Who invented the ferdinand tank. Heavy tank "Tiger". Lethal weapon of the Reich. The further fate of the machines

The most famous German self-propelled gun of the Second World War "Ferdinand" owes its birth, on the one hand, to the intrigues around the heavy tank \ / K 4501 (P), and on the other, to the appearance of the 88-mm anti-tank gun Cancer 43. Tank \ / K The 4501 (P) - simply put "Tiger" designed by Dr. Porsche - was shown to Hitler on April 20, 1942, along with his competitor VK 4501 (H) - the "Tiger" from Henschel. According to Hitler, both machines were to be launched into mass production, which was opposed in every possible way by the Armaments Directorate, whose workers could not stand the obstinate favorite of the Fuhrer - Dr. Porsche.

The tests did not reveal the obvious advantages of one vehicle over another, but Porsche's readiness for production of the Tiger was higher - by June 6, 1942, the first 16 VK 4501 (P) tanks were ready for delivery to the troops, for which Krupp was finishing assembling the turrets ... Henschel could have delivered only one car by this date, and that one without a turret. The first battalion, equipped with Porsche Tigers, was supposed to be formed by August 1942 and sent to Stalingrad, but suddenly the Armaments Directorate stopped all work on the tank for a month.

The managers took advantage of Hitler's instructions to create an assault gun based on the Pz.IV and VK 4501 tanks, armed with the latest 88-mm Rak 43/2 anti-tank gun with a barrel length of 71 caliber. At the suggestion of the Armaments Directorate, it was decided to convert all 92 ready-made and assembled VK 4501 (P) chassis in the shops of the Nibelungenwerke plant into assault guns.

In September 1942, work began. The design was carried out by Porsche together with the designers of the Berlin plant Alkett. Since the armored wheelhouse was supposed to be located aft, the chassis layout had to be changed by placing engines and generators in the middle of the hull. Initially, it was planned to assemble new self-propelled guns in Berlin, but this had to be abandoned due to the difficulties associated with transportation by rail, and because of the reluctance to suspend the production of the StuG III assault guns - the main product of the Alkett plant. As a result, the SPG assembly, which received the official designation 8.8 cm Pak 43/2 Sfl L / 71 Panzerjäger Tiger (P) Sd.Kfz. 184 and the name Ferdinand (personally assigned by Hitler in February 1943 in homage to Dr. Ferdinand Porsche), was produced at the Nibelungenwerke plant.

The frontal 100-mm hull plates of the Tiger (P) tank were also reinforced with 100-mm armor plates, fixed to the hull with bullet-proof bolts. Thus, the frontal armor of the hull was increased to 200 mm. The frontal felling sheet had a similar thickness. The thickness of the side and stern sheets reached 80 mm (according to other sources, 85 mm). The armored plates of the cabin were connected "into a thorn" and reinforced with dowels, and then scalded. The deckhouse was attached to the hull with brackets and bolts with a bullet-proof head.

In the front of the hull there were seats for the driver and radio operator. Behind them, in the center of the car, parallel to each other were installed two 12-cylinder carburetor V-shaped liquid-cooled Maybach HL 120TRM engines with a capacity of 265 hp. (at 2600 rpm) each. The engines rotated the rotors of two Siemens Typ aGV generators, which, in turn, supplied electricity to two Siemens D1495aAC traction motors with a power of 230 kW each, installed in the rear of the vehicle under the fighting compartment. The torque from the electric motors with the help of electromechanical final drives was transmitted to the driving wheels of the stern arrangement. In emergency mode or in the event of combat damage to one of the power supply branches, its duplication was envisaged.

The Ferdinand's undercarriage in relation to one side consisted of six road wheels with internal shock absorption, interlocked in pairs in three bogies with an original, very complex, but highly efficient Porsche suspension scheme with longitudinal torsion bars, tested on the experimental VK 3001 (P) chassis. The drive wheel had removable toothed rims with 19 teeth each. The idler wheel also had toothed rims, which excluded idle rewinding of the tracks.

Each track consisted of 109 tracks 640 mm wide.

In the wheelhouse, in the trunnions of a special machine, an 88-mm Rak 43/2 cannon (in a self-propelled version - StuK 43) with a barrel length of 71 caliber, developed on the basis of the Flak 41 anti-aircraft gun, was installed. The horizontal aiming angle did not exceed 28 ° sector. Elevation angle + 14 °, declination -8 °. The mass of the gun is 2200 kg. The embrasure in the frontal leaf of the cabin was covered with a massive molded pear-shaped mask connected to the machine. However, the design of the mask was not very successful and did not provide full protection against bullet lead splashes and small fragments that penetrated into the body through the gaps between the mask and the frontal sheet. Therefore, on the masks of most of the "Ferdinands" armored shields were reinforced. The gun ammunition consisted of 50 unitary rounds placed on the walls of the wheelhouse. In the aft part of the cabin there was a round hatch for dismantling the gun.

According to German data, the PzGr 39/43 armor-piercing projectile with a mass of 10.16 kg and an initial speed of 1000 m / s penetrated 165 mm armor at a distance of 1000 m (at a 90 ° meeting angle), and the PzGr 40/43 subcaliber projectile weighing 7.5 kg and an initial speed of 1130 m / s - 193 mm, which ensured "Ferdinand" unconditional defeat of any of the then existing tanks.

Assembly of the first car began on February 16, and the last - the ninetieth "Ferdinand" left the factory shops on May 8, 1943. In April, the first production vehicle was tested at the Kummersdorf test site.

The baptism of fire of the "Ferdinands" was accepted during Operation Citadel as part of the 656th tank destroyer regiment, which included the 653rd and 654th divisions (schwere Panzerjäger Abteilung - sPz.Jäger Abt.). By the beginning of the battle, the first had 45, and the second had 44 Ferdinands. Both divisions were in the operational subordination of the 41st Panzer Corps, took part in heavy battles on the northern face of the Kursk Bulge near the Ponyri station (654th division) and the village of Teploe (653rd division).

The 654th division suffered especially heavy losses, mainly in minefields. Twenty-one Ferdinands remained on the battlefield. The German equipment knocked out and destroyed in the area of the Ponyri station was examined on July 15, 1943 by representatives of the GAU and the NIBT Polygon of the Red Army. Most of the "Ferdinands" were in a minefield filled with land mines from captured large-caliber shells and aerial bombs. More than half of the cars had damage to the chassis; broken tracks, destroyed road wheels, etc. In five Ferdinands, the damage to the chassis was caused by shells of 76 mm or more caliber. In two German self-propelled guns, the barrels of the guns were shot through by shells and bullets of anti-tank rifles. One vehicle was destroyed by a direct hit from an aerial bomb, and another was destroyed by a 203-mm howitzer shell hitting the roof of the wheelhouse.

Only one self-propelled gun of this type, which was fired from different directions by seven T-34 tanks and a battery of 76-mm guns, had a hole in the side, in the area of the drive wheel. Another "Ferdinand", which had no damage to the hull and chassis, was set on fire by a Molotov cocktail thrown by our infantrymen.

The only worthy opponent of the heavy German self-propelled guns was the Soviet SU-152. The SU-152 regiment fired on the attacking Ferdinands of the 653rd division on July 8, 1943, knocking out four enemy vehicles. In total, in July - August 1943, the Germans lost 39 Ferdinands. The last trophies went to the Red Army on the outskirts of Orel - several damaged assault guns prepared for evacuation were captured at the railway station.

The first battles of the "Ferdinands" on the Kursk Bulge were, in fact, the last, where these self-propelled guns were used in large numbers. From a tactical point of view, their use left much to be desired. Created to destroy Soviet medium and heavy tanks at long distances, they were used as an advanced "armor shield", blindly ramming engineering barriers and anti-tank defenses, while suffering heavy losses. At the same time, the moral effect of the appearance on the Soviet-German front of largely invulnerable German self-propelled guns was very large. "Ferdinandomania" and "Ferdinandphobia" appeared. Judging by the memoir literature, there was no soldier in the Red Army who did not knock out or, in extreme cases, did not participate in the battle with the Ferdinands. They crawled into our positions on all fronts, from 1943 (and sometimes even earlier) until the end of the war. The number of "knocked out" "Ferdinands" is approaching several thousand. This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that most of the Red Army soldiers were poorly versed in all kinds of "marders", "bison" and "naskhorns" and called any German self-propelled gun "Ferdinand", which indicates how great was its "popularity" among our soldiers. And, besides, for the knocked-out "Ferdinand" without further ado they were given an order.

(caterpillar chain is conventionally not shown):

1 - 88 mm cannon; 2 - armor shield on the mask; 3 - periscopic sight; 4 - commander's cupola; 5 - fan; 6 - hatch of the periscopic observation device; 7 - stowage of 88-mm rounds on the wall of the fighting compartment; 8 - electric motor; 9 - driving wheel; 10 - suspension trolley; 11 - engine; 12 - generator; 13 - gunner's seat; 14 - driver's seat; 15 - guide wheel; 16 - course machine gun

After the inglorious completion of Operation Citadel, the remaining Ferdinands in the ranks were transferred to Zhitomir and Dnepropetrovsk, where their current repairs and replacement of guns began, caused by a strong explosion of barrels. At the end of August, the personnel of the 654th division were sent to France for reorganization and rearmament. At the same time, he transferred his self-propelled guns to the 653rd division, which in October-November took part in defensive battles in the Nikopol and Dnepropetrovsk regions. In December, the division left the front line and was sent to Austria.

During the period from July 5 (the beginning of Operation Citadel) to November 5, 1943, the Ferdinands of the 656th regiment knocked out 582 Soviet tanks, 344 anti-tank guns, 133 guns, 103 anti-tank guns, three aircraft, three armored vehicles and three self-propelled guns *.

Between January and March 1944, the 47 Ferdinands that remained by that time were modernized at the Nibelungenwerke plant. In the frontal armor of the hull on the right, a ball mount of the MG 34 machine gun was mounted. A commander's cupola, borrowed from the StuG 40 assault gun, appeared on the roof of the wheelhouse. did not have. Ammunition was brought to 55 shots. The name of the car was changed to Elefant (elephant). However, until the end of the war, the self-propelled gun was often called the familiar name "Ferdinand".

At the end of February 1944, the 1st company of the 653rd division was sent to Italy, where it took part in the battles of Anzio, and in May - June 1944 - near Rome. At the end of June, the company, which had two serviceable "Elephanta", was transferred to Austria.

