AHC: Nazi weapons produced post war
- Thread starter Otto Kretschmer
- Start date
What about a modern version of flak 88 with AP , HEAT , HE and other rounds ?
By the time nukes are light enough to fit on a V-1, there are better cruise missile designs possible.
Nato quickly moved away from direct fire emplaced AT weapons, and AA guns had had their day with the coming of the jet, so you might get a 'modern' 88 analogue pop up in the early 50's but it probably wouldn't catch on because ongoing efforts to standardize calibres means its an odd one out, and its going to be inferior to the L7 105.
the thing is the 88's pretty much tied to Nazi Germany, so again you'd probably have countries trying to avoid those links, especially the Germans.
A new Bayonet?
And all this time I thought the U.S. DoD was the king of wasting money,
The 88 could was in active service in Vietnam well into the 1960s and was used against American strike aircraft (no idea how effective it was).
Spain continued development of the Heinkel HE111 after the war as the CASA 2.111. Ended up with a heavier warlord and, ironically Rolls Royce Merlin engines.
en.m.wikipedia.org
CASA 2.111 - Wikipedia
But are these random salvaged examples that were sold for scrap and found use elsewhere or something? I'd guess the ones in Vietnam could have been formerly French as they were having to use Nazi kit for a while due to the inability to produce anything else.
I believe the NVA used both 88s and PAK40s for coastal defense as well. I think their was at least one instance of a US cold war Era ultra modern and expensive guided missile destroyer in the late 1960s/ early 1970s getting a hole in its superstructure from a 75mm PAK40 firing shells bearing the Fuhrers mark.
All in all ex Nazi weaponry was extremely common especially in the early to middle days of the US involvement. Pulling MP40s and 98Ks off of VC was very common and more then a few brand new Hueys ended up getting shot down by several decade old MG42s/Mg34s.
Nope. Overwhelmingly they were given/ smuggled as aid by the Soviets or Waupaca.
WWII German weapons during the Vietnam War
During the Vietnam War, the communists in the north were armed mainly with post-WWII design Soviet weapons, while their opponents in the south used almost exclusively post-WWII American weapons. So…
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marathag
Banned
Only the Soviet Bloc kept up with large tube AAA, with the West moving from 90 and 120mm for SAMs in the '50s, and the Soviet shortly after, moving the 85mm and 130mm AAA to reserve status
Even by 1945, the 88mm L56 was near the end of its usefulness as an AT gun
I think that they were, as was the case with the guns used into the 90s by Yugoslavia (not in their original AAA role) and elsewhere well into the 1950s, war reparations, either directly to the country or via a third party that had received them as reparations.
What is actually sort of surprising is that more Heer artillery didn't find its way to different nooks and crannies post war (the Israeli's, in particular, were buying anything from anyone who would sell weapons to them). There were thousands of Reich artillery pieces and hundreds of thousands of rounds of surplus ammunition literally laying around, especially in the East. You would have expected the Soviets to have handed a lot of that off to Mao or other "fellow socialist" groups, but you really don't see much of it.
Even the superb 12.8cm AAA guns seem to have simply been scrapped.
marathag
Banned
From old Vietnam Vets I spoke with, the only ground fire that really concerned them was the Sov 12.7MG, the 14.5 or larger was apparently a rarity. Above the DMZ they had a lot larger stuff, but only Rescue Choppers to get pilots ventured up there
Seriously. In the build up to the Gulf War the Saudis for whatever reason paid to have a brand new bayonet designed and built for the thousands of 98ks they still had sitting gathering dust in warehouses.
Not even some cheap Chinese manufactured cheapo crap but a pretty high end and nice des I gn made by an upper end Austrian company to some pretty high standards. At that point the bayonets were probably worth several times the value of the rifles they were supposed to go to ( Still a huge glut of Mausers or copies like the M48 on the market).
Obviously they never saw service. I think the Bayonets got given away post war to various foreign friends and backers.
Strangely enough the Soviets themselves used a good deal of old Nazi artillery. I think they still had B and C rated divisions equipped with. PAK 40s into the 60s.