Assault artillery troops from the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS
The assault artillery was part of the artillery troops , a branch of the army of the German Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS in World War II . Their task was the immediate fire support of the combat troops in direct judging .
The soldiers of the assault artillery wore the uniforms of the armored forces , but in field gray.
General
The war experience of the First World War had shown that pure infantry units could only force a breakthrough through enemy lines with difficulty. Among other things, there was a lack of means of attack to eliminate enemy machine-gun positions, which could never be completely eliminated even with strong support fire from their own artillery, and thus to avoid high losses among the attacking infantry. The chief of the operations department of the General Staff of the Army and later "father of the assault artillery" General Erich von Manstein demanded in 1935 the creation of an "accompanying artillery on self-propelled guns for infantry and anti-tank", assault artillery as a powerful and all-terrain support weapon for attacking infantry units. Militarily, the new force was branch of "artillery" assigned, and therefore the developed independently of the parallel process of construction Panzertruppe under the Inspector General Guderian .
In 1937 a prototype (Sd.Kfz. 142) with a 7.5 cm gun was created, which from then on defined the basic form of the later assault gun: a casemate tank with 7.5 cm cannon, four-man crew and radio equipment. In battle, the vehicle first had to be roughly aimed at the target to be attacked before the gunner could aim the cannon at the target using the crank.
Mission history
The assault artillery experienced its first test in the western campaign . The establishment of numerous assault gun detachments and later assault gun brigades , which were recruited exclusively from volunteers until 1943, took place quickly .
The first department to be set up in the late summer of 1940 was Assault Gun Department 184 with a total of 18 assault guns in three batteries . Until the Balkan campaign in spring 1941, divisions 185, 190 and 191 were set up and deployed in the Balkans. The 191 assault gun division supported the 72nd Infantry Division, for example, in the fighting over the Greek Metaxas line .
On June 1, 1941, there were already 15 independent assault gun detachments and five independent assault gun batteries in the army . In addition, the Greater Germany Infantry Regiment and the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler had their own assault gun battery. All assault gun units were used in the attack on the Soviet Union as a focus weapon for infantry support. As a result, the allegations changed frequently. By the end of the year, 95 of the 377 assault guns deployed in the east had been lost.
Nevertheless, the number of assault guns on the Eastern Front increased steadily. On April 1, 1942, 623 assault guns were available in 19 assault gun departments and an independent battery. By June 1, 1943, the number increased to 1422 assault guns in 26 assault gun departments and two independent batteries. On November 1, 1942, the target strength of the departments was increased to 31 assault guns (ten each in three batteries and one for the department staff).
In the further course of the war, the success of the assault artillery stimulated further differentiation; In addition to the task of following the infantry as escort artillery in direct judging, the tank artillery with motorized self-propelled guns and self-propelled howitzers was created for long-range artillery fire fighting.
Above all, however, assault guns proved their worth as tank destroyers - until 1944 only assault guns were counted as shooting down 20,000 enemy tanks. However, on the one hand, these tasks were increasingly taken over by the tank destroyer troops with their tank destroyers, and the unintended use of the tank troops as a replacement for the scarce supply of armored vehicles came. The inspector general of the tank troops, Colonel General Guderian , tried in 1943 to use the complete new production of the StuG III to equip tank regiments. This would have meant a weakening of the infantry, whose main support weapon was the StuG III. A Führer decree of March 13, 1943 decided that from May 1943 100 StuG III from new production were to be transferred to the armored troops every month. This was used to equip the tank regiments of the three tank divisions that were destroyed in Stalingrad and now reorganized. A total of 22 assault guns in four companies each should be in a tank division equipped with assault guns. In practice, mixed tank detachments were also set up, each with two tank and assault gun companies. In 1943, all tank departments of the Panzer Grenadier Divisions were each equipped with 45 assault guns.
In the same way, more and more assault guns were integrated into the tank destroyer departments. To this end, the OKH issued an order on July 15, 1943 that one tank hunter company from all infantry divisions on the Eastern Front should be equipped with 14 StuG IIIs. The 6th and 7th Infantry Divisions were among the first units whose tank destroyer division was equipped with a company of assault guns from October 1943. The reclassification of the tank destroyer units with assault guns dragged on until mid-1944 and was not completed in all divisions.
In 1943, individual divisions were given their own permanently assigned assault gun departments, in particular the Panzer Grenadier Division Großdeutschland and the Panzer divisions of the Waffen SS.