In April 1944, the 653rd division, consisting of two companies, was sent to the Eastern Front, in the Ternopil region. There, during the fighting, the division lost 14 vehicles, but 11 of them were repaired and put back into operation. In July, the division, which was already retreating through Poland, had 33 serviceable self-propelled guns. However, on July 18, the 653rd division, without reconnaissance and training, was thrown into battle to the rescue of the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen, and within a day the number of combat vehicles in its ranks was more than halved. Soviet troops very successfully used their heavy self-propelled guns and 57-mm anti-tank guns against the "elephant". Some of the German vehicles were only damaged and completely subject to restoration, but due to the impossibility of evacuation, they were blown up or set on fire by their own crews. The remnants of the battalion-12 combat-ready vehicles were taken to Krakow on August 3. In October 1944, the Jagdtiger self-propelled guns began to enter the battalion, and the elephants remaining in the ranks were reduced to the 614th heavy anti-tank company.

Until the beginning of 1945, the company was in the reserve of the 4th Panzer Army, and on February 25 it was transferred to the Wünsdorf area to strengthen the anti-tank defense. At the end of April, the Elephanta fought their last battles in Wünsdorf and Zossen as part of the so-called Ritter group (Captain Ritter was the commander of the 614th battery).

In the surrounded Berlin, the last two self-propelled guns "Elephant" were knocked out in the area of Karl-August Square and the Church of the Holy Trinity.

Two self-propelled guns of this type have survived to this day. The Museum of Armored Weapons and Equipment in Kubinka exhibits "Ferdinand", captured by the Red Army during the Battle of Kursk, and in the Museum of the Aberdeen Proving Ground in the United States - "Elephant", which went to the Americans in Italy, near Anzio.

TACTICAL AND TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS SAU "FERDINAND"

Combat weight, t ……………………… .65

Crew, people ……………………………… 6

Overall dimensions, mm:

length ……………………………… .8140

width …………………………… .3380

height …………………………… ..2970

ground clearance ……………………………. 480

Armor thickness, mm:

the forehead of the hull and the casemate …………… .200

board and feed ……………………… ..80

roof ………………………………… .30

bottom ………………………………… .20

Maximum speed, km / h:

on the highway …………………………… ..20

on the terrain ……………………… ..11

Cruising range, km:

on the highway …………………………… 150

on the terrain ……………………… ..90

Overcoming obstacles:

ascent angle, degrees ……………… ..22

ditch width, m …………………… 2.64

wall height, m ………………. 0.78

ford depth, m …………………… .1

Support length

surface, mm ……………… ..4175

Specific pressure, kg / cm 2 …… .1,23

Specific power, hp / t ... .about 8

M. BARYATINSKY

"Tiger" - the most formidable German tank of the Second World War, a kind of symbol of Hitler's "Panzerwaffe". And if the other two most famous tanks of those years - the T-34 and the Sherman - owe much of their fame to their gigantic production volumes, the Tiger earned its fame solely due to its outstanding combat qualities. And one can only regret that these qualities were used in the struggle for a wrong cause ...

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The most famous German self-propelled gun of the Second World War, the Ferdinand, owes its birth, on the one hand, to the intrigues around the heavy tank VK 4501 (P), and on the other, to the appearance of the 88-mm anti-tank gun Cancer 43. As already mentioned, tank VK 4501 (P) - "Tiger" designed by Dr. Porsche - was shown to Hitler on April 20, 1942, simultaneously with his competitor VK 4501 (H) - "Tiger" from Henschel. According to Hitler, both cars were to be put into mass production, which was opposed in every possible way by the Armaments Directorate, whose workers could not stand the obstinate pet of the Fuhrer - Dr. Porsche. The tests did not reveal the obvious advantages of one vehicle over another, but the readiness for production of the Porsche Tiger was higher - by June 6, 1942, the first 16 VK 4501 (P) tanks were ready for delivery to the troops, for which the Krupp company was finishing assembling the turrets ... Henschel could have delivered only one car by this date, and that one without a turret. The first battalion, equipped with Porsche "tigers", was supposed to be formed by August 1942 and sent to Stalingrad, but suddenly the Armaments Directorate stopped all work on the tank for a month.

The managers took advantage of Hitler's instructions to create an assault gun based on the Pz.IV and VK 4501 tanks, armed with the latest 88-mm anti-tank gun Rak 43/2 with a barrel length of 71 caliber. At the suggestion of the Armaments Directorate, it was decided to convert all 92 ready-made and assembled VK 4501 (P) chassis in the shops of the Nibelungenwerke plant into assault guns.

In September 1942, work began. The design was carried out by Porsche together with the designers of the Berlin plant Alkett. Since the armored wheelhouse was supposed to be located aft, the chassis layout had to be changed by placing engines and generators in the middle of the hull. Initially, it was planned to assemble new self-propelled guns in Berlin, but this had to be abandoned due to the difficulties associated with transportation by rail, and because of the reluctance to suspend the production of the StuG III assault guns - the main product of the Alkett plant. As a result, the SPG assembly, which received the official designation 8,8-cm Cancer 43/2 Sfl. L / 71 Panzerjöger Tiger (P) Sd.Kfz.184 and the name Ferdinand (personally assigned by Hitler in February 1943 in homage to Dr. Ferdinand Porsche), were produced at the Nibelungenwerke plant.

The frontal 100-mm hull plates of the Tiger (P) tank were reinforced with overhead 100-mm armor plates fixed to the hull with bullet-proof bolts. Thus, the frontal armor of the hull was brought to 200 mm. The frontal felling sheet had a similar thickness. The thickness of the side and stern sheets reached 80 mm (according to other sources, 85 mm). The armored plates of the cabin were connected into a thorn and reinforced with dowels, and then scalded. The deckhouse was attached to the hull with brackets and bolts with a bullet-proof head.

In the front part of the hull there were the workplaces of the driver and radio operator. Behind them, in the center of the car, parallel to each other were installed two 12-cylinder carburetor V-shaped liquid-cooled Maybach HL 120TRM engines with a capacity of 265 hp. at 2600 rpm each. The engines rotated the rotors of two Siemens Tur aGV generators, which, in turn, supplied electricity to two Siemens D1495aAC traction motors with a power of 230 kW each, installed in the rear of the vehicle under the fighting compartment. The torque from the electric motors with the help of special electromechanical final drives was transmitted to the drive wheels of the stern arrangement. In emergency mode or in the event of combat damage to one of the branches of the power supply, duplication of the other was provided.

In the wheelhouse, in the trunnions of a special machine, an 88-mm Rak 43/2 cannon (in a self-propelled version - StuK 43) with a barrel length of 71 caliber, developed on the basis of the Flak 41 anti-aircraft gun, was installed. The horizontal guidance angle was possible in the 28 ° sector. Elevation angle + 14 °, declination -8 °. The mass of the gun is 2200 kg. The embrasure in the frontal leaf of the cabin was covered with a massive molded pear-shaped mask connected to the machine. However, the design of the mask was not very successful, it did not provide full protection against lead splashes and small fragments that penetrated into the body in the cracks between the mask and the frontal sheet. Therefore, on the masks of most of the "Ferdinands" armored shields were reinforced. The gun ammunition consisted of 50 unitary rounds placed on the walls of the wheelhouse. In the aft part of the cabin there was a round hatch for dismantling the gun.

Assembly of the first car began on February 16, 1943, and the last - the ninetieth Ferdinand left the factory shops on May 8. In April, the first production vehicle was tested at the Kummersdorf test site.

The baptism of fire of the "Ferdinands" was accepted during Operation Citadel as part of the 656th tank destroyer regiment, which included the 653rd and 654th divisions (schwere Panzerjöger Abteilung - sPz.Jöger Abt.). By the beginning of the battle in the first there were 45, and in the second 44 "Ferdinands". Both divisions were in the operational subordination of the 41st Panzer Corps, participated in heavy battles on the northern face of the Kursk Bulge in the area of Ponyri station (654th division) and the village of Tyoploe (653rd division).

The 654th Battalion suffered especially heavy losses, mainly in minefields. There were 21 Ferdinands on the battlefield. On July 15, German equipment knocked out and destroyed in the area of the Ponyri station was examined by representatives of the GAU and the NIBT Polygon of the Red Army. Most of the "Ferdinands" were in a minefield filled with land mines from captured large-caliber shells and aerial bombs. More than half of the vehicles had damage to the undercarriage: torn tracks, destroyed road wheels, etc. In five Ferdinands, damage to the undercarriage was caused by shells of 76-mm or more caliber. In two German self-propelled guns, the barrels of the guns were shot through by shells and bullets of anti-tank rifles. One vehicle was destroyed by a direct hit from an aerial bomb, and another was destroyed by a 203-mm howitzer shell hitting the roof of the wheelhouse. Only one self-propelled gun of this type, which was fired from different directions by seven T-34 tanks and a battery of 76-mm guns, had a hole in the side, in the area of the drive wheel. Another "Ferdinand", which had no damage to the hull and chassis, was set on fire by a Molotov cocktail thrown by our infantrymen. The only worthy opponent of heavy German self-propelled guns was the SU-152 self-propelled artillery mount. On July 8, 1943, the SU-152 regiment fired at the attacking Ferdinands of the 653rd Battalion, knocking out four enemy vehicles. All in all, in July - August 1943, 39 Ferdinands were lost. The last trophies went to the Red Army on the outskirts of Orel - several damaged assault guns prepared for evacuation were captured at the railway station.

The first battles of the "Ferdinands" on the Kursk Bulge were, in fact, the last, where these self-propelled guns were used in large numbers. Moreover, from the point of view of tactics, their use left much to be desired. Created to destroy Soviet medium and heavy tanks at long distances, they were used as an advanced "armor shield", blindly ramming engineering barriers and anti-tank defenses, while suffering heavy losses. At the same time, the moral effect of the appearance on the Soviet-German front of practically invulnerable German self-propelled guns was very large. "Ferdinandomania" and "Ferdinandphobia" appeared. Judging by the memoir literature, there was no soldier in the Red Army who did not knock out or, in extreme cases, did not participate in the battle with the Ferdinands. They crawled into our positions on all fronts, from 1943 (and sometimes even earlier) until the end of the war. The number of "knocked out" "Ferdinands" is approaching several thousand.

