Otto Carius has passed away at the age of 92.

Otto Carius was one of the last surviving German tank aces of World War Two, an ace of aces, and possibly the most successful tank commander of all time. After being drafted twice and rejected for being underweight, he volunteered for the Panzer Corps and entered the 21st Panzer Regiment, serving on the captured Czech Panzer 38t as a loader. Over the course of the war he transferred to the 502nd Heavy Tank Battalion, commanding a Tiger at Leningrad and Narva. After being wounded in 1944, he ended up commanding a company of the colossal Jagdtiger tank destroyers. Though unimpressed with this rather absurd vehicle, he was present at the defense of the Rhine and surrendered to the Americans in April 1945.

During his wartime service, Carius and his crew destroyed over 100 enemy tanks and guns^note And one aircraft!, was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, and reached the rank of Oberleutnant. After the war, he opened a drugstore called "Tiger Apotheke" in Herschweiler-Pettersheim, where customers could pick up their medication...and copies of his memoir, Tigers in the Mud.

He is also the only tank commander in history to be portrayed as an anthropomorphized pig in a manga adaptation of his memoirs drawn by Hayao Miyazaki.

Some links:

- A Russian interview, translated.

- Otto Carius: Doromamire no Tora on MangaFox. I wasn't lying.

- Otto Carius on the Spanish language website Heroes de Guerra. Good stuff, if you can read/translate Spanish.

Cross-posted to the Armored Vehicle Thread

Wow. I had forgotten he was still around.

... How the hell can a WW 2 tank take out a plane?

Not sure on WW 2 German tanks, but in general a machine gun or two is hardly out of the ordinary for secondary weaponry on a tank.

Of course, if you get that proverbial "one in a million" chance to put a tank shell in the same location as an aircraft, you're really going to ruin that pilot's day. Or at least the half-second of it that remains.

(The less said of "Tank vs Hind" in Rambo 3, the better. )

And of course, if the tank comes across a plane that is still on the ground, it becomes quite trivial. Not sure about the circumstances in this case though.

A quick Google suggests that Carius's gunner became quite irritated at a Russian fighter that kept taking pot shots at them, so he lined up the main gun with the fighter's flight path and started taking pot shots back. On the second shot, he evidently aced the fighter with the main gun.

edited 24th Jan '15 11:12:52 PM by AFP

He... With the main gun...

Somebody put him on Improbable Aiming Skills pron— Oh, he's already there. Good. Carry on.

Man, how are you gonna explain that to fighter command when you crawl back to base?

The only thing that might make it back to base at that point is something more fit for a small cardboard box.

Well, he was probably as surprised as the pilot (briefly) was.

Not that briefly: the shot took out the wing, so he knew for a few seconds what the hell had just happened.

Laziness from the Soviet pilot. It seems the Soviet aircraft took the same low-and-slow attack path several times, to the point where Carius's gunner - one Cpl Kramer - could line up the tank's gun on the Soviet approach and just take potshots. He hit them on his second attempt. Being predictable is always a bad idea in wartime.

Getting hit by artillery is a bigger risk for aircraft than you'd think. It would be emphatically not fun to find yourself flying an aircraft near a battery of Katyusha rockets in full rock 'n' roll.

edited 25th Jan '15 3:18:25 AM by Achaemenid

A plane.

How the heck does nevermind question already asked and answered by another troper.

Reminds me of that A-10 who shot down a flying copter and blew up everyone's mind by doing so.

An F-15C managed to do that too - with a bomb.

—

There was also the only time a helicopter has shot down an aircraft - during the Vietnam War a Bell 205 splashed an Antonov An-2 biplane, by way of the crew chief firing a Kalashnikov out of the side doors. It was also the CIA's only air-to-air kill.

Helicopters are easier targets to hit for jet planes than planes are for tanks. Still, a bomb?

The A-10 is a gun with wings strapped to it intended for ground targets. It's quite unusual to have them fire at a copter or else.

- patiently waits for the next ridiculous one up'ing -

Unusual, yes. But helicopters are comparatively slow, enough that they aren't that difficult to hit with guns unless it's one of those very fast choppers and it's already going at or near its top speed.

In defense of the An-2 that got splashed by a Huey, an AK fired from a door is also the only weapons the An-2 mounts, and its redline speed might be slower than the Huey's. It's a biplane transport designed for use on short, shitty airfields (so basically ideal for a country like North Korea, which supposedly uses them for their Special Forces types).

IIRC, Robin Olds once managed to shoot down one German fighter with another German fighter. He hit one plane, and it swerved into its wingman.

re: Artillery kills on aircraft: John Levitow ended up receiving the Medal of Honor as the result of an incident where an AC-47 he was on took a NVA mortar round to the wing, peppering the entire cabin area with shrapnel and wounding the airmen working in that area. He ended up crawling across the cabin, dragging a wounded crewmate away from an open door, and then bodily dragged a lit aerial flare back to the door to toss it out before it could cook off enough to set the plane on fire. He ended up dying. Over 30 years later. Of cancer.

edited 25th Jan '15 7:13:12 AM by AFP

"shoot down one German fighter with another German fighter"

edited 25th Jan '15 1:34:45 PM by Joesolo

re: Huey vs Antonov: it will be very hard to one-up that one. That remains one of my favorite air-combat stories, not to mention the only recorded air-to-air kill in the CIA's history (since the Huey was operated by Air America, which in turn was CIA).

That Corsair pilot who destroyed a Zeke by chewing it up with the propellor like a goddamn cartoon has to come close.

—

For tank-related crazy war stories:

What happened here?◊ No guesses.

"Sir we can't pen his armor!"

"Ramming speed!"

"This isn't some viking longship!"

"I SAID RAMMING SPEED PRIVATE!"

edited 25th Jan '15 7:23:54 PM by Joesolo

Tanks should have rams fitted to the front. When I come to power I'm making that a thing.

Then do I have a present for you

I have no idea where this is from, or if it is even real, but I've heard of it a couple times and found this on the World Of Tanks forum.