Report of a Sturmgeschütz Brigade - Eastern Front 1944
From November 1944 an experience report of Stug Brigade on the Eastern Front, which was printed by the Education Department of the German Army High Command. The reports discusses Soviet Tactics, training, anti-tank tactics, tank crews, US equipment, German problems, training recommendations, cooperation with infantry and artillery. Among many other things.
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CAMO: F. 500, Op. 12451, D. 172: Oberkommando des Heeres Gen. St. d. H. Ausbildungs-Abteilung (II): Erfahrungsberichte Abwehr (17), 15. 11. 1944. Hauptquartier OKH.
Wettstein, Adrian: Sturmartillerie Geschichte einer Waffengattung
portal-militaergeschichte.de/s...
Pöhlmann, Markus: Der Panzer und die Mechanisierung des Krieges: Eine deutsche Geschichte 1890 bis 1945. Ferdinand Schöningh: Paderborn, 2016.
Wilbeck, Christopher W.: Sledgehammers. Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II. The Aberjona Press: Bedford, PA, USA, 2004.
Spielberger, Walter; Doyle, Hilary Lous: Sturmgeschütze: Entwicklung und Fertigung der sPak. Motorbuch Verlag: 2014.
Spielberger, Walter: Sturmgeschütz & Its Variants: (Spielberger German Armor & Military Vehicles Series, Vol 2)
Fleischer, Wolfgang: Die deutschen Sturmgeschütze 1935-1945. Podzun-Pallas, 1996.
Buchner, Alex: Das Handbuch der deutschen Infanterie 1939-1945; Gliederung - Uniformen, Bewaffnung - Ausrüstung, Einsätze. Podzun-Pallas: Friedberg in Hessen, Germany, 1987
ENGLISH VERSION: Buchner, Alex: The German Infantry Handbook 1939-1945.
Jentz, Thomas L.; Doyle, Hilary Louis: PANZER TRACTS No.1-1 Panzerkampfwagen I. Kleintraktor to Ausf.B. Panzer Tracts: Maryland, USA, 2002.
Jentz, Thomas L.; Doyle, Hilary Louis: PANZER TRACTS No.1-2 Panzerkampfwagen I. Kl.Pz.Bf.Wg. to VK 18.01. Panzer Tracts: Maryland, USA, 2002
#Stug #StuGLife #FromTheArchives
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If the Stug has no other Stug's in support then something went wrong. Like tankers they are never supposed to fight alone.
Regarding your two questions: The Stug 1944 manual explicitly says that while destroying enemy tanks is a priority, the Stug is nonetheless “not a Panzerjaeger”. This distinction is important because by 1944 the integral Panzerjaeger Abteilung in each Division had been reorganized into a two-battery formation, with one battery being towed anti-tank guns and the second being self-propelled. In the most ideal cases, the self-propelled battery was supposed to be equipped with Stugs. The thing is the Divisional Panzerjaeger Abteilung was trained primarily as a defensive formation. The Stug Brigade by contrast was a fire brigade response force - ideally used to shore up the defense line. And this was ideally done not by adding more stuff to the defense, but instead the Stug brigade was supposed to restore the defense line by counterattack. It thus made no sense for the Panzerjaeger battalion to take command of an attached Stug brigade - as the Stug brigade was not supposed to be just additional defensive assets. If the Stug Brigade is sent somewhere (and there were only a small number of them) then its because there is be a specific grave threat (eg a Soviet breakthrough) that needs to be dealt with in an offensive and decisive manner; and not something that could have been handled with the defensive mindset of the Panzerjaeger. - As for Wilbeck - most of his work focuses in Normandy, and frankly Zaloga and others have noted it is very erroneous in assuming that Tiger kill claims where anywhere near realistic and can be used for the kind of analysis and sweeping conclusions he makes. His work basically makes the Tigers 2-3 times more effective than the German Army would have accepted, as even the Wehrmacht was well aware that that their own tankers claimed 2-3 times more kills than they actually scored. That Wilbeck’s work vastly overestimates the effectiveness of Tigers is why he then comes to the conclusion that parcelling them out was effective. It was actually highly ineffective, but this was not reflected due to the use of inflated kill scores. Any stupid tactic can seem brillant if you doctor the score card. Indeed it is worth noting that parcelling out handfuls of Tigers was basically the only option they had in Normandy because they had so few operational at any given time. The 101st SS Heavy Tank battalion averaged only 10 running Tigers for most of June - literally making it impossible to deploy in anything above company strength! In reality Tigers were only effective in small packets exactly once - Villers Bocage - and even that was blessed with so much luck that a Mk IV would have been as deadly in the same situation. Note that nothing about the Tiger’s gunpower or armor aided Wittman in that engagement. He was firing at point blank range - nullifying his gunpower advantage - and was hit only twice. The second immobilizing round was indeed scored by a 6 pounder, which shows how even small caliber hits can disable a big tank.
