15cm STURMINFANTERIEGESCHUTZ 33B VARIANTS IN 1/15 SCALE. In Stalingrad an apocalyptic struggle unfolded, house to house fighting of such an intensity that turned shops and houses into abattoirs dripping with gore. Stalingrad was being defended by the soviets with an almost religious fanaticism, wave after wave of oncoming communist troops were thrown against the Germans out of Asia and the Mongolian hinterlands, they were hanging on like grim death to every scrap of rubble. For their Stalin they are a guard of fire-breathing war-beasts, and when the beasts falter, well-aimed revolver shots from their political commissars nail them, in one way or the other, to the ground they were defending. These Asiatic pupils of integral communism, and the political commissars standing at their backs, were destined to force Germany, and the whole world with her, to abandon the comfortable belief that Communism is a political creed like so many others, instead they were to prove the Germans first, and finally to all nations, that they are the disciples of a new gospel, and so Stalingrad is to become the Bethlehem of our century, but a Bethlehem of war and hatred, annihilation and destruction. This was the thought that occupied the minds of all the German soldiers fighting in the battle of Stalingrad, which were caught in the fatal embrace of Bolshevism, where bitter fighting was raging for a block of houses, for a single cellar, for a bit of factory wall. A special mobile armored assault vehicle was needed to fire at the enemy at point-blank range with high accuracy and precision because German soldiers were only a few yards away in another cellar behind debris of another wall. The concept was to mount a high-caliber, high-explosive weapon on a fully enclosed superstructure, the gun chosen was the potent 150mm Heavy Infantry Gun on a Pzkpfw III chassis, the resultant armored fighting vehicle first put the crew of the 150mm heavy infantry gun under armored protection and provided a nearly optimal solution for the situation. The uniqueness and strength of the “Heavy escort artillery” as an assault vehicle in armored units proved to be a quick solution success. The 15cm Sturminfanteriegeschutz 33B was actually an assault mortar-howitzer. The first vehicles were issued to Sturmgeschutz Abteilung 177, with orders to employ them in the fighting in Stalingrad as soon as possible, grim with determination, these armored fighting vehicles were unleashed against the foe with paralyzing and devastating effect, pulverizing enemy fortifications, dead enemy troops and smashed strongholds littered the smoldering rubble of Stalingrad with the punishing firepower of this weapon.
STURMARTILLERIE VARIANTS IN 1/15 SCALE
