Often, our ideas about the war and the events associated with it are gleaned in the worst case from the cinema, where the battery is commanded by the "pipe 17", and the shells for some reason explode on the ground, and in the best of the books, but … books very often of their era, which were written within a certain framework. And it turned out that when literate and talented people were still alive, capable of writing talented books about the war, many of them were emasculated. But when it became possible to write everything, there were no such people!
"Tiger" at the Royal Armored Museum in Bovington.
But this is a homemade "Tiger" by V. Verevochkin, unfortunately, now deceased, from the village of B. Oyosh near Novosibirsk.
So today we have to collect crumbs from unpublished memoirs that were written on the table, “for myself,” to look for data in dissertations and archives. But again, a historian can afford such work. But the cinematographer … it's unlikely. He must trust someone, and who? A man in uniform or a historian from the archive? Or to collect a "consultation" of specialists, and let them decide together? Well, and if not together?
And this is how he looks in Samur near Paris …
At one time, I read a number of books on the Tiger tanks, and I was struck by some specific circumstances of their combat use. And it is precisely to these circumstances that this material is dedicated, written in the form of a kind of … film script.
The tanks have arrived! Please note that the outer row of wheels has been removed on them, and transport tracks are put on instead of battle tracks.
So, it all starts with the fact that somewhere in the fall of 1943, a separate tank unit equipped with Tiger tanks arrives on the Soviet-German front line, whose task is to counterstrike the Soviet troops in the area where they are showing increasing activity. “The Russians should reduce their arrogance,” the command believes, but it is equipped with tanks directly from the factory, and their crews consist of both experienced and very young tankers. The commander is a young, but already having combat experience, a Panzerwaffe officer on the Happy Tiger tank. Other machines also have names: "Little Gretchen", "Fat Gustav", "Steel Drill", "Infernal Chariot", etc.
Let it be the protagonist of our film: Oberleutenant Rudolf Knauf. Not a fascist, but devoted to the Fuhrer and Germany, a soldier to the core, accustomed to taking care of his subordinates.
Tanks are being unloaded from railway platforms, and it should be emphasized that they are "shod" in narrow, so-called "transport tracks", and combat arrived with them. They are also unloaded, after which the tanks begin to "change shoes", but since each such caterpillar weighs 2.5 tons, the work is slow and requires the efforts of all five crew members.
Of course, this is not a shot from "this film", but this is how the tankers of the "tigers" spent their leisure time.
And it was here that the Soviet Pe-2 dive bombers attacked the station, located about a hundred kilometers from the front line. It is clear that the "Tigers" are covered by anti-aircraft gunners from the ground, "Messerschmitts" are patrolling in the sky, but … out of the best intentions, his crew, of course, hurried to remove the transport tracks from it, but they did not have time to put on the combat ones because of their weight! So the unit loses its first tank literally a couple of hours after unloading,without firing a single shot. "Welcome to war!" - say the soldiers from the infantry to the smart young tankmen.
"Something is not knocking right there …"
With a delay of four hours, the unit begins to move. Together with the tanks, several 251 armored vehicles are moving, including 20-mm anti-aircraft guns, a tractor, a mobile repair shop, that is, a whole caravan. But it moves slowly. The road is solid mud, in which more than one car is stuck. In principle, you can drive in the fields over winter crops, but there is also the famous Russian black soil, behind the first tank that passes through there are layers of black turned up earth, which is stuffed between the wheels. The wide tracks also do not save the day, so that until nightfall this tank unit does not cover even half of the intended distance.
Damaged and deprived of the course "tigers" had to be towed like this. By the way, this tank has already lost two wheels from the outer row!
They spend the night in a small village with thatched houses. True, in the courtyards where the German units were already housed, there are comfortable and clean latrines built from the boards of the master's sheds, since German soldiers cannot use what the owners themselves use because of disgust.
Loading ammunition.
The tankers are so tired that they fall asleep as soon as they reach warm houses, which, by the way, are guarded by local policemen. Meanwhile, two partisans are making their way to one of the houses through thickets of dry nettles. Fortunately, the "booth" for the Germans is right next to the fence, they dig a tunnel under it and, since … it is rarely used and there is still a little content in it, one of them climbs into the pit! And now one of the tankers goes to the closet in the middle of the night and … a captured German bayonet stabs him in one place up to the hilt!
