Cheating at Statistics: Staudegger's Secrets

In a video, British historian Mark Fenton describes a truly fantastical battle. According to Felton, a Tiger tank commander from the 1st SS Tank Division Franz Staudegger pulled off a truly incredible feat, destroying two T-34 tanks with hand grenades on foot. Unfortunately, no specifics are given for this Hollywood-worthy action story, so it is difficult to ascertain whether or not it actually happened. What is easier to evaluate is Staudegger's next engagement. According to Fenton, three days later Staudegger personally held off an attack by 50 T-34 tanks. The description of the battle is right out of an 80s martial arts movie, with an overwhelming number of opponents coming at the main character one at a time, easily dispatched by his superior skill. Felton credits Staudegger with destroying 22 T-34 tanks, which earned him the Knight's Cross.

Throughout the video and in its description, Felton draws attention to the fact that this story is not only incredible, but absolutely true. However, he doesn't give any sources or really that much to go on in order to verify what actually happened. We do have a few clues: a unit (10th Tank Corps) and a date (July 8th).

Let us reconstruct the events from the point of view of the 10th Tank Corps. This unit was kept in reserve east of the front line and only activated on July 7th, two days after the start of the Battle of Kursk. 

Cross-Examination

The further down the chain of command you go, the harder it is to find a good representation of battlefield events from both sides. It's an absolute rarity at the tactical level, which makes this episode grossgrisly found even more valuable.

From the history of the German 5th Tank Division:

Heavy Tanks vs Heavy Guns

Valeriy Lisyutin posted an interesting set of photos recently, one of which was a knocked out Tiger. These aren't particularly interesting on their own, but it had two things that are usually hard to find: a date and a place. I decided to investigate.

Cheating at Statistics: Machinations at Malinovo

The engagement of Otto Carius vs the "1st Tank Brigade Joseph Stalin" is pretty well known. It's already been established that there was no such brigade, no Hero of the USSR major, and the tanks destroyed at the village have been identified by serial number (there were only 5 IS-2s, not 17 like Carius claims). However, the battle that happened next was even more grandiose: the destruction of 28 tanks and a supply convoy! Tigers in Combat describes it rather laconically:

22 July 1944: ... . Subsequently, the Kampfgruppe moves to a position 10 kilometers east of Krivani in order to defeat the rest of the enemy brigade. When the enemy brigade's main body approaches without any reconnaissance, it is ambushed; 28 tanks destroyed.

Carius gives a much more colourful description.

"After we had finished off all the vehicles, there wasn't a Russian to be seen. They had slunk away into the fields, if they hadn't been surprised on their tanks. The entire column of vehicles was burning. Some of the trucks were overturned.

One truck drove into another. And not a single one could escape. By the time the Russians knew where the shooting was coming from, everything had already been knocked out - a really horribly beautiful sight!

Twenty-eight tanks were in front of us, burning and smoldering. With each passing moment, a fuel tank exploded; the ammunition rattled and ripped the turrets apart. We had done a great job. I was firmly convinced that we had given Ivan something to think about. It would certainly suffice to guarantee us a few peaceful nights."

Cheating at Statistics: SU Strike at Balaton

One of the easiest way to find an event ripe for a Cheating at Statistics segment is to look for a fairly frequently occurring scenario. German tanks (usually Tigers) achieve some kind of fantastic victory over a numerically superior enemy force. Then, despite their crushing victory, they immediately withdraw. Such a scenario occurs on March 13th, 1945, during the Battle of Lake Balaton.

"13 March 1945: Attack to the east with Kampfgruppe Bradel between Velenczefurdo and Tukrospuszta. The attack hits 24 dug-in ISU-152s covering a minefield. All 16 Tigers receive severe battle damage (3 total losses). After clearing some passages through the minefield, 2 Tigers seize the strongpoint, knocking out all the assault guns.

Total tanks: 32

14 March 1945: The battalion is pulled out of the line."

In addition to the usual suspect, there is another hint: 24 ISU-152s is a lot of SPGs. A heavy SPG regiment consists of only 21 ISU-152s, 5 per battery and then one commander's vehicle. 24 of these SPGs knocked out means that there would have to be something worth defending with two SPG regiments. This is a battle too big to pass up.

Zamulin on Losses

Zamulin: "For example, the talk of five tanks that the Germans lost on July 12th. Losses of both sides at Prokhorovka on July 12th is a significant and still unsolved mystery. The claims of Western researchers that the SS Corps lost only 5 tanks on July 12th is nonsense. This evaluation is based on, first of all, the absence of necessary documents. There are no document for the divisions. Either they were destroyed, or they were never written, or they are lying somewhere where researchers have not gotten to them yet. Documents that state precisely how much the SS Corps lost on July 12th does not exist. Yes, we know how much the corps had on the evening of July 11th, and how much they had on the 13th, in the afternoon. We can estimate the amount of losses, but this estimate is a bit of a cheat. Why?