This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that most of the Red Army soldiers were poorly versed in all kinds of "marders", "bison" and "naskhorns" and called any German self-propelled gun "Ferdinand", which indicates how great was its "popularity" among our soldiers. Well, and besides, for the knocked-out "Ferdinand" without further ado, they were given an order.

After the inglorious completion of Operation Citadel, the remaining in the ranks of the Ferdinands were transferred to Zhitomir and Dnepropetrovsk, where their current repairs and replacement of guns began, caused by the strong explosion of the barrels. At the end of August, the 654th division was sent to France for reorganization and rearmament. At the same time, he transferred his self-propelled guns to the 653rd division, which in October-November took part in defensive battles in the Nikopol and Dnepropetrovsk regions. On December 16, the division left the front line and was sent to Austria.

From a certificate submitted to the High Command of the Ground Forces, it follows that by November 5, 1943, the 656th Regiment destroyed 582 Soviet tanks, 344 anti-tank guns, 133 other guns, 103 anti-tank guns, three aircraft, three armored vehicles and three self-propelled guns.

In April 1944, the 653rd division, consisting of two companies, was sent to the Eastern Front, in the Ternopil region. Here, during the fighting, the division lost 14 vehicles, but 11 of them were repaired and put back into operation. In July, the division, which was already retreating through Poland, had 33 serviceable self-propelled guns. However, on July 18, the 653rd division, without reconnaissance and training, was thrown into battle to the rescue of the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen, and within a day the number of combat vehicles in its ranks was more than halved. Soviet troops very successfully used their heavy self-propelled guns and 57-mm anti-tank guns against the "elephant". Some of the German vehicles were only damaged and completely subject to restoration, but due to the impossibility of evacuation, they were blown up or set on fire by their own crews. On August 3, the remnants of the division - 12 combat-ready vehicles - were taken to Krakow. In October 1944, the Jagdtiger self-propelled guns began to enter the division, and the elephants that remained in the ranks were reduced to the 614th heavy anti-tank company.

The layout of the ACS "Elephant":

1 - 88 mm cannon; 2 - armor shield on the mask; 3 - periscopic sight; 4 - commander's cupola; 5 - fan; 6 - hatch of the periscopic observation device; 7 - stacking 88-mm rounds on the wall of the fighting compartment; 8 - electric motor; 9 - driving wheel; 10 - suspension trolley; 11 - engine; 12 - generator; 13 - gunner's seat; 14 - driver's seat; 15 - guide wheel; 16 - course machine gun.

Until the beginning of 1945, the company was in the reserve of the 4th Panzer Army, and on February 25 it was transferred to the Wünsdorf area to strengthen the anti-tank defense. The last battles "elephanta" fought in the so-called group of Ritter (Captain Ritter was the commander of the 614th battery) at the end of April in Wünsdorf and Zossen. In surrounded Berlin, the last two self-propelled guns "Elephant" were knocked out in the area of Karl August Square and the Church of the Holy Trinity.

In 1943, the German armored vehicle factory Nibelungenwerke produced 90 chassis for combat vehicles, which the Wehrmacht abandoned. The Porsche design turned out to be unnecessary, and the question arose of what to do with this stock of chassis, on the basis of which, according to the original plan, it was supposed to build a new heavy tank. "Ferdinand" - a self-propelled gun designed to destroy armored vehicles, became a forced measure in conditions of a shortage of raw materials to use already manufactured components and mechanisms.

The chassis itself was unique in its own way. Blocks (there were three of them on each side), including two road wheels, were attached to the armored hull by means of bogies equipped with a successful damping system.

The power plant consisted of two Maybach carburetor engines with a total capacity of 600 liters. with., loaded on a generator that generates energy supplied to two electric motors "Siemens". This solution greatly simplified the control of the machine and excluded it from the transmission. It should be noted that the German industry did not create an engine throughout the war that could equip a relatively high-speed heavy tank.

Thus, Ferdinand inherited the failed masterpiece of the Porsche designer, who had previously specialized in design. A peculiar approach was manifested in the fact that the manufacturability of manufacturing was practically not taken into account, in production such a chassis was very complex and expensive.

The power plant could provide a speed of 30-35 km / h if it was equipped with a tank conceived by Porsche. "Ferdinand" with 200 mm frontal armor could not move faster than 20 km / h, and even then on solid ground. In fact, the self-propelled gun is not intended for rapid throws, the main advantage of this class of armored vehicles is a powerful long-range weapon.

In order to accommodate such a cannon (it weighed more than two tons), it was necessary to completely change the original layout. The barrel of the 88 mm caliber turned out to be very heavy, it required support when moving, but due to its long length it could hit any tank. For all its slow sluggishness, the Ferdinand became a formidable weapon.

The crew had to be divided, the gunners were in the aft section, and the driver and commander in the front. The power plant was located in the center of the car.

In war, unique pieces of equipment are often used off-label. The Wehrmacht was forced to use self-propelled guns in close combat, in which any "Ferdinand" would be more effective, the gun of which could penetrate armor 193 mm thick from a kilometer distance, did not have a machine gun capable of protecting the vehicle from advancing infantry.

The car was created in a hurry, design flaws had to be eliminated in the process of modernization. After the surviving 47 self-propelled guns were sent to the manufacturer, where they were supplied with small arms, commander's turrets, and the armor was covered with a special layer that protects against magnetic mines.

After the improvement, the ACS received the name Elefant (that is, "elephant"), perhaps more characterizing a heavy machine with a long "trunk". The old name stuck in the troops (both German and Soviet).

With a huge number of shortcomings, this machine had the main advantage - the gun could hit almost any tank from great distances. "Ferdinand", whose photo still surprises with its angularity, created difficulties for the German command when crossing water obstacles, it was almost impossible to evacuate it from the battlefield in case of a loss of progress.

Until the end of the war, only two "Elephants" survived, they were burned in Berlin by the Soviet infantry. Two captured earlier, and therefore the surviving copies, took their places in museums in Russia and the United States.

Whether the Germans had the best self-propelled guns in the world or not is a moot point, but the fact that they managed to create one that left an indelible memory of all Soviet soldiers is for sure. This is a heavy self-propelled gun "Ferdinand". It got to the point that, starting in the second half of 1943, in almost every combat report, Soviet troops destroyed at least one such self-propelled gun. If we sum up the losses of "Ferdinands" according to Soviet reports, then during the war several thousand of them were destroyed. The piquancy of the situation lies in the fact that the Germans produced only 90 of them during the entire war, and 4 more ARVs based on them. It is difficult to find a sample of armored vehicles from the Second World War, produced in such small quantities and at the same time so famous. All German self-propelled guns were recorded in "Ferdinands", but most often - "Marders" and "Stugs". Roughly the same situation was with the German "Tiger": it was often confused with the medium tank Pz-IV with a long cannon. But here there was at least a similarity of silhouettes, but what similarities between Ferdinand and, for example, StuG 40 is a big question.

So what was Ferdinand like and why is he so widely known since the Battle of Kursk? We will not go into technical details and design development issues, because this has already been written in dozens of other publications, but we will pay close attention to the battles on the northern face of the Kursk Bulge, where these extremely powerful machines were massively used.

The conning tower of the ACS was assembled from sheets of forged cemented armor transferred from the stocks of the German Navy. The frontal armor of the cabin was 200 mm thick, the side and stern armor was 85 mm. The thickness of even the side armor made the ACS practically invulnerable to the fire of almost all Soviet artillery of the 1943 model of the year at a distance of over 400 m. barrel length 71 caliber, its muzzle energy one and a half times higher than that of the gun of the heavy tank "Tiger". The Ferdinand's cannon penetrated all Soviet tanks from all angles of attack at all ranges of actual fire. The only reason there was non-penetration of armor on impact is ricochet. Any other hit caused the penetration of the armor, which in most cases meant the incapacitation of the Soviet tank and the partial or complete death of its crew. This is what the Germans got so serious shortly before the start of Operation Citadel.

The formation of the units of the self-propelled guns "Ferdinand" began on April 1, 1943. In total, it was decided to form two heavy battalions (divisions).

The first of them, numbered 653 (Schwere PanzerJager Abteilung 653), was formed on the basis of the 197th StuG III assault gun division. According to the new state, the division was supposed to have 45 Ferdinand self-propelled guns. This unit was not chosen by chance: the personnel of the division had extensive combat experience and participated in the battles in the East from the summer of 1941 to January 1943. By May, the 653rd battalion was fully staffed according to the state. However, at the beginning of May 1943, all the material part was transferred to the staffing of the 654th battalion, which was being formed in France in the city of Rouen. By mid-May, the 653rd battalion was again staffed almost to the state and had 40 self-propelled guns in its composition, after passing the course of exercises at the Neuseidel training ground, on June 9-12, 1943, the battalion departed in eleven echelons to the Eastern Front.

The 654th heavy tank destroyer battalion was formed on the basis of the 654th anti-tank battalion at the end of April 1943. The combat experience of his personnel, who had fought before with the PaK 35/36 anti-tank equipment, and then with the Marder II self-propelled guns, was much less than that of their colleagues from the 653rd battalion. Until April 28, the battalion was in Austria, from April 30 in Rouen. After the final exercises, in the period from 13 to 15 June, the battalion departed in fourteen echelons to the Eastern Front.

According to the wartime staff (K. St.N.No. 1148c from 03/31/43), a heavy battalion of tank destroyers included: battalion command, headquarters company (platoon: management, sapper, sanitary, anti-aircraft), three companies of "Ferdinands" (in each company 2 vehicles of the company headquarters, and three platoons of 4 vehicles; that is, 14 vehicles per company), a repair and evacuation company, a motor transport company. In total: 45 self-propelled guns "Ferdinand", 1 sanitary armored personnel carrier Sd.Kfz.251 / 8, 6 anti-aircraft Sd.Kfz 7/1, 15 half-track tractors Sd.Kfz 9 (18 tons), trucks and cars.

