Infantry vs. Fortified Buildings in Stalingrad.

[Fred321]

Hi. If infantry come up against a fortified and strongly-defended building, which it is not practical to storm, they should get back into cover and call in artillery or an air-strike to flatten it. Or they should have a couple of tanks with them to blow it open. Right?

I don't understand why the Germans did not do this in Stalingrad. There were several cases, Pavlov's House, the Grain Elevator, the Red October Tractor Factory, where they lost hundreds and hundreds of men, fighting for weeks, months even trying to take these buildings intact. Why?

 

[Snayke]

People can still hide in rubble, which was what Stalingrad was for most of the city.

 

[Kiwi]

the germans panzer divisions where a great asset whilst advancing on stalingrad. they only encountered losses when they attacked rostov on the way to stalingrad. where they had to fight building to building. they won that battle but the tanks played little part in it. when the 16th panzer corps went into Stalingrad they faced the same situation as in rostov. They lacked manuverability in the city's streets and where easy targets for the reds. Panzers = useless in streetfighting

 

[merocaine]

I don't understand why the Germans did not do this in Stalingrad. There were several cases, Pavlov's House, the Grain Elevator, the Red October Tractor Factory, where they lost hundreds and hundreds of men, fighting for weeks, months even trying to take these buildings intact. Why?

They were rubble, they were also massive esp the tractor factory. I'm sure they were shelled and bombed to sh*t before every assault.
Those battle to'd and fored for days as both sides feed reinforcements into the fight attacking and counter attacking as many as 20 times a day.

I dont think presion bombing was very advanced back then, no bunker busters only 250 pound stuka bombs and medium altitude bombers, not very acuratte.
The americans and british even with a more overwhelming advantage in air support found the same problem in italy and that was in relativley open country, again and again the would bomb the crap out of the germans, only to find the german fighting positions still intact when the advanced.

God only knows why they wanted to take the buildings intact, it did'ent bother them when they carpet bombed the entire city

 

[knightrider4]

Stalingrad

The Russian commander was very smart only reinforcing enough troops to hold the Germans, knowing that the German mentality would be to use greater and greater force to take Stalingrad. With the majority of the 6th Army commited and being bled white the Russian reserves were commited with the result being over 250,000 German troops in the cages.

 

[Maverickjag]

If infantry come up against a fortified and strongly-defended building, which it is not practical to storm, they should get back into cover and call in artillery or an air-strike to flatten it. Or they should have a couple of tanks with them to blow it open. Right?

The city was in pieces. There was rubble everywhere. Tanks would not have much manuverability which would leave them vulnerable to infantry attacks on them. There is no sense in sending tanks into a position where they will take far more losses than the damage they will do. The intent in war is to inflict as much damage while minimizing your own losses.

Air strikes were tried but didn't work so well then. The city had the crap bombed out of it but that doesn't stop infantry from hidding in the remaining buildings and rubble. All bombing did was flatten some buildings. It wasn't enough to destroy buildings, the enemy had to be killed but the Russians held and got more determined to hold the city the more Germans that were sent.