Little-known Tanks of The Second World War: The Panzer I Command Tank

The German concept of blitzkrieg (lightening war) was to break through the enemy front line with an overwhelming armoured attack and penetrate deep behind his lines, over-running the support and supply routes of the enemy and isolating large numbers of his troops in pockets at the old front, to be mopped up by following units. With entire panzer (tank) divisions motoring through the gaps, the command and support services of a panzer division had to be mobile. Commanders were also expected to get involved at key points, so some sort of command tank to operate from was essential, basically a mini headquarters in a tank.

To meet this need the Germans developed, before the start of the war, a command version of their standard light tank, the Panzer I. This was basically an armoured box on a Panzer I chassis, with room for a commander and his chief of staff, a higher powered radio than normal, and a small map table. The vehicle was designated the SdKfz 265 Panzerbefehlswagen, where Panzerbefehlswagen is literally ‘armoured command vehicle’ and SdKfz stands for the tongue twister Sonderkraftfahrzeug or ‘special purpose vehicle’. Sometimes one wonders how the German army even got going with such lengthy designations!

Figure 1: Panzer I command tank SdKfz 265 Panzerbefehlswagen

The vehicle wasn’t just intended for divisional or brigade headquarters, but right down to company headquarter level, at least in panzer units. It was also issued to the headquarters of certain other units within a panzer division. But it was soon recognised as being rather cramped for even a small forward headquarters and larger command tanks based on other tank chassis were developed. It also suffered from thin armour (despite being upgraded between the campaign against Poland in 1939 and the invasion of France in 1940) and being easily recognisable and distinguishable from the tanks it was commanding (making it a prime target). A further problem was that the machine gun fitted for self defence was very badly positioned and was almost unusable from inside the vehicle. Instead ports were provided to fire pistols through, a very unsatisfactory means of defence.

So even by the invasion of France in May 1940 the SdKfz 265 Panzerbefehlswagen was being removed from service as a command tank and being converted to use in other roles that needed internal space, such as an armoured ambulance (or Sanitatskraftwagen). Nevertheless, 96 were still in use for the invasion of France.

In summary, the SdKfz 265 Panzerbefehlswagen was a distinctive vehicle that for the first few campaigns of the German Army in the Second World War gave useful service as a command vehicle, but which soon became obsolete.

Other tank articles by the same author:

Little-Known Tanks of the Second World War: British Matilda I

http://socyberty.com/history/little-known-tanks-of-the-second-world-war-the-matilda-mark-i/

Little-Known Tanks of the Second World War: British Churchill AVRE combat engineer tank

http://socyberty.com/military/little-known-tanks-of-the-second-world-war-the-british-churchill-avre/

Little-Known Tanks of the Second World War: French B1 bis heavy tank

http://socyberty.com/history/little-known-tanks-of-the-second-world-war-the-french-char-b1-bis/

Little-Known Tanks of the Second World War: French FT17

http://socyberty.com/history/little-known-tanks-of-the-second-world-war-the-renault-ft-17/

Little-Known Tanks of the Second World War: French Renault UE tracked supply vehicle

http://socyberty.com/history/little-known-tanks-of-the-second-world-war-the-french-renault-ue-chenillette/

TankFest 2010 – a festival of tanks at the Bovington Tank Museum, UK

http://socyberty.com/history/tankfest-2010-at-bovington-tank-museum-dorest-uk/