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I was reading North Africa, and noticed Rommel can come with Honey Stuarts. I was doing some internet research on this, but after 2 hours have not succeeded. What happened for them to drive Stuarts? Did they just press into service all armour they came across? Or did they particularly like this vehicle? How long did they keep them for/ were they shipped back to Germany for reverse engineering or just used until they were blown up or captured.

I bet Big P knows this!

They looted all kinds of tanks and equipment this hapened on both sides during the north africa campaign, It wasnt uncommon that things switched sides 2 or 3 times becouse they ran out of spare parts and/or fuel.

What Saitini said. The difficulty that both sides had in shipping supplies to the theater (the Axis had to dodge Allied convoy raiders; the Allies had to ship all the way around Africa) meant that any heavy materials, such as tanks and guns, that could be captured from the enemy were immediately put to use.

And American tanks in particular were known for their mechanical reliability. That would suggest fewer problems with breakdowns and the like, extending the life of captured vehicle even without a good supply of spare parts to keep them maintained.

mwnciboo wrote:I was reading North Africa, and noticed Rommel can come with Honey Stuarts. I was doing some internet research on this, but after 2 hours have not succeeded. What happened for them to drive Stuarts? Did they just press into service all armour they came across? Or did they particularly like this vehicle? How long did they keep them for/ were they shipped back to Germany for reverse engineering or just used until they were blown up or captured.

I bet Big P knows this!

I just saw this while sifting through these FoW threads. Apparently, the Afrika Korps captured a large number of Stuarts intact during Operation Crusader in November 1941 and in the subsequent fighting in early 1942. They were supposedly used to guard Rommel's HQ, although it doesn't seem that this is certain. I could only find 1 photo, which shows a re-painted Stuart with German crosses being loaded onto a transporter.

The Afrika Korps used a lot of captured equipment (far more so than the 8th Army), because it was usually chronically short of supplies. British trucks were also far better suited to the desert than German trucks, so they were popular, and the Germans seem to have liked 25 pounders as well. They captured a lot of equipment when Tobruk fell in 1942 and after the Kasserine Pass victory in 1943, and photos from these periods show a particularly heavy concentration of British and US vehicles.

It makes you wonder if the allies got this Intel that Hurricane Pilots would have leapt on any convoy with Beute Stuarts in the hope they could nail Rommel.

I do remember reading a book years ago called "Killing Rommel" it was a "ripping yarn" to use the old parlance. Although a little unrealistic.




might be worth doing this with Burning Empires...

Here you go, tons of pics:

http://beute.narod.ru/Beutepanzer/us/M3_stuart/m3-5-stuart.htm