Schwimmwagen - VW Type 128 and 166 - Kübelwagen - Waffen SS Reconnaissance

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The footage in the introduction shows part of a training exercise of a Waffen SS unit from June of 1943. The soldiers are training with the Volkswagen Typ 166, more commonly know as the Schwimmwagen. Today we’ll look at this amphibious vehicle and talk about its specifications. We’ll take a look more training footage related to the vehicles operation and maintenance. we’ll see more of that training exercise and end up with some beautiful footage from the Ardennes in 1945 which contains the Schwimmwagen.

The Schwimmwagen was well engineered and was the most widely produced amphibious vehicle in history. Along with its ability to travel over water like a boat, it was just as effective as its brother the Kubel wagen when traveling over land.

An example of its good design is the placement of the spare tire on front of the hood. When on the water, the spare tire breaks large waves keeping them from splashing up over the windshield.

To be honest the Schwimmwagen wasn’t used often in the water because it had some disadvantages. In a swallow river that a normal vehicle could drive through the Schwimmwagen would float, basically because that’s what it was made to do. In this case the driver would have to fight against the river flow to stay straight.

Also the Schwimmwagen motor for water travel was only able to muster 10 kh/hour that’s 6.2 M/H. This meant that if there was much of a current the the vehicle would be carried downstream. It was hard to tell where you’d actually land on the far bank which, in combat situations, was a problem. The slow speed on water also left the passengers as easy targets. The Schwimmwagen really only worked well in still water.

A further problem was the lack of armor which meant that relatively light damage from shrapnel or small arms fire could cause the Schwimmwagen to be un seaworthy.

In the Fall of 1942 the first Schwimmwagen 166 began being mass produced and up through 1944 a total of 14,276 were completed. Today only 189 of them are known to exist.

This is a 1937 training film for use and maintenance of the Kübel and Schwimmwagen. There are two reels of footage with a total runtime of 59:33 seconds.

Converting from land to amphibious travel mode was easy and if necessary could even be done without leaving the vehicle. It had an additional offroad gear it was very popular among the troops for its off-road capabilities.

The Schwimmwagen had 4 gears and could travel at 80 km/h on the Autobahn. That’s about 50 m/h which was pretty typical for cars at the time. It weighed 900 Kg.

Here is an SS Recon team out on a patrol exercise. Because of their off-road capabilities the Schwimmwagen was often used as reconnaissance.

Finally here is some footage from the Ardennes, from 1945. In the last scene you see some wonderful footage of a Schwimmwagen.