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Dean
Whilst we are talking theory and possibilities, and taking hopefully this all in the light hearted vein it should be, could I just point out a few things which I disagree with in your ideas and comments.
Keeping that platform stable is of course essential, but the minute you "mount" the gun of this size and power to the chassis you are exerting all the forces through that chassis, and the Opel 's would simply not be up to it, for all the reasons outlined by Gerald in his post on the RSO. It's worth noting that all the pictures I've seen of the Flak 20mm on the Opel don't really "mount" the gun to the truck. It's kept in its original mount which is then held in place by a fixing around the foot.
or the same but mounted on a skid.
so the energy is held within the guns original mounting as it would be on the ground.
I've yet to see a photograph of the 20mm directly fixed into the cargo bed of the Blitz, but I'm happy to be shown one and corrected, no problem.
Your point about comparison of the Flak 88 is correct in that the 88 was used against aircraft moving across the sky and required rapid fire, but tanks are not exactly slow moving across ground, can be difficult to hit due to their movement over terrain and the big difference is usually the planes don't fire back at the 88 but the tanks certainly do against antitank gunsWhich brings me to my next point, the increased height the gun is at now at makes it a much easier and bigger target than the purposely made low silhouette of the original gun carriage. Far to visible or difficult to hide than the standard configuration.
Even discounting all that it's still got to be easier to drag a gun with dodgy wheels, even repair or replace the gun carriage, than try to fix the thing to a flimsy Opel Blitz.. Also then work out where to store the ammo, which would normally be carried by the towing vehicle.
The only thing I've seen which has some comparison to this is the Portee arrangement, but note again the gun remains on its wheeled mounting.
All good fun.
Alan
Yeah I just find it an interesting possibility to consider. I sort of like the idea of putting yourself in the position of being a workshop manager who has someone come to you and say "I have a gun with no wheels, what can you put it on ?". Blame it on growing up with movies like Mad Max and Battletruck where the theory is "how mean can you make a vehicle look".
What I was getting at with the FlaK comparrison is a 2cm/3.7cm FlaK has is rapid fire so there's no recoverytime between shots requiring a much stabler platform, with an AT gun you have that 5-10 seconds between shots to allow the recoil from the previous shot to dissipitate.
The main problem with the Opel is the deck is designed to handle weight, not lateral shear so i suspect the mounting brackets for the deck would go long before the chassis did.
In theory it's doable but again it's the practicalities in wartime that are against the idea.
To mount it and counteract the shearing forces of the recoil you'd need to remove the deck, weld flat plate directly to the chassis which gives you a lower profile, stronger mount and distributes the shear force over a larger contact area. Then remove the wheels and trails from the gun, mount it facing rearward and ideally put a heavy duty spring each side between the ends of the axle and bumpstops on the truck. You'd also need to knock up some kind of shell deflector like on a tank gun.
Again you'd have a limited field of fire so you'd end up with an unarmoured StuG that has to attack in reverse. It wouldn't be ideal and it wouldn't last forever but it would do as a stop-gap field knock up.
That is however a lot of work just to get an AT gun mobile whilst taking a truck out of action. Personally I'd probably just suggest rigging up new wheels for the gun even if I just had to bolt it into a haycart to get it from A to B.
