Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1943-1945: Red Steamroller

OTB – Otdel’nyye tankovyye batal’ony (Separate Tank Battalion)

OTTPP – Otdel’nyye Tyazhelij Tankovij Polk Proriva (Independent Heavy Tank Breakthrough Regiment)

PaK – PanzerAbwehrKanone (anti-tank gun)

PP – podderzhka pekhoty (infantry support tanks)

Pz.Rgt – Panzer Regiment

PzAOK – Panzerarmee

RKKA – Raboche-Krest’yanskaya Krasnaya Armiya (the Army of Workers and Peasants/the Red Army)

RVGK – Rezerv Verkhovnogo Glavnokomandovaniya (Reserve of Supreme High Command)

SAP – Samokhodno-Artillerijskij Polk (Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment)

SPW – Schützenpanzerwagen [Armoured Infantry Vehicle or APC]

SR – Schützen-Regiment [Motorized Infantry]

TA – Tank Army

TC – Tank Corps

TSAP – Tyazhelij Samokhodno-Artillerijskij Polk (Heavy Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment)

TTPP – Tyazhelij Tankovij Polk Proriva (Heavy Tank Breakthrough Regiment)

UABTTS – Uchebnyy Avtobronetankovyy Tsentr (Tank Automotive Training Centre)

UMM – Upravlenie Motorizatzii i Mekhanizatzii RKKA (Directorate of Mechanization and Motorization of the Red Army), 1929–1934. Re-named ABTU.

VA – vozdushnaya armiya (Air Army)

VAMM – Voennaya Akademiya Mekhanizatzii i Motorizatzii RKKA (Military Academy of Mechanization and Motorization of the Red Army)

V.S. – Verbrauchssatz

VVS – Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily (Military Air Forces) i.e. the Soviet Air Force

Vorausabteilung – Vanguard battalion (abbrev. V.A.)

Preface

It was hot and dry, as I stood in the turret of ‘Godzilla-II’ and scanned across the flat horizon with my binoculars, looking for any indications of the adversary – but there were none. My tank company had been out on manoeuvres for a week in the desert and our battalion commander – who rarely graced us with his presence in the field – had ordered us to spend a day conducting company-size tactical drills. One particular favourite of his was the so-called ‘thirteen-on-one’ scenario, in which one tank from the company would assume a hull-down defensive position and the other thirteen tanks would then manoeuvre to engage and destroy the one hidden tank. We were informed that the mission had to be conducted with urgency and that we would be provided no air, artillery or infantry support, nor could we try to bypass the defending tank. This was the kind of mental inflexibility that usually leads to disaster. When I tried to point out that this kind of tank-pure assault across flat desert terrain had not worked in the Western Desert in 1941–42 or on the steppes of Russia in 1941–43, all common sense was dismissed with a curt, ‘Do as you are ordered’.