One machine which had slipped quietly on to the battlefield during the French campaign was the Sturmgeschütz assault gun.
Under Blitzkrieg tactics, all of the tanks of the army were concentrated into the fast moving Panzer divisions, which would thrust deep into the rear positions of an enemy force, spreading panic and confusion as they advanced from the narrow point of penetration. As we have seen, the shock of the advance required a high level of artillery support at the point of attack, and also harnessed the extra power of air interdiction. But in the 1930s, the bulk of Germany’s heavy artillery forces were still horse-drawn. What this meant was that the advancing tanks and motorised infantry would rapidly outstrip the artillery support.
Even mechanised prime movers like half-tracks had their disadvantages. The time taken to move into position and deploy the guns for action under battlefield conditions meant vital time was lost. In battle, split seconds literally meant the difference between life and death.
If artillery was to play a real role in the new mobile warfare it needed to be able to operate as close to the battle zone as possible, but the closer artillery pieces got to the action, the more vulnerable the gunners were to enemy fire. What was needed was an assault gun - a mobile artillery piece which could keep pace with the mechanised infantry, afford the gunners a measure of protection, and provide support on the battlefield at short notice, where it really mattered, in the very front line. A fully armoured and fully tracked mobile gun platform therefore had great appeal from the point of view of both mobility and crew protection. It also provided a means of providing close artillery support fire right in the very front line. Orders were despatched for prototype vehicles.
The Sturmgeschütze viewed from the enemy point of view. This propaganda photograph was probably taken in Russia during 1942.
The successful prototype was produced in 1936 by the Alkett company. The final vehicle was actually constructed from two separate elements and it mounted a heavy 75mm gun on a Panzer III tank chassis. The 75mm was a heavier weapon than could normally be carried on a Panzer III, but the extra space for the gun was achieved by dispensing with the turret and setting the gun on a fixed mount with a limited traverse. The Sturmgeschütz was born.
Naturally, the Grenadiers fighting in the front line welcomed this development with open arms. Here was an artillery piece which could fight with the infantry at the crucial point of the battlefield and keep pace with the lightning advances of the Blitzkrieg era.
Throughout the long years of the Second World War the Sturmgeschütz crews never came to regard themselves as tank men. They wore different uniforms, and considered themselves to be artillery men who happened to man mobile assault guns – but they were still gunners at heart.
From the gunner’s point of view, they quickly grew to love the Sturmgeschütz. After all, they were now protected against direct infantry fire and felt themselves impervious to anything but direct artillery fire. The powerful 75mm gun meant they packed a real punch in the attack.
The Sturmgeschütz had a crew of four: the commander, driver, loader and gunner. It soon became the proud boast of the Sturmgeschütz crews that their men were all volunteers, always ready to answer the infantryman’s call to ‘bring up the guns.’ The new assault gunners took to the role with great enthusiasm. Although the cramped interior of each Geschutze officially had room for only 44 rounds, the crews soon found that they could carry 90 rounds of ammunition by stacking extra rounds in layers on the floor of the vehicle. This meant the guns could stay in action and continue to give their support to the infantry for longer periods. In the coming years that would be a great advantage.
A demonstration of the building of the Sturmgeschütze and Panzer IIIs which appeared in the pages of Signal magazine.
Despite the early signs of promise, these first machines were produced in small numbers and only 30 Geschutze were available for the French campaign of 1940. But they acquitted themselves well in their first actions. Orders were immediately given for the production of a further 500 machines. These machines equipped the first Sturmgeschütze batteries which served in the Blitzkrieg campaigns, through the Balkans and into Russia.
Initially, the Sturmgeschütze were organised into independent battalions. Each battalion was composed of three troops, which originally had six guns each. The commander of the battalion also had his own vehicle. In later years the number of vehicles in each troop was raised to ten and the battalions were renamed as Brigades which, in theory, fielded 31 Sturmgeschütz. In practice, these ideals were hardly ever achieved and only highly favoured formations received the full compliment.
In battle these independent brigades were allocated to support infantry formations for a specific action and came under the command of these formations. As the war developed the Sturmgeschütz commanders naturally gained a wealth of battle experience through almost constant exposure to action. In practice it was frequently the infantry commanders who took the lead from the more experienced assault gun leaders.
The official regulations stressed that the Sturmgeschütz should be employed en masse. But the constant demands of a terrible war meant that they were more often employed as single battalions or even single machines.
One shortcoming of the early Sturmgeschütz models was the lack of a machine gun for close support against enemy infantry. This was rectified in 1941 with the introduction of the machine gun mounted on the Model E, of which a further 272 were produced.