I'm looking over photos of Afrika Korps Pz.Kpfw III's and IV's and I've noticed some have lengths of spare track draped over their turrets. The tracks don't appear to be secured to the vehicle, though. How was this done in practice? Were the tracks sufficiently heavy that they didn't need to be secured?

It depends on where they were attached/placed. It was a wide-spread practice, particularly on the thinner-skinned Pz IIIs, to tack weld small metal hooks or simple angle-iron type metal racks to either the hull or turret. Alternatively they were also tied to the lifting eyes and, in some cases, also tack welded in place as their intention was to serve as ad hoc additional armor protection vs true spares.

Tracks weren't sufficiently heavy that they would stay in place without some method of securing them, at least not for very long once the vehicle started moving that is. Newton's laws around physics and all that were still in play.

Thanks, Bill. I had a dismal education in physics (we used to catch our teacher in the all trying to figure out the problems with the Chemistry teacher), but I figured the tracks would need to be secured somehow. I'm still in research mode, so plenty of time to find photos that show the attachment points close up.

Thanks, Bill. I had a dismal education in physics (we used to catch our teacher in the hall trying to figure out the problems with the Chemistry teacher), but I figured the tracks would need to be secured somehow. I'm still in research mode, so plenty of time to find photos that show the attachment points close up.