Why?
On first encountering a Kettenkrad it is apparent this is not a cheap, easily manufactured vehicle. So why did the Germans invest so much time and money in this concept?
Like most things military, it was a creation of its era to address a problem. Before "Quad Bikes" and Helicopters if you wanted to get loads up mountains there were the following options:
1) Man power - carry it up there slowly.
2) Donkey - which was okay for small loads: providing you tolerated the bad behaviour, still slow however.
3) Build a road and use a 4 x 4 or 6 x 6 wheel drive vehicle - but there weren't many of those in the early days of WW2 and building roads up mountains is not cheap, quick or easy.
When it came to such heavy items as anti-tank guns, which typically have to be moved quickly, none of the above solutions were suitable.
The Kettenkrad was designed to fill that need. Hence why it is only 1m wide, which was just narrow enough to be able to use most existing mountain trails.
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A Kettenkrad on a narrow trail - what it was designed to do.
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This time in a trench.
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Several Kettenkrades on a narrow mountain trail - this time with 2 way traffic,
including horses. Not something you could do with normal vehicles.
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These appear to be Gebirgsjaeger (Mountain Troops) using a Kettenkrad to
tow a recoilless rifle (anti-tank gun) up a mountain. The photo is said to
be taken on Crete, in which case I would expect them to be Fallschirmjaeger.
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An official photo of a Kettenkrad with towed load. This looks to be a 7.5cm mountain gun.
Later, the Fallschirmjaeger (German Paratroops) realised it could barely be squeezed into their standard 3 engined Junkers Tri-motor transport aeroplane. They did NOT push them out and use a parachute: parachute delivery of vehicles was quite some time off in the future!
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It was a squeeze!
Then later still, the Luftwaffe found they made convenient aeroplane tugs, especially for the new fuel hungry jet engined fighters which due to the lack of fuel had to be towed out to the runway.
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A typically overloaded Kettenkrad. Note the 5 persons on it, which is 2
too many. Then add in the fact that it is towing an Arado 234 twin jet engined
bomber, which has an empty weight of 5.2 tonne and a loaded weight of up to
9.85 tonne! Consider that the manufacturer's rated towing capacity is 450kg!!!
Conservatively this vehicle is towing at least 10 times its rated load:
possibly 20 times its rated load.
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