Flakpanzer IV

The Flakpanzer IV was a family of German self-propelled anti-aircraft vehicles built on the hull of the Panzer IV medium tank during the later years of the Second World War. As Allied air power increased its pressure on German forces, the German Army needed mobile air defence that could keep pace with columns on the road. The first interim answer, the Mobelwagen, carried a single 37mm FlaK 43 autocannon behind a boxy armoured superstructure. The Wirbelwind followed in 1944, with four 20mm cannon in an open nine-sided turret, a crew of five and the Panzer IV's Maybach engine and leaf-spring suspension. Its design came from an officer named Karl Krause and was approved at the top of the German command, and its builder was Ostbauwerke at Sagan in Silesia. Roughly one hundred were completed, though no single source gives a precise figure. The 20mm shell proved limited as Allied tactics adapted, so the Ostwind returned to a 37mm gun in a simpler six-sided turret. The guns could also be turned on light-armoured vehicles and troops.