Hi, new member, I was wondering about the Allies opinion of Germany's Zimmerit. Did the Allies ever apply a similar product? Was there a study done? Or did the Germans not use the magnetic mines? I know in the Pacific, Wood was fixed along side's of the Sherman, I'm not sure if this was a anti-magnetic mine defense measure from the Japanese, or just helpful against a suicide charge from their troops holding explosives.
Thanks!

Welcome to Armorama David

Here you'll find informations from a British Intelligent report written in 1945 about Zimmerit :

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_5760954/mpage_3/printable.htm

HTH

Frenchy

David:

As Frenchy has noted, there was some interest in zimm amongst the Allies - The Brits actually collected stocks of zimm material after May 1945 and tested it with consideration of maybe using some form of this on tanks in the PTO - the Japanese having learned of both shaped charges and the magnetic mount. Things transpired rapidly though, and this became a moot issue pretty soon (Aug 1945) and the entire project was abandoned. As things turned out with the Japanese - maybe because they did not have sufficient supplies of powerful magnets and / or because they realized one needed to get close to the enemy tank to apply it anyway... they went to mounting a shaped charge bomb on the end of a stout pole and the troopie charged into the side of his target and slammed his bomb against it... Banzai! No kind of zimm would, of course, matter in this case.

The Germans did employ a magnetic shaped-charge AT "grenade" - but this was a rare weapon. There is certainly some evidence that various armies were sort of interested in "sticky bombs" - for which the zimm was invented (that and for those magnetic AT grenades). As it turned out, nobody much got involved with sticky bombs. Surely anything which could stick a sizable charge to a tank-hull would first have every chance of sticking to the guy "throwing" it! The magnetic device deployed by the Germans actually best worked if the tank stood still while the fellow positioned it - and yes, it was a sizable shaped charge and would blast a hole into most tanks on the field... if positioned right (shaped charges are of course directional.). So the Germans made and deployed zimm to beat their own weapons!

While wood "armor" would block magnetic (and likely also sticky) attachments, I personally do not know what the real intent was with the US in the PTO - mayba against those japanese weapons as above? The Germans and the Finnish applied log "armor" to the sides of StuGs on the east front - presumably to reduce effectiveness of the small-calibre AT rifles often used by the Russians to good effect against the thin side armor of these vehicles. Wood (at least when only a foot or so thick) would have little utility against any tank-calibre main-gun projectile. "Old Ironsides" not with-standing, of course - but that was 24 inches of live oak against round cannonballs and black powder!

Cheers!

Bob

OOOPS. I meant "Intelligence" of course. This wasn't a value judgement

Frenchy

Not meaning to thread-jack but the main counter measure the Germans used to counter AT rifle fire was schurzen -- those plates that many falsely assume was to protect against hollow warheads. The schurzen plates and later, "Thoma" mesh screens -- were emplaced in areas of particular vunerability. AT rifle rounds certainly penetrated them but the penetration of the schurzen or screens would alter the trajectory of the AT rifle projectile, causing it to spin or deflect and theoretically shatter on the tank's own armor shell.

The myth that they were to protect against Piats or Bazookas or cpatured Panzerfausten started after the war by some misstatements by high placed officials. Tom Laemlein of Armor Plate Press wrote an impressively researched article about how the myth began and debunks it.

Also, analysis of when/where plates appeared on German tanks confirms this. The gap above the tracks and below the sponson were known weak spots. Look at the armoring of the Hetzer, Panther, Tiger II -- all have supplemental armor placed at this spot. The Mk III, Mk IV and Stug III/IV have full schurzen/screens because their entire profile was vulnerable.

Thanks for the replies Guys! The document on Zimmerit was very interesting Frenchy, Thank you. Overall, considering the Germans research and development time and cost, production of the product, do you feel this was a worthwhile venture? I'm sure it must have helped many tanks from the Russian magnetic mines. I realize hindsight is wonderful, and I'm not wanting to devalue an interesting solution the Germans preceived as a solution to a problem/threat at very hard time.

I think that the Germans themselves realized that its value was very limited and its downsides were out of proportion to that small value. They stopped applying (mid-Sep 44') it to their own vehicles after using it for only about one year. The history books say this was because troops in the field complained that the Zimmerit was a fire hazard that (presumably) caused more damage when burning than it potentially prevented. Interestingly enough, this was almost the same reasoning used to end production of the turret mounted smoke launchers - the troops complained that they could be set off by rifle (tracer?) fire and blind the tank's crew.

I guess that the Germans had some objective evidence (in the way of after action reports form the field) of both of these problems, so the question of Zimmerit's actual effectiveness and worth was answered by the Germans, themselves, during the war.

I think we need to also keep in mind that Zimmerit was developed as a counter-measure to a potential DEFENSIVE anti-tank weapon - an infantryman's magnetic (not just "sticky") hand-emplaced explosive device. That is, Zimmerit was potentially useful to protect tanks in the offense / attack against a particular type of defensive weapon. By the the time Zimmerit was actually produced and fielded, it was Germany that was generally on the defensive and it was German troops that needed the hand-held AT weapons (like the Panzerfaust), not so much the Soviets.

So, Zimmerit was really a counter-measure to an anticipated threat that never developed - the Soviets didn't field magnetic hand-emplaced AT weapons, and Germany wasn't on the offensive by the time Zimmerit appeared.

On the other hand, if the Germans had continued to advance in the east, and if the Soviets did start fielding magnetic hand-emplaced defensive AT weapons, then Zimmerit might have been just the right stuff at just the right time...

