OT-side note on German vehicle designations

[HansBolter]

As an armor/vechicle model builder I frequent the Armorama website and peruse thier forums.

Recently there were some questions posted regarding what the abbreviations Ausf. and Sdkfz. stand for in German AFV nomenclature.

I added the following anecdotal story to the thread:

"As an interesting side note regarding SdkFz..........

Way back in my budding board wargame days of the 1970s where I cut my wargaming teeth on games like Panzer Blitz, my buddies and I came up with an amusing bastardized pronunciation of the abbreviation.....

since, more often than not, the German tanks were referred to by either thier applied "names" like Pather, Tiger, etc...or thier tank series number like Panzer IV, Panzer V, etc. while the armored cars were referred to almost exclusively by their SdkFz designations......we bastardized the pronunciation of the abbreviation in a way that seemed appropriate when applied to armored cars.....

a literal, phonetic pronunciation of the abbreviation would sound something like "sidkafiz"..... we bastardized it to "skidfizz"...

the term "fizz", in English, refers to "bubbly effervescence" and "skid" means "slipping or sliding"....so the bastardized pronunciation of the abbreviation evoked imagery of a vehicle of great energy and quickness bounding around the battlefield.......perfect for armored cars

so, for me at least, my favorite armored car will always be a "Skidfizz 222"."


Several of the regulars on the forum got a real kick out of it and at least one said he was going to adopt that moniker from now on [:D]


Does anyone else have any interesting stories to share regarding military nomenclature and how we twist it to our own liking?

[Pergite!]

..literal, phonetic pronunciation of the abbreviation would sound something like "sidkafiz"..... we bastardized it to "skidfizz"...

Hmmm, reminds me of a wierd conversation I once had with an american soldier talking about "Burdums" and "Bumps". It took me a while to discover that it was BMP´s and BRDM´s that he meant.

[HansBolter]

Thanks for the sole response Pergite.

I would have thought that a sense of humor would have been more prevelant among wargamers, but perhaps the sterotype of wargamers as "dry, personalityless sticks in the mud" has more truth to it than I wanted to believe. (let's see if that little dig will elicit some responses) [:'(]

I have to admit that while I never referred to BRDMs as burdums, but rather pronounced the acronym as "bee arr dee em", I did refer to BMPs as "bimps".

I never stopped to consider if finding ways to pronounce acronyms and abbreviations was a uniquely American quality, perhaps it is, given the dearth of responses.....[:D]