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    Tank Wrecks of the Eastern Front, 1941–1945
    Tank Wrecks of the Eastern Front, 1941–1945
    Tank Wrecks of the Eastern Front, 1941–1945
    Ebook186 pages1 hour

    Tank Wrecks of the Eastern Front, 1941–1945

    By Anthony Tucker-Jones

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    A photographic history of the destruction left in the wake of the world’s largest confrontation between mechanized armies: “Highly recommended.” —AMPS Indianapolis
     
    Four years of armored battle on the Eastern Front in the Second World War littered the battlefields with the wrecks of destroyed and disabled tanks, and Anthony Tucker-Jones’s photographic history is a fascinating guide to them. It provides a graphic record of the various types of tank deployed by the Red Army and the Wehrmacht during the largest and most destructive confrontation between mechanized armies in military history.
     
    During the opening stages of the war the German victors regularly photographed and posed with destroyed Soviet armor. Operation Barbarossa left 17,000 smashed Soviet tanks in its wake, and the heavy and medium tanks such as the T-28, T-35, KV-1, and T-34 proved to be a source of endless interest. Once the tide turned, the wrecked and burnt-out panzers the Mk IVs, Tigers, and Panthers were photographed by the victorious Red Army.
     
    As well as tracing the entire course of the war on the Eastern Front through the trail of broken armor, the photographs in this book provide a wide-ranging visual archive of the tank types of the period that will appeal to everyone who is interested in tank warfare and to modelers and wargamers in particular.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateAug 30, 2016
    ISBN9781473895027
    Tank Wrecks of the Eastern Front, 1941–1945
    Author

    Anthony Tucker-Jones

    ANTHONY TUCKER-JONES spent nearly twenty years in the British Intelligence Community before establishing himself as a defence writer and military historian. He has written extensively on aspects of Second World War warfare, including Hitler’s Great Panzer Heist and Stalin’s Revenge: Operation Bagration.

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      Book preview

      Tank Wrecks of the Eastern Front, 1941–1945 - Anthony Tucker-Jones

      author.

      Chapter One

      T-26

      The T-26 light tank constituted Stalin’s most numerous tank type in 1941. It first entered service a decade earlier and by the time of the Second World War some 12,000 had been built. Essentially, there were four models of the T-26, the M1931, M1933, M1938 and M1939. The T-26 first saw combat in the Spanish Civil War, Russo-Japanese border conflicts and the Russo-Finnish War. The Red Army was also equipped with smaller numbers of the T-37, T-38 and T-40 light reconnaissance tanks.

      In early 1931 the Revolutionary War Council took the decision to mass-produce the T-27 tankette, which signalled the Red Army’s commitment to developing its armoured and mechanised units. At the same time it was decided to build the T-26 light tank. While the tiny two-man T-27 was intended to carry out reconnaissance work, the T-26 was to support the infantry divisions during the breakthrough of enemy lines. This formed part of the Red Army’s developing concept of Deep Battle, which envisaged enveloping an enemy over a very wide area.

      The T-26 was based on the British Vickers-Armstrong 6-ton Mk E light tank built for the export market. This came in two versions, the Type A and B, one with twin turrets side by side and the other with a large single turret. The first examples of these had arrived from Britain in 1930, but before they were put into production the Soviets produced competing prototypes known as the TMM-1 and TMM-2 with American engines and the driver to the left. The superior British design was then put into production under a licence agreement as the T-26 Model 1931. It was first seen in a large-scale display during the Red Square Parade on 7 November 1931.

      The tank was powered by an eight-cylinder Armstrong-Siddeley petrol engine (known as the GAZ T-26), also produced under licence. This provided a road speed of 32km/h and a road range of 140km. The engine was located at the back of the hull with the transmission being sent forwards to the front drive sprockets. The gearbox located by the driver’s feet had five forward speeds, and steering was of the clutch and brake type. The Soviet version retained the simple and robust Vickers suspension, which comprised two groups of four bogie wheels each side-sprung on quarter-elliptic leaf springs. The crew or fighting compartment was in the middle with the driver seated to the right of the turret.

      The T-26 was initially armed with two DT 7.62mm machine guns mounted in twin turrets, though the T-26TU commander’s variant was produced with a 37mm gun in the right turret and hand-rail frame antenna on the hull. It carried 180 rounds of main armament ammunition, had 3 crew and was normally issued to the platoon and company commanders. The Model 1932 also had a 37mm gun.

      The initial double-turret configuration proved far from ideal. The gunners’ seats did not automatically rotate with the turret mechanism, but had to be traversed manually, which was laborious in combat. In addition, to stop the turrets jamming each other locks had to be fitted to restrict traverse to 265 degrees.

      As a result of these limitations the turrets were soon abandoned in favour of a single one. To start this was achieved by removing the right-hand turret and installing the gun in the remaining left-hand one. However, the German Rheinmetall 37mm gun chosen to up-gun the T-26 proved difficult to mount in the restricted space on the left. Firing this much more powerful gun generated a recoil that had a tendency to crack the turret ring.

      Instead, the Bolshevik Leningrad Factory and the Kharkov Locomotive Works were tasked with developing a larger central cylindrical turret that could house the new 45mm Model 1932 gun. This became standard on the T-26 Model 1933 and on the BT-7 and T-35 tanks. Similarly, it was intended that all T-26s would have radios that required a distinctive horseshoe-shaped frame antenna fitted to the top of the turret. In reality, those tanks with radios were reserved for the platoon and company commanders. The horseshoe radio antenna soon proved vulnerable to artillery fire and was eventually discontinued.

      The Model 1933 became the most numerous type of T-26 with over 5,000 being built by 1937. In service the crews soon developed an understandable dislike for the poor armour and the underpowered engine. Following the border clashes with the Japanese Army between 1934 and 1935, the T-26’s riveted armour was dropped in favour of welded armour. This was after it was found that machine-gun fire split the rivets which then showered into the crew compartment. Attempts to improve the engine only managed to increase its 90bhp to 97bhp. The last of the Model 1933s built in 1936 were armed with two additional machine guns, one to go on the top of the turret for anti-aircraft duties and another one in the rear of the turret. It was followed by the Model 1938 and Model 1939 with a new conical

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