Stalingrad Tank-Boy - did he exist?

Hallo all

Watching an old (1988) film lat night, The Beast,
I was struck by one of the characters (the tank
commander) who revealed that as an 8 year old
he had been at Stalingrad - lowered by rope above
unsuspecting German panzers and dropped molotovs
in hatches to end up being the hero 'Tank Boy'.

It got me wondering - did a boy like this exist and is
it documented?

The character later joined the Tanks and served in Afghan
in '79

[YOUTUBE]PxS3CL-IewY[/YOUTUBE]

 

It's a movie...f.g.s.


But picture this:
City in ruins..almost no building standing ..perhaps pieces of wall....so, in order to "drop" something from above the soldiers had to be on such sort of weak piece of wall.
Then, secondly a tank..through the impassable rubble.. at best parked next to such a piece of wall..amongst heaps of rubble.

That tank being guarded by a platoon of infantry..or the commander sticking his head out to overview (before sniper had intensified).

even so you could never drop a kid on a rope straight above the tank..


Or maybe inside a factory with intact roof structure ?
Or from an intact bridge ?
In devastated Stalingrad ?

All in all it is easier to lob a few molotovs yourselves instead of using a kid..(hey, the russians have hearts too..).

 

I dont want to know why you think it didn't happen

I was asking if it might have happened...

 

An 8 year old at Stalingrad would be around 44 years of age in 1979.

Theoretically possible, but by western standards a little old for modern day front line combat.

Regards
Tom

 

Did panzers venture into, say, the ruins of Red October, or the tractor factory? There you had the conditions for the theoretical exploits of Tank Boy to happen.