The commander notices that the guy has been gone for a long time, goes in search, and as a result finds a corpse! The next morning, the poor fellow is buried, in a letter to the house they write that he fell in a fierce battle, and the policeman who guarded this house … is shot so that others can serve as they should. Dejected by such an absurd death of their comrade, the tankers are trying to continue moving, but that was not the case. At night, a severe frost unexpectedly struck, which made the dirt accumulated between the wheels frozen so that it was impossible to turn the wheels of the "tigers". Two tanks, when trying to move them from their place, flew transmissions, and one of them tore off the gear rim of the drive wheel. Two more tanks burst torsion bars. As a result, only four tanks were able to move on, and then only after the dirt between the wheels was washed off with hot water, which had to be heated with buckets, and five vehicles had to be repaired immediately. In order to replace the torsion bars, it was necessary to remove six wheels from each of them, and then another 12 from two adjacent ones, in order to be able to get close to it. The ring gear is changed quite quickly, but it is impossible to replace the transmissions in the field, so the "251" together with the tractor tow these tanks back to the station.
Four tanks, and then the fifth tank that caught up with them, move on, and then it turns out that the fuel consumption has exceeded all norms and the tanks run the risk of reaching the front line with completely dry tanks. Fuel trucks are urgently called, and they arrive, but not all - one on the road is undermined by the damned partisans.
This is how the Tiger had to be refueled from a barrel, and he needed a lot of barrels!
The tanks are getting to the gas station, which is observed by the Soviet intelligence from the nearest forest through binoculars, and immediately reports this on the radio. True, the commander of a tank unit is not very alarmed that it is necessary to refuel during the day and not at night - after all, the cloud cover is very low, and in such weather the aviation usually does not fly.
Absolutely awful Russian roads!
And then, on low level flight, Soviet attack aircraft appear from behind a nearby fishing line. They lead through the farm, near which there are tanks and fuel trucks, heavy fire from cannons and machine guns, release eres, drop time bombs. The tankers rejoice: the shells of the Russian aircraft cannons only strike sparks from the Krupp armor, the eres fly inaccurately and do not hit the tanks, the bombs also fall off target, so that all the tanks seem to be intact. Fuel tankers are out of luck! All of them are riddled with bullets and flare up like torches, one takes off into the air and the tank standing next to it catches fire from it! As a result, there are only four tanks left, and the fuel supply for them is limited.
The speed is at the level of a pedestrian, and it's not surprising: you can't accelerate through black soil!
The unit commander agrees with the command that refueling will be done at night by the river seven kilometers from the front line, which they will have to cross to get there.
Since the ground is frozen, the tanks move quickly and arrive at the crossing point even before the pontoon park can get there. You have to wait. Snow crumbs are falling from the sky, but then suddenly a thaw begins and everything around again turns into mud. Even the need for tankers has to cope, standing on the tank, because otherwise pounds of mud on your boots are guaranteed, but how will you climb into a tank with such feet?
Then the pontoon park arrives, the pontoons are lowered into the water, but it turns out that the tanks on battle tracks cannot drive into them and they have to be “changed” again. Only now, when they are all in the mud, it is much more difficult to do it.
And it was possible to get stuck like that, but I don’t want to!
Unable to resist, the commander of the tank "Fat Gustav" suggests trying to move to the other side on a wooden bridge located nearby. In appearance, the bridge is quite strong and if the tank is lightened to the limit, freed from ammunition, machine guns, drained of fuel, and then accelerated to maximum speed, then maybe he will be able to slip to the other side. Of course, the instruction for such experiments prohibits, but the commander sees that here in Russia no instructions apply, and allows his tanker to act at his own peril and risk, especially since he referred to Jules Verne, which he read in childhood - the novel Around the World in eighty days”, where the railway train crosses the bridge over the abyss just like that. "Fat Gustav" is "exposed", its commander sits in the driver's seat himself, accelerates his tank, drives onto the bridge, and … falls through the flooring in the very middle of it!
Well, changing the torsion bar in such mud was a real torture! This photo, however, was taken in Italy, but the dirt, it is also dirt in Italy!
He cannot get out of the tank, and it is hardly possible to save him - after all, the water is ice-cold, and the tank, among other things, also fell upward with caterpillars and got stuck in thick silt.
