It cannot be said that before Hitler's attack, the nature of the future war and the role of large mechanized formations in it, no one in our country understood and did not foresee. Quite the opposite, in the USSR, the development of tank forces proceeded in accordance with the doctrine of "deep operation". It was put forward by the Soviet military theorist Vladimir Triandafillov in his 1929 book The Nature of Operations in Modern Armies. In it, analyzing the armed forces of the states of Eastern Europe, he suggested that the future war would be more maneuverable than the First World War, although he explained this not by the possibility of using new weapons, but by the fact that the Eastern European armies would not be able to deploy enough forces to create such a dense defense, which is required for trench warfare. The concept was further developed by other Soviet military theorists, including Konstantin Kalinovsky. They took into account the progress that had taken place in the field of military technology and attached greater importance to tanks and aircraft.
The pre-war concept of a "deep operation" in its completed form presupposed the introduction of a penetration of enemy defenses and the action in its depths of mobile forces - mechanized formations supported by aviation and, possibly, airborne assault forces. These formations, consisting of tanks, motorized infantry and in some cases cavalry, were supposed to cut the enemy grouping, disrupt its communications and, if favorable conditions were present, surround it. Their other task was considered to seize strategically important areas and thwart enemy attempts to create a new line of defense. At all stages of the "deep operation", from breaking through the defense and ending with the encirclement and destruction of the enemy, tanks played a significant and sometimes decisive role. They were supposed to support the infantry in breaking through the defenses and serve as the basis for mechanized formations.
Supple Armor
It was important not only to formulate the correct theory, but also to create these mechanized formations. The pre-war period was the time of searching for their optimal structure. Ultimately, the Red Army entered the war with a tank force consisting of 29 mechanized corps.
It quickly became clear that the Soviet mechanized corps did not live up to the hopes placed in them. Most of them lost almost all of their military equipment in a few days of fighting. Some counterattacks by the Soviet corps did delay the enemy's advance. But none of them led to the defeat of the advancing grouping, on which it was applied. Many factors were to blame for the disastrous outcome of the combat work of the mechanized corps of the 1941 model. First, the unfavorable strategic environment: the Red Army entered the war without completing its mobilization and strategic deployment. This meant that a significant part of the Soviet rifle divisions were still in the deep rear, and they were desperately lacking to cover the flanks of the attacking Soviet tank armada and stabilize the situation in secondary directions. In addition, the combat capabilities of the mechanized corps were reduced due to the lack of people and vehicles that did not have time to arrive after the announcement of mobilization. Secondly, most of the mechanized corps met the war at the stage of formation. And none of them had all the weapons required by the state. Thirdly, the organization of the mechanized corps was far from optimal. With a staff of more than a thousand tanks (in practice, on average, about half of this number), the corps had relatively little motorized infantry and artillery, and there were almost no engineering troops in its composition.
There is nothing to develop success …
The disastrous end of the first mechanized corps led to a major revision of military doctrine. Initially, it was decided to abandon the mechanized corps as an organizational structure and go to separate tank divisions with a reduced number of tanks. But even this did not seem enough. In the fall of 1941, a separate tank brigade became the main organizational unit of the tank forces. Since its formation required significantly fewer people and military equipment, new brigades could be created faster, especially in the face of a shortage of trained personnel and catastrophic losses in tanks in the summer of 1941. In addition, the requirements for the level of training of the brigade commander were lower than for the commander of a tank division, not to mention the commander of a mechanized corps.
But even with a full complement of military equipment, the ability of the brigades to act independently were severely limited. They operated mainly in conjunction with rifle divisions, tanks were used to support the infantry. Sometimes they could perform independent tasks. For example, during the defensive phase of the Battle of Moscow, separate tank brigades were used to block the most dangerous areas. In October 1941, the 4th Tank Brigade (which became the 1st Guards Tank Brigade for its merits) showed itself excellently in the battles near Mtsensk, in which its commander, Colonel Mikhail Katukov, became famous. The future marshal of the armored forces widely used the method of tank ambushes in defense, with the help of which he held back the advance of the German tank division for a long time. But when the German adventure near Moscow failed and it was time to move from defense to offensive, it turned out that the Soviet command did not have strong enough tools to operate in the depths of the enemy defense. As a result, the opportunity to finally defeat the enemy, taking advantage of his temporary weakness, was not fully used. Defeated near Moscow, in the spring and summer of 1942, the Wehrmacht managed to restore the front and stabilize the situation.
New buildings - first samples
The counteroffensive in the winter of 1941/42 showed that powerful and effective formations of tank forces are urgently needed to successfully complete the operation. The restoration of the evacuated industry and the widespread use of mass production technologies in tank building provided an ever-increasing flow of new armored vehicles for this. In the spring of 1942, the formation of a new type of tank formations began. Each of them consisted of three tank brigades and one motorized rifle brigade. Although they were called Panzer Corps, they actually had fewer tanks than the pre-war Panzer Division. The Soviet command again got their hands on the instrument intended for a "deep operation". But its first application ended in disaster again. In May 1942, two tank corps were killed in the battle near Kharkov, without significantly affecting its course. Tank corps performed somewhat better in defensive operations in the summer of 1942. Their counterattacks were more effective than the previous year. But as before, they only delayed the enemy's offensive, and did not lead to his defeat. The losses were lower, but still high, especially compared to the insignificance of the results achieved. Even the concentration of tank corps within the special tank armies did not help.
