Sunday, March 13, 2022

The V3 armored car was a homemade armor-reinforced truck, which resistance fighters from Frederiksværk built during the occupation.


They built it at Stålvalseværket [steel mill] and Hillerød-Frederiksværk-Hundested Railroad led by Poul Frode Wilspang in Frederiksværk.

 It was christened V3 as a pun of the German V1 and V2 rockets that had been sent against the Allies. It was displayed outside the Freedom Museum in Copenhagen until the museum burned down in 2013.

 The armor consisted of old ship plates, which the workers welded on a Ford AA truck, procured for the purpose. The chariot was armed with a Bren-type light machine gun, mounted on a large steel barrel that served as a "cannon tower".

The truck was not finished when the news of the surrender of the German Armed Forces on 4 May 1945 reached the workers at the steel mill. So they decided to meet in the evening of the same day and finish it. The next day, it was put into use by the resistance movement, who were to arrest Nazi friendly informers and collaborators. 

 The resistance fighters had received a tip about suspicious activity on Nyvej by the vacation cottages at Asserbo. At the address, they found a larger stock of black market goods, especially cans of ham. The remains of the Lorenzen group [Nazi collaborators - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzen_Group] were in the neighboring cottage. Here, another group tried to arrest the military-trained former HIPOs and SS volunteers. But the Lorenzen group had machine guns, pistols and ammunition and opened fire on the resistance fighters. 

 The group that was to seize the smuggled goods came to the aid of the armored car. They covered the house with the machine gun, and the shooting stopped. Out of 19 women and men from the Lorenzen group, two had died of gunshot wounds, a third had been hit in the abdomen and had dragged himself into a closet where he committed suicide. The rest were arrested and taken to Copenhagen.

 The resistance group discovered after the operation that V3's armor was not bulletproof, as several shots had gone straight through the steel plates.
 


thank you Kim for sending me the story and photos, and for translating the history! 

1 comment:

  1. The resistance fighters were the "Holger Danske" group, first formed in 1942 by five people bearing the name of one of the Danish legendary heroes ("Ogier the Dane").

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