The staffing structure of the battalions was slightly different. We must start with the fact that the 653rd battalion included the 1st and 2nd companies, the 654th - the 5.6th and 7th companies. The 4th company "fell out" somewhere. The numbering of vehicles in battalions corresponded to German standards: for example, both vehicles of the headquarters of the 5th company had numbers 501 and 502, numbers of vehicles of the 1st platoon were from 511 to 514 inclusive; 2nd platoon 521 - 524; 3rd 531 - 534 respectively. But if we carefully consider the combat composition of each battalion (division), we will see that there are only 42 self-propelled guns in the "combat" number of units. And the state is 45. Where have three more SPGs from each battalion gone? This is where the difference in the organization of improvised tank destroyer divisions comes into play: if in the 653rd battalion 3 vehicles were brought into the reserve group, then in the 654th battalion 3 "extra" vehicles were organized into a headquarters group with non-standard tactical numbers: II -01, II-02, II-03.

Both battalions (divisions) became part of the 656th Tank Regiment, the headquarters of which the Germans formed on June 8, 1943. The formation turned out to be quite powerful: in addition to 90 self-propelled guns "Ferdinand", it included the 216th assault tank battalion (Sturmpanzer Abteilung 216), and two companies of radio-controlled tankettes BIV "Bogvard" (313rd and 314th). The regiment was supposed to serve as a battering ram for the German offensive in the direction of Art. Ponyri - Maloarkhangelsk.

On June 25, the Ferdinands began to move towards the front line. By July 4, 1943, the 656th regiment was deployed as follows: to the west of the Orel-Kursk railway, the 654th battalion (Arkhangelskoe district), to the east, the 653rd battalion (Glazunov district), followed by three companies 216th battalion (45 "Brummbars" in total). Each battalion of "Ferdinands" was assigned a company of radio-controlled tankettes B IV.

On July 5, the 656th Panzer Regiment went on the offensive, supporting parts of the 86th and 292nd German Infantry Divisions. However, the ramming strike did not work: the 653rd battalion on the very first day got bogged down in the hardest battles at the height of 257.7, which the Germans called "Tank". Not only were the thirty-fours dug in at the height up to the tower, but the height was also covered with powerful minefields. On the very first day, 10 battalion self-propelled guns were blown up by mines. There were also heavy losses in personnel. Having blown up on an anti-personnel mine, the commander of the 1st company, Hauptmann Spielman, was seriously wounded. Having found out the direction of the strike, the Soviet artillery also opened hurricane fire. As a result, by 17:00 on July 5, only 12 Ferdinands remained on the move! The rest received injuries of varying severity. The remnants of the battalion over the next two days continued to fight to capture Art. Diving.

The attack of the 654th battalion turned out to be even more disastrous. The 6th company of the battalion accidentally ran into its own minefield. Within just a few minutes, most of the "Ferdinands" were blown up by their own mines. Finding the monstrous German vehicles, barely creeping into our positions, the Soviet artillery opened concentrated fire on them. The result was that the German infantry, supporting the attack of the 6th company, suffered heavy losses and lay down, leaving the self-propelled guns without cover. Four "Ferdinands" from the 6th company were still able to reach the Soviet positions, and there, according to the memoirs of the German self-propelled gunners, they were "attacked by several brave Russian soldiers who remained in the trenches and armed with flamethrowers, and from the right flank, from the line of the railway they opened artillery fire, but seeing that it was ineffective, the Russian soldiers withdrew in an organized manner. "

The 5th and 7th companies also reached the first line of trenches, having lost about 30% of their vehicles on mines and came under heavy shelling. At the same time, Major Noack, the commander of the 654th battalion, was mortally wounded by a shell fragment.

After taking the first line of trenches, the remnants of the 654th battalion moved in the direction of Ponyri. At the same time, some of the vehicles were again blown up by mines, and "Ferdinand" No. 531 from the 5th company, being immobilized by flank fire of the Soviet artillery, was finished off and burned down. At dusk, the battalion reached the hills north of the Ponyri, where it stopped for the night and regrouped. There were 20 vehicles left in the battalion on the move.

On 6 July, due to problems with fuel, the 654th battalion launched the attack only at 14:00. However, due to the heavy fire of Soviet artillery, the German infantry suffered serious losses, retreated and the attack was drowned. On this day, the 654th battalion reported "about a large number of Russian tanks arriving to strengthen the defense." According to the evening report, the self-propelled gun crews destroyed 15 Soviet T-34 tanks, and 8 of them were credited to the crew under the command of Hauptmann Luders, and 5 to Lieutenant Peters. 17 cars remained on the move.

The next day, the remnants of the 653rd and 654th battalions were drawn to Buzuluk, where they made up a corps reserve. Two days were devoted to car repair. On July 8, several Ferdinands and Brummbars participated in the unsuccessful attack on the station. Diving.

At the same time (July 8), the headquarters of the Soviet Central Front received the first report from the chief of artillery of the 13th Army about the Ferdinand that was blown up by a mine. Two days later, a group of five officers of the GAU KA arrived from Moscow to the front headquarters specifically to study this sample. However, they were unlucky, by this moment the area where the damaged self-propelled guns stood was occupied by the Germans.

The main events developed on July 9-10, 1943. After many unsuccessful attacks on st. The diving Germans changed the direction of the strike. From the northeast, through the state farm "May 1", an impromptu battle group under the command of Major Kall struck. The composition of this group is impressive: the 505th battalion of heavy tanks (about 40 Tiger tanks), the 654th and part of the machines of the 653rd battalion (44 Ferdinands in total), the 216th assault tank battalion (38 Brummbar self-propelled guns "), A division of assault guns (20 StuG 40 and StuH 42), 17 Pz.Kpfw III and Pz.Kpfw IV tanks. Immediately behind this armada, tanks of the 2nd TD and motorized infantry on an armored personnel carrier were supposed to move.

Thus, on a front of 3 km, the Germans concentrated about 150 combat vehicles, not counting the second echelon. More than half of the first-echelon vehicles are heavy. According to the reports of our artillerymen, the Germans here for the first time used a new attacking formation "in line" - with the "Ferdinands" that were going in front. The vehicles of the 654th and 653rd battalions operated in two echelons. In the line of the first echelon, 30 vehicles were advancing, in the second echelon one more company (14 vehicles) moved with an interval of 120-150 m. The company commanders were in the general line on the command vehicles carrying a flag on the antenna.

On the very first day, this group easily managed to break through the state farm "May 1" to the village of Goreloe. Here our artillerymen made a truly ingenious move: seeing the invulnerability of the newest German armored monsters to artillery, they were allowed to enter a huge minefield filled with anti-tank mines and landmines from captured ammunition, and then opened hurricane fire on the "retinue" of medium-sized ones following the Ferdinands. tanks and assault guns. As a result, the entire strike group suffered significant losses and was forced to withdraw.

The next day, July 10, Major Kall's group struck a new powerful blow and individual vehicles broke through to the outskirts of Art. Diving. The vehicles that broke through were the heavy self-propelled guns "Ferdinand".

According to the descriptions of our soldiers, the "Ferdinands" advanced, firing from a cannon from short stops from a distance of one to two and a half kilometers: a very long distance for armored vehicles of that time. Having been exposed to concentrated fire, or having found a mined area of the terrain, they retreated in reverse to some shelter, trying to always be facing the Soviet positions with thick frontal armor, absolutely invulnerable to our artillery.

On July 11, Major Kall's strike group was disbanded, the 505th heavy tank battalion and the tanks of the 2nd TD were transferred against our 70th army in the Kutyrka-Teploe region. In the area of art. Only the units of the 654th battalion and the 216th assault tank battalion remained, trying to evacuate the damaged materiel to the rear. But it was not possible to evacuate the 65-ton Ferdinands during July 12-13, and on July 14, Soviet troops launched a massive counteroffensive from the Ponyri station in the direction of the May 1 state farm. By mid-day, the German troops were forced to withdraw. Our tankers supporting the infantry attack suffered heavy losses, mostly not from German fire, but because a company of T-34 and T-70 tanks jumped out onto the same powerful minefield where the Ferdinands had blown up four days earlier. 654th battalion.

On July 15 (that is, the very next day), the German equipment knocked out and destroyed at the Ponyri station was examined and studied by representatives of the GAU KA and the NIBT test site. In total, on the battlefield northeast of st. Ponyri (18 km2) left 21 self-propelled guns "Ferdinand", three assault tanks "Brummbar" (in Soviet documents - "Bear"), eight tanks Pz-III and Pz-IV, two command tanks, and several radio-controlled tankettes B IV "Bogvard ".

Most of the Ferdinands were found in a minefield near the village of Goreloe. More than half of the vehicles examined had damage to the undercarriage from the impact of anti-tank mines and land mines. 5 vehicles had damage to the chassis from shells of 76-mm and higher caliber. Two "Ferdinands" had bullet holes, one of them received as many as 8 hits in the gun barrel. One car was completely destroyed by an aerial bomb hit from a Soviet Pe-2 bomber, one was destroyed by a 203-mm projectile hitting the roof of the wheelhouse. And only one "Ferdinand" had a shell hole in the left side, made by a 76-mm armor-piercing projectile, 7 T-34 tanks and a ZIS-3 battery fired at it from all sides, from a distance of 200-400 m. And one more "Ferdinand", which had no external damage to the hull, was burned by our infantry with a bottle of KS. Several "Ferdinands", deprived of the ability to move under their own power, were destroyed by their crews.

The main part of the 653rd battalion operated in the defense zone of our 70th army. Irrecoverable losses during the battles from 5 to 15 July amounted to 8 vehicles. And one of our troops captured perfectly serviceable, and even together with the crew. It happened as follows: in the course of repelling one of the German attacks in the area of the village of Teploe on July 11-12, the advancing German troops underwent a massive artillery bombardment of a corps artillery battalion, batteries of the latest Soviet self-propelled guns SU-152 and two IPTAP, after which the enemy left on the battlefield 4 "Ferdinand". Despite such a massive shelling, not a single German self-propelled gun had armor penetration: two vehicles had shell damage to the chassis, one was badly destroyed by large-caliber artillery fire (possibly the SU-152) - its frontal plate was displaced. And the fourth (No. 333), trying to get out of the shelling, was moving in reverse and, having hit the sandy area, simply “sat down” on its belly. The crew tried to dig the car, but then attacking Soviet infantrymen of the 129th Infantry Division ran into them and the Germans preferred to surrender. Here ours faced the same problem that has long weighed down the minds of the command of the German 654th and 653rd battalions: how to get this colossus out of the battlefield? Pulling the "hippopotamus out of the swamp" dragged on until August 2, when, with the efforts of four C-60 and C-65 tractors, Ferdinand was finally pulled out onto solid ground. But in the course of its further transportation to the railway station, one of the self-propelled guns' gasoline engines failed. The further fate of the car is unknown.

