Tank Craft 50 Panzer III Light Tank: Stalingrad and the Caucasus, 1942

By the spring of 1942 the Panzerkampfwagen III, or Pz.Kpfw.III, which was commonly known as the Panzer III, which had first seen service in the Polish Campaign, was still the most numerically important armoured fighting vehicle in the Wehrmacht’s arsenal. Spearheading the Panzer divisions during the Blitzkrieg era, the Pz.Kpfw.III was less heavily armoured than many of its opponents, but it was sturdy and reliable, while its main armament was the equal of any enemy weapon it was called upon to face.The basic version was continuously up-gunned and up-armoured, while maintaining its speed and manoeuvrability, and the later variants could still be considered a potent, modern weapons system. Operating on the open plains of modern-day Belarus and Ukraine, the Pzkpfw III was at the forefront of the dramatic advances of 1941 and would be called upon to bear the burden of the effort in the offensives planned for the following year which, if all went to plan, would knock the Soviet Union out of