Marder III

Tank Destroyer · Germany

A hard-hitting 7.62 cm gun on a light chassis behind a thin open shield. 18 rounds and almost no armour: fire from cover inside its 25° arc, and HE splash reaches the crew.

(the vehicle's description in the garage)

At a glance

History

The Marder III (Sd.Kfz. 139) was an early German tank destroyer built in a hurry in 1942 to counter the T-34 and KV-1. It mounted captured Soviet 76.2 mm F-22 field guns, re-bored as the 7.62 cm PaK 36(r), on the chassis of the Czech-built Panzer 38(t), behind a tall, thin, open-topped shield. About 340 were built.

The gun was powerful for 1942, but the vehicle was tall, lightly armoured and open at the top and rear, so its crews relied on concealment. Marder IIIs fought at Stalingrad, in North Africa and at Kursk.

In Armor Heads

Design note: Marder III, Sd.Kfz. 139: the captured Soviet 7.62 cm PaK 36(r) (about the StuG's penetration) on the Panzer 38(t), open top and rear, 25 deg each way (Panzer Tracts), no MG (none on the real vehicle).

Compared with the other 34 WW2 vehicles, it is bottom 5 for turret front armour (#33 of 35).

Survivability

• Hit points: 640. Damage taken multiplier: 1.18 (effective HP 542).
• Open-topped: HE near misses do 1.5x splash damage and hit the crew three times as hard, so they knock crew out far more easily.
• Tracks: a hit on the running gear breaks a track 45 % of the time (the hit does no damage); the crew repairs it in 8 s.

Real plate: the thickness of the real vehicle's armour there, and its slope from vertical with the line-of-sight thickness in brackets; each zone's multiplier is worked out from it (see how the numbers work). The last column counts square-on hits under 100 m.

Main gun

• Mount: casemate, gun arc ±25° of the hull centreline at 14°/s; turn the hull to aim further.
• Elevation +16° / depression -8°, at 16°/s.
• Reload: 4.8 s.
• Damage per minute (AP): 3,562.
• Accuracy: 0.06° dispersion when settled, aim time 1.76 s, move bloom 0.09.
• Gunner's sight: ZF 3x8, 3x (binoculars 6x / 10x / 15x).

The penetration threshold is the lowest zone multiplier (the thickest armour) the shell still gets through: zones below it stop the shell (10 % damage for AP, 20 % for HE). See how the numbers work.

HE and the crew: every direct hit shakes the crew (slower reload and traverse, a wider aim circle) for about 1.9 s when the plate stops it and 3 s when it bursts through. It is big enough to knock crew members out of their seats even when the plate stops it.

APCR (7.5 cm Pzgr. 40 APCR) is bought in the garage, not issued: 3 rounds for 200 credits, at most 6 carried, from a team stock of 3 per player for the whole match (never resupplied). It gets through far thicker plate than the AP up close but loses its punch quickly with range:

Matchups (AP against the hull front, square-on, under 100 m)

• Its AP gets through the hull front of 28 of the other 34 vehicles. It is stopped by: Panther, M26 Pershing, Tiger II, IS-2, Churchill VII, Jagdpanther.
• 30 of the other 34 vehicles' AP get through its hull front. Safe from the front against: Panzer II Luchs, M32 TRV, Sd.Kfz. 250/9, T-60.
• From the side, 34 of them get through its hull side; from behind, 34 get through its hull rear (every zone is in the table above).

Secondary weapons and equipment

• No working roof machine gun.
• Smoke: 1 salvo, each recharges in 40 s.

Mobility

• Running gear: tracks (pivot turns).
• Top speed 42 km/h on roads, 19.7 km/h off-road (47 %), reverse 8.4 km/h, acceleration 3 m/s².
• Turn rate 34°/s (20°/s at top speed). Mass 10,700 kg. Engine start 3 s.

Special ability (B)

Ammo Drop: a supply crate comes down by parachute just behind the tank and lands 8 s later; every tank of the team (this one too) that drives over it in the next 60 s gets 50 % of its full shell and smoke load back, once each. Ready 30 s after the round goes live, once per round; another use costs 150 credits.

Where it appears

Players can take it on all seven WW2 maps, on either team. The AI fields it on:

• Kasserine Pass 1943, Red (Axis side): 2x in an 8-vehicle line-up (first at position 3).
• Prokhorovka 1943, Red (Axis side): 1x in an 8-vehicle line-up (first at position 8).
• Stalingrad 1942, Red (Axis side): 1x in a 7-vehicle line-up (first at position 3).

Where it ranks (1 = best of 35)

The real vehicle

Sources used for the model: armedconflicts.com https://www.armedconflicts.com/-t6378 (5,850 x 2,160 x 2,500 mm, 380 mm clearance, 10,670 kg, PaK 36(r) L/51.2); tanks-encyclopedia.com https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/germany/panzerjager-38t-fur-7-62-cm-pak-36r-sd-kfz-139-marder-iii/ (5.85 x 2.16 x 2.5 m, -7/+16 deg, 50 deg traverse); armedconflicts.com Pz.Kpfw. 38(t) Ausf. F https://www.armedconflicts.com/topic/view/36580 (4,610 mm, 2,135 mm, 293 mm track, 400 mm clearance, Panzer Tracts 18); Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_38(t) (775 mm wheels in the Ausf. F thread; 4.61 m); blueprint Dr Dan Saranga four-view, the-blueprints.com 69935 (one scale 3.00 mm/px)

In-game model: 5.86 m long (gun included) × 2.18 m wide × 2.51 m high (antenna excluded), 8,370 triangles, built at true scale.

Images

Renders of the in-game model in a plain nation colour (the game paints its camouflage at runtime).