STUGz we're totally bad ass and extremely underrated, they kicked ass in Kursk...
I'm 74 and have been a student of WWII all my life, beginning with stories told by veterans who were there. You are in the top rank of sources of reliable information about this incredibly complicated and often miss-reported war. Thank you so much for making these videos!
Thank you!
A Stug getting stuck with a cook as infantry support sounds like a recipe for disaster.
😂
Sturmgekocht
depends on the cook.. remember "Under Siege" movie?
Speaking as a professional Chef, let me tell you, cooks are some of the hardest characters I know😂 Running through Ruskies with a kitchen knife & STuG.
On the contrary. As any serviceman will tell you: Who's the most dangerous in the army? Who kills more men than anyone in the army? Exactly, the cooks.
You reminded me of something, when you spoke of the staff and support troops having to act as infantry in support of the assault gun units. My wife's Opa was an enlisted artillerist in the German Army before the war. Then he became an officer, but was put in the finance branch (Zahlmeister). He made it to the rank of captain, serving in the 23rd Panzer Division. Towards the end of the war they were fighting in East Prussia, and because they were short of artillery officers and there was no more money to pay anyone, they put him in charge of a Kampfgruppe of mixed assault guns and self-propelled artillery, including captured Soviet weapons. High adventure, to the end of the war!
Richard Berry What Finance a new StuG for only 25% down!
@@thecanadiankiwibirb4512 Not sure what you mean. Please readvise.
What unit was he with at the end, still with 23. Panzer-Division? Was it a Kampfgruppe of his name?
@@HE-162 Yes, it was a Kampfgruppe under the 23rd. But I didn't ask him what it was named. I wish I had. He is no longer with us, so we will never know. :(
@@richardberry5984 we might be able to find out, I do a lot of research on things like this. If you’d like, send me an email: soldbuchdatabase@gmail.com
"The stug life chose me" -Panzerkoch Jonas
Hope I can 'shed some light'on the light thing. Light can generally be described as bright or soft. White is a very bright colour and colours like red and green are soft colours. This means that white flares will illuminate a large area, red a smaller area. Even if they are equally powerful. To illuminate a target, you don't need a lot of illumination so red is better, it does the job but does not risk illuminating yourself.(assuming you hit) This is also the reason that small flash lights used for night navigation are often red. They dont draw as much attention. Green isnt used as often in temperate climates due to the colour fading into the background. There are often woods and foliage about. This is the same reason orange is rarely used in desert terrain. Cheers!
Also red light does less damage to your night vision than white or green, although the human eye sees green light better than red.
I thought this was related to the way MHV did the lighting on his video lol (Since it's different compared to usual). Context really does matter.
@@stephenwoods4118 Yeah, it's not a bright colour. Again with the green, it's not often used in temperate/tropical climates because of the obvious colour blending in. I recall reading an anecdote where a company in Vietnam called in Medivac for their wounded, only to mark their position with green smoke. This of course meant the medivac was look for green smoke..... In the jungle...
@@TheIfifi The smoke from smoke grenades is a light green, Most of the vegetation in SE Asia, with the exception of rice which is a brilliant emerald green, is a fairly dark shade of green. Also one doesn't usually say what color smoke they are popping, Charlie has radios too, and people who listen to them and smoke grenades of their own, obtained through various means. Usually the ground unit says popping smoke, and the Aerial unit says I see your smoke. Occasionally the Aerial unit says I see your green and yellow smoke, to which the ground unit says shoot at the smoke lat at the smoke. Smoke has a distinctive visual texture and moves, usually swirls, around, unlike vegetation which may bob and weave but doesn't usually move very far.
NATO maps are made to be readable in red light.
You had me at stug
@15:15 Red flares for target illumination is two part. One, the infantry does not lose all night vision (eyes adjusted to darkness). Two, the light radius of a red flare is less than a white flare so the target is illuminated and not the attacking infantry with it.
Wow, there was a lot of information in this video. Thank you for doing these great videos and a lot of research 👍
17 shots to kill a Stalin tank. That's consistent with my experience from Combat Mission Red Thunder.
Talking about russian tanks,The other day i one-shoted a kv-1 with a panzer 3J1, im new in the game, felt pretty proud of it...
