A7V Sturmpanzerwagen „Mephisto“ (chassis number 506)

No correspondence.

According to the „Mephisto“ book produced by the Queensland Museum, this is „Mephisto“ and her crew photographed near Marchienne-au-Pont, Charleroi, Belgium, sometime around mid-1918. A keen eye will notice however the trees in the background are devoid of foliage and the road muddied, suggesting the photograph was taken in the Autumn or Winter months (not the warmer climate of mid-June).

"A7Vs made their combat debut at St Quentin on 21 March 1918 during the 1918 German Spring Offensives. Five A7Vs were assigned to provide close support for infantry assaults on British positions south of St Quentin. Only two of the tanks were able to participate, a female (501) and 506, which was cannon-armed. German and British accounts attest to the effectiveness of the gun-armed tank, in neutralizing strongpoints and concentrations of infantry. The A7Vs were then returned to their base near Charleroi for repair and maintenance. At this point, 506 was transferred to Abteilung 3, where it was repainted and named Mephisto after the Devil in the Faustus legend (another A7V, 503, was named Faust).

In late March and early April 1918, the Germans attacked the small, strategically placed town of Villers-Bretonneux, France in an effort to capture or neutralize the vital Allied transport hub of Amiens. Villers-Bretonneux was held after a successful Allied counter-attack led by Australian troops from 9th Brigade. The Germans staged a second attack on Villers-Bretonneux on 24 April 1918 that included three groups of A7Vs. 506 Mephisto was assigned to the second group of A7Vs, consisting of six tanks, given the objective of taking objectives (Monument Farm, Monument Wood, and the Bois d’Aquenne) immediately to the south of Villers-Bretonneux. The German attack on the first day was successful and during the battle, the first tank versus tank battle was fought between elements of the third group of A7Vs and British medium and heavy tanks operating near Cachy to the southwest of Villers-Bretonneux. During the fighting around Monument Farm, Mephisto became stranded when the edge of a shell crater it was passing over collapsed under its weight.

Mephisto was abandoned by its German crew but not before being stripped of its machine guns, the cannon’s breechblock and other essential items according to standard operational practice. Mephisto lay in No Man’s Land for three months before its capture by the 26th Battalion AIF (commanded by Major, later Lieutenant-Colonel, James Robinson) on the night of 17/18 July 1918 and its subsequent recovery, with the assistance of the British 1st Gun Carrier Company, from under the noses of the German troops opposing them on the night of 22-23 July 1918. The dangerous retrieval operation was carried out under fire on the very night that the Germans unleashed a heavy poison-gas barrage on the Villers-Bretonneux area.

Most of the Australian and British soldiers involved in the recovery became gas casualties, but the operation was nonetheless successfully completed. The war prize Mephisto was now securely in Allied hands and quickly moved under cover in the nearby Bois l’Abbé. Mephisto was then moved to the British 5th Tank Brigade’s Training Ground at Vaux-en-Amienois.

From Vaux-en-Amienois, Mephisto was moved to London via Dunkirk before being shipped to Brisbane on the SS Armagh, leaving England on the 2nd of April 1919, and arriving in Brisbane Australia on the 2nd of June . It remained at the wharves for six months before being moved to the Queensland Museum, Fortitude Valley, on 23rd August 1919. It was an eleven-hour operation which required the use of two Brisbane City Council steamrollers to tow Mephisto to its new home."

Source: tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww1-germany-sturmpanzerwagen-a7v-5...

A huge shout out to Immanuel Voigt for his most generous assistance in securing this rare original photograph.

Taken on: March 26, 2023

Sets appears in: • Grüße aus dem Schützengraben • Tanks

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