Panzer Grenadiere: Motorized or Armored Infantry Companies?

[Cadmos]

Hello!

Does someone know what symbols refer to motorized infantry and what to armored infantry (with APCs)?

This source says, that the "rectangle with two wheels" refers to armored (gepanzert) infantry companies. It is the last symbol at the bottom:

https://wwii.germandocsinrussia.org/de/ ... ect/zoom/4

But here it says that this means motorized infantry companies:

http://www.niehorster.org/011_germany/s ... ls_41.html

I attach the OOB of the 23rd Tank Division as an example. So the question is: are these motorized or armored infantry companies ?

Thank you very much!

[Cadmos]

Here is another example, the 17th Tank Division. It says "Armored Infantry", but the symbols indicate "motorized"?

[Tom Peters]

There are others who are better at this than I am, but I interpret those highlighted units as motorized. Mech/APC would have an oval under one side of the btl.

Most mobile units were motorized and few were in APC.

Mad Dog

[johnwilliamhunter]

Mad Dog is correct, all of the infantry units in the above kriegsgliederung are motorized. The document linked from germandocsinrussia is confusing, note that the 5th symbol down shows the correct gep. symbol. the oval under one side, looks like a half track. The last symbol looks to have been pasted there? it says "gep." but it shows a motorized symbol. The next page in the series, the 5th symbol down shows an armored MG company with the appropriate symbol.

[Cadmos]

Thank you both for the clarification!

The document linked from germandocsinrussia is confusing, note that the 5th symbol down shows the correct gep. symbol. the oval under one side, looks like a half track. The last symbol looks to have been pasted there? it says "gep." but it shows a motorized symbol.

Yes, I also noticed that the symbol has been pasted in - but this was also the normal procedure in our armed forces. If there were small errors in regulations, then you would get some pages with corrections, rather than a new corrected regulation print. These had to be pasted onto the errors in the regulation.

BTW: It gets even more confusing when one starts to compare the different "tactical symbol regulations" of the German Army with different release dates. Since they seems to have changed some symbols over time...

[johnwilliamhunter]

BTW: It gets even more confusing when one starts to compare the different "tactical symbol regulations" of the German Army with different release dates. Since they seems to have changed some symbols over time...

Yes they did change over time, my experience is with the late war so sometimes I'm lost looking at early war symbols, there are also cases where certain units done things their own way.

[Russ3Z]

Here is another example, the 17th Tank Division. It says "Armored Infantry", but the symbols indicate "motorized"?

The "Armored Infantry" in this case only refers to the company highlighted in green, in this case a single (armored) infantry company in the 1st btn of the 40th regiment (farthest right in the picture).

Otherwise, in the time period you're looking at, "armored units" (this could include units whose main assets were tanks, armored half-tracks, or armored cars) would usually be denoted by a left-slanted rectangle. A good example showing the difference is here:

http://www.niehorster.org/011_germany/4 ... pz-01.html

In this case, notice the Pioneer battalion, with 2x motorized light combat engineer companies and 1x armored combat engineer company.

I think it wasn't until sometime into 1942 that the oval symbol plus circle underneath to denote half-tracks was put into widespread use.

[Cadmos]

Thank you for the explanations! I came upon another unclear detail in such "Kriegsgliederungen", it is a detail not mentioned in the regulations: Sometimes there are bars (with numbers like 72, 88, 93, etc.) to the right of regiments or battalions. Like seen here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rw8nd1 ... share_link

Does this maybe mean the current personnel number in % ? For example that Bn. NARWA hat a personnel number of 78% from prescribed, full strength on 1st July 1943 in the above document?

Thank you!