The StuG

Germany's premier not-a-tank

Tanks tend to overshadow other armored fighting vehicles in discussion about World War II. Tank destroyers, half-tracks and various self-propelled guns often play second fiddle to tanks in people's imagination. This oversight, however, is a grave mistake, since such vehicles played major roles in the war. This is especially true of Germany's assault tank series, the StuG, short for Sturmgeschütz ("assault gun"). This particular vehicle family is important not only for its prevalence in the German army (over 12,000 built, easily outnumbering the 8,500 Panzer IVs (Read our earlier article) which were Germany most numerous tank), but also for its interesting history as a vehicle that was designed for one specific role but "changed career" later.

The need for something like the StuG was recognized during World War I, when German infantry fighting on the Western Front found it difficult to engage fortifications such as pillboxes and bunkers. The field artillery of the time was too heavy and not sufficiently mobile to keep up with advancing infantry, but the technology of the time did not allow for an effective self-propelled artillery piece.

The idea got new support during Nazi Germany's rapid rearmament before World War II. General Erich von Manstein became the champion of the Sturmartillerie ("assault artillery") concept: armored self-propelled guns that would advance alongside infantry divisions and provide supporting direct fire.

The first prototypes of what became the StuG were produced in 1937. They used the chassis and running gear of the Panzer III tank with a turretless superstructure holding a short-barreled 7.5 cm StuK 37 L/24 cannon, a slightly modified version of the gun used on Panzer IV tanks (which themselves were originally designed to engage fortifications, only as part of a tank force without infantry).

Slotting the vehicle into the army's organization was a problem. It was similar to a tank in appearance and use, but the armored corps had neither the resources to form StuG units, nor the inclination, as German tank doctrine was all about spearheading assaults, breaking through enemy lines and causing havoc behind the front line, and not about helping the slow infantry follow and mop up the remaining resistance. The infantry, whom the StuG was designed to help, also lacked the resources, so the vehicle ended up with artillery arm.

Lacking a turret allowed the StuG to be shorter than a tank (6 ft 5 in, 1.95 m), making it a smaller target, while also being able to carry more armor and a larger gun. Early versions did not have any machine guns, since they were supposed to be used in conjunction with infantry, who would have enough small arms fire. The short-barreled gun fired low-velocity high explosive shells which had a thin wall (the "skin" of the shell) and a large amount of explosives. These shells were effective at destroying fortifications, infantry and soft-skinned vehicles, and even proved surprisingly useful against thinly armored obsolete tanks. The vehicle had a crew of four: commander, driver, gunner and loader.

The StuG proved to be a good tank-killer during the invasion of Poland, and later during the conquest of France. Some more heavily armored tanks such as the British Matilda II and the French Char B1 could not be penetrated, but the StuG still had a chance to disable them with shots to the tracks or the turret. The gun continued to serve well against obsolete Soviet tanks such as the T-26 and the BT-series during the early days of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, but soon came up against T-34 medium and KV-1 heavy tanks which greatly outmatched it.

The StuG went through Ausführung ("versions") A to E during these early days. The changes were gradual refinements and the fixing of teething problems encountered in the field. An MG 42 machine gun was eventually added for anti-infantry protection, and could be fired by the loader who had to stick his upper body outside the vehicle.

The appearance of heavily armored enemy tanks in the Soviet Union, however, forced a serious upgrade to the design. A quick fix was tried by introducing armor-piercing shells containing tungsten, but Germany never had enough tungsten to meet the needs of StuG units. The second-best option was the introduction of a whole new gun which could knock out these heavier targets. That new gun was the 7.5 cm StuK 40, which came in two different versions, L/43, and the longer and slightly more powerful L/48 - the same gun that was also mounted on the later versions of the Panzer IV. This cannon had a longer barrel – this meant that the detonation of the propeller charge would keep accelerating the shell inside the barrel for a longer time, giving it more speed, better accuracy and a longer range. When firing armor-piercing shells, the new StuG Ausf. F could engage most Soviet tanks effectively at normal ranges, while still being able to destroy fortifications with high explosive shells.

This new version also had an additional 30 mm (1.18 in) armor welded or bolted to its original 50 mm (1.96 in) frontal armor. Crews on the Eastern Front also liked to add extra armor in the form of concrete, spare track links or even wooden logs, though these were more psychological than practical in their effect.

