68d PSW DAF201, 68d PSW L202, & 68d PSW P202:
This represents the Dutch Armoured cars (Allied Minor Vehicle
Note 27 &
Note 28) in German use.
The division occupying the province of South Holland, 227. Infanterie-Division, was not slow to exploit the occasion: already on 15 May it obtained permission to add four M39s, together with some Landsverk vehicles, to its strength. They were used by its Aufklärungs-Abteilung or reconnaissance battalion. It is uncertain what was the exact provenance of these four vehicles. One M39 had been destroyed by its own crew and photographs shows that the one stuck at the Scheveningen boulevard was cannibalised by the Germans. The two other cars at Scheveningen were pulled from the shallow sea and repaired. Photographic evidence shows both M39s with and without guns in use by other German units. The four vehicles abandoned in the west of North Brabant were on 16 May in the hands of 33. IR, an infantry regiment of 225. ID, that had assembled them at a base in Roosendaal; their exact further fate is unknown, though they were doubtlessly pressed into service. Later an official German designation was given: Panzerspähwagen DAF 201 (h) ("reconnaissance armoured car DAF 201 (h)"), in which the "h" stands for holländisch, "Hollandic".
Late May, 227. ID went to France; pictures taken there show four M39s, repainted in a gray colour and with extra large Balkenkreuze, the German national cross insignia, on hull and turret. All are fitted with 37 mm guns. Until the middle of 1941 the division was tasked with various occupation duties in France; then it was stationed in Belgium. That summer four M39s in use by the division were sent to DAF for a complete overhaul. On this occasion the steering mechanism was reinforced and radio sets were fitted, using very high and large antennae of the "bed frame" type, attached to the turret roof. The four cars of the reconnaissance unit of 227. ID took from November 1941 part in Operation Barbarossa, in the relatively quiet northern front sector, and were all lost on the Eastern front during the next years, apparently lasting well into 1943, perhaps because they were used for rear-area security duty. One seems to have been destroyed by a Soviet tank, others to have been abandoned for lack of spare parts and destroyed by their own crews. Several sources claim that M39s were used by the German military police, the Ordnungspolizei, but this seems to be based on a confusion with the use by that organisation of Dutch Landsverk M36s.
In August 1940 from the Delft depot the broken down M 39 left there on 11 May was sent, together with a Landsverk M38, to the Heeresversuchstelle Kummersdorf at Kummersdorf to be researched and was then stocked at Stettin-Altdamm to be part of a planned large German armour museum in Stettin. In March 1945, on approach of the Red Army, the armour collection was used to assist the defenders of Stettin and lost in that process.
See also German Vehicle Note
N,
BG.