FreiKorps Oberland Garford-Putilov Armoured Car

 JTS is staying with a 1930s theme today with one of the weirdest armoured fighting vehicles ever designed.

The Garford-Putilov was a heavy armoured car built in Russia during WWI based on imported Garford Trucks. It was desperately underpowered, 10 hp, giving a top speed of around 10mph. Like all improvised armour on civilian chassis it was overloaded and top heavy.

Off road performance was woeful.

It was armed with three maxim guns in separate turrets and a 76mm light howitzer in the oversized rear turret. The howitzer was enclosed by a weird flash tube.

The weird turret makes this a wonderful vehicle for Alternate WWII. It could be a vortex gun, for example.

A number were captured by the Germans and used by the Freikorps. The Freikorps were psychotic right wing thugs built around the heavily trained and psychologically conditioned Imperial Stormtrooper units. They went on to form the nucleus of the SA and theWaffen SS and used many of the same insignia.

The photos show a G-P car used by the Bavarian Freikorps Oberland, which included such alumni as Heinrich Himmler and Josef Dietrich.

The standard Freikorps logo was the Totemkopf,  the skull and crossbones of the stormtroopers but there were many others.

The Bavarian Oberland used the edelweiss as a badge and hence an eidelweiss-totemkopf.

So I have used it as the bonnet flag for my G-P.

The poster on the side of my model represents the Thule Group, a mystical bunch of weirdos that transformed into the Nazi Party.

Kenneth Hite mischievously links the Thule group with the Freikorps Oberland in his fun book on the Nazi Occult so I couldn't resist doing the same. A great link for Weird WWII ideas.