M39 Pantserwagen - Production

Production

As DAF had never before produced armoured fighting vehicles, the planned interval of just four months between order and the first delivery had been very optimistic. Production was soon delayed, largely because components were not made available on time. Ougrée Malhaye could only send the armour sets five to seven weeks later than DAF had expected. The electrical components had been ordered from the German manufacturer Bosch but their delivery stagnated after the outbreak of war on 1 September. France halted export of military goods at the start of the war, including the prismatic episcopes and visors intended to be fitted in the M39. The Dutch Philips company started a crash programme for production of a suitable prism but this would take several months to come into effect. The worst delay was caused by changed Army specifications for the machine gun mounts; these had been received by DAF in April and new drawings were only ready in August. The special steel pieces again had to be produced by Ougrée Malhaye, but the only steel oven capable of casting them happened to be in revision for several months. In November the entire production process was halted for some weeks because of the Venlo Incident: the German Abwehr had abducted two British intelligence officers from Dutch territory and it was feared that the Dutch protests regarding the incident would be used as a pretext to invade The Netherlands; all vehicles were temporarily evacuated to Rotterdam as Eindhoven, where DAF was based, was dangerously close to the German border.

By November all turrets had been delivered by Landsverk. However, they had not yet been fitted with any armament because the Ordnance Department had decided to produce the needed 37 mm cannon itself in its arsenal, under a licence obtained from Bofors in June 1937 to equip the earlier M38, and manufacture had met with some serious delays. When the first car was officially delivered by DAF on 27 November 1939, not only did the turret lack any guns but also the hull machine guns and all visors were absent. Nine vehicles, also in an unfinished state, were delivered in December and the final two on 3 and 5 January 1940 respectively. DAF reduced the price by 1500 guilders per unit to partly compensate for the deficiencies. The cars were moved to an Ordnance Department facility in Delft to be completed. In late January the first vehicle could be fitted with the first 37 mm gun produced for the series and at the same time equipped with a full set of episcopes and periscopes provided by the Nederlandsche Instrumenten Compagnie (Nedisco); it was immediately tested at the gunnery range at Oldebroek. In February, five other vehicles were parked at the Cavalry Depot, officially "fit for military use" but in fact still waiting to be equipped with guns.

The delays irritated the ministry of defence such that in February it asked the Ordnance Department when the type could be operational. It was promised that six vehicles would be completed in March and April each if 110 bulletproof tyres of the Veil-Picard type, which had been ordered in December from Michelin in France after export of the American Seiberling-type had been forbidden, were delivered on the due date of 1 April. In fact the tyres would never arrive; and bar a single vehicle to which bulletproof tyres had been experimentally fitted all M39s used normal inflatable truck tyres. But a far more serious deficiency would impede operational use.

Already in May 1938, after cracks had been discovered in the conventional armour of the M36 vehicles, the ministry of defence had asked DAF whether their type, using untried welding techniques, could also be prone to cracking; in the summer of 1938 the commander of the 1e Eskadron Pantserwagens while testing the demonstrator vehicle had also expressed his concerns on this matter. Despite the warnings by Addink, Van Doorne pretended that he was unconcerned. Nevertheless the May 1939 contract had contained a warranty clause, instructing DAF to weld all connections tension-free and making DAF liable for all defects of this nature. Late March 1940 during cleaning it was discovered that on three of the six vehicles the welds of the machine gun mounts were cracking. One vehicle was sent to DAF that rewelded the crack and reinforced the glacis by riveting a steel plate behind it. Soon however, it transpired that next to the reinforcing plate a new crack had appeared. In April the number of cars showing cracks had risen to five and on some of these the welds between the glacis and bottom plates were starting to crack also. According to DAF the defects had been caused by attaching the mounts after the vehicles had been largely finished. The Comissie Pantserautomobielen concluded that, as war was imminent, DAF should be allowed to quickly repair the cracks by rewelding and fitting reinforcement plates but that ultimately the armour plates had to be completely replaced.