They wrote that we got a 'nasty surprise' when we found that we couldn't crack the Russian armour, but in truth it went much farther than that. For one thing, we could crack the Russians, and we did, all the way to the end. A 55mm did for almost anything they threw at us back then, even a Svyatogor if you know what you're doing, though you really wanted something bigger for that. No, the real surprise was that armour simply didn't work the way we thought it did. And there were enough people who told us so – to their credit, mostly in diplomatic terms afterwards – but we loved the idea so much. You haven't been young and irresponsible if you haven't ridden a Panzerwagen unbuttoned at top speed. It is the most exhilarating feeling in the world, a loping wolfpack chasing its prey to ground. And then you actually go out there and the enemy doesn't have targets painted on and you feel a right idiot.
What we learned the day we faced off against the Russians wasn't that they were bigger and badder than us. They were, I guess, but they were just as scared. Everything else was big and bad. The world was full of things that could kill you. Every barn and hut could shelter a PAK, every haystack enemy armour, each molehill and piece of brushwood a mine. Speed was good strategically speaking, but at the sharp end, the Hauptmann said, it just gets you to the funeral faster. When you're inside that wagon trying to spot whatever Ivan was hiding in the next village, you cursed every centimetre of armour sacrificed for another kph you couldn't use. 'Speed is armour' sounds really good, but on the drawing board you tend to forget that only works as long as you're moving across their field of vision. And you never do that if they are any good at their job.
What saved us in the end wasn't the extra steel plate we bolted on or the new guns they put in our turrets. It was good to have. Every bit kept some Kameraden from getting cooked. But what did it was our radios. The Russians were better at using terrain – we learned every lesson at a steep price – but they never managed to get their act together for a coordinated fight. If they saw us, they engaged or snuck away. If we spotted them, more often than not we would run a distraction, call in friends to loop around behind them, or grab them between us. It was still a crappy business, often enough it was about who Ivan blew up first and who got to return the favour. But they never adapted to that. It went even better when you coordinated with the infantry. Ivan could never stop himself from chasing a running panzer, and that was one time when speed helped. We couldn't hit anything while running, but neither could they, so as long as you kept an eye on their dust cloud and had somewhere to duck when they stopped, you were safe enough. It was one hell of a game, but once you drew them inside the field of a dug-in Flak, the fireworks got spectacular. We killed more of them that way than we did hand to hand.
(Interview with Oberleutnant 'Hansi' Staller, panzer ace, for Motorwelt 10/64)