6th PzD - OOB Question - Stalingrad

[Richrd]

I apologise in advance for doing this to you guys, but if you want confusing, I got lots of it.
At the same time the 232nd StuG abt received it's orders to entrain for the eastern front, the 203rd StuG Abt was already in Salsk. Christmas Eve the battalion was attached to 57th Pz Kps, moved up and fought on the Aksay. The commander of the 3rd Batterie was a Leutnant Koch, who was killed on January 14th. On the 27th, Major Kodel returned to the command of the battalion. So, there's 31.
Thats not all. It seems the 2nd battery of the 243rd StuG was outside the pocket and it too was attached to the 57th PzKps sometime in december. One battery would be ten StuG's. Forty one all told, if at full strength. Could this be Raus' assault guns?

[Volcano Man]

Yeah, it looks like it is more likely that this 40 vehicle StuG battalion was a collection of already present units and stragglers, probably not a completely fresh unit. In the case of the 203, it is already present in Armeetruppen.Don, but maybe some other information will turn up to the contrary.

To answer my own question, s.Pz.Abt.503 was not present in the area until ~27 Dec, 1942 which is about seven days beyond the campaign's time frame.

[Wien1938]

That sounds like "Bingo!" to me. Well done. That fits the pattern and given that Raus would have been largely writing from memory as the war records were locked up in Moscow and Washington, it is easy for him to have confused the commander's name.

[Indragnir]

That sounds like "Bingo!" to me. Well done. That fits the pattern and given that Raus would have been largely writing from memory as the war records were locked up in Moscow and Washington, it is easy for him to have confused the commander's name.

Sorry for that very old old thread necromancy.

New research have clarified the Koch 42 strong StuG btl attached to 6.Panzer Division:
It was the StuG.Abt.228 newly formed and sent to Russia (intended for Italian 8th Army, but rerouted to help in Wintergewitter). It had 31 vehicles (still 21 by 23 Decemeber). It was attached to the division 6.Panzer Division after the battle of Vyerkhnye Kumskiy.

The other missing 11 StuGs were from StuG.Abt.243 (only a battery inside the pocket.) KG v.Pannwitz managed to raisE 2 batteries with 16 StuG from late November-early December.

StuG.Abt.203 was at Wintergewitter also, but arrived 23 December (27 StuGs), quite later than the tank battle of Vyerkhnye Kumskiy.

Raus confused a lot of things. There were no camels used in this battle...maybe as draft or pack duty (they were by July at Kalach) but not in battle, 81st Cavalry Division information is quite clear on Russian sources.