The never ending cycle of measure / counter-measure / new measure... The R&D guys can't foresee the future and sometimes they get it right, but sometimes they don't.

In that the Germans discontinued the Zimmerit after only about a year of deployment, it is probably safe to conclude that they really did not see much evidence of it being worthwhile... We should always remember that decisions made in Nazi Germany concerning weapons and equipment were, to say it mildly, fraught with all manner of politicking and what we would surely call corruption and "cronyism" and insider-dealing today! This not to imply that such does not maybe occur "every once and again" in our modern procurements world... Still, IF it had bequeathed some noted actual benefit, it probably would have persisted in use, armies being fairly pragmatic organizations. Was it a "fire-hazard"? There's little evidence to support that claim, but there it is - maybe something said to "justify" getting out of this contract. After all, those smoke-launchers... consider that somehow they were concluded to be a field hazard, and ended up being dropped from most post-1943 vehicle production... due to their being a hazard from enemy fire... so, spin forward to today, where US, NATO, and many east-block vehicles sport them... Maybe the post - WWII armaments industries and their pet generals have rationalized that modern infantrymen (infantry-persons?) are less able to hit such a small target? Hmmm.

Bob

The issue w/German smoke launchers wasn't their being a fire hazard, I recall. It was that they were just vulnerable to small arms fire and shrapnel, setting off the smoke grenades while still in the launchers. The crews would be blinded by their own smoke at inopportune times.

I would surely have to agree with you! I don't think I said that anyone considered them to be a FIRE hazard... I said that they were "concluded to be a FIELD hazard... due to their being a hazard from ENEMY fire"! Just as you point out! Which is exactly why I find it hilarious that we now-a-days put smoke launchers on all sorts of NATO and other AFVs! If indeed those WWII Germans concluded that their smoke launchers were vulnerable to enemy small-arms and shrapnel and that they posed some risk to their crews by maybe blinding them at inopportune times back in later 1943, why is it the modern Germans (and other folks, too) now figure that these things are safe from enemy small-arms fire and shrapnel today? Seems to me either somebodies simply forgot some lessons learned (a common-enough military practice around the world), or there's a new think going on as to whether modern infantry-persons can hit things as small as smoke launchers on AFVs, and /or maybe modern shrapnel is not as bluntly dangerous as that of olden days!

Cheers!

Bob

Here's a French M4A2 with Zimm from an experiment they did postwar

[quote]


Or the more likely case that modern smoke discharger compounds are not as likely to ignite under enemy fire?

These pages give some good data on smoke dischargers, particularly the Germans moving their smoke under armour, which may have been something to do with the "rapid bloom" type smoke candles they used?

http://www.custermen.net/nahvert/nah.htm
http://www.panther1944.de/en/sdkfz-171-pzkpfwg-panther/technik/nebelkerzen-wurfgeraet.html
http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/cv/weapon/launchers.html

There was a lot of thought in armorland after VE Day. It was one of those moments where changes in technology had a lot of good men confused. The tank had played a remarkable role in the ground campaign in Europe (both East and West) and that was hard to forget. However, tank losses had been extremely high and were getting very nasty by 1945. The allies were most impressed by the Panzerfaust and Panzerschreckt - just as the Germans had been impressed by the Bazooka. Some experienced officers thought that the dialects of combat had remade the tactical landscape. The personal anti-tank weapon was born because of the extreme vulnerability of badly supported infantry against tank attack. (The aspect of fear early in the war is hard to over rate. Some of the armored cavalry charges used on occasion by the Germans could panic units and create holes in the line. As this factor declined, serving in tanks kept getting more dangerous at close range so tanks were used at increasing range, kept in very heavy cover or simply accepted serious losses.) It did appear that Panzerfaust type weapons (and recoiless rifles) in conjunction with air power would greatly restrict the use of tanks in future wars. Such doubts were heartily promoted by the new USAF. Why buy tanks when cheap weapons could knock out tanks until airplanes arrived? Or so it was thought until Korea showed otherwise.

The Germans had developed a magnetic mine. An enterprising European film company went through a few million miles of Goebble's propaganda films and snipped out enough footage to do a series on all of the German weapon systems. (Netflix has most of the volumes: highly recommended for geeks.) One shot shows a training exercise where a German soldier pops out of a concealed position and throws the mine at a passing tanks and the thing sticks like glue. How many of these things actually worked is hard to say, but they were only valuable at extremely close range and were pointless after the deployment of the Panzerfaust. The Rooskies were giving their soldiers a kind of molotov cocktail which, being Rooskies, they would use. (Indeed German tankers learned early in the Ost that Soviet infantry could and would kill tanks - a good reason to keep infantry close by at all times. Allied bazooka teams proved dangerous in the Ardennes when German had to leave concealment for the offensive. ) The Soviets were also working on a magnetic mine (I think every army was and Spielberg's "sticky bomb" was fact) and the Germans simply projected their technology onto the Soviets. The result was Zimmerit, a technology developed by the Germans to counter German weapons not used by their enemy. But the possibility some kind of better magnetic mine for the infantry showing up at least got the Brits to check out the technology. Must remember that checking German weapons was SOP after the war. The allies tested a multitude of late war German weapons after VE Day. Many appeared later as standard issue NATO infantry weapons. And rockets. And advanced submarines. And proper jet fighters. Fortunately they didn't have to look in German junk heaps for advanced communications or atomic bombs.)

Military history is very messy. It is startling how many successful weapon systems or tactical innovations were born of chance. Shouldn't be any surprise and wrong roads were also followed.