Sturm-Infanteriegeschütz 33B

The Sturm-Infanteriegeschütz 33B was a German self-propelled heavy assault gun of the Second World War, made by Alkett by fitting a fully enclosed, heavily armoured boxy casemate to a Sturmgeschütz III chassis. It mounted the improved 15 cm sIG 33/1 infantry gun offset to the right, with only 3 degrees of traverse each way, and an MG 34 machine gun in a ball mount. Twenty four were built from rebuilt StuG III chassis, although sources differ on whether Alkett began in 1941 or in September 1942. The first dozen were delivered by the end of October 1942 to assault gun battalions fighting at Stalingrad, while the second dozen could not reach the city after the Soviet encirclement and formed a battery that served with the 22nd and then the 23rd Panzer Division. Five were still reported in September 1944, and one survives in the Kubinka research collection near Moscow.