Ulater's Archive

"I report these irrecoverable losses for the period of 8th to 21st March 1943: 1. 5th Tank Korps - T-34 - 28, T-70 - 9, T-60 - 33 2. 145th Tank Brigade - T-70 - 2, T-60 - 5 3. 10th Tank Brigade - T-40 - 1 4. 213th Tank Brigade - KV- 2, T-34 - 3, T-70- 1 5. 138th Separate Tank Brigade - T-60 - 10, Valentine - 1 6. Information from 1st Tank Korps was not received, It will be added later. Signed Major Burchenkov."

Loot Force One begins    In the previous article, I jumped a fair bit ahead, and I nearly forgot about one very interesting aspect of Wehrmacht's procurement - common thievery. Or rather, the use of captured equipment, surely the most extensive in WW II, and perhaps the most extensive ever. Austria: First steps    Anschluss gave Germans a great opportunity to practice mobile operations outside of combat, and they also acquired a modest number of austrian weapons and factories for their own use. Bofors 40 mm AA guns that continued production after the Anschluss in Vienna Arsenal, along with a small number of Oerlikon 20 mm guns, several thousand artillery pieces and small arms . Most important, for the motorpool atleast, was the addition of Steyr company, and several other small companies that provided space and production capacities to manufacture many competitive truck types, like Steyr 640, a 1,5 ton, 6x4 vehicle, which was one of the first foreign tru...

As follows is a study and comparison of British Army and Red Army tank tactics, as written by the Canadian Armoured Corps in May of 1944. The study, uses an article written by a Soviet officer and British manuals and reports as sources. For context, the study notes that the organization and tank strength of a Soviet Armoured Corps and a British Armoured Division is generally similar. Soviet General (a) Exploitation of a breakthrough is carried out by a large mobile group of all arms acting directly under the front (or army) command. An armoured corps may form part of the group, or may act independently for this task. (b) From a position in the rear, the armoured corps moves up to a lying up place under cover of darkness. If the latter is only 15 to 20 kilometres from the front, it can also be used a jumping-off place, and a regulating line is indicated to time the advance. (c) The exact moment at which the armoured corps should be thrown in is very difficult to decide. The guid...

Succesful Panther commanders seem to be, atleast in german records, far more rare than Tiger commanders. One of these is SS-Obersturmfuhrer (lieutenant) Malkomes.     "In the course of the further heavy fighting on the invasion front, Malkomes was wounded for the fifth time on August 7th, 1944. SS-Ostuf. Malkomes, fighting with his company in the course of his previous missions, captured or destroyed: 147 tanks 14 assault guns 43 guns 52 anti-tank guns 84 anti-tank rifles 20 trucks 1 half-track 1 scout car 2 armored cars of which Malkomes shot personally: 24 tanks 31 anti tank gun 12 guns 15 trucks 2 armored cars"

Losses from 5.7.1943 to 15.7.1943. Losses are divided between безвозвратный, or irrevocable, and подбитый, or knocked-out. For convenience, losses will be written down in a format of : Tank type - irrevocable losses/knocked-out. 1. 3rd Mechanized Corps -  KV tanks - 1/4, T-34 - 126/64, T-70 - 13/0. Total of 140/68. 2. 6th Tank Corps - T-34 - 107/21, T-70 - 12/4, T-60 - 3/2. Total of 122/27. 3. 31st Tank Corps - T-34 - 105/28, T-70 - 10/9, T-60 - 1/0. Total of 116/37.   Total for 1st Tank Army - KV tanks - 1/4, T-34 - 338/113, T-70 - 35/13, T-60 - 4/2. Total of 378/132. 4. 29th Tank Corps - T-34 - 58/40, T-70 - 23/23. Total of 81/63 tanks. SU-122 - 8/0, SU-76 - 3/0. Total of 11 SUs. 5 18th Tank Corps - T-34 - 28/23, T-70 - 9/7, Churchill - 6/9. Total of 43/39. 6. 5th "Zimovnikovsky" Guard Mechanized Corps - T-34 - 9/54, T-70 - 4/14. Total of 13/68. Total for 5th Guard Tank Army  - T-34 - 95/117, T-70 - 36/44, Churchill -  6/9. Total of 13...

New myths to replace the old "You have horses! What were you thinking!" - Is a now famous line from band of Brothers series, which came to symbolise the German army's lack of motorised transportation, or what  looked like a lack of motorised transportation from the point of view of a simple US infantryman observing a collumn of german prisoners of war marching into captivity. If we forget that we are talking about a TV series and the context, that observation was not completely wrong. Other people, taking a more "serious"(and yet more simplistic) approach, just looked at the number of Panzer and Motorised divisions in relation to infantry divisions at any given time in german army, and they came to the conclusion that Wehrmacht was roughly 80% horse-drawn, which is mostly based on conjecture and out-dated information.[1] Even if one would accept that german infantry divisions were mostly horse-drawn, due to the number of horses compared to vehicles, it stil...

   Reports goes into detail about the knocked-out Panthers, caliber of guns that hit them and whether they burned. The list is as follows: 1. Turret no. 312 , tank broke down and was later blown up by retreating germans. 2. Turret no. 633 , rear armor penetrated by a single 76.2 mm shell, engine destroyed, tank burned. 3. Turret no. 613 . rear armor penetrated by a single 76.2 mm shell, engine destroyed, tank burned. 4. Turret no. 434 , sloped side armor penetrate by a single 76.2 mm shell, lower side armor penetrated by two 76.2 mm shells and turret rear penetrated by three 45 mm shells. 5. Turret no. 634 , turret side penetrated by three 45 mm shells, mantlet penetrated from the side by a single 76.2 mm shell, mantlet penetrated frontally by 45 mm APCR shell,  lower side armor penetrated by a single 76,2 mm shell and sloped side armor penetrated by a single 76.2 mm shell, ricochet off the glacis plate. 6. Turret no. 535,  two penetrations of the sloped si...