M1 Garand Picture of the Day

[CapnJohn]

Soldiers of the 100th Infantry Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, an all Japanese American unit, in a German Schwimmwagen captured during the battle for Leghorn, Italy Date: 12 July 1944

Information

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[us019255]

The neat little vehicle, which almost looks like an ATV, is new to me. What is it??

[CapnJohn]

The VW Type 128 and 166 Schwimmwagen (literally Floating / Swimming Car) were amphibious all-wheel-drive off-roaders, used extensively by the German Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS during the Second World War.
The Type 166 is the most mass-produced amphibious car in history, and arguably the most capable light military wheeled off-roader in World War II.
Development
Volkswagen Schwimmwagens used the engine and mechanicals of the VW Type 86 four-wheel drive prototype of the Kübelwagen and the Type 87 four-wheel drive 'Kübel/Beetle' Command Car, which in turn were based on the platform of the civilian Volkswagen Beetle. However, Erwin Komenda, Ferdinand Porsche's first car body designer, was forced to develop an all new unitized bodytub structure, since the utterly flat floorpan chassis of the existing VW vehicles was totally unsuited to smooth movement through water. Komenda patented his ideas for the swimming car at the German Patent office.

The earliest Type 128 prototype was based on the full-length Kübelwagen chassis with a 240 cm (7.9 ft) wheelbase. Pre-production units of the 128, fitted with custom welded bodytubs, demonstrated that this construction was too weak for tough off-roading, had insufficient torsional rigidity, and easily suffered hull-ruptures at the front cross-member, as well as in the wheel-wells. This was obviously unacceptable for an amphibious vehicle. The large-scale production models (Type 166) were therefore made smaller, and had a wheel-base of only 200 cm (6.6 ft).

VW Schwimmwagens were both produced by the Volkswagen factory at Fallersleben / Wolfsburg, as well as by Porsche's facilities in Stuttgart; with the bodies (or rather hulls) produced by Ambi Budd in Berlin. From 1941 through 1944 a total of 15,584 Type 166 Schwimmwagen cars were produced; 14,276 at Fallersleben and 1,308 by Porsche. Only 133 are known to remain today, and only 13 have survived without restoration work.[1] Given these numbers, the VW 166 is the most mass-produced amphibious car in history.

courtesy WikiPedia