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SKODA RSO The various wheeled and semi-tracked tactical military vehicles which the German government and industry had designed and produced during the '30s were the cream of contemporary automotive engineering. For the takeover methods and the blitzkrieg tactics of lightning war and a quick victory the elaborate and sophisticated motor vehicles which the Wehrmacht's "elite divisions" used when they overran their neighbouring countries in 1938 - 40 were ideal. They also came out extremely well in parades, propaganda films and the like, but were far less suitable for the reality of the Eastern Front when the fighting there dragged on and got stuck in the winter of 1941/42. The extra hard work under arduous sub-zero temperatures, combined with maintenance problems, took its toll. Additional difficulties stemmed from the chronic shortage of motor vehicles, both on the Eastern Front and elsewhere. Artillery tractors in particular became scarce, partly because of the large amount of prime materials required, not to mention the man-hours needed for their elaborate manufacture. Supply just could not keep up with demand. There was also an acute shortage of horses for the horsedrawn equipment in infantry units. The transport shortage was solved to some extent by the pressing into service of captured enemy equipment, altough on the other hand this only added to the maintenance and repair problems. Moreover, few vehicles were able to cope adequately with the atrocious going and severe temperatures encountered in Russia. Both the duration of the conflict and the vaste distances into enemy territory had been grossly underrated and these miscalculations were to cost dearly. It was General von Schell who attempted to reorganize soft-skin vehicle production in Germany. His "Schell Programm" reduced the extensive overall variety of models per category - from motorcycles to trucks - to an acceptable minimum, abandoning the less suitable types and concentrating on mass-production of the best. Typical examples of this simplification scheme were the Volkswagen Kübelwagen, the 1.5-ton Steyr 1500(A) range and the 3-ton Opel "Blitz" trucks But it was Hitler himself who in November 1941 stated that there was no point in keeping in production at high expense semi-tracked artillery prime movers which would in theory last for 120 years when everybody knew that they could hardly survive more than two years of actual combat life. A new generation of much simplified tractors would have to be devised. Sophistication and superfluous detail had to be abandoned forthwith, if only to preserve high-grade materials - a very valid point indeed. Specially for the Eastern Front, the Heereswaffenamt Wa.Prüf. 6 (the appropriate Ministry department) arranged with Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG in annexed Austria for the design and manufacture of two new types of artillery tractors: the Radschlepper Ost (wheeled tractor, East) and the Raupenschlepper Ost (tracked tractor, East). For the former requirement the manufacturers came up, in January 1942, with a rather ungainly modification of the standardized Steyr 1500A 1.5-ton 4x4 truck. It featured rigid axles with spoked wheels, entirely of steel and with a diameter of 1.5 metres (nearly 5 feet). The full-track tractor wich they designed was the well-known RSO/01 which, unlike the wheeled one, soon entered quantity production in their own factories as well as those of Auto Union/Wanderer, Gräf & Stift and KHD/Magirus (RSO/03). In addition to the standard model, there was a multiplicity of derivatives, most of which remained in the experimental stage. The big-wheel was never heard of again. For the wheeled tractor project, the HWA (Heereswaffenamt) had approached Dr.-Ing. h.c. Ferdinand Porsche KG at Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, the well-known automotive design firm, for an alternative proposal. Ferdinand Porsche (1875 - 1951) was a genius and responsible for a large variety of vehicle designs, ranging from the little KdF "people's car" (Volkswagen, including "Kübel" and amphibious "Schwimmer") to battle tanks. Hitler had in April 1942 made it known that for the new tractor requirement he wanted a tall, four-wheeled, low-speed but powerful and straightforward vehicle, not unlike the Austrian Zugmaschinen of WW1 and Porsche was the obvious choice because he had been largely responsible for such machine as the Austro-Daimler M12 and M16 of that period. At Porsche's bureau, the order from the HWA was executed under Design No. 175 (becoming Type 175) and the Skoda engineering works in Plzen (Pilsen), Czechoslovakia, were charged with the production of prototypes. Here was another parallel with the WW1 tractors: although bearing the Austro-Daimler name, these had in fact been built by Skoda, who