Sturmgeschütz III
1940 German self-propelled gun family
The Sturmgeschütz III (StuG III) was an assault gun produced by Germany during World War II. It was the most-produced German fully tracked armoured fighting vehicle, and second-most produced German armored combat vehicle of any type after the Sd.Kfz. 251 half-track. It was built on a slightly modified Panzer III chassis, replacing the turret with an armored, fixed superstructure mounting a more powerful gun. Initially intended as a mobile assault gun for direct-fire support for infantry, the StuG III was continually modified, and much like the later Jagdpanzer vehicles, was employed as a tank destroyer.
Development
The Sturmgeschütz originated from German experiences in World War I, when it was discovered that, during the offensives on the Western Front, the infantry lacked the means to engage fortifications effectively. Their MG-08 machine guns and Minenwerfers were too heavy to accompany German assault troops for long periods of time, much less field artillery systems. The German army adopted by modifying field guns, like captured Russian 76.2 mm pieces, into makeshift infantry guns (Infanteriegeschütze). The infantry guns were attached to infantry regiments, and provided responsive immediate fire support against fortified enemy machine guns positions. By the end of the war, the Imperial German army had developed the purpose built 7.5 cm leichtes Infanteriegeschütz 18, or 7.5 cm le.IG 18.
The interwar German army kept the 7.5 cm le.IG 18 and later added the 15cm schweres Infanteriegeschütz 33 (sIG 33) infantry gun to the regimental cannon companies.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sturmgeschütz III” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.