A small incident in Denmark

[Hans]

In researching the Danish contribution to WWII I came across a small incident, unfortunately too small for making into a scenario, but I thought the readers here might find interesting....

"The Danes too had their "V" weapon and wanted vengence! With WW2 approaching the end, Danish underground forces obtained a scraped Ford 2 ton truck and improvised it into an armored car. Finally ready on 5 May 1945, it was composed of steel plates and a steel drum for a turret. The V3 was never used against the occupying German forces as they had surrendered before the V3 was completed, but it was used on one occasion against Danish collaborators in Frederiksvaerk.

The Germans had recruited large numbers of Danes to act as terrorist gangs during the war; while German forces capitulated peacefully, the Danes in Nazi service continued to fight in a short, small-scale civil war. The V3's only combat was the capture of the Lorenzen gang, who were hiding in a summer cabin in Frederiksvaerk. The V3 turned up at the cabin, and fired a warning shot at the cabin. A gang member looked out, panicked, and shot himself in the head. His bullet, as well as killing him, hit the armored car. The V3 machine gunner opened fire on the house, but stopped when they realized there was no return fire. The house was stormed and the gang, along with a number of heavy weapons and much ammunition, were captured. There were 18 men and one woman in the house; 1 killed himself, and 2 were killed and 5 wounded by the V3. After this action the V3 toured Northern Zealand and then Copenhagen on a sort of promotional tour. While the V3 has a number of bullet holes in it, apparently only one of them, in the passenger side door, was from enemy action. The rest are from what Barfod describes as "target practice". No explanation of why they used their own armored car for target practice is given."

[Robert Olesen]

Impressive and interesting

[Philippe]

If I had whipped up a home-made armored car in my garage the one thing I would really want to know is whether or not the thing would actually stop bullets. And there would only be one way to find out. Could that account for the extra bullet holes ?

[Slappy]

Are you sure this wasn't just a leftover prop from an 'A Team' episode that the Danes imported? This looks an awful lot like what BA would whip up in the last ten minutes of every show.