With the beginning of the Soviet counteroffensive, the Ferdinands fell into their element. So, on July 12-14, 24 self-propelled guns of the 653rd battalion supported units of the 53rd Infantry Division in the Berezovets area. At the same time, repulsing the attack of Soviet tanks near the village of Krasnaya Niva, the crew of only one "Ferdinand" Lieutenant Tiret reported on the destruction of 22 T-34 tanks.

On July 15, the 654th battalion repulsed the attack of our tanks from the direction of Maloarkhangelsk - Buzuluk, while the 6th company reported the destruction of 13 Soviet combat vehicles. Subsequently, the remnants of the battalions were drawn to Oryol. By July 30, all "Ferdinands" were withdrawn from the front, and by order of the headquarters of the 9th Army were sent to Karachev.

During Operation Citadel, the 656th Panzer Regiment daily reported on the presence of combat-ready Ferdinands by radio. According to these reports, on July 7, there were 37 Ferdinands in service, July 8 - 26, July 9 - 13, July 10 - 24, July 11 - 12, July 12 - 24, July 13 - 24, July 14 - 13 units. These data do not correlate well with the German data on the combat strength of the strike groups, which included the 653rd and 654th battalions. The Germans recognize 19 "Ferdinands" as irretrievably lost, in addition, another 4 cars were lost "due to a short circuit and the subsequent fire." Consequently, the 656th regiment lost 23 vehicles. In addition, there are inconsistencies with Soviet data, which documentary evidence of the destruction of 21 Ferdinand self-propelled guns.

Perhaps the Germans tried, as was often the case, to write off several vehicles as irrecoverable losses retroactively, because, according to their data, since the transition of the Soviet troops to the offensive, 20 Ferdinands have been irrevocably lost (this apparently includes some of the 4 cars burned down for technical reasons). Thus, according to German data, the total irrecoverable losses of the 656th regiment from July 5 to August 1, 1943 amounted to 39 Ferdinands. Be that as it may, this is generally confirmed by the documents, and, in general, corresponds to the Soviet data.

If the losses of the "Ferdinands" in both German and Soviet ones coincide (the difference is only in the dates), then "unscientific fantasy" begins further. The command of the 656th regiment declares that during the period from July 5 to July 15, 1943, the regiment disabled 502 enemy tanks and self-propelled guns, 20 anti-tank and about 100 other guns. Particularly distinguished in the field of the destruction of Soviet armored vehicles, the 653rd battalion, which recorded 320 Soviet tanks, as well as a large number of guns and vehicles, in the destroyed ones.

Let's try to deal with the losses of the Soviet artillery. During the period from 5 to 15 July 1943, the Central Front under the command of K. Rokossovsky lost 433 guns of all types. This is data for a whole front, which occupied a very long defense zone, so the data on 120 destroyed guns in one small "patch" seems clearly overestimated. In addition, it is very interesting to compare the declared number of destroyed Soviet armored vehicles with their real decline. So: by July 5, the tank units of the 13th Army numbered 215 tanks and 32 self-propelled guns, another 827 armored units were listed in the 2nd TA and the 19th TC, which was in the front reserve. Most of them were brought into battle precisely in the defense zone of the 13th Army, where the Germans inflicted their main blow. The losses of the 2nd TA for the period from 5 to 15 July amounted to 270 T-34 and T-70 tanks burned out and wrecked, the losses of the 19th TK - 115 vehicles, the 13th Army (including all replenishments) - 132 vehicles. Consequently, of the 1129 tanks and self-propelled guns used in the 13th Army's zone, the total losses amounted to 517 vehicles, and more than half of them were recovered already during the battles (irrecoverable losses amounted to 219 vehicles). If we take into account that the 13th Army's defensive zone on different days of the operation ranged from 80 to 160 km, and the Ferdinands operated on the front from 4 to 8 km, it becomes clear that such a number of Soviet armored vehicles could be snapped into place in such a narrow area it was simply unrealistic. And if we also take into account the fact that several tank divisions operated against the Central Front, as well as the 505th Tigers heavy tank battalion, assault gun divisions, Marder and Hornisse self-propelled guns, as well as artillery, it is clear that the results 656th regiment shamelessly bloated. However, a similar picture is obtained when checking the effectiveness of the heavy tank battalions "Tigers" and "Royal Tigers", and indeed of all German tank units. For the sake of fairness, it must be said that combat reports of both Soviet, American and British troops sinned with such "truthfulness".

So what is the reason for such a famous "heavy assault gun", or, if you like, "heavy tank destroyer Ferdinand"?

Undoubtedly, the creation of Ferdinand Porsche was a kind of masterpiece of technical thought. In the huge ACS, many technical solutions were used (a unique chassis, a combined power plant, the location of the BO, etc.) that had no analogues in tank building. At the same time, numerous technical "highlights" of the project were poorly adapted for military operation, and the phenomenal armor protection and powerful weapons were bought due to disgusting mobility, a short power reserve, the complexity of the machine in operation and the lack of a concept for using such technology. This is all true, but this was not the reason for such a "fright" before the creation of Porsche, that the Soviet artillerymen and tankmen in almost every combat report saw crowds of "Ferdinands" even after the Germans took all the surviving self-propelled guns from the eastern front to Italy and until the battles in Poland, they did not participate on the Eastern Front.

Despite all its imperfections and "childhood diseases", the self-propelled gun "Ferdinand" turned out to be a terrible enemy. Her armor did not penetrate. I just didn't get through. At all. Nothing. You can imagine what the Soviet tankmen and artillerymen felt and thought: you hit it, you fire shell after shell, and it looks like a spell, rushing and rushing at you.

Many modern researchers cite the lack of anti-personnel weapons of this ACS as the main reason for the unsuccessful debut of the Ferdinands. Say, the car did not have machine guns and the self-propelled guns were helpless against the Soviet infantry. But if we analyze the reasons for the losses of the Ferdinand self-propelled guns, it becomes clear that the role of the infantry in destroying the Ferdinands was simply insignificant, the vast majority of vehicles were blown up in minefields, and some more were destroyed by artillery.

Thus, contrary to popular belief that V. Model is to blame for the large losses at the Kursk Bulge of the Ferdinand ACS, who allegedly "did not know" how to apply them correctly, we can say that the main reasons for such high losses of these ACS were the tactically competent actions of the Soviet commanders, the fortitude and bravery of our soldiers and officers, as well as a little military luck.

Another reader will object, why are we not talking about the battles in Galicia, where from April 1944 slightly modernized "Elephanta" participated (which were distinguished from the previous "Ferdinands" by minor improvements, such as a course machine gun and a commander's cupola)? We answer: because their fate there was no better. Until July, they, brought together in the 653rd battalion, fought local battles. After the start of a major Soviet offensive, the battalion was sent to the aid of the German SS Hohenstaufen division, but ran into an ambush by Soviet tanks and anti-tank artillery and 19 vehicles were immediately destroyed. The remnants of the battalion (12 vehicles) were consolidated into the 614th separate heavy company, which took the battles at Wünsdorf, Zossen and Berlin.

ACS number Nature of damage Cause of damage Note
731 A caterpillar was destroyed A mine was blown up A self-propelled gun was repaired and sent to Moscow for an exhibition of captured property
522 The caterpillar is destroyed, the road wheels are damaged.
523 The track is destroyed, the road wheels are damaged Blown up by a land mine, set on fire by the crew The car burned down
734 The lower branch of the caterpillar is destroyed.
II-02 The right track is torn off, the road wheels are destroyed.
I-02 Left track torn off, road roller destroyed Blown up by a mine and set on fire Machine burned down
514 The caterpillar is destroyed, the road roller is damaged Blown up by a mine, set on fire The car burned down
502 Torn off a sloth Blown up by a land mine The car was tested by shelling
501 The caterpillar was torn off The mine was blown up The machine was repaired and delivered to the NIBT landfill
712 The right drive wheel is destroyed. A shell hit The crew left the car. The fire is extinguished
732 The third carriage is destroyed.
524 Torn apart caterpillar Blown up by a mine, set on fire Machine burned down
II-03 Caterpillar destroyed Shell hit, set fire to KS bottle Car burned out
113 or 713 Both sloths destroyed. Projectile hits. Weapon set on fire Machine burned out
601 Right caterpillar destroyed Shell hit, gun set on fire from outside Machine burned out
701 The fighting compartment was destroyed. A 203 mm shell hit the commander's hatch -
602 Hole in the port side of the gas tank 76-mm shell of a tank or divisional gun The vehicle burned out
II-01 The gun burned out Set on fire by the KS bottle The car burned out
150061 A sloth and a caterpillar destroyed, a gun barrel shot through Shell hits on the chassis and a cannon Crew captured
723 The caterpillar is destroyed, the weapon is jammed. Projectile hits to the chassis and mask -
? Complete destruction Direct hit from the Petlyakov bomber

“In the third week of August 1942, Hitler ordered to stop the serial production of the VK450-1 (P) tank chassis and at the same time ordered the development of a heavy self-propelled artillery unit in the Porsche Tiger tank - schwere Panzer Selbstfahrlafette Tiger. work was suspended once again - the installation of a heavy field gun on the chassis of a heavy tank seemed excessively expensive in purely financial terms. Large caliber guns usually occupied firing positions far enough from the front line, and therefore the powerful booking of a self-propelled gun armed with such a gun simply made no sense.

Design work was resumed after some interval, but now a heavy tank destroyer was being designed, armed with a powerful Flak-41 anti-aircraft gun. The use of a tank chassis to create a tank destroyer was more in line with reality than the design of a well-armored self-propelled artillery mount of large caliber. Such vehicles could cover the flanks of tank units with fire in an offensive, and in defense, they could successfully fight from pre-planned "ambush" positions with enemy armored vehicles.

In both cases, the heavy tank destroyer was not required to make rapid throws over rough terrain, which the chassis of Professor Porsche was not physically capable of. At the same time, powerful armor expanded the area of use of tank destroyers, allowing them to operate even from open firing positions, from which the use of light tank destroyers was not possible. At that time, the German armed forces had no other castle fighters, except for light ones, created on the chassis of Pz.Kpfw tanks. I. Pz.Kpfw. II. Pz.Kpfw. 38 (t).