at the time were associated with the Austrian firm. Most of the artillery pieces they pulled were also Skoda manufacture. Meanwhile, since time was pressing (Hitler wanted the tractors issued to the troops for the forthcoming winter of 1942/43), yet another alternative solution was studied. Latil of Suresnes, Seine, in occupied France and now working for the Wehrmacht under the control and supervision of Daimler- Benz AG, had for many years been supplying heavy four-wheel drive artillery tractors for the French Army. Known as the TAR-type, these had been used in large numbers in the Great War and had been further developed during the '20s and '30s (TAR3, 4, 5, TARH1, 2). Many TARH tractors had been captured by the Wehrmacht in 1939/40 and founds to be of excellent quality. The Germans even employed them, as Latil Schw. Radschlepper (f). The HWA in 1942 ordered Latil to modify their TARH design to meet Hitler's requirements, by the use of large metal wheels, using no rubber, and to get it ready for quantity production, with a thousand requires before the end of the year and a monthly delivery of a thousand units thereafter. The large wheels were a feature Hitler had great belief in; he probably recalled the performance of the Austro-Daimlers in the 1914-18 conflict, when the Austrians - his compatriots - had used relatively large numbers of them and even the Kaiser had borrowed some, complete with Skoda-built 30.5-cm mortars, in the siege of Belgian forts. Unlike Porsche, Hitler believed them to be just the job for the wretched "roads" in Russia which were just wide tracks of deep mud in which his supposedly mobile armies mired. But how wrong he was! The Ostradschlepper prototypes were tested and while they performed reasonably well in certain types of terrain, they were next to useless in snow, and particularly on icy surfaces and hard snow on metalled roads. Porsche, who had been in Russia and knew the conditions, had formed his own judgment but strangely enough Hitler and his associates never asked for his opinion. Porsche was asked to design the RSO, using as little of the scarce raw materials available as possible (no copper, no rubber for tyres) and carried it out obligingly, without questioning, which was probably just as well. The Reich's top civil servants had a working system all of their own, with strife and financial gain involved, and Porsche knew it was wiser not to interfere with them and their policies. One consequence of this system was that projects like the RSO tended to drag on, without proper supervision, taking too long and failing in the end. Porsche had worked hard and the first RSO prototypes were read for trials on October 1, 1942, barely seven months after the original orders had been given. In late October the vehicles were put through their paces at the Army's Berka test facilities near Eisenach and on November 20, Albert Speer, the Minister of War Production, witnessed a demonstration. Hitler himself first watched the Skoda and the Latil perform on January 4, 1943, in the vicinity of his headquarters in East Prussia. He was not impressed and as a result he decreed that the production order for a so-called O-series of 200 units which already been given to Skoda (i.e. AG Vorm. Skodawerke, as it was called during the war) was to be halved. Several improvements were made during these months of tests. The petrol consumption was 2 litres per kilometre, not excessive perhaps for this type of machine (and 10% less than that of the Latil), but petrol was extremely scarce and when Porsche applied to the HWA for another 4000 litres for the continuation of the tests, he was informed in writing that the request would be considered. The HWA was clearly unhappy with the RSO and in August declared that no more petrol was forthcoming because the RSO was a dead duck; Porsche was not amused. Unlike Hitler, he had never really believed that a vehicle like the Radschlepper Ost was the solution to the original problem but he had designed it because he was a designer, not a politician, and had been asked to design it. He reckoned that there were enough competent civil servants and military top brass to decide whether a requirement was valid or not and to what extent. Although Porsche had not entirely given up arguing, he knew that he was backed by Hitler, who, as Führer, had the autority to overrule both the HWA and Speer's ministry. This was often necessary in order to get something done but usually led to inter- departmental conflicts. Thus, early in 1943, the initial order for RSOs was curtailed and later that year the project terminated altogheter. Time had marched on and the Russian Front requirement for a special tractor was no more.... The writer vividly remember that in the winter of 1944/45 a column of at least a dozen of Skoda RSOs arrived in his home town in occupied Holland.