To replace the torsion bar - and they broke quite often due to the large weight of the "tigers", again it was required to remove as many as 18 wheels, nine on each side.
Meanwhile, the Soviet army intelligence continues to observe and report, and now several Katyushas are moving into the beam located very close to the forward beam, and as soon as the first tank is on the pontoon in the middle of the river, they open fire. Rocket projectiles fly one after another, the river is covered with fountains of ruptures, and now one pontoon with the tank turns over and sinks.
But then it froze, and the tanks drove much faster!
Two tanks still cross over to the other side, they are met and … they are surprised to ask the commander, but where are the rest of the vehicles? The next morning a tank attack on the Russian positions is planned, even old Czech tanks will be used, and there are only two so-expected "tigers" here!
It was categorically not recommended for German tankers to stop on the side of the road near the forest, especially if their tank was faulty. You never know what …
The morning begins with the roar of artillery barrage, after which German tanks with two "tigers" at the head begin to move. Artillery hits the approaching tanks from the Russian trenches, anti-tank missiles are firing, and the cars that come close are thrown at grenades and bottles with flammable liquid. Moreover, there is no special "strain" in everything that happens. The infantry skillfully fires, the armor-piercers shoot accurately, machine guns, as expected, cut off the infantry from the tanks with fire. There is, in general, a rather mundane combat work, and little by little it becomes clear: this is not 41st now! One 38 (t) tank lights up, then the German T-III and T-IV with a short cannon, but both "tigers" stubbornly crawl forward. And then a 122-mm corps cannon, which was still in silence, hits one of them almost point-blank, and with the first hit blows the turret off it. However, she does not have time to make the second shot. She is noticed by the commander of the Happy Tiger and bombards her position with shells.
Final preparations before the fight.
The Russian defense seems to have been broken through, the infantry rushed into the trenches. But in the rear they have five T-34 arr. 42 years old with Mickey Mouse hatches. They begin to move and in a wide arc embrace the "tiger" creeping forward, accompanied by the infantry supporting him. “Shoot like an exercise! - orders the commander, - first the extreme left, then all the others in an arc! " And yes, indeed, first the shell of the Hitlerite tank rips off the track from the farthest and most extreme tank. The crew throws a smoke bomb on the armor and pretends that the tank has been destroyed.
The second gets more. A shell hits him on the side, and he really catches fire. Tankers in burning overalls jump out into the snow and this is the only way to save themselves. Two tanks on the right are also put out of action by the Tiger shells one after the other, but the fifth, the fifth, meanwhile, reaches the range of a direct shot and thrust a shell into its side. "Tiger" twitches and also begins to burn, and its commander, along with the rest of the crew, run to flee to the rear. And then a tank smoked with a smoke bomb comes to life on the left flank, and begins to hit the fleeing Fritz in black overalls from a cannon and a machine gun. One commander escapes, gets to the headquarters, where he learns that the Cossacks broke through to the rear in the neighboring sector, that for some reason the Russians had more tanks than expected, that their artillery was firing hurricane, and there were practically no reserves, and a decision was made to “straighten front line "along the river, because the Russians will not be able to force it right away.
Two "tigers" moved to the attack.
Loud "Hurray!" Soviet infantry, which had risen in a counterattack, is heard quite close, IL-2 attack aircraft spitting fire again appear in the sky and … seeing that the situation is nowhere worse, the commander of the Happy Tiger runs across the river in the last command vehicle. Then he repeats all the way to the station and on it he meets all his broken and lagging tanks. None of their crews survived. Someone was killed by partisans at night, and their corpses are still lying around the standing cars, and someone simply disappeared from no one knows where, and the tank, as it stood, stuck in the mud, is still there. At the station, they ask him where his unit is, where the people are, and he replies that both the people and the tanks are all there, in the east, where just at that very time a crimson sunset is blazing in the sky.
Well, on our side, these machines will have to fight, and not the T-34/85 from the epic "Liberation". Because it was twice as difficult as what came later. And those who sat in them, after all, they knew and knew everything about the Tiger tanks about their tanks, but they still did their job and did it well, no matter what!
The most interesting thing is that the events described here were not invented (even if it was a "movie"), but all somehow took place in reality, although, of course, not at the same time and not at the same location.
