Flamethrower Puchkov: Fire and Steel on Gogol Street, Stalingrad

June 29, 2025 - Reading time: 4 minutes

Soviet flamethrower operator A.D. Puchkov fires at German troops entrenched in the lower floor of a ruined building during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Stalingrad, October 1942.
The shattered cityscape is barely holding together. Rubble, twisted rebar, and smoking bricks define the battlefield. Somewhere among these ruins, a Soviet flamethrower operator, A.D. Puchkov, kneels behind a mound of debris — his weapon hissing with pressure, ready to turn air into hellfire.

Captured in one of the most iconic frontline photographs, Puchkov takes aim at German troops holed up in the lower floor of a collapsed building on Gogol Street. The scene is typical of urban combat in Stalingrad: close-quarters, relentless, personal. Every building was a fortress, every floor — a killing field.

Flamethrower troops like Puchkov were rare and feared, both by the enemy and within their own ranks. Operating an ROKS-2 or ROKS-3 flamethrower, these soldiers carried volatile fuel on their backs, were often primary targets for snipers, and had to get dangerously close to their targets — usually under withering fire.

Puchkov wasn’t just wielding fire. He was part of the last line of Soviet defense. His role wasn’t merely tactical — it was psychological warfare, driving enemy infantry from their positions through sheer terror and searing flame.

The photo, taken by war photographer L.I. Konov, freezes a split second of bravery and brutality — a man fully exposed, weapon lit, targeting an enemy barricaded mere meters away. The image was later archived and published by victory.rusarchives.ru and remains one of the few surviving visual documents of Soviet flamethrower use during the Battle of Stalingrad.

The men who wielded fire did not often live to tell the tale. But their actions helped define the desperate, furious stand on the Volga’s banks — a turning point in the war.

📷 Technical photo data:
Source: https://victory.rusarchives.ru/
📸 Photographer: L. I. Konov
📅 Date: October 1942
📍 Location: Gogol Street, Stalingrad, USSR