I spoke with, I personally know very well and spoke with this man, about this issue, a participant in the battle from the German side, the commander of the 7th company of the Leibstandarte tank regiment, Rudolph von Ribbentrop. "

Interviewer: "Ribbentrop's son?"

Zamulin: "Yes, his eldest son. He came to me with Artem Drabkin in 2015 to Prokhorovka field, we walked around, I drove him around these places. I asked a question about tanks. He said "I cannot speak for every division. I can say that officially my company had 4 tanks on the 11th, that's it. Immediately before the attack, another PzIV was given to me that was not recorded in any papers. I also received a message that after some time another tank will arrive. Turns out there was six. It's impossible to, based on the data by Swedish researches, this book that came out, Zetterling and Frankson, it says that they analyzed the documents and on the evening of the 11th Leibstandarte had only 77 vehicles, but that was in the evening and only based on documents. We have no idea what the division looked like at that moment. Ribbentrop says that two more tanks came in the morning, regular tanks that took part in the fighting."

Interviewer: "And how many came to other companies?"

Zamulin: "Exactly, yes, and how many arrived during the day? Consider that Leinstandarte's tanks effectively played the role of stationary guns that day. They fired through an anti-tank ditch and fought at a large distance, and I don't think that if Leibstandarte took losses these would be losses that could not be repaired after some amount of time, but they were losses nevertheless. Imagine if two corps, the 18th and 29th, they had 360 tanks together, attacking in echelons. 150 in one, 150 in another, and combined arms divisions from the 5th Guards Army behind them. All of this was moving and shooting. Positional fighting, counterattacks, imagine that 360 tanks over 10 hours, and this is just tanks, to say nothing of artillery, knocked out only 5 enemy tanks. How?"

Interviewer: "Maybe 5 were total losses. They'll never tell."

Zamulin: "Exactly, now we come to this. Maybe it was only total losses. Maybe it was a fabrication. Maybe it was something else."

Interviewer: "It's hard with German losses in general. These 10-day reports..."

Zamulin: "Yes, yes. But look at what's published in the media. The Welt German newspaper, the Russian edition at least, published a teeth-shattering article for the 75th anniversary where it said that the Russians lost Prokhorovka based on Töppel and Frieser's research, the former Bundeswehr military historian, retired colonel, he also writes about five tanks and so on. I consider that if the Ministry of Defense made such an unprecedented step and put so much information online for free access, we must perform a complete, thorough, and scrupulous investigation, to understand for ourselves..."

Source

Cheating at Statistics: Claims at Klepenino

A common excuse for German inflation of claims is that the battlefield is left to their enemy, so there is no possible way to count how many enemy tanks were lost. However, even on the defensive, the Germans seem to manage to greatly overestimate the damage dealt to the enemy. According to the the 1972 edition of the Deutsches Soldatenjahrbuch, the 561st Tank Destroyer Battalion destroyed 34 Soviet tanks, "nearly all heavy and super-heavy" during their defense of Klepenino between January 29th and February 8th of 1942. Let's take a look at what was happening in the area and what these "super-heavy tanks" really were.

Tiger Defender

"Award Order

1. Name: Agafonov Yakov Grigoryevich
2. Rank: Senior Sergeant
3. Position, unit: Gun commander, 1st battery, 1840th Tank Destroyer Artillery Regiment, 28th Independent Tank Destroyer Brigade
   Is nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
   

Cheating at Statistics: Coverup at Kovyagi

If there's one trend with SS armour units, it's that their successes seem to be accompanied by sudden and unpredictable failures. Whenever a unit fails to take an objective or is pushed off their lines, it always seems to be accompanied by fantastical achievements that just happened to not have altered the course of battle at all. Let's examine one of these scenarios. As it happens, Forczyk has done all the hard work for me in Red Steamroller.

