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

After mid-July 1941, the primary Soviet armoured formations were the tank regiment and the tank brigade. At the outset of the war in the East, each Soviet mechanized corps had five tank regiments: two in each of its two constituent tank divisions and one in the mechanized division. The tank regiments were intended to function as part of a combined-arms structure within a division and were tank-pure formations with no organic infantry or artillery; each tank regiment in the tank divisions was authorized three tank battalions with a total of sixty-two tanks. However, once the mechanized corps began to disintegrate under the hammer blows of the German Panzergruppen, the Stavka opted to rely upon independent tank brigades both for expediency of formation and simplicity of command and control. The tank brigades authorized in late August 1941 were based upon the remnants of the mechanized corps and were supposed to have three tank battalions with a total of ninety-one tanks and a motorized infantry battalion. However, as Soviet losses mounted and industry could not yet replace them, the size of the tank brigade continued to shrink. In September, the tank brigade was reduced to two tank battalions with sixty-seven tanks and in December to only forty-six tanks and the infantry battalion was omitted.

Soviet Armour Forces in the Southwest Front, 22 June 1941

Prior to the war, most Soviet tank battalions were usually comprised of only one tank model, but the number of tanks could vary from thirty to fifty. The new T-34 and KV-1 tanks were being fielded by battalions, so there was little integration with existing models prior to the German invasion. The Soviet tank battalion was much smaller than its German counterpart and grew increasingly leaner throughout 1941. Typically, the Soviet tank battalion had a headquarters, an eighty-man maintenance company, a reconnaissance platoon with three BA-10 or BA-20 armoured cars, a twenty-one-man medical section, some fuel and ammunition elements and three tank companies. The Red Army kept tinkering with the size of tank platoons prior to the war, trying out 3-, 4- and 5-tank platoon configurations. Heavy tanks were normally kept in 5-tank platoons, but the light and medium tanks quickly abandoned the pre-war 4-tank platoon and relied upon a 3-tank platoon structure for most of the war.

Although the new KV-I, KV-II and T-34 tanks attract much attention in estimates of the Red Army’s relative combat power in June 1941, these tanks comprised barely 12 per cent of the available Soviet armoured forces at the outset of Barbarossa and were initially rendered nearly combat ineffective by a host of logistical and training defects. Many of these modern tanks had only arrived at their units a few weeks or months prior to Barbarossa and had been stored in warehouses, pending summer training in 1941. Very few crews had trained on either of these new tanks and they were so dissimilar to the earlier light tanks that even experienced tankers needed a transition course before they could effectively use these vehicles in combat. However, far more serious was the shortage of 76.2mm main-gun ammunition for the KV-I and T-34 and the almost complete absence of 152mm ammunition for the KV-II. The more fortunate T-34 tank battalions had a single basic load of ammunition – often with no armour-piercing rounds – while the less fortunate units had only been issued machine-gun ammunition. The fuel shortage was even worse, with most Soviet heavy and medium tanks having no more than one basic load of fuel, enough for a few days operation. Most of the fuel in forward depots was gasoline for the T-26 and BT-series light tanks, but diesel fuel for T-34s and KVs was still in short supply. Spare parts for the new tanks were virtually non-existent. Consequently, the only real advantage enjoyed by the T-34 and KV tanks at the outset of Barbarossa was the enormous effort required by the Germans to destroy them, but otherwise their innate firepower and mobility advantages were squandered by inadequate logistic readiness.