Historical Usage of the 251/9

[Cobetco]

so i bought and have been enjoying Final blitzkrieg for a while now, and having played through a bunch of scenarios  I've been sinking my teeth back into the large armored quick battles that i have always enjoyed playing in CM. now normally i'd take a platoon of halftracked panzergrenadiers to hold "objectives" and such. but a while back i thought, hey, halftrack mortars now work (a feature i hope will make it back to Normandy) why not try out the weapons platoon? and for how I've been using my mounted pixel truppen this was actually a good idea, i just can't get my head around the 251/9. why would you need a stubby 75 when you should in theory have tanks around? on top of that its made of paper so what use is it against infantry? and its a stubby 75 so its not so great against tanks, i'd rather have a marder IIIm

 

Edited May 12, 2016 by Cobetco

[sandman2575]

Direct fire support against soft / entrenched targets. Nothing more exotic than that. Yeah you'd rather have a MkIVF or MkIIIN than a halftrack with a 75mm gun, but hey, they're better than nothing.

I agree they can be tricky to use because like you say, they are made of paper. But they can be used well with the 'target area' command where you think enemies might be lurking even if you haven't spotted them -- for example that high church steeple that overlooks the whole area -- little danger in using one of your "Stummels" to fire a few HE rounds where you suspect observers are located.

[Anthony P.]

Yup, soft targets. I actually rather like them in CQB, the open top really makes spotting and communication with supporting infantry a wonderful dream.

[sandman2575]

Unfortunately the open top also means they're very vulnerable to small arms fire. Indeed, there really isn't anything they're *not* vulnerable to.

Safe to say the sdkfw 250 wasn't a great weapons platform... But then, so many of the Wehrmacht's weapons by mid-war were less-than-ideal improvisations born of necessity -- like all the AT vehicles built on MkII and captured Czech tank chassis...

[Cobetco]

hmmmmm ok, well i'll mess around with targeted building destruction later. also in my adventures i found a tiny bug(??) mortar halftracks won't fire if they have their HQ team inside, which isn't too much of a pain but if it isn't a bug, i kinda feel defeats the purpose, I've just been putting them in kubelwagens or 250/1s for mobility.

[Anthony P.]

I've honestly not had too much of an issue with the open top, but that might be because I've only really used it in Normandy. Not many tall buildings there, as long as it's kept back at a proper distance it's fine.

[Michael Emrys]

4 hours ago, Cobetco said:

why would you need a stubby 75 when you should in theory have tanks around?

If you mean historically, because Germany never came close to manufacturing enough tanks to put them everywhere they were needed. So a lot of vehicles that were already built and/or much cheaper to build were pressed into service in new roles. Anything to get some HE onto targets.

BTW, any Stummel that is even considering taking on a proper tank is already far gone into lunacy. Keep that in mind. If you see a tank, RUN!

Michael

[kevinkin]

The Sd.Kfz.251 was the main half tracked platform for the Germans to which they added various weapon types. They turned out to be a way to project firepower at a relatively low cost. I think wargamers are most familiar with the 20 mm AA and 75 mm HE versions. As mentioned above, when used in the appropriate tactical situation, they could be effective and fairly robust. I tend to think of them as a stand off weapons advancing carefully and ready to high tail it at the site of enemy tanks. I read that the Germans would have left over guns as they improved their tanks. So the older 75's were placed on the 251 so as not to waste the older guns. Although very vulnerable, they still could haul their ammo with them. Not having to man handle a regular artillery piece was something of a luxury for grunts on the ground. 

Kevin

Edited May 12, 2016 by kevinkin

[Michael Emrys]

12 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Not having to man handle a regular artillery piece was something of a luxury for grunts on the ground. 

More than a luxury, they were a necessity for mobile warfare. The US didn't produce thousands of M7s because they wanted to mollycoddle their red stripers, being able to pull up stakes and follow the tanks at a moments notice was essential to maintaining the momentum of an offensive. Similarly, when the Grenadiers wanted some HE support, they wanted it NOW, not just whenever the divisional artillery could get around to it.

Michael

[Doc844]

As all has been said above.  Why push a infantry support gun around when you can drive.  Necessities of war gentleman.  For a modern perspective, British troops in afghan using javelins to take out inf. And hard cover, not what they were designed for but a handy if expensive work around.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

And remember that the vast majority of battles didn't involve armor, so a HT with a 75mm was viable a lot more often than not, if used carefully.

[kevinkin]

2 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

they were a necessity for mobile warfare

Agree Michael. That made a big difference turning WWI break-ins into WWII breakthroughs. The internal combustion engine and with it reliable mechanization delivered both on the spot and sustained firepower.    

[Lethaface]

I think Summels are great inf support, especially when the enemy is in hard cover. I often use a pair of Stummels supporting my advance platoon. Obviously a MkIV is better allround, but ammo is limited and I tend to have better uses for tanks in other roles.

[Erwin]

They are not tanks, nor are they assault vehicles - they are simply mobile artillery pieces - meant for HE action from a long distance.  The challenge is that the vast majority (all?) of CM2 scenarios use maps that are relatively small, or offer relatively short LOS - which is very dangerous for any thin-skinned vehicle.