Video: useful lecture by Yuri Bakhurin about the Ferdinand self-propelled guns

The crews of these tank destroyers had practically no protection from enemy fire, except for a gun shield. The armament of the light tank destroyers left much to be desired. Even self-propelled guns of the "Marder" series, armed with anti-tank 75-mm cannons Rak-40 and captured Soviet field guns of 76.2 mm caliber, penetrated the frontal armor of heavy tanks only from extremely short distances. The number of fully armored SluG III assault guns was not enough, moreover, the 75-mm short-barreled guns of these self-propelled guns were not suitable for fighting serious tanks.

On September 22, Armaments Minister Alberz Speer officially commissioned the Porsche team to design the Sturmgeschutz Tiger 8.8 cm L / 71. In the depths of the Nibelungenwerk, the project received the code "type 130". A variant of the Rak-43 anti-tank gun. designed for self-propelled guns received the designation "8.8 cm Pak-43/2 Sf L / 71" - 88-mm anti-tank gun model 1943, 2 modifications with a barrel length of 71 mm for self-propelled artillery mount. Even before the prototype was built, the self-propelled gun changed its designation to “8.8 cm Pak-43/2 Sll L / 71 Panzerjager Tiger (P) Sd.Kfz. 184 ". Then so many more renaming followed that it is time to ask the question: "What is your name ... now?" Own name "Ferdinand" stuck. Interestingly, the name "Ferdinand" appeared in an official document only on January 8, 1944, and the first official name for the heavy self-propelled gun was received only on May 1, 1944 - "Elephant", by analogy with the heavy self-propelled artillery mount on the Pz.Sfl chassis. III / IV "Nashorn". rhino and elephant are both African animals.

"Ferdinand" was born

The Type 130 self-propelled gun was designed in close cooperation with the Berlin firm Alquette, which had vast experience in the design of self-propelled artillery installations. The drawings of the original design of the Type 130 self-propelled gun were signed on November 30, 1942. but two weeks earlier, WaPuf-6, the armored division of the Wehrmacht Armaments Directorate, had approved the conversion of 90 Porsche Tiger Gank chassis to self-propelled guns. The conversion included numerous changes to the design and layout of the chassis.

ACS layout and "Elephant / Ferdinand" booking scheme

The fighting compartment was moved to the rear of the hull, the engine compartment to the middle of the hull. The rearrangement of the vehicle was associated with the need to maintain the balance of the vehicle due to the placement in the stern of a heavy stationary wheelhouse with unprecedented booking - 200 mm forehead and 80 mm side. The wheelhouse was placed in the stern because of the long one. 7 m. Gun barrel. This arrangement made it possible to maintain a more or less acceptable overall length of the machine - the barrel almost did not protrude beyond the hull.

Differences between Ferdinand and Elephant.

On "Elephanta" there was a course machine-gun mount, covered with additional overhead armor. The jack and the wooden stand have been moved to the stern. The front wheel arch liners are reinforced with steel profiles. The spare track links have been removed from the front wheel arch liners. Dismantled headlights. A sun visor is installed above the driver's viewing devices. A commander's cupola was mounted on the roof of the wheelhouse along the mud of the commander's cupola of the StuG III assault gun. On the frontal wall of the cabin there are welded gutters for drainage of rainwater. On the Elephant, a toolbox is installed in the stern. The rear wheel arch liners are reinforced with steel profiles. The sledgehammer has been moved to the stern leaf of the felling. Instead of handrails on the left side of the aft deckhouse, there are fasteners for spare tracks.

Factory crew of a new, not yet painted, self-propelled gun FgStNr, 150 096, just pulled out of the Nibelungenwerke factory, sunny May morning 1943. The chassis number is neatly written in white paint on the front of the hull. On the frontal part of the wheelhouse there is an inscription in chalk "Fahrbar" (for the run) in Gothic script. The last production series included only four Ferdinand tank destroyers.

Even before the signing of the entire set of working drawings of the self-propelled gun in December 1942, the Nibelungenwerke company subsidized the Eisenwerke Oberdanau company from Linz in order to start work on the conversion of the first 15 tank hulls into tanks in January 1943.The last of the 90 hulls were manufactured and shipped by the Npbelungenwerke company 12 April 1943
Meanwhile. had to abandon plans for the final assembly of self-propelled guns by Alquiett for two reasons.

First, there was a lack of special Ssyms railway transporters. which were used primarily for transporting Tiger tanks to threatened sectors of the Eastern Front. The second reason: Alquette was the only manufacturer of the StuG III assault guns badly needed for the front. in regard to the number of which the front's apaeitism remained truly insatiable. The assembly of Type 130 self-propelled guns put an end to the manufacture of StuG III assault guns for a long period.

Suspension drawing of ACS "Elephant / Ferdinand"

Even the manufacture of self-propelled cuttings "type 130". for which, according to the production plan, the Alquette company was responsible, were transferred to the Krup company from Essen, which, by the way, had a serious impact on the pace of production of the Tiger tank turrets. The cooperation of the Nibelungenwerke - Alquette firms ultimately limited themselves to business trips of Alquette welding specialists to the Nibelungenwerk to assist in the final assembly of heavy self-propelled guns at the Porsche plant.

A brand new Ferdinand at the beginning of a long journey from the factory to the front. At the factory, self-propelled guns were painted in one color - Dunkeigelb, crosses were applied in three places, numbers were not drawn. The vehicles were often delivered from the factory without gun masks. There were not enough shields, in many photographs of self-propelled guns from the 654th battalion there are no shields on the Ferdinands. The toolbox is located as standard - on the starboard side, spare tracks are stowed on the fenders just behind the wheel arch liners. Towing ropes are attached to the hooks.

On May 8, 1943, the last Ferdinand (FgstNn 150 100) was assembled. Later, this vehicle entered service with the 4th platoon of the 2nd company of the 653rd battalion of heavy tank destroyers. The "Jubilee" car is decorated with numerous chalk inscriptions. The vehicle is festively decorated with tree branches and layouts of shells. One of the inscriptions reads "Ferdinand" - this means that such a name appeared on the Nibelungeneverka already in May 1943.

On February 16, 1943, the first prototype of a heavy tank destroyer (Fgsr. Nr. 150,010) was assembled by the Nibelungenwerke. According to the plan, the last of the 90 ganks ordered by the fighter was to be handed over to the customer on May 12. but the workers managed to hand over the last StuG Tiger (P) (Fgst. Nr. 150 100) ahead of schedule - on May 8. It was a labor gift from the Nibelungenwerke to the front.

Krupp from Essen supplied the box-shaped deckhouses in two sections, which were bolted together during assembly.
The first tests of two "Ferdinands" (Fgst.Nr. 150010 and 150011) took place in Kummersdorf from April 12 to 23, 1943. In general, the machines received a positive assessment according to the test results and were recommended for operation in the field. Such an outcome of the test can hardly be called a surprise, since Operation Citadel was planned for the summer, in which the stake was made on the use of the latest armored vehicles. Operation Citadel was supposed to be a real search test for heavy tank destroyers, tests of beta quotes and subtext. Just a test.
The shooting took place without any special remarks.

By this time, the name "Ferdinand" was firmly entrenched in all circles for the Type 130 self-propelled gun. Ferdinand in its final form differed from the Type 130 project in a small but extremely important detail. On the Type 130 assault gun, a course machine gun was provided for self-defense against enemy infantry. There is no doubt that if that design of the machine was answered by the Alquette firm, then the machine gun would have been retained.

At the Krupp company, however, they did not bother with the installation of a machine-gun mount in a frontal armor plate 200 mm thick. By that time, there was experience in placing a machine-gun mount in the frontal armor of the "Tiger" tank hull, but its thickness was half that of the "Ferdinand"! The specialists of the Krupp company, in general, rightly believed that any cutouts weaken the strength of the entire armor plate. The machine-gun mount was abandoned, as a result of which the crews lost their means of self-defense in close combat. "Excessive" losses of heavy self-propelled guns, thus, were predetermined at the design stage.

Not new - the concept of a combat vehicle is tested for truth only in combat. The gunners could hardly imagine the difficulties of providing nine dozen modern armored self-propelled guns, for the operation of which the problems of supply and repair were critical. A vehicle weighing almost 70 tons was very susceptible to breakdowns, and why tow a broken off self-propelled gun. There will not be enough horses. To a large extent, it was the lack of towing equipment that contributed to the high losses of the Ferdinands at Kursk. moving forward would simply flatten the enemy's defenses and did not provide tank and self-propelled artillery units with the tractors necessary to tow damaged combat vehicles. May 1943 and losses in self-propelled guns near Kursk could not be so significant.

The German Army Command intended to form three Ferdinand-armed artillery units according to the Kriegsstarkenachweisung. K.st.N, 446b, 416b, 588b and 598 of January 31, 1943, two units of the 654th and 653rd assault gun battalions (StuGAbt) were formed on the basis of the 190th and 197th assault artillery battalions, respectively. Third, StuGAbt. 650 intended to form from a "blank slate". According to the state, the battery should have nine self-propelled guns "Ferdinand" with three reserve vehicles at the battery headquarters. In total, according to the state, the battalion was armed with 30 self-propelled guns "Ferdinand". Both the organization and tactics of the StuGAbt's combat use were based on "artillery" traditions. The batteries took part in the battle on their own. In the event of a massive attack by Soviet tanks, this tactic seemed erroneous.

In March, on the eve of the beginning of the formation of battalions, there were changes in views on the tactical use and organization of units armed with Ferdinands. The changes were facilitated personally by the Inspector General of the Panzerwaffe Heinz Guderian, who achieved the inclusion of the Ferdinands in the tank forces, and not in the artillery. The batteries in the battalions were renamed companies, then the instructions and manuals on combat tactics were redrawn. Guderian was a supporter of the massive use of heavy tank destroyers. In March, by order of the Inspector General Panzerwaffe, the formation of the 656th Regiment of Heavy Tank Destroyers, consisting of three battalions, began. The 197th assault artillery battalion was once again renamed, becoming the 1st battalion of the 656th regiment (653rd battalion of heavy tank destroyers) - 1/656 (653), and the 190th battalion - 11/656 (654) ... 3rd Battalion "Ferdinands". The 600th, 656th regiment was never formed. The two battalions received 45 "Ferdinads" each - a complete analogy with the battalions of heavy tanks, which were armed with 45 "Tigers". The new III battalion of the 656th regiment was formed on the basis of the 216th assault tank battalion, it received 45 StuPz IV "Brummbar" Sd.Kfz assault howitzers. 166.armed with 15 cm StuK-43 howitzers.