Well done mate! I can't even 1 shot a kv-1 with a 17-pounder!
@@winstonchurchill237 thanks m.r prime minister, the shot went trough the driver's view port, all of the crew killed instantly.
Stalinium, comrade.
Nice hat, Mr Von Mackensen. Saw you on the Great war channel.
Excellent stuff! The kind of detail information that historians and enthusiasts "nerd out" on. Thank you!
White flares reduce night vision more than red. Also, white flares might illuminate friendly units more than red, which would explain what the effect was on friendly Stugs.
Really liked this one. Actual reporting from the front puts you right in the middle of it all. Thanx.
I love how you break all of this down. Ww2 German army has always been my favorite subject. Love the after action reports on actual combat and efficiency of the unit's. Thank you for the great work, it's like going to school and i learn so much..
Michael Wittman started his massive number of kills in a Stug
Nice to see another #FromTheArchives! These ought to get more views than they sometimes do because the information is very high quality.
I have read and re-read SLEDGEHAMMERS as well as several StuG III histories (currently 202 StuG Brigade). The problem with massing Tigers by the Germans is in the offensive they didn't mass them, even though they were considered "break-through tanks"; but in the defense they tended to do so. The area of operations most showing the effectiveness of spreading Tigers out in the defense was on the Western Front, Normandy in particular. Due to Allied air massing armor by the Germans was virtually impossible, especially if in range of ships off shore. They split the Tiger battalions into companies and placed them behind the lines as reaction forces. This reduced the distance they had to move, kept them out of the front line except when the Tigers chose to engage, and kept 4-5 Tigers available along the front, that being the normal number of Tigers operational from a company. On the East Front in the offensive there was only one major attack which used two Tiger Battalions to break into and through a Soviet defense line. This was the offensive to crush a Soviet bridgehead just before the German offensive in Hungary to retake the Hungarian oilfields. This was by, I think, 501st SS and 503rd SS Heavy Tank Battalions with Tiger II. Negatively, the Soviets detected the 501st which alerted them to the presence of the 6th SS Panzer Army. In contrast most offensives had the Tigers dispersed. For example at Kursk II SS Panzer Corps had a Tiger Company added to the Panzer Regiments of 1st SS, 2nd SS, and 3rd SS Panzergrenadier divisions as well as Gross Deutschland. 503rd Heavy Tank Battalion had three Tiger companies. Each of those was attached to a separate Panzer Division. The Tiger and StuG battalions/brigades both had problems with being attached to support Infantry Divisions. The Infantry Commanders tended to want a Tiger/StuG with each of its sub-units. StuG seemed to be deployed to a Division and then to a Regiment. Usually about 4 - 5 StuG, which like the Tigers was a company/battery after several days of combat. Regimental commanders then sent platoons to Battalions. This meant deploying 2-4 guns to a battalion with the Regiment or Division keeping a reserve of 2-4 guns. This worked but was much less effective than keeping the Battery together. Tiger units found the infantry divisions sometimes deploying a single Tiger on high ground to boost the infantry's morale. It would have to keep moving around to avoid the Soviet artillery and if it engaged Soviet targets all day, the infantry would sometimes pull back with the Tiger when it pulled back for ammunition and fuel. By late '44 German infantry divisions were not in most cases what they had been back in 41-42. All in all a well done look at late StuG III Brigades although you didn't mention the escort company and other attached units the StuG brigades usually had. SLEDGEHAMERS, the book your "How Effective was the Tiger Really?" presentation is also highly recommended reading.
The infantry wait too late to dismount... this is always a problem, even today. We joke that their motto is "Death Before Dismount".
can you take look at how finns used their stugs and tanks, there isn`t much information about it
Really interesting vid thanks. Amazing they were maintaining their morale and trying to improve so late in the war. In the very late war you often see footage of Stug deploying at trouble spots so they had a very tough job.
There is a good training film from 1944 about the tactics of the Pzjg IV and Panzergrenadier with flame throwers counterattacking, Panzergrenadier greifen an. Which corresponds to the lecture.
A soldier's vision recovers much quicker form a red light than a white one. Hence red night lights in U.S. armored vehicles and aircraft. Is this a secret ?
No, just not widely known outside service and ex service personnel.
Or anyone that works at night lol.
Those reports are really enlightening about both German tactics and Russian developments. If you have more, do publish them here! :)
I guess with Stalin Tanks they mean the IS and IS-2, they are really a beast
By the way. One of the famous Tiger commanders started his career on a StuG. Michael Wittmann. And i am not realy shure but it was said, that he commands his Tiger like he did with the StuG before.
