The farther from the war, the farther from the USSR, the more noticeable is the advantage of Soviet knowledge over Russian. Those who graduated from Soviet schools and universities, over those who studied in all these newfangled educational programs, licked up from their Western counterparts. Knowledge versus computer. Real facts versus facts recognized as real by a majority vote on Wikipedia.
You will say: what does the armament and education problems have to do with it?
Yes, despite the fact that it is there, in this very Wikipedia, that our children and grandchildren are gaining their minds. We saw this in the comments to articles about weapons or armored vehicles. Knowledge gleaned from "war" games. Moreover, "knowledge" is aggressive. From the series “Two opinions, mine and wrong”.
With all that, we have nothing against what the employees of "Wargaming" and "Gaijin Entertainment" are doing. A very useful thing, war games, especially since in order to correctly draw the same tank in a computer, workers shove through mountains of archival papers. In an attempt to bring everything as close as possible to the historical view.
Another question is that our users, having assimilated the information received during the game, behave about the principle "make … to God to pray …"
Here, in dialogues with representatives of this very youth, we came across one of the examples of the manifestation of such knowledge. Imagine our reaction when a young man, clearly interested in the history of Soviet armored vehicles, suddenly says that during the war the Germans invented the T-34-T! Moreover, he uploads real photographs of those years, in which tractors and other special vehicles based on the T-34 tank with German crews are really visible.
So the question arises: for whom is this material intended and for whom do those who prepared it really work?
Those who want to know the truth about the war, or what is today called the truth on the Internet?
We think, after all, for the audience whose education we, to put it mildly, have lost. The very young man who wants to know, but is not trained to separate the wheat from the chaff. And I have to believe what the Internet is clogged with.
So, fascist Germany unleashed a war in Europe. All the vaunted European armies, despite the talk about their power and invincibility, quickly raised their legs up and turned into zilch. The German military machine ground these armies in a short time and received many trophies at its disposal. Including military equipment and weapons.
Naturally, this technique was used by the German army in the following campaigns. This is quite logical, since the military industry of the conquered countries also began to be controlled by Germany.
Simply put, the Wehrmacht in terms of military equipment and weapons has become a European army. Not German, but European. Since the Germans have plagued a lot of things from all over Europe, and Britain helped.
Germans in the USSR broke their teeth. Russians, and in that war all were Russians, not only did not surrender, but also performed a feat in the rear. The factories were taken out in a short time, the specialists were evacuated. Production took place deep in the rear.
But at the same time, in the initial period of the war, the losses of Soviet troops, including in armored vehicles, were enormous. Moreover, the equipment fell to the Germans not only after the battle, but also quite serviceable, abandoned, for example, due to lack of fuel. In this case, the Wehrmacht did exactly the same with the tanks as it did in Europe. Instead of a star, they drew a cross, and the tank went into battle already German.
But there were also such vehicles that fell into the hands of the Germans with faulty weapons or with a damaged turret. At the same time, all other systems operated properly. They were used as tractors and other special vehicles. Moreover, the Germans did not really think about modernization. They simply removed the turret, and the resulting hole in the hull was simply covered with a tarpaulin.
This is the history of the war. But how does this relate to the "invention" of the T-34-T?
But in no way.
This is a myth, and it is rather crudely worked out and is designed just for the poor in history.
After all, if you take the manuals "Manual on the towing and evacuation of damaged equipment" (1940), "Memo on the evacuation of vehicles from the battlefield" (1941), "Manual for a tank soldier" (1941), "Manual evacuation of stuck tanks from the battlefield”(1942), then it directly states that the evacuation of tanks must be carried out using tractors or artillery tractors.
However, it also says that in some cases the commander has the right to use tanks for these purposes. It can be not only more powerful machines, but also of the same type with damage. Why in some cases? What is the reason for this decision?
Alas, the reason is in the service life of the tanks. Nobody will allow the commander to spend the motor resource of a combat vehicle on the evacuation of damaged tanks. The tank should fight, and not perform the functions of an ARV. But the use of damaged tanks, removing towers, as special, in particular, command vehicles, in the Red Army began already in 1942.
True, these were not T-34s. These were BT-7 and T-26. Already in the battle of Stalingrad, these very machines appeared in our army. The M-17T engine, which is generally worthy of a separate story, was quite satisfactory in all respects to the tank commanders. And it was impossible to "get paid" for using the BT-7 and T-26 tanks "for other purposes". Cars have not been produced since 1940.
If damaged, the commanders were obliged to send the T-34 for repair. Either deep in the rear, to the factory, or to the workshops right in the rear of the corps or army. Let's repeat - the tank must fight! And this is an immutable rule of war.
This is approximately how myths are born, in which over time everyone begins to believe. Someone will say - so what? This is not critical. This is just one of the small, not particularly important episodes of that war. Well, people believe in something that did not exist, so what?