The battalion of heavy tank destroyers included a headquarters company (three Ferdinands) and three line companies formed by K.St.N. 1148s of March 22, 1943. Each line was armed with 14 "Ferdinands" in three platoons (four tank destroyers in a platoon, two more "Ferdinands" were assigned to the company headquarters, which was often called "1st platoon"). The date of the formation of the headquarters of the 656th regiment is considered to be June 8, 1943. The headquarters was formed in Austria in St. Pölten, their cadres of the Bavarian 35th tank regiment. Lieutenant Colonel Baron Ernst von Jungenfeld became the regiment commander. Major Heinrich Steinwachs took command of the 1st (653rd) battalion, Hauptmann Karl-Heinz Noack - II (654th) battalion of the 656th regiment. Major Bruno Karl remained at the head of his 216th battalion, which was now III / 656 (216). In addition to the Ferdinands and Brummbars, the regiment received the Pz.Kpfw tanks for the headquarters company. Ill n vehicles of the forward artillery observers Panzerbeobachtungswagen III Ausf. H. The headquarters company also had half-tracked artillery observers Sd.Kfz. 250/5. sanitary and evacuation half-track armored personnel carriers Sd.Kfz. 251/8. light reconnaissance tanks Pz.Kpfw. II Ausf. F and tanks Pz.Kpfw. Ill Ausf. N.

The 1st Battalion (653rd) was garrisoned in the Austrian town of Neusiedel am See. II (654th) battalion was stationed in the French Rouen. The second battalion was the first to receive new equipment, but its "Ferdinands" were brought to the unit's location by the driver-mechanics of the 653rd battalion.

Burned "Ferdinand" from the 656th Regiment of Heavy Tank Destroyers. Kursk Bulge, July 1943. By the nature of the camouflage color, the vehicle belongs to the 654th battalion, but there are no tactical signs on the wheel arch liners. The shield of the gun mantlet is missing, most likely shot down by an anti-tank shell. Marks from small-caliber shells or a bullet of anti-tank rifles are visible on the barrel in the area of the muzzle brake. In the frontal armor plate of the hull in the area of the location of the radio operator there is a mark from an anti-tank projectile of 57 or 76.2 mm caliber. In the wheel arch liners - bullet holes of 14.5 mm.

"Ferdinand" with hull number "634", from the 4th platoon of the 2nd company of the 654th battalion. The car lost its speed after being blown up by a mine. The lid of the toolbox has been torn off. Ultimately, the toolbox was moved to the rear of the hull. The picture perfectly conveys the camouflage pattern and the white side number typical for the self-propelled guns of the Noack battalion.

Ferdinand, hull number 132, commanded by NCO Horst Golinsky. Self-propelled gun Golinsky was blown up by a mine under the Ponyri in the defense zone of the 70th Red Army. In the Soviet wartime press, the photograph was dated July 7, 1943. The car's undercarriage is seriously damaged. A mine explosion blew off the entire first cart with two road wheels. In general, the car is in good order, only there was nothing to evacuate it from the battlefield. Pay attention to the pistol loop plug hanging from a chain in the rear of the wheelhouse.
A staged shot. A Soviet infantryman threatens Ferdinand with an RPG-40 grenade. "Ferdinand" with hull number "623" from the 4th platoon of the 2nd company of the 654th battalion was blown up by a mine long ago. A whole series of photographs was taken, in the last ones - the self-propelled gun was enveloped in clouds of white smoke from ignited phosphorus.

Two photographs of a Befehls-Ferdinand self-propelled gun from the headquarters company of the 654th battalion of Hauptmann Noack. The machine has no external damage. The self-propelled gun number, "1102", indicates that the vehicle belongs to the deputy battalion commander. The camouflage pattern is typical of the 654th Battalion. The drawing on the barrel and the mask is made in such a way that it becomes obvious that the self-propelled gun never had a mask gun shield. The Soviet press indicated that this self-propelled gun was first blown up by a mine, and then sipped a Molotov cocktail.

Burned and blown up "Ferdinands" - cars with hull numbers "723" and "702" (the closest to the camera -FgStNr. 150 057). Both vehicles are painted in camouflage typical of the 654th battalion. The self-propelled gun closest to the camera ("792") lost its muzzle brake. Both cars do not have mask guards - perhaps the guards were torn off by explosions.

The 653rd Battalion received most of its Ferdinands in May. On 23 and 24 May, the Inspector General of the Panzerwaffe was personally present at the regimental exercises in Brook-on-Leyte. Here the 1st company practiced shooting, the 3rd company, together with the sappers, forced the minefields. Sappers used Borgvard remotely-controlled self-propelled charges-tankettes
B.IV. Guderian expressed satisfaction with the results of the exercises, but the inspector general expected the main surprise after the exercises: all self-propelled guns made a 42-km march from the training ground to the garrison without a single breakdown! At first, Guderian simply did not believe this fact.

The technical reliability demonstrated by the Ferdinands during the exercise ultimately played a cruel joke on them. It is possible that the result of the exercises was the refusal of the Wehrmacht command to equip the regiment with powerful 35-ton Zgkv tractors. 35t Sd.Kfz. 20. fifteen of the Zgkv tractors that entered the battalions. 18t Sd.Kfz. 9 were for broken Ferdinands, what a dead poultice. Later, the 653rd battalion received two Bergpanthers, but this fact took place after the Battle of Kursk, in which many Ferdinands had to simply be abandoned due to the impossibility of towing them. The losses in equipment were so significant that the 654th was disbanded in order to saturate the 653rd battalion with equipment.

The regiment's battalions united only in June 1943 before being sent by rail to the Eastern Front. The baptism of fire "Ferdinands" was to be accepted during the operation "Citadel", on which the head of the Reich had high hopes. In fact, there was an understanding on both sides of the front - Operation Citadel decides the outcome of the war in the East. The 653rd battalion was equipped with equipment in full accordance with the headquarters - 45 "Ferdinands", in the 654th battalion one self-propelled gun was not enough to the full strength, and in the 216th battalion - three "Brummbars".

Unlike the tactics of covering the flanks of a tank wedge that had been previously planned and worked out in the exercises, now the self-propelled guns were tasked with directly accompanying the infantry in an attack on the heavily fortified enemy defenses. The people who planned such actions hardly imagined the real combat capabilities of the Ferdinands. Shortly before the start of the operation, the 656th regiment received reinforcement in the form of two sapper companies, equipped with remotely controlled mine-clearing machines - Panzerfunklenkkompanie 313 Lieutenant Frishkin and Panzerfunklenkkompanie 314 Hauptmann Brahm. Each company was armed with 36 tankettes Borgvard V.IV Sd.Kfz. 301 Ausf. And, designed for making passages in minefields.

During Operation Citadel, the 656th Regiment operated as part of the XXXX1 Panzer Corps of General Harpe. The corps was part of the 9th Army of Army Group Center. The 653rd Battalion of Heavy Tank Destroyers supported the operations of the 86th and 292nd Infantry Divisions. The 654th Battalion supported the strike of the 78th Infantry Division. The only really assault part of the regiment is the -216th battalion, intended for operations in the second echelon together with the 177th and 244th assault gun brigades. The target of the attack was the defensive positions of the Soviet troops on the Novoarkhangelsk-Olkhovat-ka line and especially the key defense center - height 257.7. It was dominated by soft pounds, cut by trenches, firing positions of anti-tank guns and machine guns, strewn with mines.

On the first day of the operation, the 653rd battalion advanced in the direction of Aleksandrovka, deepening into the first line of defense. The crews of the Ferdinands reported 25 destroyed T-34 tanks and a large number of artillery pieces. Most of the self-propelled guns of the 653rd battalion were already out of action on the first day of the battle, falling into a minefield. The Russians perfectly equipped their defensive positions, placing thousands of thousands of YAM-5 and TMD-B anti-tank mines in wooden hulls in the foreground. Such mines were hardly detected by electromagnetic mine detectors. Anti-tank and anti-personnel mines were alternately displayed, which greatly impeded the work of sappers armed with conventional probes. In addition, the crew of a self-propelled anti-tank mine damaged by the explosion jumped out of the car straight onto the anti-personnel mines. It was in this situation that the commander of the 1st company of the 653rd battalion, Hauptmann Spielman, was mortally wounded. In addition to mines, improvised explosive devices were widely used, made on the basis of shells and even air bombs of various calibers. Torsion bars suffered the most during mine explosions. The self-propelled guns themselves were not damaged. but as a result of a breakdown, the torsion bars lost their speed, and there was nothing to tow the blown up, but actually serviceable cars, there was nothing.

The offensive began as planned by clearing the minefields. The passages for the "Ferdinands" of the 654th battalion were provided by the 314th engineer company. Hauptmann Brahm's men used up 19 of the 36 remote mine-clearing machines available. First, the StuG III and Pz.Kpfw control vehicles moved into the passage. Ill with the aim of launching the remaining wedges and deepening the passage. However, the tanks and assault guns came under heavy barrage of Russian artillery fire. Further clearance of the minefield became simply impossible. Moreover, most of the landmarks on the borders of the passage made were shot down by artillery fire. Many of the Ferdinands' driver-mechanics drove out of the aisle into a minefield. The battalion lost in one day at least 33 self-propelled guns out of 45 available! Most of the wrecked cars were to be repaired, there was only a "trifle" left - to tow them out of the minefield. In general, the losses of the first three days of most of the 89 who took part in Operation Citadel were the result of the detonation of heavy tank destroyers on a single mine.

On July 8, all the surviving Fsrdinands were withdrawn from the fighting and sent to the rear. A significant number of wrecked vehicles still managed to be evacuated. Often, for towing one self-propelled vehicle, a "train" of five or more tractors was assembled. Such "trains" immediately came under fire from Russian artillery. As a result, not only Ferdinands were lost, but also extremely scarce tractors.

