Tankopedia
WW2LightArmoured CarGermany

Sd.Kfz. 234/2 Puma

In service 1944 - 1945

A wheeled eight-wheel armoured car with a real tank turret and 900 km of range - listed here as reconnaissance, not a tank.

Built byBussing-NAG and Daimler-Benz

Sd.Kfz. 234/2 Puma
Sd.Kfz. 234/3 at Bovington — Hohum, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 3.0

Development history

The Puma was the gun-armed version of the Sd.Kfz. 234 heavy armoured car family: eight-wheel drive, eight-wheel steering, an air-cooled diesel chosen for desert service and a turret with the 5 cm gun originally designed for the Leopard light tank project. Only 101 were built before production shifted to cheaper open-mounted versions. Fast, quiet and long-legged, it was the best German reconnaissance vehicle of the war, but it is a wheeled armoured car rather than a tank and is recorded as such here.

Variants

One canonical record, 3 recorded variants.

  1. Sd.Kfz. 234/1

    1944

    Open-topped turret with a 2 cm autocannon, cheaper reconnaissance version.

  2. Sd.Kfz. 234/2 Puma

    1944

    Enclosed turret with the 5 cm KwK 39/1 L/60 gun.

  3. Sd.Kfz. 234/3 and /4

    1944

    Open mountings for a short 7.5 cm support gun and then the 7.5 cm PaK 40.

Notable actions

  • Normandy
  • Eastern Front 1944-45
  • Defence of Germany