Air force ground combat units also received assault gun units . At the turn of the year 1941/42 , the Hermann Göring Brigade had an assault gun battery. When the brigade later became the Panzer Division Hermann Göring, the III. Division of their tank regiment also assault guns. The I. and II. Parachute Corps , set up in January 1944 , also each had an assault gun division.
In 1944, the target strength of the assault gun departments was increased again. The assault gun departments, now renamed as Heeres-Sturmgeschütz-Brigades or Heeres-Sturmartillerie-Brigades, were equipped with 45 guns (14 each in three batteries and three for the department staff). In addition, there was an accompanying grenadier battery made up of soldiers specially trained to work with assault guns. In June 1944, a total of 48 assault gun and three assault artillery brigades were deployed in the army, 33 of them on the Eastern Front. Often they served as tank destroyers - a role that they took on very efficiently thanks to their low silhouette and strong armor in conjunction with good armament (from version F). Until the introduction of the Panzer IV Ausf. F2 , the StuG III F was the only combat vehicle that could pose a threat to the Russian T-34 at greater distances. The StuG III remained in use as the standard weapon of the assault artillery until the end of the war.
In 1944 the Finnish Army received 59 StuG III from Germany to use in the fight against the Soviet Union . With these tanks around 90 enemy tanks were destroyed with the loss of only eight of their own vehicles, some of which were blown up by their own crews. Even after the Second World War, the remaining assault guns were used in the Finnish army until the 1960s.
Weapon systems
StuG III advancing into the Soviet Union in 1941
View of Stalingrad from the tower of a StuG III, September 1942
From 1943 the assault guns were armored with additional side plates. StuG III on the Eastern Front in 1943
From 1943 Italian Semovente assault guns were taken over by the Wehrmacht as StuG M42 (i)
Storm howitzer 42 on the Eastern Front
US soldiers recover an abandoned storm tiger
| Type | gun | Construction year | number of pieces |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assault tank I | 15 cm | 1938-40 | 38 |
| Assault Gun III | 7.5 cm | 1940-45 | about 10,000 |
| StuIG 33 B | 15 cm | 1942 | 24 |
| Assault tank II | 15 cm | 1942 | 12 |
| Assault Tank IV | 15 cm | 1942-45 | 306 |
| Balaclava 42 | 10.5 cm | 1942-45 | 1,299 |
| Sturmpanzer 38 (t) | 15 cm | 1943-45 | 389 |
| Assault Gun IV | 7.5 cm | 1943-45 | 1,141 |
| Assault gun M42 (i) | 7.5 cm | 1943 | 294 |
| Assault tank VI | 38 cm | 1944 | 18th |
See also
swell
literature
- Joachim Engelmann, Horst Scheibert: German Artillery 1934-1945. Starke Verlag, Limburg 1974.
- Peter Müller, Wolfgang Zimmermann: Assault Gun III. Backbone of the infantry. Volume 1: History, development, production and use, Müller History Facts, Andelfingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-9522968-2-0 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from July 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. April 7, 2012.
- ↑ Wolfgang Fleischer: The German Assault Guns 1935-1945 , Podzun-Pallas Verlag, ISBN 3-7909-0588-7 , p. 26
- ↑ Wolfgang Fleischer: The German assault guns 1935-1945 , Podzun-Pallas Verlag, ISBN 3-7909-0588-7 , p. 44.
- ↑ Wolfgang Fleischer: Die German assault guns 1935-1945 , Podzun-Pallas Verlag, ISBN 3-7909-0588-7 , p. 97
- ↑ Thomas L. Jentz : Die deutsche Panzertruppe 1943-1945 , Podzun-Pallas Verlag 1999, ISBN 3-7909-0624-7 ; Pp. 68 to 70
- ↑ Wolfgang Fleischer, Richard Eiermann: Die deutsche Panzerjägertruppe 1935–1945 , Podzun-Pallas Verlag 1998, ISBN 3-7909-0613-1 ; Pp. 115 to 117
- ↑ Wolfgang Dierich: The Air Force Associations 1935–1945 , Verlag Heinz Nickel 1993, ISBN 3-925480-15-3 .
- ↑ Wolfgang Fleischer: Die German assault guns 1935-1945 , Podzun-Pallas Verlag, ISBN 3-7909-0588-7 , p. 105
