As the Australian Armour and Artillery Museum continues to disassemble their leichte Feldhaubitze 18/2 auf PzKpfw II (Sf), or Wespe for short, here are some images showing the very assembly process of Wepse.
The Wespe was designed by Alkett in 1942 on the basis of the Panzer II chassis. Assembly took place at Famo-Ursus in Warsaw, Poland from February 1943 to July 19441 . Initially, the body with the 10.5cm howitzer was placed on an unchanged Panzer II chassis, but due to lack of space in the combat compartment, the chassis was extended for later models. The images below are from the June 1943 episode of the cinema newsreel Die Deutsche Wochenschau.
The specimen now in Australia is one of the originally two Wespen from the ‘André Becker collection’. This collection was dissolved in 2021 and most of it was sold in a public auction. It is said this vehicle originates from the Trun scrapyard in France. It still looks relatively complete, but from the recent “Workshop Wednesday” videos, it becomes evident it did undergo some visual restoration, during which missing parts were remanufactured and refitted.
I’ll leave you with this introductory video on the Wespe from the Australian Armour museum.
Footnotes
- Doyle and Jentz, Enzyklopädie Deutscher Panzerkampfwagen., Spielberger and Doyle, Panzer I Und II Und Ihre Abarten.[↩]
Leave a Reply