This is one of the few Sturer Emils built. It used the chassis of the heavy tank prototype that Henschel was working on, the development of which was put aside when the order for the Tiger I sized heavy tank was issued. The VK3601 chassis was not capable of carrying the turret that was designed to go on Porsche's intended Tiger chassis, so Henschel had to design a new chassis, the VK4501. This became the one we are familiar with on the Tiger I. Porsche's chassis' were used on the Ferdinand/ Elephant.
Ed: Ah, posting at the same time, yep see the link
Nice! One of these bad boys was in action at Stalingrad with Panzerjäger-Abteilung 521.
Jason
The One who saw action at Stalingrad had 22 kills rings painted on its gun barrel and was captured intact in January of 1943 in the Stalingrad area.
Today, the one captured by the Red Army can be seen in the Museum of Armoured Forces in Kubinka, Russia.
Here is a link to a site with information and photos about the two Sturer Emils.
One of those kept the long-distance world record for knocking out a tank. The record was only broken 50 years later, by an US-tank in the 2nd gulf-war.
it might be possible that this is the same Sturer Emil?
If you compares this picture with the picture of WJW ,there are a few similarities.
For instance the same white spots on the right fender (from our sight) and the same spare tracks hanging alongside of the barrel. The description of the image is as follows " Sturer Emil undergoing repairs" .
A great gun for standing off out of range of the enemy tank guns and picking them off one by one, the big problem with this was when it came time to move forward or back they often did not! High failure rate of chassies and drivetrain.
Very nice picture as well Dave. Perhaps you can put some kind of copy protecting on it or crop details from the picture. Some people have the bad habit to lift pictures from others from the net for who knows what use and without asking.
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