"On 11 August, Katukov fought his way across the Merchyk River despite desperate efforts by Totenkopf’s Panzergrenadiers to stop him. Then he sent the lead elements of 6 TC and 3 MC south to Kovyagi, which was a station on the Polatva-Kharkov rail line. Getman’s tankers, with some attached sapper squads, succeeded in blowing up several sections of rail track. Priess committed Edwin Meiderdress’ I.SS-Panzer-Regiment 3 to counter-attack Polkovnik Vladimir M. Gorelov’s 1st Guards Tank Brigade, which had just stormed its way into Kovyagi. The result was another vicious meeting engagement and this one went very badly for Totenkopf; one company commander was killed in his tank and two others were badly wounded. However, Meiderdress had better luck against the 22nd Tank Brigade, which only had seven tanks left and its commander, Major Aleksei A. Laptev, was killed in action. Altogether, Totenkopf knocked out 18 Soviet tanks in its counter-attack."

Seems believable, even a little humble for an SS unit to claim only 18 tanks in such a high profile engagement. However, even this is unlikely. August 11th was quite far into the offensive portion of the Battle of Kursk, and leading Soviet brigades were quite exhausted by that time. Let's see how many Soviet tanks were there to face the Germans.

Compare and Contrast

An interesting document was posted the other day on the War Thunder subreddit.

While very interesting on its own, there is one particular part of the trials that popped out at me.

Cheating at Statistics 21: Fudging Franz

Like the Tiger, the Ferdinand is a weapon that often has some rather incredible kill ratios attributed to it. Personally, I've seen numbers as high as 50:1, but those tend to not be accompanied by any specific references. However, one battle is frequently cited as proof of the Ferdinand's supremacy: the battle near Nikopol, where the tank destroyer's performance was allegedly quite impressive. From The Combat History of German Heavy Anti-Tank Unit 653 in World War II:

"The first defensive fighting at the bridgehead began on 20 November 1943. The villages of Maryevka (20 November 1943) and Katerinovka (23 November 1943) where particularly critical areas in the German defensive line. The Ferdinande had tremendous success during the engagement at Koschasovka/Miropol from 26-27 November 1943. They destroyed 54 Russian tanks: 21 by Leutnant Franz Kretschmer and his crew."

On one hand, a defensive battle is one where the Ferdinand's tough front armour and long range gun would excel. On the other hand, lack of ground taken by the German forces meant that they had no way to count the knocked out enemy tanks, making it a perfect scenario for some classic overclaim.

Cheating at Statistics 20: Precision at Pechenegi

The alleged long-range supremacy of German weapons is a common trope in popular history. The dreaded "Flak 88" sets up on a hill and fires at hordes of incoming T-34s or Shermans, racking up a large amount of kills despite being hard to hide and having limited range in practice. I already picked apart claims of these guns excelling at 3500 meters, but Forczyk brings even more impressive claims by the SS-men for us.

"...the rest of Koptsov's 15th Tank Corps reached Pechenegi on 4 February and was shocked to find that elements of the SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) were already defending the heights on the far side of the Northern Donets.

...

The Germans emplaced a few 8.8cm Flak guns on the heights and they were able to engage Koptsov's tanks at distances up to 6,000 meters and succeeded in setting nine tanks on fire."

Nine tanks knocked out at ten times the recommended engagement range? Sounds fishy. Let's take a closer look at what was happening at the banks of the Donets on that day. 

Cheating at Statistics 19: Time Travelling Tigers

One of the first uses of the IS-85 tank was in the Korsun Pocket. The 13th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment, equipped with brand new IS-85s, was sent to block Kampfgruppe Bake (an unusual formation equipped with both Tiger and Panther tanks) from breaking through to the pocket. Forczyk describes this engagement as not particularly favourable to the IS tanks.

"These heavy tanks were committed into action on 15 February and unwisely attacked Kampfgruppe Bake instead of sitting on the defense; the Panthers and Tigers knocked virtually all of them out. Following this incident, the GABTU resolved to upgrade the new IS-series heavy tanks to the 122 mm gun."

Oof, that's quite a mistake for a book published in 2015. The decree titled "On IS tanks" authorized the production of an IS tank armed with a 122 mm gun in September of 1943. By February 15th, these tanks were not only in production, but had already reached the front lines.

However, there's something else fishy in play here. This unit that was destroyed by Tigers and Panthers mysteriously pops up on the very next page to wreak havoc on Kampfgruppe Bake and Frank's attempts to break through to the encircled men. Let's take a look at what actually happened.

On German Tank Losses

Aleksey Isayev talked about the peculiar nature of German loss records before, but this time he specifically tackles the losses of tank units.

"The Germans had a habit of not recording the tank as lost until the very last moment, even if it stands right in the middle of Soviet positions, but unburnt, it can be recorded in documents as still recoverable. Who knows, maybe the Russians will go away, we'll pull it out. Later, when the situation was completely hopeless, it was finally written off as an irrecoverable loss. And even then, if the tank is only a charred husk, it can be recorded as "in long-term repairs" in German documents.