Breakthrough hammer
In search of a way out of the impasse, the leadership of the Red Army again begins to change its doctrine. In addition to tank corps, a new type of mobile unit is emerging - the mechanized corps. In terms of the number of tanks, these formations were approximately comparable, but the new mechanized corps had significantly more infantry. On October 16, 1942, Stalin signed the order of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 235 "On the combat use of tank and mechanized units and formations." It formulated the principles of their use, some of which repeated the ideas known in the pre-war period, and some appeared as a result of studying the accumulated experience of tank warfare. This order separated the mechanized and tank corps from the smaller tank units according to their missions. If individual units were supposed to mainly support the infantry in breaking through the enemy's defenses, then the corps were viewed as a means of the commander of the army or front, designed to develop the success of the breakthrough. The mechanized corps was considered more adapted for independent action, therefore it could be used to pursue the enemy and independently advance on the enemy who did not have time to gain a foothold. The order demanded that tank forces avoid collisions with large enemy tank units, shifting the burden of fighting them onto the shoulders of anti-tank artillery. The tank corps were to act primarily against the infantry. An attempt to imitate the methods of the Wehrmacht used in repelling Soviet counterattacks in 1941-1942 is visible here.
The principles of Order No. 235 proved to be effective during the Soviet offensive in the winter of 1942/43. Its success was largely ensured by the effective use of mobile units, whose actions led to the encirclement of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, the defeat of the 8th Italian Army in the Ostrogozh-Rossoshan operation, and other major successes. For the first time since the beginning of the war, mobile units were used the way they were supposed to be used: to break through into the depths of enemy defenses. In this campaign, tank armies showed themselves especially well (the 5th under the command of P. L. Romanenko in the Stalingrad operation, the 3rd under the command of PS Rybalko in Ostrogozhsko-Rossoshan). They have proven to be the most suitable vehicle for such tasks.
How to beat the Tiger?
The next stage in the development of tank forces was the Battle of Kursk. In it, the Soviet tank forces had to bear the brunt of the blow of the Wehrmacht tank forces, which used the new Tiger and Panther tanks, significantly superior in their characteristics to the Soviet ones. In the ensuing battles, the tactics of tank ambushes again showed themselves well, again used by the master of tank warfare Mikhail Katukov, who this time commanded not a brigade, but the 1st Tank Army. Having exhausted the enemy in battles, he at the same time managed to maintain the combat effectiveness of his own troops. Much less successful were the results of the counterstrike at Prokhorovka by the 5th Guards Tank Army, which suffered heavy losses.
During the offensive phase of the Battle of Kursk, it turned out that avoiding a collision with the enemy's mobile troops was not so easy for an advancing tank formation - that is why they are mobile troops. The actions of the German tank divisions transferred to critical points of the battle often stopped the Soviet onslaught, which had an initial success. And only if the Soviet mobile forces managed to overcome their resistance, the offensive was successful.
Soviet tank triumph
The operations of 1944-1945 became the real disclosure of the potential of the Soviet tank forces. At the beginning of 1944, the armed forces of the USSR had 24 tank and 13 mechanized corps (37 mobile formations in total), as well as 87 separate tank and mechanized brigades and 156 separate tank and self-propelled artillery regiments designed to interact with the infantry. By this time, the high command had accumulated considerable experience. The strategic environment was favorable. The Red Army possessed the initiative and, thanks to this, itself determined where and how the next important strategic operation would take place. The tank forces could prepare for it in the best possible way and were used in the most suitable role for them. The Red Army received new equipment: heavy tanks "IS", T-34 with an 85-mm cannon, self-propelled artillery pieces. This made it possible to successfully fight against German tank forces.
The Belarusian, Yassy-Kishinev, Vistula-Oder strategic offensive operations became brilliant pages in the history of Soviet tank forces. In these operations, thanks to the action of mobile forces, it was possible not only to inflict defeat, but to completely destroy large enemy groupings. In each of them, a significant strategic result was achieved: the liberation of significant territories, the withdrawal from the war of a member of a hostile coalition, significant advancement into the depths of the enemy's territory and the occupation of a line to deliver the final blow that ended the war.
Faster and more powerful
Tanks appeared during the First World War as a weapon designed to break through enemy defenses. In this capacity, they proved their value, especially during the last year of the war, when they proved to be the ideal means for delivering powerful surprise strikes, carried out without lengthy preparation and many days of shelling enemy positions.
During the interwar period, tanks underwent significant improvements. It was especially important that their technical reliability and average speed of movement increased. It became possible to use tanks more widely - not only for breaking through the defense, but also for the subsequent development of the success of the breakthrough and actions in the depth of the enemy's defense.