The Ferdinands of the 654th battalion attacked together with the infantry of the 78th division at heights 238.1 and 253.3. advancing in the direction of Ponyri and Olkhovatka. The actions of the self-propelled guns were provided by the 313rd engineer company of Lieutenant Frishkin. Sappers suffered losses even before the start of the battle - four tankettes with demining charges exploded in an uncharted German minefield. Another 11 tankettes were blown up in a Soviet minefield. The sappers, like their counterparts from the 314th company, were hit with iodine by a hurricane of Soviet artillery fire. The 654th Battalion left most of its Ferdinands in the minefields around the Ponyri. especially a lot of self-propelled guns were blown up in a minefield near the farms of the collective farm named after May 1. It was not possible to evacuate 18 heavy tank destroyers that were blown up by mines.

After numerous reports on the lack of sufficient tractors, the 653rd Battalion received two Bergnanters. but "the milk has already run away." The destroyed Ferdinands remained motionless for too long and did not escape the attention of Soviet demolition men who had visited the battle on short summer nights. In other words, the long-awaited Bergapanters had nothing to tow "- Soviet sappers blew up the damaged self-propelled guns. The activity in terms of towing damaged vehicles finally ceased on July 13, when the 653rd battalion was transferred to the XXXV Army Corps. The next day, an impromptu battle group Teriete, formed from the remnants of the company of Lieutenant Heinrich Teriete and several vehicles of the anti-tank artillery battalion of the 26th Panzer-Grenadier Division, was sent to the aid of the surrounded 36th Infantry Regiment. For the first time, "Ferdinands" were used according to the initially conceived tactics and achieved success, despite the multiple numerical advantage of the enemy and in the absence of proper reconnaissance. The self-propelled guns worked from ambushes, periodically changing positions, stopping the attempts of Soviet tanks to inflict flank attacks. Lieutenant Teriete modestly stated that 22 Soviet tanks were personally destroyed, modesty has always adorned the warrior. In July Teriete was awarded the Knight's Cross.

On the same day, the 26 surviving Ferdinands from the 654th battalion joined the 34 surviving Ferdinands from the 653rd battalion who had been pulled out of the battlefield. The self-propelled kulak, together with the 53rd Infantry and the 36th Panzergrenadier Divisions, held the defenses in the Tsarevka area until 25 July. On July 25, only 54 "Ferdinands" remained in the 656th regiment, and only 25 of them were combat-ready. The regiment commander, Baron von Jushenfeld, was forced to withdraw his unit to the rear for the restoration of equipment.

During the period of Operation Citadel, the crews of the Ferdinands of two battalions of the 656th regiment recorded 502 confirmed-destroyed Soviet Ganks (302 of them were attributed to the 653rd battalion), 200 anti-tank artillery guns and 100 artillery systems for other purposes. Such data are given in the summary of the Supreme High Command of the German Ground Forces dated August 7, 1943. Three months later, in the next summary of the OKI, it was said about 582 Soviet tanks destroyed by the Ferdinands. 344 anti-tank guns and 133 other artillery systems, three aircraft, three armored vehicles and three self-propelled artillery mounts. The pedantic Germans also counted anti-tank rifles - 104 destroyed by heavy tank destroyers. German headquarters were always distinguished by amazing accuracy in their reports ... From the depths of the regiment, reports were transmitted upward, in which the strengths and weaknesses of the Ferdinands were assessed. In general, the idea of a heavily protected self-propelled tank destroyer paid off, especially if the vehicles were used specifically to combat tanks. The crews liked the range of the guns installed on the Ferdinands, their high combat accuracy and high armor penetration. There were also disadvantages.

So high-explosive fragmentation shells got stuck in the breeches of guns, steel shells of all types of shells were poorly extracted. Ultimately, to extract the casings, the crews of all "Ferdinands" acquired sledgehammers and crowbars. The crews noted with negative the poor visibility from the car, the lack of machine-gun armament. If the gunner noticed Soviet infantrymen, who are big fans of the Molotov cocktail, near the car, he immediately inserted a machine gun into the cannon and opened fire from it through the barrel. After the end of the Battle of Kursk, 50 kits were made in the repair company, which made it possible to fix a machine gun in the body of the gun, so that the axis of the machine gun barrel coincided with the axis of the gun barrel so that the zeros did not ricochet from the walls of the barrel bore and the muzzle brake. In the 653rd battalion, they experimented with machine guns placed on the roof of the wheelhouse. The shooter had to fire through an open hatch. exposing yourself to the iodine bullet of the enemy, except
In addition, zeros and debris flew through the open hatch into the wheelhouse, which the other crew members were not at all happy about. By its nature, "Ferdinand" was a "lone hunter", which Operation Citadel fully confirmed.

On rough terrain, self-propelled guns moved at a speed of no more than 10 km / h. The attack turned out to be slow, the enemy had time to zero in, besides, the time spent under fire increased. While "Ferdinands" were not always threatened by medium and small-caliber artillery fire, medium tanks, assault guns and armored personnel carriers, forced to "match" heavy tank destroyers in speed, suffered from such fire. The attack was held back by the constant expectation of clearing passages in the minefields. The concept of using "Ferdinand" as a means of transporting infantry on a special platform attached to the self-propelled gun was disrupted by Soviet artillery. Under the downpour of machine gun, mortar and artillery fire, the panzergrenadiers on these platforms were defenseless. The huge and slow monster was an ideal target for all weapons. As a result, Ferdinand brought the corpses of Panzer Grenadiers to the enemy's front line, and the dead German soldiers no longer had to protect the monster from the destructive Molotov cocktails that the living Soviet infantrymen generously treated to the Ferdinands. Another vulnerability of "Ferdinand" was the power plant, which often warmed up when driving on soft terrain.

From above, the power plant did not have proper armor protection - the same Molotov cocktail was perfectly spilled through the ventilation holes on the motors. What is the use of an armored jacket that survived the shelling, if the engines are out of order, the electric motors have burned out, the fuel lines and electrical wiring are broken by shell fragments? Soviet artillery often fired at tanks with incendiary shells, which posed a great danger to the self-propelled fuel system. The reason for the loss of most of the 19 out of order not from the detonation of the "Ferdinand" mines was damage to the power plants. There were cases of failure of engine cooling systems from close detonations of shells, as a result, the engines of "Ferdinands" overheated and caught fire. One "Ferdinand" was lost due to spontaneous ignition of an electric generator, when the self-propelled gun got stuck in the ground.

The negative assessments of the entire electromechanical power plant turned out to be unexpected. Four cars burned down due to short circuits in the electrical system of the engines. For their mass, the cars demonstrated good maneuverability if the torsion bars did not break. Not only did mines disable Porsche's patented torsion bars, even large rocks posed a threat. In principle, wide tracks, for the mass of "Ferdinand" turned out to be narrow - the self-propelled guns got stuck in the ground. And then a fairy tale about a white bull began: an attempt to get out on its own ended in an overheating of the engine, at worst, in a fire, for towing, tractors were needed, there were no tractors ...
In most cases, the armor provided reliable protection for the crew. Again, not always. On July 8, the "Ferdinands" of the 3rd company of the 653rd battalion ran into the "hunters" - self-propelled artillery installations SU-152, capable of firing 40-kg armor-piercing shells. The armor of the three Ferdinands could not withstand the hits of such shells. One "Ferdinand" was destroyed in a completely fantastic accident.

A shell fired by a Soviet cannon hit the Borgward demining wedge. installed on the carrier - the Pz.Kpfw. III. The 350-kg explosive charge of the tankette detonated and smashed into atoms both the tankette itself and the carrier tank. A considerable part of the "atoms" of the tank collapsed on the "Ferdinand" taxiing nearby. The remains of the tank broke the "Ferdinand" gun barrel and disabled the engine! A fire broke out in the self-propelled engine compartment. This was probably the most successful anti-tank cannon shot in the entire Second World War. One shell destroyed three units of combat tracked vehicles: the Borgward B-IV remote-controlled mine-clearance vehicle, the Pz.Kpfw. III and the Ferdinand heavy tank destroyer.

The battalions armed with the Ferdinand tank destroyers achieved some success, but at the cost of too great losses, which could not be replenished. Under these conditions, by order of 23 August 1943, the 654th battalion was ordered to hand over all the materiel to the 653rd battalion. The 654th battalion ceased to be considered II / 656 (653) and became simply the 654th battalion, as did the 216th battalion, which was no longer listed as III / 656 (216). The remnants of the regiment were taken to rest, repair and reorganize in Dnepropetrovsk, the largest industrial center of Ukraine in the front-line zone, where there were opportunities for the repair of heavy tank destroyers. 50 out of 54 self-propelled guns were subject to repair, repairing four tank destroyers was deemed inappropriate. Alas, for the repair of Professor Porsche's revolutionary products, special equipment was required, which was not even available in Dnepropetrovsk. Meanwhile, the front was approaching the city of Peter on the Dnieper. "Ferdinands" at the end of September were evacuated to Nikopol, where all combat-ready vehicles (at least ten) were sent to the Zaporozhye region. Alas, even the Ferdinands failed to slow down the Soviet tank roller - on October 13, German troops received an order to retreat, and a few days later Red Army units crossed the Dnieper along the Dneproges dam, although the Germans managed to blow up the dam of the dam.

Soon the Germans also left Nikopol. Here on November 10 the Ferdinands of the 653rd battalion entered a fierce battle. All self-propelled guns capable of moving and shooting were sent under Mareevka and Kateripovka. where they have achieved local success. The offensive of the Red Army was stopped, however, not by the Ferdinands, but by the prolonged autumn rains that began, which turned the roads into what is known. The offensive resumed with the first frosts. 26 and 27 November "Ferdinands" from the battle group "Nord" were successful in the battle for Kochasov-ku and Miropol. Of the 54 Soviet tanks destroyed in these places, at least 21 vehicles were shot down by the Ferdinand's crew, commanded by Lieutenant Franz Kretschmer, who received the Knight's Cross for this battle.

Memo for the soldiers of the Red Army for the destruction of the self-propelled guns "Ferdinand / Elephant"

By the end of November, the situation in the 656th regiment became critical. On November 29, 42 "Ferdinands" remained in the regiment, of which only four were combat-ready, eight were in medium repair, and 30 were in need of overhaul.
On December 10, 1943, an order was received for the 656th regiment to evacuate from the Eastern Front to St. Poltey. The withdrawal of the regiment from the Eastern Front stretched from December 16, 1943 to January 10, 1944. "

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Quote from the magazine "Military machines" # 81 "Ferdinand"