Aleksey Isayev, The End of Army Group North Ukraine

Yuri Pasholok gives more specific examples.

"There were no greater liars than the people who kept records of German tank condition. This started happening as soon as the war began. For instance, the PzIV that you can see in Patriot Park was written off by the Germans on January 10th, 1943. In reality, it was lost two weeks before that. More precisely, they thought they lost it, since it was towed to the rear and later sent to Germany. As for examples where the tank was never officially lost but is propped up on cinderblocks because it was lightly damaged and then picked apart by passing Kameraden, there's no shortage of those. Sure, they were later sent to the factory and repaired, but there were enough PzIIs like this in the spring of 1940 that production of the PzII stopped for half a year while old tanks were repaired. This happened constantly, until the end of the war."

Cheating at Statistics 18: Volosovo Vanishing

Following some very generous evaluations of their performance, the s.Pz.Abt. 502 continued backing up before the advance of the Red Army. Just a few days later, on January 28th, 1944, an epic battle erupted near the village of Volosovo:

"28 January 1944: Volosovo is reached. Tiger III (Feldwebel Hermann) is approached by 27 T-34s. With only 3 armor-piercing and 9 high-explosive rounds remaining, he destroys 7 T-34s. Several alerted Tigers knock out 8 more T-34s. Ammunition is running out. 9 more T-34s are knocked out at dawn."

A scenario fit for an action movie! It seems everything is lost. but victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat and 24 of the attacking 27 T-34s are knocked out! However, just to be safe, let's make sure that the battle actually happened.

Cheating at Statistics 17: Leaving Leningrad

In early 1944, the German forces around Leningrad weren't doing so well. The blockade around Leningrad had ruptured, Sinyavino heights were lost, and Army Group North was beginning to slink back westward. Introduction of the hyped up Tiger tank failed to make a difference here. Now these Tigers, namely s.Pz.Abt 502, were holding back the Red Army while the rest of the Germans escaped. Forczyk describes the situation: "The remaining Tigers of the s.Pz.Abt.502 assisted the AOK 18 in its withdrawal by turning to ambush the Soviet spearheads; on 25 January they claimed 41 Soviet tanks destroyed at Voyskovitskiy, 5 km southwest of Gatchina."

Anyone who's been keeping up with this long running series will have recognized the perfect storm: the Tiger crews know for a fact that the battlefield will remain in Soviet hands and that their claims will not be checked. There was also incentive to make up for the Tiger tank's rather dismal performance on the Leningrad front. Let's take a look at just what happened at Voyskovitsy on January 25th.

85 mm AT Gun Battery

"16.11 At 13:00, a radio telegram arrives from the XXXXVI Tank Corps giving us the objective to deliver an attack from Shitkovo through Lama, as the progress of 2 Pz.D. is blocked by flanking fire from the forest east of Morozovo."
NARA T-315 R-587 F-1014/1019

The Soviet report shines a little more light on the nature of this blocking fire:

"On 16.11, around 12:00, the enemy began an attack on the left flank of the 316th Rifle Division (8th Guards) with 25 tanks. Of them, 7 tanks fired from standstill and 18 drove towards Morozovo. The 4th AT gun battery of the 768th Artillery Regiment opened fire on the advancing tanks despite enemy fire. As a result, 3 tanks were knocked out and the tank attack was pushed back. The battery lost one gun."

Seems like a fairly standard course of events, but the 768th Artillery Regiment wasn't an ordinary AT gun unit.

Cheating at Statistics 16: Back in the MiusSR

I explored the overclaim of German tank forces at the Mius Front previously, but Nipe's book is a gift that keeps on giving. For instance, the depiction he gets from German sources of the attack on July 22nd against Kalinovka hits every trope in the book: "swarms" and "waves" of Red Army forces, "deadly 88s" (Nipe goes on for an entire paragraph about using the Flak 36 to destroy T-34s from 3000-3500 meters, while actual anti-tank manuals instructed German artillerymen that it took 2-3 shots to hit a T-34 at 500-600 meters). The artistic description of the attack goes on for quite some time until we get to the part we care about: "The losses were ignored, until, in less than an hour, 130 burning or immobilized T-34s dotted the landscape in front of the high ground".

Well, if you dream, dream big. 130 tanks out of the 140 Nipe claims the Soviet attacked with! Seeing as how a Soviet mechanized corps consists of only 117 tanks (69 of them T-34s), that's an enormous loss delivered on just one day. Let's take it all the way to the top and see what the Southern Front has to say about such an enormous setback.

