneider):

link

The books posted right after WW2 by the VFW and the official Army photo books all have photos of captured equipment in use by the other side. I listed the pages of these interesting photos in an early Time Portal Passages as a filler article.
Some of the interesting ones showed the US troops using them. In some cases the American tanks are in German marking and had just been recaptured. One was of a Stuart tank in Africa and another was of a Sherman in Italy.
One interesting photo showed a German Stuka with German markings rubbed out and replaced with Italian markings. Next to those were British marking as it had been captured recently. Needless to say it was shot down over Allied landing beaches.
A large number of photos of Allies using captured German artillery and support trucks.

I recall seeing a photo of a French artillery tractor with Russian markings, implying that it had been taken by the Germans and used on the Eastern front before being captured again.

The OP is talking about WW1, not WW2.

In the main, the Germans used captured heavy tanks only. I'm not aware of any significant use of captured Whippets (or any use at all in fact).

In WW1, the Germans had limited facilities for maintaining the operational capability of tanks. This included their own as well as any that were captured. The main centre was in Charleroi. Large numbers of British Mk IVs were captured during the Battle of Cambrai and were recovered in the aftermath in late 1917 and early 1918. This gave a big enough pool that made it worthwhile to create an operational Beutepanzer force, divided up into tank Abteilungen or sections. Additional tanks were captured in Operation Michael during the Spring of 1918.

Whippets, FT17s, and Mk Vs did not become available to the Allied armies for operational use until the late Spring of 1918. The earlier use of Schneiders and St Chamonds were not used in big enough numbers to enable sufficient to be captured. The St Chamond had a very tricky transmission, which ruled it out from a maintenance perspective. Few Schneiders were captured intact, given that few were used and most left of the battlefield were in no fit state to recover until the petrol tank location was modified. There are photos of a Whippet, FT17, and a Schneider in German markings but these were being evaluated behind the lines and never saw action in German hands.

Once the major battles involving tanks got under from July 1918 onwards, the gains in each battle were such that, unlike Cambrai, the Germans were not able to capture any significant numbers of the later marks and versions.

Robert

The Freikorps had at least one Whippet in service by 1919. There's a current thread about it (with several pix) on the Landships forum here: link

Yes, there were some other interesting vehicles used by Freikorps after the war.

Robert

Interestingly, Sepp Dietrich served in WW1 as a non-com in the original German tank force.

B

Anyone interested in the German tank arm of WW1 should seek out a copy of "The German A7V Tank and the Captured British Mark IV Tanks of World War 1" by Maxwell Hundleby and Rainer Strasheim.

Highly recommended.

B