Kurt and I grinned at each other over the bulkhead; the unreliability of the Luftwaffe in providing air protection was already a grim joke among panzer boys throughout the East.
Helmann questioned the airman further, but he seemed to know little else of use to us. We rejoined our armoured column at the rear, tucking in behind the Hanomag holding the prisoners, and we transferred the pilot across to that same vehicle. The pilot seemed to think this was below his dignity, but he had no choice in the matter.
We rolled on towards the river on the western horizon. We were fifteen Tigers and ten Hanomag half-tracks, the best machines in the world for their purpose, but we were outnumbered.
*
Just as the sun touched the western land, I saw Russians south of us. They were a row of dark shapes in the distant steppe, trailing exhaust fumes, surrounded by showers of mud spray. Helmann had already seen them, because he was on the radio link to the other Tigers, ordering them to turn and fight.
‘They shouldn’t be there this soon,’ Kurt said, as I turned the Tiger to face the oncoming Ivans.
‘This is an advance group, I’m sure of that,’ Helmann said in our headphones, as I brought the panzer to a halt in an area of low, grassy dunes off the road. ‘This is just a sample of what’s on offer. We must fight them off, and then we will resume our march.’
On our right, the other Tigers were taking up position also, in groups of two or three over a perimeter of several kilometres. The Hanomags grouped up on the ground behind them, seeking what cover they could among the low mounds of frozen grass. It was better for them to stay with us than strike out on their own and encounter more Red armour on the way.
I saw the Russian vehicles more clearly: a line of a maybe dozen abreast, low and squat in appearance, much wider than a T34. These were the new Stalin tanks, for sure, and in the sky above them, over their fumes . . .
‘Aircraft,’ Helmann cursed. ‘Red planes. Sturmoviks.’
I felt my throat tighten in fear. Sturmoviks were Russian fighter-bombers, slow but protected with armour plate on their bellies, and they loved nothing more than strafing German boys with their cannons and bomb-loads. I could see them up in the corner of my cracked vision block, three little dots against the reddening sky, issuing vapour as they descended on us.
‘They’ll make an attack, and then the Stalins will come in,’ Helmann said on the radio to the other Tiger commanders. ‘Be ready for this.’
I could see the prisoners’ Hanomag near us, concealed behind a dune, with a soldier in the cab lining up an MG 42 into the air. A fine gun, the ’42, putting out a thousand rounds per minute – but what use was it against Sturmoviks and Stalins? If the soldier also had such doubt, he didn’t show them – he fired off a burst of tracer to assess the distance, and then, like everyone else, he waited while the Sturmoviks descended and the Stalins advanced.
The seconds were long and painful. My mouth was dry and my heart was thumping in rhythm with the Maybach transmission, seeing the planes come lower, closer now than the Stalin tanks below them. Then the aircraft were on us, and the Hanomag soldier opened up with his MG as they swooped in.
The Sturmoviks’ wings flickered with cannon, and I saw the front of the Hanomag blow apart as the shells went through its thin armour. The visored windows split open, and the soldier on the MG42 was ripped to pieces, thrown out of the vehicle bodily as the cannon shells tore in. The Hanomag’s rear doors flew open, and that copper-haired Ivan girl threw herself out onto the ground, her hands over her head. Our Luftwaffe pilot friend emerged, and threw himself down beside her.
The cannons hit our Tiger as well, each impact like a hammer on our steel body, and immediately they dropped their bombs. I saw two small, tear-shaped bombs shoot down almost horizontally in their trajectory, one landing near a Tiger and showering it with earth and mud. The other fell behind a dune – and as it exploded, I saw pieces of another Hanomag and its troops whirling through the air – wheels, bits of track, men’s bodies and sheets of metal plate, all trailing smoke and flames.
The planes were gone as quickly as they appeared, and while debris was still falling to the ground, our Tigers opened fire on the Stalins.
The range was some two kilometres, but it was better to keep these beasts at a distance, not let them get close. Our 88mm gun boomed, and the familiar reek of propellant charge filled the hull. I saw our tracer rounds shooting out all along our line, the high velocity taking just a fraction of a second to reach the Russians.