Before that he was in an armored car.
Drove past a StuG 2 days ago in Finland. Parola panssarimuseo (panzer museum)
Work would be boring as hell without you bro! Thanks for everything you do man
when your learning about the courland pocket on one channel and their stugs from another. improvise, adapt, overcome
I didn't choose the Stug life... - German conscript, 1944
Did the stug life choose him?
HAHA, you deserve a German cookie!
Rui Costa A panzershokolade cookie.
Outstanding video and presentation.
StuG Life!
Das war interessant! Danke für diese Video!
"that war interesting " now I understand Germany fought in so many wars lol
@@mikhailzavarov4958 I knew It didn't meant war, it was just a joke ha ha
This is my favourite of all the Non visualized videos.
Isn’t crazy how 6-7 years in an entire century defined it all my grandparents always talked about before the war and after the war and they were to young to fight in in it
true.
Engineer reconnaissance
I need more of the StuG life.
Thanks for posting.. These motorized artillery pieces can be formidable weapons if properly handled..♥
Yeah, sometimes our life can be a bit dire, but we Stugs still have a wild, expansive and warm iron heart to keep going on in life.
Very insightful 👍
10 years ago, went to the local RV dealer in Richmond,In for some RV repair work. In the garage I turned a corner and I was next to a STuG! With skirts and in red primer. He said the guy who owns it takes it out back and runs it.
The red vs white flair thing may be to help with the eye getting used to darkness quicker after seeing a red light than a white one, which would be crucial for tank crews giving that you already have limited vision in a tank during daytime.
I feel like this channel channel Is begging to get an ww2 Eastern front tank documentary.
tolle Infos ... würdig eines Stugasm ;-)
I love your excellent content and I love that jacket you are wearing. What brand is it or how can I order one?
question: how long will it take to transfer such a unit of stugs? I ask because - here is such a thought - if you have time to redeploy such a unit, there is intelligence data where such a unit will be most useful and this data is not outdated, it means that the Soviet troops have already stopped active operations on this front area. Hence the reports of Soviet tanks that do not engage in active battles but simply go away. Soviets can continue fighting to improve their positions on the ground, but they do not have any decisive tasks. So in half the cases when Stugs were "effective", they really were not needed.
The Allies referred to "Firing on suspicion" as "Speculative fire". This term is still used today. Firing blindly into a building or trees where the enemy is known to be but unseen is referred to as "Proximity fire".
Or reconnaissance by fire.
Why no mention of the StuG Life? :(
If a unit is em place; is it not also true that it is difficult to remove to a secondary position?
Stug crews racked up 20 000 soviet tanks destroyed from 41 to 44 and another 10 000 in 45! And were able to with new tactics able to even smash IS-2s
And they still lost the war....
@@hymanocohann2698 heh heh you dont say, Soviets produced 103 500 tanks during the war with 83 500 destroyed, so they still had another 20 000 to go. I share that number only for the purpose of the Stugs excellent performance. Germany found themselves in a multi front war being completely out produced.
@@WarReport. I think you're wrong and 1,000,000 soviet tanks were destroyed. Or maybe even more. Let me read more of Guderian and other loosers.
@@igorverevkin7709 the numbers are there my Russian friend, what that number isn't impressive enough for Soviet tank production? Pretty fucking good for a country who really had fuck all for industry 20 years prior
You are aware Gebbels propaganda is kind of divorced from reality? You should stop parroting it...
I have heard about keeping the tigers apart before and this I think was due to fuel in moving them about,
It would be interesting to note the differences & similarities between the American Tank Destroyer doctrine vs. what the Germans may have been thinking about with centralizing their StuG's. I always found it weird that that General McNair guy created a defensive doctrine that (may) have been more useful for the Germans than anyone else. I wonder what parts of the TD doctrine the Germans could have or did use in their own way.
Tracked Panzer Jager and Jagedpanzer units used tactics a lot like what US Army tracked TD were trained for.
Can you do more German unit reports?
I have a question; if a Stug platoon would act as a quick reaction force a infantrie force, who would be in command ? Would the stug officer be Subordinate for that engagement ? Thanks
I've read and have no reason to doubt, that usually the officer with the most combat experience was in charge, which was often the Stug battery commander. They got more combat time because Stugs had high kill - to-lost ratios, thus they lived longer than German infantry. This was especially true later in the war when Germany was short of infantry, and junior infantry officers more so.
