During World War II, the Western Allies occasionally made organized use of captured Axis weapons, equipment, and vehicles, turning them against their former owners. This practice went well beyond individual soldiers picking up trophies on the battlefield.
Battlefield pickups were common but discouraged. Allied troops were taught to identify weapons by their distinctive sounds, and carrying an enemy weapon could lead to friendly fire incidents. The German MP 40 was a favorite trophy, but its sound differed sharply from Allied submachine guns such as the Thompson.
Organized use of enemy small arms was rarer but did occur. The British armed certain special forces units with captured German MP 40s, including the SAS, which valued the weapon's folding stock and lighter weight for parachute operations. Captured German ammunition could be sourced through resistance networks.
Both the British Special Operations Executive and its American counterpart, the Office of Strategic Services, issued German Walther PP and especially PPK pistols to agents operating undercover in occupied Europe. Their compact profiles made them ideal for concealment, and ammunition could again be obtained from resistance groups.
The Luger was also adapted as a silent killing weapon. SOE armorers modified Luger pistols for a planned assassination attempt on Hitler and for other covert operations inside Germany. The Welrod assassination pistol was later deliberately chambered in 9 by 19 millimeter Parabellum so agents could use captured German ammunition behind the lines.
Japanese equipment saw far less Allied use. Apart from souvenirs, some US scouts and snipers were officially equipped with Japanese Type 97 or Type 99 sniper rifles, which were praised for their low muzzle flash and smokeless propellant. Japanese machine guns were sometimes turned on their former owners, but these were battlefield pickups discarded once ammunition ran out.
During Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands in September 1944, the US 82nd Airborne Division faced a shortage of heavy anti-tank weapons. The US bazooka was not plentiful and its rocket was not fully effective against heavier German tanks and assault guns.
The shortage stemmed partly from a planning miscalculation. Planners had not expected the airborne troops to face much German armor, and the ground element, British 30 Corps, was expected to relieve them quickly. In the event, the paratroopers met seasoned German troops and armor.
The 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment overran a German supply depot near Nijmegen stacked with panzerfausts, the single-shot German shaped-charge weapon that packed a much bigger punch than the bazooka. Crates were distributed to the 82nd Airborne, and many men already knew the weapon from service in Sicily and Normandy.
Major General James Gavin, commander of the 82nd Airborne, wrote that the panzerfaust was "the best anti-tank weapon we had for the remainder of the war." Crates of the weapons remained in divisional stores for later combat operations.
In late 1944 and early 1945, advancing Allied armies in Western Europe outran their supply lines. Most supplies still came over the Normandy beaches and moved forward by the Red Ball Express, while captured ports had mostly been damaged by the Germans. Antwerp was captured intact, but the Scheldt estuary remained in German hands until costly British and Canadian operations cleared it.
Fuel and ammunition shortages forced the Allied armies to halt and dig in on the German frontier, giving the Germans time to reorganize and launch the Ardennes counteroffensive in mid-December 1944. Because artillery shells for British and US guns were scarce, some units were re-equipped with captured German weapons that had plentiful ammunition.
The US Army re-equipped two field artillery battalions with German 10.5 centimeter leFH 18 field guns. The 244th Field Artillery Battalion received the feared German 88 millimeter anti-tank gun for indirect fire, and the 733rd Field Artillery Battalion also used captured 88s. British units likewise turned captured German guns against their former owners.
The US 83rd Infantry Division offered one of the most extensive examples of reusing captured German vehicles. Nicknamed the Ragtag Circus and the 83rd Panzer Division, it used German armor en masse and built up spare parts to keep the vehicles running.
The division fielded StuG III assault guns and SdKfz 251 half-tracks resprayed olive drab and marked with the Allied white star, along with German soft-skin trucks. Its headquarters used US Jeeps and trucks alongside German Kubelwagen field cars and BMW and Zundapp motorcycles, and it even commandeered and repainted civilian buses.
The division also added an air unit: a captured Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter repainted olive drab, marked with Allied stars, and bearing "83rd Infantry Division" on the underside of its wings. Other units used the odd German vehicle, such as the Fourth Coldstream Guards, which captured and used a Panther tank in the Netherlands in late 1944, naming it Cuckoo before abandoning it for lack of spares.
In North Africa, both sides pressed captured armor into service because of its value in the desert and the difficulty of resupply. The early British campaign against the Italians produced an astounding 365 captured Italian tanks, 60 of them medium types, which equipped the 6th Royal Tank Regiment while it waited for more modern British tanks.
The Italian tanks were overhauled and fitted with British radios, but proved unpopular due to poor mechanical reliability and thin armor. Three squadrons of the 6th Royal Tank Regiment used the 60 Italian M13/40 medium tanks.
The cavalry unit of the 6th Australian Infantry Division also captured and used Italian tanks, painting white kangaroos on hulls and turrets for identification. It fielded the M11/39 medium with a 37 millimeter gun and the heavier M13/40 with a 47 millimeter main gun, using 11 tanks for reconnaissance and direct fire support until Allied types replaced them.
The British and US-equipped Free French Army that fought across France and into Germany in 1944 and 1945 was well supplied with armor but occasionally used captured German vehicles. One French unit was fully equipped with abandoned German tanks to support the siege of the German-held port of Saint-Nazaire, an important U-boat base that held out until the end of the war. That unit had a Tiger 1, a Panther, 11 Panzer 4s, and two StuG III assault guns. After the war, the French Army used 49 Panther tanks until a new French design entered service in the 1950s.
Aircraft captured and reused for practical purposes were distinct from those taken home for scientific examination and testing. During the North African desert campaign, the Royal Australian Air Force captured an intact Junkers Ju 52 3M transport at El Gazala in Libya. Number 450 Squadron adopted it as a runabout, repainted it in Allied colors, and named it Libyan Clipper.
The Ju 52 made two to three round trips each week between Cairo and the front line in Libya, carrying supplies, ferrying pilots on leave, and bringing up food. For the Australians, one of its most important jobs was bringing beer, and the aircraft proved a tremendous morale booster.
Another German plane pressed into Allied service in large numbers was the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, a short takeoff and landing communication aircraft. The British captured up to 145 of them; 64 were handed to the French as war reparations, while the remainder in RAF service became personal aircraft for Allied leaders.
Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery had a personal Storch in North Africa and then Northwest Europe. Air Vice-Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst had Rommel's personal Storch, captured in North Africa, and used it to take Prime Minister Winston Churchill for a flight over Allied lines in Normandy in 1944.
The South African Air Force also operated captured Junkers 52s from the desert campaign. Several SAAF fighter squadrons, including numbers 1, 4, and 5, adopted captured Messerschmitt Bf 109 F fighters as squadron hacks for utility and liaison duties, flying in South African Air Force colors.
These examples show that the organized reuse of captured Axis equipment by Allied forces, though rare, stretched from small arms and covert pistols to artillery, tanks, and aircraft.