We hit two of the Stalins straight away, one of them immediately trailing a plume of fire as it slowed to a halt, and the other slewing around as its track was shed, presenting its side armour inadvertently. One of our gunners took the invitation, and put a round clean into the hull above the wheels. The Red tank crawled slowly, smouldering, and then began to burn from the rear deck.
These tanks were massive, though – wider even than our Tigers, equipped with a huge, oblong turret – and while we knocked down those two, I also saw our rounds hit their Red comrades and ricochet off completely, spinning off across the steppe into the distance. One of the Stalins was hit twice, then three times, and each shell was deflected in this way, bouncing right off the turret or glacis plate.
‘Scheisse,’ Kurt observed – and he was right. We really were deep in it.
When the Stalins returned fire, their muzzles spat out orange flames straight at us. There was a colossal impact on our front plate, and our sixty-tonne panzer shuddered under the blow. Up in the turret, Wilf kept firing, the shell cases raining down out of the breech onto the hull floor. The Tiger nearest us was hit in the turret, and I saw the great, steel structure lift out of its bearings for a second, and then judder as the gunner’s hatch flew open and sheets of sparks and smoke came out.
The commander’s cupola hatch slid open over the side of the turret, and the commander appeared, struggling to escape the inferno that must be erupting inside. He was trapped, though, and he writhed as the flames below grew so fierce that they rose three metres out of the gunner’s hatch beside him. Down on the hull, the driver’s hatch opened – the man in there sitting exactly where I was in my own panzer – and two arms appeared, as the driver sought to haul himself out. His arms remained there, lifeless, as smoke and flames poured from his hatch also.
On the ground by the wrecked Hanomag, I saw the red-haired Russian woman looking around desperately as the panzer battle erupted over her, surrounded as she was by the smouldering bodies of her captors and her fellow prisoners. I saw Kurt hunch over his machine gun and take aim at her.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Leave her.’
He looked at me and shrugged.
‘Get us behind one of those dunes, Faust,’ Helmann shouted. ‘We can shoot over the top.’
I drove the Tiger over to the nearest dune, a low mound of frozen tundra, and brought it to a halt on top of the mechanical and human wreckage of a bombed-out Hanomag. Its crew were beyond help now, and we needed the added shelter of the mound which marked their final stopping point.
Our turret traversed left, and continued firing, with the dune guarding our hull side. In this new location, I could see right along our line of panzers, our Tigers stretching into the distance, pouring out their fire on the attackers. I saw the nearest Tiger take a hit in the front track, sending shattered links soaring into the smoky air, their steel reflecting the setting sun. He was hit again in the flank; the round penetrated and then came shooting out of the engine grilles, having evidently rebounded inside the crew compartment. Bits of the engine flew out in sparks, and burning gasoline began to erupt from the tanks, flooding the whole panzer in orange flames. I hoped the crew were dead before the fuel poured down into the hull.
On my left, two of the Stalins were manoeuvring at high speed to outflank us and fire along our line from that angle. Several of our Tigers traversed their turrets to aim at this threat, and they shot up the leading Stalin by blowing off his tracks on both sides. I saw the huge Rus
sian vehicle flop down in the mud, and continue sliding on its belly, carried by its momentum towards the Tigers, still firing, even though tracks and wheels were flying out behind it.
It came to rest at point-blank range in front of a Tiger, which lowered its barrel and finished the crippled JS with two rounds through the upper hull. The Russian’s hatches were blown off, and the turret began to spin around, issuing sparks from the gun muzzle. The crewmen who scrambled out were blown apart by a high explosive shell from the Tiger, their limbs scattering across their steppe.
That second Stalin of the pair, though, had broken through, and he came crashing over the hillocks between our panzers, firing at a rapid rate against anything with a German cross on its side. A Hanomag was hit as it tried to reverse away, and the whole half-track stood up on its armoured nose, its tracks racing around in the air and the Panzergrenadiers inside falling out, until their vehicle thumped down on top of them, and exploded in a wave of burning fuel.
