 History, datas and pictures of the German and Italian artillery and self-propelled guns of WW2.
Most of this artillery and self-propelled guns are used or will be used with the computer wargame WW2 Total.
Self-propelled artillery was very
much a product of the type of
warfare that evolved during WW2: before 1939 self-propelled
artillery scarcely existed (apart
from a few trial weapons), but
by 1943 it was used by all the
combatant nations. The sudden
rise of this new form of weapon
can be attributed almost entirely
to the impact of the battle tank
on tactics, for warfare no longer
took place at the speed of the
marching soldier and the scouting
horse, but at the speed of the
tank. These swarmed all over
Poland, France and eventually
the Soviet Union, and the only
way that the supporting arms,
including the artillery, could keep
up with them was to become
equally mobile.
Many of the early self-propelled
artillery platforms were
simply conversions of existing
tanks in order to mount artillery
pieces, but the measure of conversion
varied widely. Some were
scarcely more than lash-ups to
meet a hasty requirement or were
built locally to suit a particular
task. Others, however, were carefully
designed from the outset
and may be regarded as virtually
new products. But two distinct
trends can be discerned in the
way self-propelled artillery was
used in action. One school
regarded mobile artillery as a
simple adjunct to existing
artillery doctrines, and this
school designed and used the
self-propelled platforms to deliver
indirect supporting fire in the
usual way. The other school
regarded the mobile gun as a
form of close-range direct-fire
weapon to be used in close
support of armour, and this
school was responsible for the
assault gun. Today both types of
weapon are extant, but in the
West the modern accent is on the
indirect-fire weapon and in the
East it is on the close-support
assault gun.
Only a selection of the many
types of self-propelled artillery
that proliferated between 1939
and 1945 can be found in the computer wargame WW2Total. While some important
types have been omitted, some
'one-offs' have been included to
demonstrate the variety of design
concepts that were attempted.
The number and approaches of
the different designs were
enormous before 1945, but only
relatively few models actually
found their way into action.
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