The Western Allies did use Axis weapons and equipment in World War II, but this was not about the casual battlefield pickups where a soldier grabbed an enemy weapon because he liked the feel of it. Many Allied troops did that, of course. The MP 40 submachine gun was a favorite, and plenty of soldiers carried captured pistols as personal trophies. In the Italian campaign, my maternal grandfather carried a Thompson as standard issue, but he also kept a Beretta semi-automatic pistol he had taken off an Italian officer.
As far as I know, he never fired it in anger. The military generally discouraged this practice on the front line. Enemy weapons had a distinctive sound, and a soldier firing one at night could easily draw friendly fire from his own side. Troops were trained to recognize the difference between the German 9-mm machine pistol and the American Thompson, and the consequences of confusion could be fatal.
What we are looking at here is something rarer: the organized, deliberate use of captured Axis equipment by Allied forces. It happened at every level, from small arms to artillery, tanks, and even aircraft. The British took captured German MP 40s and issued them in a structured way to certain special forces units dropped behind enemy lines. The SAS used them because the folding stock made them far lighter and easier to carry during parachute operations than the Thompson.
Ammunition could be sourced from the resistance networks, which simplified supply. The Special Operations Executive and its American counterpart, the OSS, issued German Walther PP and PPK pistols to agents going undercover in occupied Europe. These compact weapons were easy to conceal, and again, ammunition could be obtained locally through resistance contacts. The Luger even saw use as a silent killing weapon.
SOE armorers modified a batch of them for assassination work, including a planned attempt on Hitler. I examined one of these modified Lugers at the Combined Military Services Museum in Maldon, Essex. The museum has an enormous collection of covert-use weapons. The famous Welrod assassination pistol was later deliberately chambered in 9-mm Parabellum so that SOE agents could execute targets using captured German ammunition once they were behind enemy lines.
Japanese equipment was rarely used by the Allies beyond souvenirs. There was one notable exception: US scouts and snipers in the Pacific were sometimes equipped with Japanese Type 97 and Type 99 sniper rifles. These were genuinely good weapons, with an incredibly low muzzle flash and smokeless propellant that made a sniper much harder to spot. A fair number of these rifles were used officially by US snipers.
Japanese machine guns were also turned against their former owners, but those were essentially battlefield pickups, discarded once the ammunition ran out. In general, Japanese weapons were considered greatly inferior to American and British ones, so no widespread issuance ever happened. One of the most significant examples of organized reuse came during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. The US 82nd Airborne Division faced a serious shortage of heavy anti-tank weapons during the fighting in the Netherlands.
The bazooka was not plentiful enough for the parachute drop, and its rocket was not fully effective against the heavier German tanks and assault guns the paratroopers encountered. The problem was ammunition. Little arrived with the initial drop, and subsequent supply drops were often scattered. Priority went to small arms ammunition, food, and medical supplies.
Gliders were loaded with the same critical items. The planners had apparently not believed the paratroopers would face much German armor, a serious miscalculation. The ground element of Market Garden, British 30 Corps with its tanks, was expected to arrive quickly and deal with any German armored vehicles. In the event, the paratroopers faced seasoned German troops and armor.
Fortunately, the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment overran a German supply depot near Nijmegen that was stacked with crates of panzerfausts. These single-shot shaped-charge weapons packed a much bigger punch than the US bazooka. Crates were distributed to the division, and many men already knew the weapon from service in Sicily and Normandy. The panzerfausts proved exceptionally effective.
Major General James Gavin, commander of the 82nd Airborne, later wrote that the panzerfaust was the best anti-tank weapon the division had for the remainder of the war. Crates of these weapons remained in divisional stores and were issued during further combat operations. In late 1944 and into early 1945, the advancing Allied armies in Western Europe outran their own supply lines. Most supplies still came over the Normandy beaches, trucked forward by the Red Ball Express.
Captured ports had mostly been badly damaged by the Germans to prevent their use. Antwerp was captured intact, but the Scheldt estuary remained in German hands and required costly British and Canadian operations to clear before supply ships could actually use the port. Shortages of fuel and ammunition soon appeared. The Allied armies were forced to stop and dig in on the German frontier until the crisis could be relieved, which gave the Germans a valuable breathing space to reorganize and launch a counteroffensive in the Ardennes in mid-December 1944.