The Ausf. G, with over 8,400 produced, became the definitive version of the StuG and was introduced in December 1942. It had a wider and taller superstructure, and a commander's cupola. The cupola was originally rotating, but the Allied bomber campaign against German industry created a chronic shortage of ball bearings in 1943, and a new, non-rating cupola was designed and used for a while.

From the spring of May onward, the Ausf. G. also had a single 80 mm (3.14 in) armor plate in the front instead of two plates welded or bolted together. Schürzen ("apron") side plates were also fitted over the tracks. Originally equipped before the Battle of Kursk (Read our earlier article), these were designed to protect the tracks against Soviet anti-tank missiles, but later also proved to be effective against hollow-charge weapons like the bazooka. (Read our earlier article) The loader's machine gun was equipped with a square shield to protect the loader. Many StuGs eventually had these replaced by a rotating machine gun on the top which could be operated by the loader from inside the vehicle. A second, coaxial machine gun was also added to the gun mantlet.

The Ausf. G also introduced the Saukopf (“pig’s head”) gun mantlet. Unlike the earlier, boxy mantlet, the new sloped and rounded mantlet had a better chance of deflecting hits. There weren’t enough castings to produce enough Saukopf mantlets, so the older version also remained in production until the end of the war.

The StuG also had several variants produced apart from the main development line. The StuH 42, introduced in 1942, was an Ausf. F armed with a howitzer cannon, strictly intended for infantry support. Of course, infantry support was the entire premise of the StuG, but more and more StuGs were used in an anti-tank role, necessitating a version that would actually stick to its original job. 1,299 StuHs were built.

Ten StuGs were armed with flamethrowers as an experiment, but they were never used in combat.

The Sturm-Infanteriegeschütz 33B ("assault infantry gun") was a StuG chassis with a large, boxy superstructure holding a 15 cm sIG 33/1, Germany's main heavy infantry gun, and the largest weapon ever classified as an infantry weapon. 24 of these were built and used in the Battle of Stalingrad. They took horrendous casualties in the fierce fighting, but one still remains in the Kubinka tank museum in Russia.

You always read about the "StuG III," but never about the StuG I and II. That's for good reason: there never were such vehicles. The vehicle was simply called "StuG" without any numbers until 1943. In early 1943, the Krupp company proposed a new version of the StuG, one built on a Panzer IV chassis instead of a Panzer III one, as the company only produced the former. The first design proved to be too heavy, and the project was abandoned for half a year. In August, after the Battle of Kursk, Hitler held a conference where he was told that the StuG greatly outperformed the Panzer IV in infantry support and defensive roles. He decided to switch production over to a turretless vehicle based on the Panzer IV, which eventually became the Jagdpanzer IV.

In November 1943, Alkett, the primary manufacturer of the StuG, suffered damage from Allied bombing, and StuG production plummeted. Krupp's earlier idea of building a StuG on a Panzer IV chassis was dusted off and revised, since it could be put in production quicker than the Jagdpanzer IV. The resulting vehicle was named the Sturmgeschütz IV, while the previously existing StuGs were redesignated as StuG III. The numbers do not represent a linear development, but simply signify what type of Panzer chassis they were built on. 1,141 Stug IVs were built, and, like most StuG IIIs in the last years of the war, were used in an exclusively anti-tank role to prop up Germany's failing tank corps.

Most StuGs served on the Eastern Front, with much smaller numbers in North Africa, Italy and Western Europe. They excelled in a defensive role: their small size made it easy to camouflage them, and the lack of a turret was not a problem when you knew which direction the enemy attack was going to come from. They suffered from the casemate gun emplacement and the relatively thin armor on the attack, but were still more cost-effective than Tigers and Panthers.

A number of nations used the StuG beside Germany. Finland received 59 vehicles in two batches. The first batch of 30 destroyed at least 87 Soviet tanks at the cost of 8 StuGs (some of which were destroyed by their own crews to prevent them from falling into Russian hands). Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy and Spain also received StuGs in numbers ranging from ten to several hundred. The Soviet Union captured several hundred. Only a few of these were put into frontline use, with most either used for testing or as the basis of new vehicles such as the SU-76i assault gun (not to be confused with the SU-76). The last country to use the StuG was Syria, which acquired some 30 during the 50s – the last few were in service up until the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

If you want to see some of the remaining StuGs in the the best tank museums of the world, join us either on our Britain at War Tour or our Third Reich Tour.

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