Operation Hubertus ETO (id:#63805)

(HASL 10a - Red Factories ID: RB CG II)   [next]   [previous]

Stalingrad, Russia 1942-11-11 (28 others)

Overview:

For Paulus, the battle for control of Stalingrad had become the battle of attrition he had feared. He knew that time was running short for his Sixth Army to secure the remaining tenth of the devastated city still held by Vassily Chuikov’s tenacious 62nd Army. As his forces regrouped in early November, Paulus fretted. The Germans were not equipped for winter war-fare and intelligence reports indicated increasing Soviet activity along the flanks of the Sixth Army. He therefore called on his troops for a final desperate effort to clear the rubbled city—code-named Operation HUBERTUS. Fresh German units, some four battalions of combat engineers (each with about 600 specialists trained in demolition of fortifications), would lead the assault. A dozen experimental assault guns (the Sturm-Infanterie-geschütz, or StuIG 33B, mounting a 150mm gun) would join other armored vehicles for the street fighting. At the same time, however, special aid stations and graves registration teams moved up close behind the front lines.Behind the Barrikady, the German pionier troops were ordered to launch their initial assaults at two known Soviet strongpoints—one called the “Chemist’s Shop” and the other the “Commissar’s House” (alternately known as the “Red House”). One German officer, Major Josef Linden, appraised the terrain in and around the gun factory with glum foreboding: “loosely hanging corrugated steel panels that creaked eerily in the wind; a perfect mess of iron pans, gun barrels, T-beams, huge craters.” And every pile of rubble threatened, if not a Soviet, at least a boobytrap.The Soviet defenders (relatively fresh men of the 45th Rifle Division, leavened with battle-wise veterans of the 138th Division) were well aware that a German offensive was in the offing. Newly compressed into a narrow zone barely 10km long, with the freezing river at their backs, the stalwart soldiers of the Soviet Union dug themselves even deeper into the rubble, well protected by numerous machineguns and anti-tank guns. Steel plates had holes drilled through to expose only the muzzles of the weapons, while mines and booby-traps were strewn with abandon. Heavy artillery shells were withheld by the Front Command in anticipation of the coming offensive, but General Chuikov was able to distribute precious ammunition and food to his front-line troops.Finally, at 0300 hours on 11 November, Operation HUBERTUS opened with a violent German barrage. When the artillery fell silent at 0630 hours, ten battalions of German infantry, supported by tanks and engineers, stormed towards the Soviet defenders.

Defender: Russian (138th and 45th Rifle Divisions)  

Errata (source)