Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt

On the Soviet side, the Western Front still had 328 tanks left in thirteen tank brigades and the 1st Guards Motorized Rifle Division (1GRMD) by the end of October: thirty-three KV-1, 175 T-34, forty-three BT, fifty T-26 and thirty-two T-60. The British Arctic PQ-1 convoy had reached Archangelsk on 11 October with twenty Mark II Matilda tanks, followed by PQ-2 on 30 October with seventy-six Mark III Valentine tanks; these ninety-six tanks were rushed by rail to Moscow and used to outfit the 146th Tank Brigade and four independent tank battalions (131, 132, 136, 138 OTB).¹³⁶ Another major British Lend-Lease convoy, PQ-3, would arrive in Archangelsk on 22 November with 200 more British tanks. Red Army tank officers were not impressed with the 2-pounder (40mm) gun on the Matilda and Valentines, nor their poor cross-country mobility, but their 60–75mm-thick armour was impervious to German 3.7cm and 5cm anti-tank weapons. British-built armour plate also had a much higher nickel content – 3 per cent versus 1 per cent for Russian-made steel – which reduced the risk of armour spalling (i.e. metal splinters inside the tank) when the tank was hit by non-penetrating rounds.¹³⁷ Although designed as infantry support tanks and employed in that role by the Red Army, the 2-pounder gun did not have an HE round, which reduced the value of the tanks in that role. Nevertheless, British Lend-Lease tanks helped the Red Army to restock its tank units until domestic production could catch up and are estimated to have comprised about 10 per cent of the tanks defending Moscow in November–December 1941.

Tanks were also useful for raising morale as a symbol of the Red Army’s strength and Stalin decided to make them the centerpiece of the military parade celebrating the October Revolution in Moscow on 7 November; Polkovnik Andrei G. Kravchenko’s newly-formed 31st Tank Brigade paraded across Red Square with its KV-1, T-34 and T-60 tanks, then headed straight to the front to join the 20th Army at Klin. In another effort to bolster morale, the Stavka decided to create the first guards units and Katukov’s 4th Tank Brigade was redesignated as the 1st Guards Tank Brigade (1 GTB). Aside from the prestige associated with guards units, this began a process by the Stavka of providing the best battle-proven units with the newest tanks and keeping them up to strength. However there were initially too few resources to create more than a few guards tank units before the end of 1941 and the Stavka was forced to form a number of independent tank battalions and company-size-detachments so that each army received at least a few tanks.

Zhukov used the respite in the German offensive to integrate fresh units into his line in front of Moscow and sent Konev to take over the new Kalinin Front. Konev was ordered to keep counterattacking the German 9.Armee in order to force von Bock to divert further forces away from Moscow. The critical area along the Lama River between Kalinin and Istra, where Höpner’s panzers intended to break through to Moscow, was held by General-major Vasiliy A. Khomenko’s 30th Army and Rokossovsky’s 16th Army. Rokossovsky received five new rifle divisions and five tank brigades (Katukov’s 4th Tank Brigade, and 23, 27, 28, 33 TB) with about 250 tanks to rebuild his battered army, but Khomenko’s 30th Army was under-resourced. The other critical sector was around Naro-Fominsk, where the 5th, 33rd and 43rd Armies were provided eight tank brigades with 450 tanks. By mid-November, Zhukov’s Western Front had a total of fourteen tank brigades with almost 1,000 tanks, although there were only thirty-seven KV-1 and 156 T-34s. A large part of the Red Army’s remaining tank force was now comprised of light tanks that were inferior to the German Pz.III and Pz.IV.