Post
by gebhk » 09 Sep 2022 12:03
Hi Olek
It's not at all true that no SP small-calibre AA weapon was adopted. The Polski Fiat 508/518 MG carrier was precisely such a weapon. The majority of these cars served with light AA batteries, with one vehicle allocated to each platoon which in practice means to every 40mm Bofors gun. Its role was to provide defence against very low flying aircraft and, secondarily, against ground attack. It seems likely that several were also employed by the motorised cavalry brigades as HQ protection vehicles, where again, their dual potential was useful. I have not come across the oficial name of this vehicle and this complicates searches. It is one of a range of vehicle types built on the PZInz 302 chassis and, confusingly, the whole vehicle is often and incorrectly called samochod (or ciagnik) PZInz 302. The car itself was officially called Polski Fiat 508/518, in this case probably something like "Samochod Polski Fiat 508/518 pod ckm na podwoziu PZInz 302". To confuse matters further, the vehicle also often rejoiced and rejoices in the colloquial term 'taczanka motorowa'. Yet another element of the confusion is that there are several well-known photographs of a very early prototype which differed very significantly from the production version.
A search using the terms Polski Fiat 508/501 (or 508/18) ckm or PZInz 302 ckm should yield a fair number of photographs and there is a section of Pathe film showing several of these vehicles. Given your location, I presume you speak Polish and, if so, I would recommend the relevant Wielki Leksykon Uzbrojenia monographs: vol 110 and special edition Vol 3/2018 (Polski Fiat 508/518/302T i wyposazenie).
Your first photograph is some sort of experimental contraption that, I am virtually certain, never made it as a standard weapon. The second, while clearly involving folk messing around for the benefit of the photographer, shows a standard arm-and-socket arrangement in the left lower corner of the picture. All medium machine guns had a set of accessories to convert their tripod into an AA mount. Similarly, every platoon in the infantry and cavalry had a tripod to convert one of its BARs to an improvised AA weapon. These tripods however were designed to operate from the gound and were virtually useless aboard, say, a truck. For this reason trucks, cars and even horse-drawn vehicles were frequently equipped with a socket that took the standard AA mast for machine guns, thus providing a reasonably stable platform for the weapon. To be clear, this did not make the truck or other vehicle a self propelled AA weapon. It was simply, much as the AA fiiting on the turret of a tank, a means of providing limited self-defence if a unit equipped with machine guns was surprised by enemy aircraft, say on the march.