"Losses of our forces on July 22nd, 1943

• Men:
• Killed: 216
• Wounded: 919
• Missing: 8
• Horses
• Killed and wounded: 8
• Materiel
• Guns: 3
• Tanks: 5
• Planes: 22

Losses in tanks over 6 days of fighting from July 17th to July 22nd, 1943: 180 tanks in total. Of those 96 were lost irreparably (4 KV, 65 T-34, 25 T-70, 2 T-60)."

So much for 130 burning and immobilized T-34s. Not only is this figure leaps and bounds higher than actual Soviet losses, it's extremely unlikely that 72% of losses from almost a week of fighting would come from just an hour long engagement. When you consider 30-40 tanks from the 4th Guards Mechanized Corps that were allegedly knocked out the day before and the 78 tanks claimed on July 17th, this figure becomes less and less believable.

Cheating at Statistics 15: Machinations at Mius

Long time readers of my "Cheating at Statistics" series have no doubt noticed a certain trend with the kill claims of SS units: they are as humble as they are specific. Page after page tells you great tales with "dozens" of destroyed enemy tanks and "hundreds" of dead enemy soldiers in the great battle for "somewhere over there". George M. Nipe Jr's Decision in the Ukraine is proudly based on German sources (almost exclusively so, as he doesn't seem to be aware that any other kind exists), and therefore repeats the same tired old tropes: lots of enemy casualties, human waves, piles of corpses, but very few specifics. One of the few is contained in the description of a Soviet attack at hill 213.9 on July 18th during the battle for the Mius-Front.

"Columns of greasy black smoke from burning T-34 and T-70 tanks marked the limit of Soviet progress on the center ridge. At the end of the day, of the seventy-eight tanks that the army claimed had been knocked out, many were destroyed in front of the training area rallying point."

The rest of the paragraph is more vagueness about significant losses and piles of bodies, but we have the number: 78 tanks. Let's see who they came from.

There's hill 213.9 in the middle of the map, with the 5th Shock Army coming up from behind the Mius river to make a significant dent in the German defenses, going right over top of it on July 18th. The solid red line with a thinner dotted red line shows the Red Army's positions by the end of the day. Let's see what the army's tanks were up to.

"Losses of the army (less 221st Rifle Division) consist of: up to 600 men killed and up to 1750 men wounded. Knocked out: 4 cannons, 4 mortars, 20 machineguns, 4 cars. Lost on July 17th and July 18th: 47 tanks, of those 11 KV, 21 T-34, 3 T-70, 12 T-60. Out of all tanks lost, 8 burned, 3 need capital repairs, 7 need medium repairs, the rest (29) need light repairs."

Luckily, there is also a list of losses for July 17th alone: 8 KVs, 11 T-34s, 2 T-60s, and 2 T-70s, which means the tanks lost on July 18th alone were:

• 3 KVs
• 10 T-34s
• 10 T-60s
• 1 T-70

for a total of 24 tanks, less than a third of what the Germans claimed they knocked out. The missing KVs and T-60s in German records also warrant a mention, but considering that Nipe brings up such phantoms as SU-152s on T-34 chassis and Soviet 172 mm guns, I wouldn't look at German tank identification abilities too closely.

On German Losses

"There is confusion regarding the alleged precision... I'm not going to speak for the Western Allies, that's not my topic, but I had to work with German losses. And believe me, the mess with their counting of losses is much greater than ours. We had a very specific Form #8, "Report on Losses", everyone had to fill it out, if it had to be revised then another form would be submitted. The Germans had nothing like this. As for the German data, you can take a look at just one period, with static positions, let's say Sevastopol. Here's a report by the army Senior Quartermaster. Compare it to the list of names of killed officers. They counted officers separately and NCOs and soldiers separately. The difference in numbers can be as high as 50%, one and a half times higher when you count them by name.
...
Overall, if you take 1944 and count the losses in Bagration, it's a horrible mess. Reports on losses get delayed until the fall. That same 17th Army in Crimea that was defeated on the peninsula only reports its losses several weeks later. They were only counted several weeks later. If we take the 10-day report of the medical service for the army, the number of losses in Crimea are almost an order of magnitude less than the losses that were actually taken and reported on later. This precision is greatly exaggerated. It's the opposite: the Germans were more interested in what they had now, and the losses they sustained, well, the numbers were often counted very poorly. Paulus' army doctor at Stalingrad writes reports, compare it with the 10-day reports, the difference is huge, 20%. Where it comes from, it's hard to say, but it's there a lot. The lower the level, the deeper you have to dig to discover precise numbers."

Aleksei Isayev, Battle for Moscow