Reconnaissance by the TUR unit recently uncovered a curious find on russian ammunition depot: German Kl. Az. 23 umg detonators dating from World War II. On close inspection the devices bear the WaA stamp with a code and the eagle-and-swastika mark.
The WaA marking was applied by inspectors of the Waffenamt, the Nazi Germany land forces' ordnance administration, after quality checks of batches of weapons or ammunition. That code could reveal factory of origin, year and other details about the item, although in this case some digits are hard to read.
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The Kl. Az. 23 umg fuze was intended for the Sprenggranate 34 75 mm high-explosive fragmentation shells used with the PaK 40 75 mm towed anti-tank guns and KwK 40 tank guns, which were fitted to the Pz.Kpfw. IV tanks from the F2 modification onward and to the StuG III assault guns.
There are also internet reports of these fuzes equipping shells of other calibers, from 37 to 105 mm. The unit notes that the specific Kl. Az. 23 umg detonators they found were supplied to the USSR in the period from 1939, after the partition of Poland, up to 1941, before Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union.
At that time Germany did cooperate with the USSR, delivering various industrial equipment, samples of modern military hardware and other goods. However, when it comes to weapon supplies, this cooperation was not on a mass scale and was more an exchange of technologies than wholesale transfers.
A more likely explanation is that these fuzes were captured by Soviet forces during fighting and remained in Soviet, and later russian, arsenals ever since. Russia still holds large stocks of captured equipment, and some items have even appeared on European antique markets after the USSR's collapse.
If these Kl. Az. 23 umg detonators were indeed delivered between 1939 and 1941, they are now at least 85 years old. Despite appearing in excellent condition at first glance, it is unlikely that after eight-plus decades they remain reliably serviceable; the probability of failures or non-detonations would be very high.
That in turn calls into question the sense of attempting to use them. It also remains unclear why and how the Kl. Az. 23 umg detonators ended up on the front line rather than tucked away in russia's more remote arsenals. It is equally unlikely they could be adapted for use in any of the ammunition types currently fielded by russia.
Finally, the theory that these fuzes are being repurposed for improvised munitions, such as aerial drops, can be rejected: to arm, the Kl. Az. 23 umg detonator requires rotation and centrifugal force produced during firing from a rifled gun, and without that spin it will not function.
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