Crompton’s Column
Bruce Crompton chats about his many years involved in restoring Kettenkrads
Over the many years that my team and I have spent restoring all kinds of military vehicles, we’ve been fortunate enough to have a close association with the restoration of five Kettenkrads.
Also known as the Sd. Kfz. 2 (Sonderkraftfahrzeug 2), the Kettenkrad is a half-track motorcycle with a single front wheel. It was used by the Germany military during World War Two and is probably better known as the Kleines Kettenkraftrad HK101, but to keep things simple I’ll just refer to it as the Krad.
One Krad that many people will instantly recognise is the one that appears in the 1998 movie Saving Private Ryan. Although it was over 20 years ago, I still get shivers down my spine every time I remember our involvement with that great film. I actually had two Krads on set at the time and had my own driver for whenever they wanted to film them.
I was on set one day and found my Krad being driven by a stuntman. I then found out that my driver had gone for a cigarette break, whereupon director Steven Spielberg had called for the Krad to appear in a particular scene. To my horror, I watched the Krad flying up the r…