Good question. I am an ex professional soldier. He is under orders from higher authority, the same higher officer as the local infantry officer is and his instructions will usually be to support the local commander in his mission either an attack or defense. He may only be there for a couple of hours. So his rank is not relevant it is his designated role that is important. The local infantry commander has been given the role of defending this area or attacking this location and the stugs have been sent to assist. It would be chaotic if every time a senior rank walked past they could interfere with the orders of the actual commander. That is what is meant by chain of command. A person may be senior to you in rank and you must give them the courtesy their rank requires but they can only issue you orders if they are in your chain of command. Otherwise people would just steal each others soldiers. The sergeant cook could just walk up to the infantry privates and demand they peel his potatoes and wash his pans. Their answer should be "We will check with our own sergeant about that sarge. " The stug Captain can not order lower ranking infantry to wash his stugs. He has his own stug soldiers and has to use them. They are in his chain of command. Another issue is specialization. The stug commander may be an infantry qualified officer but usually he would be a specialist having spent his whole career commanding stugs or other self propelled artillery. They are very different roles with their own training and career path up to Major at least. I believe they were considered self propelled infantry support artillery. The Infantry officer is a specialist not a default role. In basic training as an enlisted recruit or as an officer cadet you learn basic infantry tactics. However if you select or are selected for infantry you will go to the Infantry school and learn advanced infantry tactics. The Officers and NCO's in particular will continue to take leadership and tactical programs and the soldiers will take specialist courses in weapons and roles. By the end of the war the Germans were scrambling and there were a mix of many new and half trained guys and veterans and anything could have happened in a hard situation. Both the stug unit and the Infantry unit belong to the same Division and battalion and have the same Colonel or Major but the local commander of the local battle is the infantry officer requesting the stug. The local Infantry commander is in charge of the battle at that point. The stug is arriving to support the infantry and will leave again once it's job is done. The stug commander has not come to take over the battle unless he has been ordered to do that. However if the Colonel shouts "Major Schmidt take your stugs and get to xyz and take command from Hauptmann Fritz he seems to be a bit shell shocked. Then see what can be done to fix the situation and report back if I need to send another commander or if Fritz is okay. Dont hang around there because I need you and your stugs back here ASAP." In that case he will be in command. Hope this helps. Movies really help to confuse things don't they. Ex soldiers like me see war movies and see that the movie depictions of the army are totally opposite to reality. No wonder people can't follow it.
Is not the "Sovjets use their AT guns against infantry" an effect of the sovjets not really having any heavy AT guns ( designed as such)? The 76mm guns usally being divisional artillery, and as such tasked with normal artillery missions, in aditions to fullfilling AT-tasks.
Not really. It's a matter of names. The ZiS-3 76mm gun was designed in 1940. Then the Soviet believed the German propaganda of a heavy, multi-turreted tank (Neubaufahrzeug) thought the 45 and 76mm guns were insufficient, so Marshal Kulik, commander of Soviet artillery, ordered the production of light 45 mm anti-tank guns and 76.2 mm divisional field guns to be stopped. Turns out German tanks were not as heavy as the 76mm could handily penetrate lots of them. The towed and SP versions (SU-76) served well in both AT and light artillery role. Note that the American Tank Destroyer with 3-inches and 90mm gun also served dual-role or AT and indirect artillery role. SU-152, despite having a short barrel gun, would also destroy any tank.
@@VT-mw2zb don't forget the ZIS-2 57mm and the towed 100mm BS-3
@@matthiuskoenig3378 76mm guns were generally division-level anti-tank reserves, 45-57 the battalion and regiment's. The 100mm guns seems to be Rifle Corps' or Tank Armies (which is actually closer to a Panzer Corps) anti-tank/light artillery reserves.
Red flears are for not blinding your troops whit white light in the night. Thats why tactical personal flashlamps haw red filter, so do the HUD-s and interior lights of army equipment
We call it "Probing Fire" I believe.
Tigers worked better dispersed than stugs did because they have a turret and a longer range gun and better armour.
The Stug is life
It sometimes sounds like you say StorG and not StuG. Anyway, great video.
this difference in tactics with stug and tiger is intresting, in ambush role it seems stugs would do better if only few were deployed at times. With tigers i understand since they were more independent units. Perhaps its pointless to compare them in -44, you do your best with what you have.
Tactics will be different because Tiger is a Tank and Stug is a tank destroyer (self propelled anti-tank gun/assault gun) so STUG is not a tank.
So for BICE we need a 3 to 1 StuG to StuH battalion
When they are talking about massed Soviet artillery are they referring to multiple rocket launchers?
they noted artillery, I assume not rocket artillery. I need to take a look at rocket artillery, yet from I gathered so far, its effect really depended on the situation.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized How accurate is rocket artillery?