Two Tigers engaged that one JS, and even at close range I saw their shells deflect repeatedly from that massive turret, while the Russian hit one Tiger in the gun mantle, causing the 88mm gun to slump onto the front deck, with smoke coming from the turret ring. The disarmed panzer sought to retreat by retreating, but reversed clumsily into a crater, allowing its underside to ride up in full view of the Stalin. The Red gunner sent his shell cleanly through the belly plate, and the Tiger convulsed as its stored ammunition evidently exploded, making the whole turret spin off, dragging the turret crew with it in their burning cage.
The second Tiger stood its ground, and with great coolness shot away the Stalin’s left track at a range of 100 metres. Before the Stalin could traverse its gun, the Tiger rolled around to stand at the Stalin’s rear, where the back plate of any armoured vehicle is thinner and lighter over the engine. The Stalin tried to crawl away, but its broken track bunched up and hobbled it, so that it could only move a few metres in the mud. The Tiger put a single round through the Stalin’s back plate, splitting it open in a shower of rivets. The Stalin’s crew continued to traverse the turret, until the whole vehicle was on fire from spilled fuel, and the Tiger reversed to find another opponent in the melee.
Up in our turret, Helmann was barking orders to the other commanders, as the tank battle became a close-quarters and mobile scrap, like a street fight - but a fight between men armed with steel carapaces and the most powerful guns their nations could supply.
‘Outflank them to the left, driver,’ he yelled at me. ‘Left and to their side, let them come through us,’ he shouted, as I threw the Maybach into gear and the transmission spat its burning lubricant into my face. ‘That’s the way!’
All along our line, the Tigers were breaking position, swerving left and right to present highly mobile targets to the onrushing six or seven Stalins that still faced us. The little Hanomags tried to escape in some cases – but the Stalins saw them as soon as they broke their cover among the tundra dunes, and shot them with high-explosive that ripped their angled sides open. In other cases, the Panzergrenadiers leapt from their transports and found cover among the dunes, waiting for the tank battle to somehow burn out.
I lost sight of the Russian woman prisoner and the Luftwaffe pilot, who I last saw still flattening their faces into the mud and ice, with their hands over their heads.
I drove the Tiger, sliding on the ice, out of the protection of the hillocks, and slewed it around so that we faced the Stalins from the side. One of the Red machines, barely a hundred metres distant, surely noticed our movement – because it rotated its hull until its front plate, a colossal wall of steel, was facing directly onto us. Wilf, up in our turret, fired three times in ten seconds, with Stang our breech-man grunting as he reloaded with amazing speed each time. Our rounds deflected off the Stalin’s huge turret twice – and the third actually stuck in the armour plate, a slug of German steel jammed into a slab of Russian steel, its tracer still glowing red.
Beyond the Stalin, I saw a Tiger roll into a depression in the ground, burning from the engine deck; and then another of our panzers standing still, with its hatches open and the crew climbing out with their uniforms on fire.
Suddenly, my glass vision block shattered as we were hit on our front plate by the Stalin facing us. I heard another impact striking our turret, and a long groan from somebody up there, followed by a series of shouted commands from Helmann. Yet another impact came, low on our front hull, and the blow threw me back in my seat. My ears were ringing, and I could see nothing through the wrecked glass except the red sunset sky, in broken fragments.
I felt Helmann kick me in the back, and the tip of his polished boot brought me to my senses.
In the seat alongside me, Kurt was yelling,
‘Push out the glass, Faust, for the sake of scheisse. Helmann’s telling you to ram that Stalin. Ram it!’
In a daze, I unclamped the vision block from inside, raised the armoured bracket and pushed the broken glass out onto the hull front. A blast of freezing air came in, bringing smoke and sprays of ice - and then a blast of metal fragments as another shell hit us, blowing scabs of armour plate off our front.
With bits of metal in my face, I drove the Tiger straight at the Stalin, aiming hull-to-hull across the rolling ground. I could not understand why our gun was not firing – but that terrible groan which erupted when the Stalin’s shell hit us told me someone in the turret was badly wounded. With no gun, we could only use our sixty tonnes and our Maybach as a battering ram – it was either that, or sit obediently and be shot to pieces.
