frank1970
Posts: 1678
Joined: 9/1/2000 From: Bayern Status: offline
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I asked my great uncle about the attacking of KV1 with bad trained boys.
He told me that in the beginning of the war all methods of tankfighting with infantry were new. Until Russia the Wehrmacht fought enemy tanks with their Paks or with 88s. In Russia the frontlines were too long to give every unit 88s and the Pak did not work at all (ok, it worked but it didn´t knock out enemy tanks but just knocked on the armour).
The first weeks the troop paniced, then the soldiers attacked the tanks with infantry weapons. They had losses but they got the experience they needed to effective kill enemy tanks.
My great uncle told me that he was fighting the most time in forests or swamps. In this areas tanks were rare and the surrounding was good for infantry: the tanks moved slowly and the tankers could not see too much. The "Panzerbekämpfer"(=tankfighters) climbed up trees or hid in trenches then jumped and attacked the tanks. He told me it was a defence measure and rarely used in attacks,(" We weren´t silly, it wasn´t the infantry´s job to attack enemy tank formations, that was the job of the Panzer units or the Luftwaffe").
The "Panzerbekämpfer" were organized in small troops (2 or 3 men), who were specialiced on fighting tanks. A company had about 2 or 3 troops of those tankfighters (this means about 9 men out of 150 ) they were handpicked soldiers, fast good trained, very fit and clever. My great uncle told me you had a good chance to survive the attack on a SINGLE tank, even in open area. But attacking more than one in the open was very dangerous and was only done in nightfights or when the tankfighters could use lots of smoke ammo.
He also told me that one man was lost at almost every attack (per troop).
The type of tank was not so important, he told me. The slower and greater the better he says (Maybe the dead circle around a tank depends on the size of a tank?? I don´t know it and my great uncle didn´t explain it).
Summary:
He would in no case have attacked attack any tanks (more than one) in the open, no T34, no KV1, no BT7, not with green boys and not with elite soldiers.
[This message has been edited by Frank (edited January 08, 2001).]
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