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Of all the possible conventional things that could happen from being shot to clearing a minefield and it chain reacting, I always thought being halfway through a bridge build when a BM 21 strike hits would be the worst.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Perhaps there are more recent and easier to study sources from the Second Lebanon War of 2006? Hezbollah used Katyusha launchers, apparently older ones supplied through their Iranian commanders. There's bound to be some reports on their use and on targeting them.
@@edward9674 Not all that accurate, certainly not compared to convential guns. What the rockets were good for was saturating a large area with large amounts of ordnance in a relative short amount of time and they were very effectieve in that.
When you get StuG in an bad situation...
Soviets fighting to the last tank probably had something to do with inability to disengage quickly bc of bad command control due to lack of wireless at the individual tank level, at least earlier in the war.
Interestingly enough the russians now uses combined arms-warfare and therefore avoid tank-vs-tank-battles. All that while the desperate germans throw their tigers and whatnots in heavy tank formations against the soviet lines. So basically just opposite strategies from both sides when compared to the beginning of the conflict.
By 1944, the Wehrmacht gave up on even hoping the Luftwaffe would show up.
@@v4enthusiast541Yeah sure. They had no fuel and the Red Army got more and more planes. Also armed warfare included in practice very little airsupport, it was mostly infantry, tanks, artillery and anti-tank guns.
I might not go that far, though I would make this point. As the war drew on, for the Wehrmacht they had the issue not in the reduced manpower, more importantly in the reduced quality of the manpower. They were losing the officers, NCO's that had the combat experience, understanding of doctrine, experience in general, with each major engagement. The Soviets on the other hand, were only getting more experience and had Stalin, despite the politicking, psychological operations he was putting his field marshals through, was in fact, letting the more qualified run the day to day operations. Even some elements of grand strategy. Not only that, the Soviet army was getting more quality personnel, the officers and NCO's who survived. They were able to pass information, knowledge on. They were leading the attacks. Given the option of attack in two, three locations, trying to push the enemy back, you have one area with a few tanks and one area where there are no tanks. Tanks are pretty hard to kill, actually. I'll take the area without the tanks thanks, it's easier, safer and it means I get another day fighting for revenge for what the SS units did. Every single German crime committed on Russian soil. That tank is going to be a pain in the arse to take out, but if he's got no friends about, he might not stay around to fight, which is awesome. He might even get abandoned, because the position is so untenable, even more awesome, we get to capture it.
@@LionofCaliban Yeah sure, but there is also this element of the germans de facto switching strategy. In the early war years they were succesfull because they knew how to effectivly combine their weapons, while the other side did this rarely. But now it was different: The Sovietunion did not send their tanks in waves against units of infantry, PAKs and artillery plus some tanks in reserve. Instead they now could support their tanks with artillery and infantry. And the germans answer was putting up heavy tank formations that were de facto a complete rehaul of the whole war of movement strategy of the germans. Now these heavy tanks should go out and kill enemy units that could put up infantry, anti-tank guns and supporting own tanks. A tank is far less efficient if he uses to hunt enemy tanks. It should support infantry-actions and needs their support. And the germans kinda forget that in the end.
@@SergeantAradir "Just wait until we have 5000 Maus and Elefants! It will turn back the Bolsheviks all the way to Alaska!"
The moment that the HE round hits the stug it is too late for the infantry to get off the vehicle
I bet this extremely interesting report was widely ignored by anyone in charge during the war. I would be very interested in reading the actual report myself.
Jeebus. What a nightmare. In CC3 i would never ever evet put stuggs in the open. I always tried to keep them at the near-edge of their optimal engagement distance depending on: The crew The maingun The terrain. If its swinging the longer 75 , the crew is rested, they are in great spirits and thus will engage and reload and stay on the ball, they can get closer with and sometines without a lot of support, although ill micromanage them a bit. If theyre still a little green, exhausted, morale in decline, then they are kept back and used only for suppression and light support. If i lose even one, its a serious blow to morale. And that stsrtd a domino effect on the field. Everyones reaction times, awareness, endurance , tenacity it all suffers terribly when you lose a big piece of steel like a StuG 💔
Any more reference to Begleits and use there of.
?
Red light doesn't hinder sight in low light conditions as much as white light does.
Maybe the 'Stalin Panzer' was an IS of some type? Only Soviet tanks I can think of that can take a prolonged beating from German 75mm guns other than a KV.
seeing the flat front at gun mantles got me annoyed , it should be slope atleast 30 or 40 degrees
Later models had a cast “pigs head” mantlet, which was heavily sloped
How big was the crew survivalbility on the Stug?
