The Hummel (‘Bumble Bee’) was a self-propelled artillery unit based on the Geschutzwagen III/IV chassis, armed with a 150 mm howitzer. It was used by the German Wehrmacht in World War II from late 1942 until the end of the war.

Development

The Hummel was designed in 1942 out of a need for mobile artillery support for the tank forces, the lack of which had first been felt during Operation Barbarossa. There were some self propelled artillery vehicles already in service with the Wehrmacht at the time, but most were of limited value.

The first option looked at was to mount a 105 mm leFH17 howitzer on a Panzer III chassis, but this was rejected in favour of the same howitzer on a panzer IV chassis. One prototype was built of this design.

This design was again rejected, this time in favour of a more powerful solution: mounting the 150 mm sFH 18 L/30 howitzer on the specially designed Geschutzwagen III/IV, which took elements of both the panzer III and panzer IV chassis. The same chassis was also used for the Nashorn tank destroyer.

The Hummel had an open topped lightly armoured fighting compartment at the back of the vehicle, which housed both the howitzer and the crew. The engine was moved to the centre of the vehicle to make room for this compartment. Late model Hummels had a sligthly redesigned driver compartment and frontal superstructure, to offer more room to the radio operator and driver.

714 Hummels were built to the end of the war, with another 150 built as ammunition carrier.

Combat history

The Hummel first participated in large scale combat with the battle of Kursk, when some 100 Hummels were in service. They served in Panzerartillerie Abteilungen of the panzer divisions, forming separate heavy self propelled artillery batteries, each with 6 Hummels and one ammunition carrier.

Variants

Because the basic Hummel could only carry a limited amount of ammunition, the Munitionstrager Hummel (ammunition carrier Hummel) was developed. This was basically a standard production Hummel with the howitzer taken out, a 10 mm armour plate covering the gun mount and with racks fitted to hold the ammunition. When necessary, these could still be fitted with the 150 mm howitzer of the normal Hummel; this could even be done as a field conversion.

External links

• Achtung Panzer! profile of the Hummel (http://www.achtungpanzer.com/humm.htm)
• World War II Vehicles (http://www.wwiivehicles.com/html/germany/hummel.html)