The Allies had overrun many German artillery batteries and supply depots, with the weapons often in perfect working order. Because of the shortage of Allied artillery shells, a decision was made to re-equip some artillery units with captured German guns, which had plentiful ammunition. The US Army re-equipped two field artillery battalions with German 10. 5 cm leFH 18 field guns.
The 244th Field Artillery Battalion received the feared German 88-mm anti-tank gun and used it in an indirect fire role. The 733rd Field Artillery Battalion also used some captured 88s. The British got in on the act as well. German guns captured in battle were turned against their former owners.
One of the most extensive examples of captured vehicle reuse came from the US 83rd Infantry Division. Its nicknames included the Ragtag Circus and, more tellingly, the 83rd Panzer Division, because of its use of captured German armored vehicles. Many Allied units used the odd German tank or vehicle here and there. The Fourth Coldstream Guards captured and used a German Panther tank in the fighting in the Netherlands in late 1944, naming it Cuckoo.
It was later abandoned due to a lack of spare parts. The 83rd Infantry Division did something far more ambitious. They decided to use German vehicles en masse and built up a large supply of spare parts to keep them running. The number and type of vehicles was impressive.
A number of StuG III assault guns were resprayed olive drab and marked with the Allied white star. So were several SdKfz 251 armored half-tracks and various German soft-skin trucks. The headquarters was equipped with US Jeeps and trucks, but also German Kübelwagen field cars and some BMW and Zündapp motorcycles. They even commandeered civilian buses and repainted them.
Most incredible of all, they added an air unit: a captured German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, repainted olive drab, marked with Allied stars, and with the 83rd Infantry Division painted on the underside of the wings. In the North African campaign, both sides pressed captured armor into service because of the immense value of any vehicle in the desert and the difficulties of resupply. The British campaign against the Italians who had invaded Egypt resulted in a series of telling defeats for the Italians, during which the British captured an astounding 365 Italian tanks. Sixty of these, about 16 percent, were medium types.
These were used to equip the 6th Royal Tank Regiment while it waited for more modern British tanks. The Italian tanks were overhauled and fitted with British radios. They were deeply unpopular because of poor mechanical reliability and thin armor. Three squadrons of the 6th Royal Tank Regiment were equipped with sixty Italian M13/40 medium tanks.
The cavalry unit of the 6th Australian Infantry Division also captured and pressed Italian tanks into service. The Australian tankers painted white kangaroos on the hulls and turrets to aid identification in battle. Two types were used: the M11/39 medium, armed with a 37-mm gun, and the slightly heavier M13/40 with a 47-mm main gun. Eleven Italian tanks were used effectively by the Australian cavalry for reconnaissance and direct fire missions in support of their infantry.
They were replaced when Allied types became available. The Free French Army, equipped by the British and Americans, fought across France and into Germany in 1944 to 45. It was well supplied with armor but occasionally used captured German vehicles as well. 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 was well behind the Allied front line.
This important U-boat base held out until the end of the war. The French unit had a Tiger I, a Panther, eleven Panzer IVs, 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. A distinction needs to be made between aircraft captured and reused for practical purposes and those flown home for scientific examination and extensive testing.
This is about the former. During the desert campaign, the Royal Australian Air Force captured an intact Junkers Ju 52 transport aircraft at El Gazala in Libya. It was adopted by No. 450 Squadron as a runabout, repainted in Allied colors, and named 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. And being Australians, one of its most important jobs was bringing up beer. There was nothing better than a cold one when you were stuck in a trench in the desert. The aircraft became a tremendous morale booster for the Australians.
Another extremely 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 them. Sixty-four were handed to the French as war reparations, but the remainder in RAF service became the personal planes of Allied leaders. Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery had a personal Storch in North Africa and then in Northwest Europe.
Air Vice-Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst had Rommel’s personal Storch, captured in North Africa. He 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 a number of captured Junkers 52s from the desert campaign. Several SAAF fighter squadrons, including Nos.
1, 4, and 5, even adopted captured Messerschmitt Bf 109F fighters as squadron hacks, flying them in South African Air Force colors. These are just a few examples of the reuse of captured Axis equipment by Allied forces. From panzerfausts in the hands of American paratroopers to a Ju 52 delivering beer to Australians in the desert, the Allies proved willing to turn the enemy’s own tools against them whenever it made practical sense.
