January 24, 2015, German tank ace Otto Carius passed away at the age of 93 after a short illness. After being drafted in May of 1940 into the 104th Infantry Replacement Battalion, Carius volunteered for the Panzer Corps. After training, his unit was sent to East Prussia in preparation for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Carius began his tank career as a loader in a Panzer 38(t), which was an early-war light tank of Czech design that was used extensively by the Wehrmacht. The 38(t) performed very well in the Polish Campaign and in the West in 1940, but the vehicles' shortcomings were very quickly exposed during Barbarossa. This account is from Carius, describing an action that took place on July 8, 1941:
"It happened like greased lightning. A hit against our tank, a metallic crack, the scream of a comrade, and that was all there was! A large piece of armour plating had been penetrated next to the radio operator's seat. No one had to tell us to get out. Not until I had run my hand across my face while crawling in the ditch next to the road did I discover that they had also got me. Our radio operator had lost his left arm. We cursed the brittle and inelastic Czech steel that gave the Russian 47mm anti-tank gun so little trouble. The pieces of our own armour plating and assembly bolts caused considerably more damage than the shrapnel of the round itself." - Carius, Otto (2003). Tigers in the Mud.
In 1943, Carius transferred to the schwere Panzer-Abteilung 502 (502 heavy tank battalion). The 502 was outfitted with the Tiger I, and it was in this legendary tank that Otto Carius, and his crews, would rack up most of their 150 confirmed kills. And, unbelievably enough, the gunner of one of his Tigers is credited with shooting down a Soviet fighter with his tank's main gun! Carius would later describe the feat as being "unparalleled", and I would tend to agree with him. Carius would finish the war as the commander of a Jagdtiger company of the 512th Heavy Antitank Battalion (schwere Panzerjägerabteilung) in the West at the beginning of 1945. He would surrender to the US Army on April 15, 1945