Report of a Sturmgeschütz Brigade - Eastern Front 1944

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A Stug getting stuck with a cook as infantry support sounds like a recipe for disaster.

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!

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!

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!

"The stug life chose me" -Panzerkoch Jonas

You had me at stug

17 shots to kill a Stalin tank. That's consistent with my experience from Combat Mission Red Thunder.

The infantry wait too late to dismount... this is always a problem, even today. We joke that their motto is "Death Before Dismount".

@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 👍

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.

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..

Really liked this one. Actual reporting from the front puts you right in the middle of it all. Thanx.

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.

Nice to see another #FromTheArchives! These ought to get more views than they sometimes do because the information is very high quality.

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.

I didn't choose the Stug life... - German conscript, 1944

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.

Michael Wittman started his massive number of kills in a Stug