The Western Allies did occasionally fight with German weapons in their hands, though it was far less common than the enthusiastic battlefield trophy hunting might suggest. When Allied soldiers picked up enemy guns on the battlefield and used them on their own initiative, that was one thing. The organized distribution of captured Axis equipment, from pistols to tanks to aircraft, was another matter entirely, and it happened more often than most people realize. Many infantrymen carried captured weapons as personal backups or souvenirs.
In the Italian campaign, my maternal grandfather was issued a Thompson submachine gun as his standard weapon, but he also carried a Beretta semi-automatic pistol he had taken from an Italian officer. As far as I know, he never fired it in anger. There was good reason why soldiers were generally discouraged from using captured firearms in combat. The sound of a German MP 40 was distinctly different from the weapons carried by Allied troops, and in the chaos of battle, that difference could get a man shot by his own side.
Training films drilled soldiers on recognizing enemy weapon sounds, warning them that the German 9mm machine pistol, nicknamed the Schmeisser, had a rate of fire similar to the American Thompson but that the Thompson was more accurate in comparison. The threat of friendly fire made most men think twice before relying on a captured gun. Still, some units went further and used German small arms in a deliberate, organized way. The British special forces, including the SAS, were equipped with captured MP 40s for operations behind enemy lines.
The folding stock made the weapon far more practical for parachute drops than the heavier Thompson, and ammunition could be obtained from resistance networks in occupied Europe without raising suspicion. The Special Operations Executive and the American OSS issued German Walther PP and PPK pistols to agents going undercover. These compact weapons were easy to conceal, and again, ammunition was simple to source through the resistance. The Luger was also adapted for covert assassination work.
SOE armorers prepared a batch of modified Luger pistols, one of which I examined at the Combined Military Services Museum at Maldon in Essex. These silenced weapons were intended for operations inside Germany, including a planned attempt on Hitler’s life. The museum holds a vast collection of covert-use weapons, and it is well worth a look. Later, the famous Welrod assassination pistol was deliberately chambered in 9mm Parabellum so that agents could carry out killings using captured German ammunition, which would be far easier to come by behind enemy lines.
Japanese equipment saw much less organized use by the Allies. Aside from battlefield souvenirs, some US scouts and snipers in the Pacific were issued Japanese Type 97 and Type 99 sniper rifles. These were genuinely excellent weapons, notable for their incredibly low muzzle flash and smokeless propellant, which made a sniper far harder to spot. Quite a few of these rifles were used officially by American snipers throughout the Pacific War.
Japanese machine guns were also sometimes turned against their former owners by US troops, but those were basically battlefield pickups, discarded as soon as the ammunition ran out. The Japanese arsenal was generally regarded as far inferior to American and British equipment, with the exception of those sniper rifles, so no widespread issuance of captured Japanese weapons ever took place. There were moments when necessity forced the Allies to embrace captured equipment in a more formal manner. During Operation Market Garden in September 1944, the US 82nd Airborne Division found itself desperately short of heavy anti-tank weapons.
The bazooka was not plentiful enough during the parachute operation, and its rocket was not fully effective against the heavier German tanks and assault guns that faced the paratroopers. The ammunition situation was dire. Very little came in with the initial drops, and subsequent supply drops were often scattered widely, with priority given to small arms ammunition, food, and medical supplies. Gliders were loaded with the same priority items.
The planners had apparently miscalculated, believing that the British, American, and Polish paratroopers landing to seize bridges in the Netherlands would not have to face much German armor. They also expected the ground forces of British 30 Corps to advance rapidly and relieve the airborne troops with their own tanks and anti-tank guns. In the event, the paratroopers met seasoned German troops and armor. Fortunately, the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment overran a German supply depot near Nijmegen stacked full of panzerfausts.
These single-shot, shaped-charge weapons packed a much bigger punch than the American bazooka, and many of the men were already familiar with them from service in Sicily and Normandy. Crates of panzerfausts were distributed throughout the 82nd Airborne and used to devastating effect. Major General James Gavin, the division commander, later wrote that the panzerfaust was the best anti-tank weapon they had for the remainder of the war. Crates of these weapons remained in divisional stores and were issued in later combat operations.
As the Allies advanced across Western Europe in late 1944 and into early 1945, their supply lines stretched to the breaking point. Most supplies still came over the Normandy beaches, trucked forward by the complicated Red Ball Express, while captured ports had generally been badly damaged by the Germans. Antwerp had been taken intact, but the Scheldt estuary remained in German hands, requiring costly British and Canadian operations to clear before supply ships could dock. Fuel and ammunition shortages soon appeared, and the Allied armies were forced to halt and dig in on the German frontier.
That pause gave the Germans a valuable breathing space to reorganize and launch their counteroffensive in the Ardennes in mid-December 1944. During the advance, the Allies had overrun numerous German artillery batteries and supply depots, many of the weapons in perfect working order. Facing a severe shortage of shells for their own guns, the Allies made the decision to re-equip some artillery units with captured German weapons, which had plentiful ammunition available. The US Army re-equipped two field artillery battalions with the German 10.