We covered the hundred metres between us and the Russian in seconds, moving so fast that the Stalin gunner could not calibrate on us and shot right past us twice, his orange tracer lighting up the dark, frozen earth. I eased off the throttle as we approached the prow of the Stalin, and our Tiger tracks bit into the tundra; the running gear began howling and the belly of the panzer started slamming up and down as we slid – effectively out of control now – directly into the Ivan machine.
I heard Kurt curse, and I saw him brace with his hands over his skull – and at the last moment I did the same, with the steel glacis of the JS filling my entire vision. The impact was like a kick in the belly, and after that, it took me a few seconds to realise what was happening.
We were stationary, wedged up against the Stalin; the Russian panzer seemed to have stalled in the concussion too, because there was no engine noise from outside at all. Then I realised that our Tiger too had cut out, and I tried to restart our motor frantically with the hand switch. I could still hear that groaning voice from our turret, and a muttered dialogue between Wilf and Helmann, who were trying to use the hand crank to operate the turret.
I saw our 88mm barrel swing slowly around and depress in elevation, coming down over my head and pointing straight into the Stalin’s upper deck. I could actually see into the JS driver’s position through his vision slit – his lights were still on inside, and men were moving around in there, maybe struggling to restart their engine.
In the next moment, we fired.
I clearly saw our armour-piercing round burst through their upper armour, and enter inside the compartment. Through the Russian’s vision slit, I saw our warhead ricochet again and again inside there, flying chaotically around the confined space and bouncing off the steel walls, glowing bright red. Finally, the explosive charge in the projectile detonated, in a plume of sparks. I saw nothing more inside there, as smoke filled the interior.
We were so close that the recoil of our gun had pushed us back a metre from the other tank, but still our engine would not catch. Up on top of the Stalin’s turret, two men climbed out of their hatches, their backs and sleeves smouldering with flames. Both had machine pistols with a cylinder magazine – and without even hesitating, these two Ivans jumped straight from their wrecked vehicle onto our battered but still functioning Tiger.
Kurt fired on them with his gimbal MG, but the smouldering Russians were already on our roof and impossible
to hit. I heard them moving above me, their boots clunking on the armour plate as they clambered up onto our turret. In the turret, Wilf fired his co-axial MG, and I saw the body of one Russian crash down onto the front hull in front of my vision port. There was shooting from outside the turret, and I heard Helmann yelling, ‘He’s shooting into the engine!’
Was that to be our destiny? To have our Tiger set ablaze by a Russian emptying his machine gun through our engine grilles, incinerating himself as he set us on fire too? No!
Our engine finally caught life and started, and I reversed the panzer with a great jolt, to dislodge whoever was up there. I saw that second tank man thrown forwards off the turret by the movement; he fell onto the ground in front of us, still clutching his gun and with his uniform still on fire. I drove forwards over him, traversing the tank across him to make sure he was finished, and then I advanced back into the scrum of fighting vehicles.
I saw that the engagement was in its final stages.
Of our fifteen Tigers, I could see several burning, and of our ten Hanomags, I saw at least five lying destroyed among the undulating ground. The Stalins were reduced to a handful, who were now seeking to retreat, leaving the rest of their dozen on fire, or wrecked and static. The setting sun was touching the western horizon now, exactly where we wanted to be heading: a molten red disc surrounded by streaks of gold and purple cloud. Its light slanted across the battlefield, showing its mayhem in stark detail.
I saw the crew of a Tiger burning up with their vehicle – each man slumped in his hatch, presumably killed by a high-explosive burst as they tried to escape. The flames rose around them, fed by their gasoline reserves, a column of orange as high as an oak tree against the sunset. I saw the crew of a Stalin, disembarked from their bogged-down vehicle in a crater, being set upon by Panzergrenadiers from a Hanomag. Our troops were venting their anger and frustration, and yet conserving their precious ammunition, by bayoneting the Russian crews and clubbing them down with entrenching spades.
Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir Page 4
