Hello,

Last weekend I have visited the scale modelling meet-up in the Stammheim Military Museum and saw this vehicle in one of the exposition halls but without any sign or description. From its setup, it seems to be an evacuation/medical vehicle of some kind but the exposed positions on outside of the hull made me wonder what this could possibly be.

I tried contacting the museum but have no word from them yet.

Any ideas form any of you experts?

Thanks!
Cristian

It's a shot in the dark but looks like a East german Marder made up as some sort of ambulance afv.

Anyone else wish to take a guess

I'd say it's a Marder converted to a gunnery range control vehicle. IIRC the UK has (or had) a similar setup on CVR's on Salisbury Plain and in Canada

There are two images on panzer-modell.de:

http://www.panzer-modell.de/specials/ontour/stammheim/88g.jpg
the rear looks a bit strange, the usual Marders
had a large hatch/ramp ...

http://www.panzer-modell.de/specials/ontour/stammheim/100g.jpg
Shows some kind of information display which can't be
read from the photo, I wonder if it says anything useful ...

/ Robin

It's a Feuerlöschpanzer Marder (Firefighting Marder), based on the 120 mm mortar carrier prototype :

http://www.panzerbaer.de/types/bw_flpz_marder-a.htm

Here's another specialized variant of the Marder, used against forest fires :



HTH

H.P.

Thanks for the perfect link, H.P.
FOr those of you who are not actually fleunt in German, it is NOT a Marder chassis, but a prototype for a 120mm mortar carrier converted to fire extinguisher once the project was abandoned. Only one vehicle was converted and used solely in one Bundeswehr facility...

It Would make a cool (and different) model. One question....why would you have external seats on a fire fighting vehicle?

Hi;

When Fighting any kind of fire you would always want Eyes outside of your Vehicle, very important when you need to watch for Trouble Hot Spots, or other Dangers !

CHEERS; MIKE.

it's a one-off West German Army fire-fighter based on a Marder-1 chassis (failed 120mm mortar project) but several more were made by a private company using Marder-2's bought as surplus -- google "Airmatic firefighting" to see several videos of their forest fire-fighting Marders. They also had a Buffel painted red as a command vehicle & the forestry service used a blimp for surveillance until it was replaced with remote video towers to spot fires.

I stumbled across this video some time ago on one of those YouTube rabbit-hole trips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyWPnhf4OF4

You guys are just great!!! Thanks so much fór the wealth of information!

Cheers,
Cristian