[Cobetco]

15 minutes ago, Erwin said:

They are not tanks, nor are they assault vehicles - they are simply mobile artillery pieces - meant for HE action from a long distance.  The challenge is that the vast majority (all?) of CM2 scenarios use maps that are relatively small, or offer relatively short LOS - which is very dangerous for any thin-skinned vehicle.

are you sure? it doesn't appear to have the gun elevation for indirect fire? and on the PnzIV the stubby 75 was meant for close support, it was also the gun on the original production models of stug. maybe i am wrong? and after some experimentation I (personally) have concluded that i was thinking about them wrong and everyone else was right, i assumed they would be defensive in nature like a marder, but they do seem to be able to used offensively quite well, i think i've just had bad experiences with the mg  gunner on the 251/1 and assumed the same would happen, but nope they are not exposed.

[MikeyD]

That stubby 75mm gun had been in German service from the beginning. The PzIII still mounted that gun at war's end and the gun was popular. A HEAT round meant it could adequately deal with enemy armor if needed. When your primary task is throwing HE downrange high pressure tank guns become counterproductive. The 17 pdr and Panther 75mm HE shell was nothing to write home about.  That was why the US insisted on keeping 75mm gunned Shermans around. Because tank killing was not its primary mission. The wide variety of 75mm rounds available made it pretty much ideal for its primary task.

[Sailor Malan2]

Yep. The comparison you want is with an Infantry Gun such as the IG37, not anything else. Then you get:

significantly more mobile

better crew protection,

more ready use ammo

Thats what it's all about...

Edited May 14, 2016 by Sailor Malan2

[Erwin]

14 hours ago, Cobetco said:

are you sure? it doesn't appear to have the gun elevation for indirect fire? and on the PnzIV the stubby 75 was meant for close support,

I didn't mean indirect fire from miles away.  I meant HE support from far enuff away that enemy inf AT and small arms fire couldn't hurt it - so at least 200m and preferably a lot further from any target.  And If the enemy is at a higher elevation, even small enemy arms will kill the crew - just had that happen to me in KG Peiper. 

[Michael Emrys]

9 hours ago, Sailor Malan2 said:

Yep. The comparison you want is with an Infantry Gun such as the IG37, not anything else. Then you get:

significantly more mobile

better crew protection,

more ready use ammo

Thats what it's all about...

+1

Sailor nailed it. This is pretty much the case with all thin-skinned or soft-skinned improvisations, such as portees, in all armies during the war. The idea was to take an already existing gun and give it some extra mobility but not to risk it in places where you wouldn't want to risk the gun in its original configuration. Just putting it on wheels does not turn it into a tank. You might take an existing gun and put it in an existing tank chassis and end up with something more durable, such as the StuG, but that's another whole genus of fish. Why not simply make more StuGs? Because Germany could only produce so many chassis of that type, and there was a need for more mobile infantry support guns.

Michael

Edited May 14, 2016 by Michael Emrys

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Most of the short 75mm guns were either removed from Pz.IVs/StuGs that were refitted with long guns, or from stockpiles originally intended for those types.....Hence they start turning up on almost every surplus armoured chassis you can imagine after the decision to switch Pz.IVs/StuGs to the long gun:

Pz.III Ausf N, SdKfz.233, 250/9, 251/9 234/3 etc. etc.

Edited May 14, 2016 by Sgt.Squarehead

[MikeyD]

This topic reminds me of the Sheridan light tank in 1960s US service in Vietnam. Whether the vehicle was considered a smashing success or a crashing failure all depended on who got it. Units that 'traded up' from M113 APCs thought Sheridan was a wonder weapon. Units that 'traded down' from an M48 MBT thought it was a death trap.

In this case, if you're comparing 251/9 to the towed light infantry gun its looks like an ideal design for infantry support. If you're comparing it to PzIV tank it appears barely adequate. The Bulge offensive was one of the few times that Germany had enough tanks to go around. Other fronts were barely scraping by. 251/9 was a better alternative than nothing at all.

Edited May 14, 2016 by MikeyD

[kevinkin]

I wonder how many times US infantry AARs stated they were getting hit by a self propelled gun thinking is was a fearsome STUG when it was actually a 251/9? The mind tends to exaggerate - the fish gets bigger as the years go by phenomenon. When their memories make it into the history books the half tracked gun gets discounted. 

Guess we can look into the production numbers to see if this is true.

Kevn

Edited May 14, 2016 by kevinkin

[Anthony P.]

If it's a Stug or a half-track probably matters little as long as the 75mm HE keeps coming.

[John Kettler]

Cobetco,

Welcome aboard! (If I didn't already)

The 251/9 is in the Armored Gun Platoon of a Motorized Reconnaissance Battalion. Instead of having the towed 75 mm howitzers of the Armored Light Infantry Gun Platoon, the guns were now on the halftracks and protected from a lot of enemy fire. There is some excellent material on this in pages 328-330 of a book I now must get called Tip of the Spear: German Armored Reconnaissance in Action in World War II, by Robert J. Edwards. The 251/9 was intended as a better substitute for the heavy tall and surprisingly not really good cross country 8-wheeled 233 AC with the short 75. Though I wouldn't have expected it at all, the 20 degree elevation limit for the 251/9 makes it abundantly clear this wasn't used in a howitzer role at all. 

Regards,

John Kettler

 

 

[Cobetco]

7 hours ago, John Kettler said:

The 251/9 was intended as a better substitute for the heavy tall and surprisingly not really good cross country 8-wheeled 233 AC with the short 75.

 

yes I've been reading about this, (and may or maynot have ordered the Panzertracks book on the 251) and apparently their was a (late)? or alternative version of the 251/9 that along with a 250 version went into production in the summer of 44 that used the same mount as the 234/2 which included an MG, which would be interesting. maybe BFC can add it to the list of things that may show up one day like the STUG IV