Battalion Panzer Recon...

[dougeagle]

With a few rule sets that I have for WW2 wargaming in 1:5 scale and when using a panzer battalion, there is usually a panzer dedicated as being a recon tank, such as a Panzer II in the early stages of the war. I have a buddies German DAK panzer battalion that I am putting some decals onto and was wondering what the Panzer tactical numbers would have been at the battalion level?
*Regiment command was noted with an "R" and battalion command with the Roman numeral 1.

Anybody have some suggestions?

[groundlber]

Dougeagle -SFCMac beat me to the answer. The recon platoons were part of the battalion or regimental headquarters, so the vehicle numbers would be "I-nn" or "II-nn".
The lower numbers seem to have been reserved for the officer's tanks.
Groundlber

[Gort]

Up to about mid-war the typical markings for the staff company tanks was R/I/II followed by sequential numbers 01 - 08. Tanks x01, x02, and x03 were dedicated command tanks (befehlpanzer) with additional radios and antennas. Tanks x04 - x08 belonged to the recon platoon.

From mid-war on some units adopted a different numbering system. Combat experience had shown that the enemy wasn't entirely stupid and had learned to identify the command vehicles and concentrate fire on them. Vehicles with tactical IDs that started with a letter or roman numeral, or ended in a 0 or 1 became prime targets. The most common system adopted had the regimental staff change from R to 9 (ie 901 - 908) and battalion staff change from I/II to 0 (ie 001 - 008). In some units this was further changed to 9/0 04 - 9/0 12. The separate identifier for the individual battalion was no longer necessary as the battalions were equipped with different vehicles (Pz IV or Pz V). At the company level the command tanks were remnumbered from x01 - x02 to x04 - x05, and platoon vehicles from xx1 - xx5 to xx5 - xx9.

Cheers