Probably pretty low if it was penetrated on the driver hatch, It could have easily killed the driver, gunner and commander because they were in a row. Probably the soviets knew this eventually. then you had the poor loader that maybe he was lucky enough to bail out
@@v44n7 but for that you need tobe shot at at first and that is depending on the tactics used thats what i meant
Wait, there was a army group center?
I exhaled forcefully
Dude I love the knowledge, but I think some animation would really help your videos.
No.. I need vids I can listen too on the road.
Surely there are some surviving Stug crew members you can interview and ask about tactics?
did you look at a calendar recently?
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized yeah sure we just had ANZAC day in Australia to remember the people who served in the wars including my family. Yes there is not many WW2 veterans left alive, all the members of my family that served have now passed away. Anyhow it was just a suggestion.
Armored Warfare in the Italian campaign was different due to the difference in terrain. The tactics that would be useful in Western Europe War on the Russian front wouldn't work in Italy because of the mountainous Terrain. In this case because of the numerous hiding spots a single tank can create tremendous delays on the defensive. Due to the terrain the attacking Force may be reduced onto a very narrow front with exposed flanks which would be ideal to defeat from a defensive standpoint
Who fired these "teaser rounds"? I would assume that tactic applied to their Nashorns etc? This has been and continues to be a great channel for historical gamers, esp WW2/ETO Livin' the Stug life!
Instead of "untypical" you would say atypical or unusual. Sorry but as a german these slight mistakes put me on edge. Love your content.
If the infantry was leaving these targets, that could be dealt with by small arms, to the STuGs, is that an indicator to troop morale, quality, or both, at this late stage in the war?
4.00 US radios and tanks in Red Army In 1942, the No. 19 Mk II was produced in Canada by Northern Electric, Canadian Marconi and RCA Victor. A majority of Canadian sets used English/Cyrillic front panel lettering, the result of a Lend-Lease contract to the Soviet Red Army.[7] 12,780 LL to USSR
Fast and Fuhrious!
I like your presentation. With your videos, it’s interesting to hear about the nuts and bolts of how a war is fought on the grass root level. Too many of the old propaganda movies and videos suggest the Germans though everything in a piece meal fashion. If this true, why did it take so long to beat them.
More pictures
Stalin panzer, IS maybe? IS2 would have been only around in very limited number then.
Stalin panzer is indeed a term used to refer to the IS-1 or IS-2 heavy tanks.
some 2000 IS2 were produced by Nov 1944. That is 1.5 times as many as all Tigers I produced.
Nov 1944. After the major-league beating that the Germans got in Normandy/Mortain/Falaise, and in Operation Bagration, by that time I would be waving a white flag and giving up!
my grandfather told me that he found tanks locked from the outside to prevent the crew deserting
That would be a nightmare if it brewed up.
Possibly a penal unit. I've read an account from an Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik pilot in which the some of the gunners attached to the squadron were penal troops and were chained to their positions.
Did you get "Der Reserveoffizier " yet?
jo
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized I found it to be an interesting read with good insights, how about you?
@@19platten20 I found some interesting parts in it, but I hadn't had time to read the whole thing. Thanks for the recommendation.
you're very welcome. and thank YOU for that great content
Stugs crewed by artillery troops used different tactics than those crewed by panzer troops.
Shouldn't you have depicted StuG III G instead of F?
Here is my attempt to explain the recommendation to use StuGs as counter-attacking mobile reserves while Tigers as essentially pillboxes. If you look only at technical details, StuGs should serve as mobile, redeployable anti-gun guns in support of the infantry. Their optimal employment in mutual defense, overlapping fields of fire might be in similar fashion to the Soviet anti-tank strongpoints and regions; except that the towed 45mm or ZiS 76mm guns aren't so easily redeployed, and during the retreat, the infantry don't have a mobile, small arms proof "shield". Tanks, with a rotating turret, should be the ones doing the counter-attacking. What override it is: a) terrain, and b) force available. If you are talking about the Eastern front, 1944; I'm not sure which offensive or sector they were, but let's say Operation Bagration. The whole Army Group Center had close to 500 tanks and SPGs. They were outnumbered 8.2:1 (Glantz, When Titans clashed). If you are outnumbered, and the terrain allows for it, the enemy will inevitably try to bypass centers of resistance and encircle you. The Soviet estimated that they were facing 800k Germans, which was more or less correct, if the whole AG Centre was considered. The immediate troops in front of the Soviets were more like 330k. The Soviets finally massed 1.2 million troops, achieving overall 3.7:1 advantage in men in the overal tactical battle. In the penetration sectors the advantages were 8-10:1. In the face of such opposition, every scrap of mobile armoured reserves counts. The StuGs despite technically may not be the best for the task, has do be the mobile reserve anyway since they would be the only thing that were armoured and mobile. During the tail end of Bagration, the German strategic/operational counterstrokes might include a battalion or two of Tigers. I'm not familiar with the Italian front. If you check out the terrain, the tempo of the offensive, and the correlation of force, there might be some differences.
