Engineering and Combat Engineering Vehicles.Allied or Axis

And this deep and insightful statement has WHAT to do with the subject of Engineering and Combat Engineering Vehicles.Allied or Axis??

 

Maybe it was an expression of the apparent fact that the Germans had no engineering and combat engineering vehicles to speak of......

 

LOL That may be true . But with his previous statements on other threads I doubt he has that much insight LOL .

 

They did have this. But only built 20 .

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Specifications

Bruckenlegepanzer IV / Bruckenleger IV: Bridgelayer based on Ausf C / D. Nine-meter bridge had a 28-ton capacity. The vehicle was found to be too heavy for the suspension and the design was canceled in 1941. 20 units produced were used by the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 10th Panzer Divisions in the 1940 campaign. ​

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Bruckenlegepanzer IV

 

Valentine Bridgelayer

 

Sherman tank using a Churchill 'Ark' armoured ramp carrier to climb over an escarpment, 79th Armoured Division, 13 February 1944

 

Churchill Ark Mk II (UK pattern) bridging vehicle


Churchill ARVE

 

There is something wrong with this image it is the Krupp prototype MKA the zugfuhrerwagen= the Krupp project for the panzer 3.

 

Bruckenleger IVc

 

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I know I'm not following this thread by posting randomly (forgive me) but the Allied vehicles, to my knowledge, were far better.

 

Thats ok . I think they were too and had thousands more .

 

Brückenleger IVb

"During WWI the British Army found that the tank experienced great difficulty crossing some trench emplacements, where they would become stuck and vulnerable to attack. An attempt to counter this problem was the introduction of Fascine's. These were large bundles of wood that would be secured to either the front or back of the tank and were dropped into the trench to give a more even surface. This practise is still in use in modern Armies, who now use large plastic pipes. The British Warrior MCV's in the 2003 invasion of Iraq were often seen with them secured to their sides.
Some would say that this method of using fascines during WWI was the building block for the more modern Armoured Vehicle-Launched Bridge. An AVLB is a combat support vehicle. It is a converted MBT hull, where the turret has been removed and replaced with a folded bridge, which is normally made up of two or three sections, reaching 60ft in length and is capable of supporting the weight of modern MBT's (60 tons+).
The AVLB's will travel with the armoured fighting vehicles and when these need to cross obstacles like a river or large ditch and there is no bridge or one that can support the weight of the fighting vehicles, with in a matter of minutes the AVLB will un-fold the sections of bridge and extended it across the crossing point and finally un-attach the bridge from the MBT hull so the fighting vehicles can cross it. Once they have, the MBT hull will then cross, re-attach the bridge and retract it back into sections, before rejoining the fighting vehicles.
These types of AVLB's were developed during WWII, but the method of deploying the bridge from the hull were not as sophisticated as today's. Either the bridge would remain attached to the top of the hull, which would then be driven and submerged in the river or others couldn’t re-attach the bridge to the hull.
The Allies used the highly adaptable Sherman or Churchill tank hulls for their variants of combat support vehicle's and the Germans used their equivalent, the Panzer IV. The production of the Panzer IV started in 1937 and continued through out the war. It was a popular hull for a number of different variants numbering around 20. These included assault guns, AA guns, recovery vehicle and bridge layer.
This variant was designated the Brückenleger IVb. During 1940 20 of these vehicles had been converted from Panzer IV's. The Panzer IV manufacturers, Krupp’s, converted 4 while Magirus converted a further 16. These 20 vehicles were in service with the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 10th Panzer Divisions during the 1940 campaign's in France and Belgium. The bridges were able to support vehicles up to 28 tons. But by 1941 they were removed from service, as the suspension of the vehicle could not support the added weight of the bridge with its deployment gear and they were converted back into tanks. In the same year Krupp developed the Bruckenleger IVc and manufactured 4 of these variant, which went in to service with 3rd Panzer Division in fighting on the Eastern Front. "

The Brückenleger IVb

 

Looks like a few of the sources I have seen also have this as an example.

 

Marine Engineers Iwo Jima

 

Marine LTV bridge

 

My favorite is always the Armored Bulldozer

 

D-7 armored bulldozer of the UK 3rd Division, 1 May 1944

 

Just on Russell Island in the Pacific the US dumped this engineering equipment. One forgotten island!