A little known episode from the fighting during the Warsaw
Uprising in August and September 1944, involved the operations carried out by
1000. Sturmtiger-Kompanie. A prototype of the Sturmtiger was sent to Warsaw and
off-loaded at the station in Pruszków on August 15, 1944. This station was
prepared for receiving and handling heavy vehicles like the Sturmtiger, the
mortar “Karl” Gerät, and possibly railed artillery, and was equipped with two
railway cranes with huge lifting capacity. Similar equipment was available at
the station in Nasielsk where the Tiger-Battalions Schwere-Abteilung 505 and
507 were also sent, in order to then be deployed at the front outside Narwia. A
second such vehicle was off-loaded on August 18. The status report from the 9th
Army on August 20 (Krannhal’s op.cit. p. 378) confirms that 1000.
Sturmtiger-Kompanie with two Sturmtigers was included among the units which
fought in Warsaw. It was the first prototype-vehicle to arrive in Poland’s
capital city, together with another such vehicle, sent out before being
manufactured on a series production line, with an iron or light steel
superstructure. Just such a vehicle had already been produced toward the end of
1943. This fact is confirmed by the Army Group Centre’s report 65004/7, with a
notation written by General Guderian.
“To the Army Group, for the purpose of its being put to use
in Warsaw: – on August 14, dispatched: one Tiger, with a 38 cm rocket firing
ramp (test model), which is not suitable for use against anti-tank forces, as
it is made of light steel.”
The heaviest assault guns of the Sturmtiger type were
equipped with launch systems for firing 380mm calibre rockets; model Stu M RW
61, with a range of 3,600 – 4,600 metres. There were no Sturmtigers deployed
along the first combat line, where these heavy vehicles weighing 65 tonnes
risked falling into bomb craters, and moreover, where the use of their
strong-points, or positive characteristics, was not suited to a destroyed city,
with various areas often isolated by barricades. The Sturmtiger was stationed
in the area around Ulica Sucha and Ulica 6 Sierpnia (now Ulica Nowowiejska), on
Mokotów Field and possibly on Plac na Rozdrożu (Crossroad Square), as well.
It’s difficult to establish which targets they fired on
because the heavy 380mm projectiles’ explosions have more than once been
ascribed to bomb explosions resulting from railway gun shelling or, quite
simply, to rocket projectiles of a different type, called Werfer – also known as
“closets” or “choirs” by Warsaw’s inhabitants. At that time, the Sturmtiger was
an entirely unknown entity, and the vehicles that were captured in 1945 came as
a complete surprise to the allied troops.
At the end of August, a Sturmtiger, firing from the ghetto
area or Kerceli Square, pounded, among other areas, Ulica Zakroczymska and the
National Mint on Ulica Sanguszka in the Old Town. One other vehicle shelled
resistance fighter positions in the suburb of Sadyba. On September 8-16,
Sturmtigers fired on the area around Ulica Przemyslowa, Ulica Fabrycna and
Ulica Naczna in Powisle. On September 8, Sturmtiger projectiles fell on
insurgent positions at the Lazarus Hospital on Ulica Książęca. General von
Vormann, commander of the 9th Army, made a memorably worded, harsh assessment
of the Sturmtiger and its battle-fighting capabilities, “They have only factory
personnel (von Vormann was referring to the first vehicle, delivered on August
15) who can’t shoot.”
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