Interestingly, this is the American Tank Destroyer doctrine - you know, the one they famously didn't follow :)
@@ianwhitchurch864 Well, I think StuGs and Tank Destroyers were light tanks done right. With StuGs, you simplify the tank to be short, inconspicuous, or concentrate the armour on the front (where the shot will likely hit), but still carry a gun that can destroy most targets. They can fulfil many roles: reconnaissance (smaller, lighter, faster), infantry support, infantry mobile anti-tank, armoured counter-attack, and occasionally going toe-to-toe with tanks. American TDs were also not bad but they were a bit too tall and too lightly armoured for some roles.
Thought/comment in regards to the extreme range fire from emplaced AT guns. The Chieftain, forgive the lack of the video, made the point that units can often only deal with a set amount of contact, conflict at anyone point. It puts stress on the unit and it makes it harder for it to function as efficiently. Combine this with say, artillery fire, say a Katyusha battery dropping rockets in a close enough area, air attack, radio jamming, infantry attack or ambush, it maintains that contact force, psychological pressure on the Wehrmacht formations, forces. Not only does it do that, but it's..... almost a declaration of ownership, you're on our territory, our range, we can shoot at you from here and you can do nothing to stop us. Does it take out any vehicles? Probably not to almost definitely not. I'd bet against it entirely. Does it make you think real hard about where you are and keep your head down? I'd think so. Some of the..... Romanian, I want to say, formations, if not others from conquered nations, weren't exactly known for holding their nerve. Though, with how badly equipped they were, you can't really blame them either.
In fact small groups of Tigers were often VERY effective. They were the most effective tank of WW II. in terms of impact per tank and unlike the overrated waste of time and money Panthers. Many German commanders noted the weaknesses of the Panther in particular its vulnerable side armor. Yes the Germans needed numbers of mediums and light tank/tank destroyers but the stiffening of the Tigers led spearheads in attack and counter attack AND defense hard points. The Stg III was indeed an excellent vehicule but by 1944 was beginning to be obsolete if still effective. Despite Guderians complaints the Jg Pz IV was a great idea. The long version even more. A Pz IV chassis giving you the armor and gun as the Panther. Who needs Panthers in a defensive war?? In 1944 all Pz III should cease. Pz IV production being reduced to support vehicles, AA, Art and tank destroyers with Hetzers being the mass produced TD. The Tigers would play the needed role of heavies vs JS II, JSU 122, 152's and Su 100s.
Tigers were heavy tanks, deployed in independent heavy tank battalions, while Panthers were medium tanks designed to replace the Panzer IV as the mainstay of panzer divisions. The Panther had superior frontal armour, mobility, weight and a main gun that (like the Tiger's) could comfortably penetrate any standard Allied tank in service. This is why the Tiger was replaced in service by the Tiger II.
Not all are STUG ready....
Beating an ambush tactic is to out flank it.
I see "Stug" I hit like, what can I say, I have excellent taste
Did the soviets make a he shell for their anti tank guns?
yeah, from what I know there were very few guns in WW2 that didn't have a HE round.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized ah ok well that explains why Soviet anti tank guns were used to fight infantry...
not only HE, shrapnel shells were also widely used.
@@alexalexin9491 ah ok so im assuming modern equivalent of grapeshot?
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Also in general the Soviet anti-tank guns carriages allowed for much higher elevation than their Western and German counterparts (excluding the 88mm anti-air of course) making them more suitable to be used as both a field gun and an anti-tank gun.
The Stug lll we're extremely underrated, topnotch killing machines, they ruled in Kursk.
The STUGs were a last ditch effort..after 1943, the Russians could attack anywhere they wished-the vast eastern front was impossible to defend. And without air support, German armor was at a huge disadvantage.So, even though the STUGs could be effective, why would any Soviet commander engage the Germans frontally? They just attacked the flanks (as at Bagration); the few german armored columns were simply cut off and ran out of fuel and ammo.
How to deal with panzers: kzhead.info/sun/hKuhkZRtlommdK8/bejne.html