You can approach history this way. Only, after all, the war consists of small, completely unremarkable episodes. How many feats were accomplished by soldiers, officers, generals? Feats that we will only learn about today. Or maybe our children and grandchildren will find out tomorrow. Small episodes of the big war …
The whole question is how to submit. And today we are served in such a way that the patriots of the pen rush into the same trench with the soldiers of General Panfilov, wander through the snow-covered forests with Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and go into the last attack with Alexander Matrosov. Because today someone needs to protect the heroes of that war from such “new historians”. Calling into question everything that was in our history of those years.
This is how history is changed. In the beginning, it seems to be quite unremarkable episodes. Then some not very famous battles. Then fictional films. Beautiful myths that distort the events that were real. And then - the belief in Soviet atomic bombs in Japan in 1945. Belief in the decisive role of the United States in the victory over fascism. Belief in the allies of Hitler and Stalin …
Well, as the final nail, here is an extract from the "Manual on evacuation for the Red Army".
2. Means of evacuation.
Evacuation of vehicles from the battlefield is carried out by tanks or tractors (wheeled vehicles can be towed by cargo vehicles).
A tank of the same type with an emergency can easily cope with the task of towing on slightly rough terrain in the event that the suspension is not damaged. On very rough terrain and with damaged suspension, a tractor or special attachment is required.
The fact that pragmatic Germans for their needs used everything that came to hand, everyone knows this, and on our pages it was in the cycle "One among strangers". Therefore, it is absolutely not surprising that the Nazis began to make ARVs on the basis of everything that came to hand: French, Czech, British machines. Our T-27, BT-7 and T-34 were no exception.
If we talk about our units, then yes, before the war and during the war, tank tractors were not mass-produced by the industry. In April 1940, under the leadership of N. G. Zubarev, a technical project was developed for a heavy transport tractor based on the chassis of the T-34 tank, which received the designation "Machine 42".
During the war, T-34 tanks with faulty armament, or well "caught" in the tower, which were dismantled by the forces of military workshops, were really used as tractors.
The shoulder strap of the tower was sealed with an armor plate, in which the entrance hatch was installed. The tractor was designed to evacuate damaged and faulty tanks from the battlefield to shelter or tow medium and light tanks to the place of repair, as well as to pull out tanks in case of light and medium types of jamming.
And already quite after the war, on the basis of the T-34 tank chassis, three types of tractors were developed and adopted by the Soviet Army: a tractor with a winch, a tractor with a set of rigging equipment, a T-34T tractor, and a SPK-5 self-propelled crane.
But such details had to be reached. To dig, so to speak.
But then it would become clear that the Germans would not have called this car as indicated, that is, T-34-T. In German terms, the name would look like this: GPzT-34Z (r) from Gepanzerte Panzer Zugmaschine. But it’s necessary, again, to dig deeper into the reference books …
It is much easier to take and give out that the Germans became the inventor of the tank tractor. And ours, as always …
In fact, the Red Army did not have much need in tank tractors before the war. Based on the appendix to the "Manual for the evacuation of stuck tanks from the battlefield", the evacuation detachment was supposed to have 12 tractors. Which were able to solve any evacuation problem.
Especially "Voroshilovets", which was able to drag everything from the battlefield.
But is it really possible to take it like this and admit that the Red Army was better organized than in the Wehrmacht? It is not to respect yourself. And that is why there are such pearls, which are joyfully applauded by young "lovers of Internet truth":
“The situation was aggravated with the adoption of the so-called new types of tanks: the heavy KV and the medium T-34. Only the most powerful tractors and tractors could work with them. But the latter were, firstly, few, and secondly, their speed and mobility were insufficient to keep up with the tank formations."
Here! There were few tractors, and they were slow! We couldn't keep up with the tank formations!
For a long time we tried to imagine this terrible picture, how, during the offensive (for example) behind a tank formation, gasping in the dust raised by the advancing tanks, tractors with broken and knocked-down vehicles attached unsuccessfully try to catch up with the tank columns.
It's hard to imagine what would have happened during the retreat, to be honest, we used to grab onto the saving people's commissars.
Why was it necessary to drag the broken vehicles behind the advancing formations, if, according to their mind, they needed to be transported in a completely different direction? Towards the repair and restoration bases and workshops of the advancing corps and divisions.
Or to the factory, if the matter was completely sad.
But is it possible today to imagine that this was the case in the Red Army? No, only the Germans could do that.
And they do believe …
Epilogue: ignorance and inability to work with sources, plus a wild flight of imagination and not very clean aspirations today give rise to just such "masterpieces". Replacing scientific knowledge with Wikipedia leads to the fact that a person, in order to simplify the process of obtaining information, generally ceases to think logically. Accordingly, the brain, not prepared for mental work, surrenders under the pressure of pseudo-information and takes on trust the nonsense born by the majority of Wikigolos.
And this, unfortunately, is ours today.