5 cm leFH 18 field gun, backed by large stocks of captured ammunition. The 244th Field Artillery Battalion was re-equipped with the feared German 88mm anti-tank gun and used it in an indirect fire role. The 733rd Field Artillery Battalion also employed captured 88s. The British joined in as well, turning the Germans’ own guns back against them.
The most remarkable example of the Allies reusing captured German vehicles came from the US 83rd Infantry Division, nicknamed the Ragtag Circus and later the 83rd Panzer Division for its extensive use of captured armor. Many Allied units used the odd German tank or vehicle as the occasion demanded. The Fourth Coldstream Guards captured and operated a German Panther tank during the fighting in the Netherlands in late 1944, naming it Cuckoo, though it was later abandoned for lack of spare parts. The 83rd Infantry Division, however, decided to go much further, using German vehicles en masse and building up a substantial stockpile of spare parts to keep them running.
The range of vehicles they pressed into service was impressive. A number of StuG III assault guns were resprayed olive drab and painted with Allied white stars, alongside German SdKfz 251 armored half-tracks and various German soft-skin trucks. The division headquarters used not only US Jeeps and trucks but also German Kubelwagen field cars and BMW and Zündapp motorcycles. They even commandeered civilian buses and repainted them.
Most astonishing of all, they added an air unit in the form of a captured German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, repainted olive drab, marked with Allied stars, and bearing the 83rd Infantry Division’s name on the underside of its wings. In North Africa, both sides pressed captured armor into service, largely because of the difficulty of resupply in the desert and the value of every working vehicle. The early British campaign against the Italians who had invaded Egypt resulted in a series of decisive defeats for the numerically superior Italian force, during which the British captured an astounding 365 Italian tanks. Of those, 60 were medium types, and they were used to equip the 6th Royal Tank Regiment as it waited for more modern British tanks to arrive.
The Italian tanks were overhauled and fitted with British radios, though they were deeply unpopular with their crews due to poor mechanical reliability and thin armor. Three squadrons of the regiment were equipped with the 60 Italian M13/40 medium tanks. The cavalry unit of the 6th Australian Infantry Division also captured and pressed Italian tanks into service. The Australian tank crews painted white kangaroos on the hulls and turrets to aid identification in battle.
They used two types, the M11/39 medium armed with a 37mm gun and the slightly heavier M13/40 with a 47mm main gun. Eleven of these Italian tanks were used effectively by the Australian cavalry for reconnaissance and direct fire missions in support of the infantry, until they were replaced by Allied types when those became available. The Free French Army, equipped by the British and Americans and fighting across France and into Germany in 1944 to 45, was generally well supplied with armor but also occasionally used captured German vehicles to supplement its strength. One French unit was fully equipped with abandoned German tanks and used to support the siege of the German-occupied port of Saint-Nazaire, which remained well behind the Allied front line.
This important U-boat base held out until the end of the war. The French unit operating there fielded a Tiger I, a Panther, eleven Panzer IVs, and two StuG III assault guns. After the war, the French Army continued to use 49 Panther tanks until a new French design entered service in the 1950s. When considering captured aircraft, a distinction must be made between planes reused for practical purposes and those taken home for scientific examination and testing.
The practical reuse of captured German aircraft was more widespread than one might think. During the desert campaign, the Royal Australian Air Force captured an intact Junkers Ju 52/3M transport aircraft at El Gazala in Libya. It was adopted by Number 450 Squadron as a general runabout, repainted in Allied colors, and named the Libyan Clipper. Every week, the Ju 52 made two or three round trips between Cairo and the front line in Libya, moving supplies, ferrying pilots going on leave, and carrying food.
Being Australians, one of its most important duties was bringing up beer. There was nothing better than a cold one when stuck in a trench in the desert, and the aircraft became a tremendous morale booster for the troops. Another exceptionally popular German plane pressed into Allied service was the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, a short takeoff and landing communications aircraft. The British captured up to 145 of these excellent planes.
Sixty-four were handed to the French as war reparations, but the remainder stayed in RAF service and became the personal transports of Allied leaders. Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery had his own Storch in North Africa and later in Northwest Europe. Air Vice-Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst flew Rommel’s personal Storch, captured in North Africa, and even used it to take Prime Minister Winston Churchill on a flight over Allied lines in Normandy in 1944. The South African Air Force also operated a number of captured Ju 52s from the desert campaign, and several SAAF fighter squadrons, including Numbers 1, 4, and 5, adopted captured Messerschmitt Bf 109F fighters as squadron hacks, utility and liaison planes flown in South African Air Force colors.
These examples show that the reuse of captured Axis equipment by the Allies was far more than a casual matter of battlefield trophies. It was a practical, sometimes necessary, and occasionally ingenious response to the realities of war, born of supply shortages and the simple value of serviceable weapons. From panzerfausts in the hands of American paratroopers to Australian beer runs in a captured German transport, the tools of the enemy found new purpose in the hands of those who had conquered them.