US troops at Red Square celebrations

Churchill said something to the effect that it was the Russians that did the heavy lifting in the Eurpean war.

It is shocking to see how much war material the Americans supplied Russia. Looking back, one can see what an important move that was for the Allies.

I own a number of different Soviet weapons. They are simple, but fairly well made and 100% reliable. I don't know much about tanks, but the Russian tank appears to have a bigger gun and a bettter engine (12 cylinder diesel vs gasoline) than the Sherman. And they made a LOT of them.
 
One thing I would like to note on a tangent here: There were, until later in the war, very few actual "Muscovy Russians" in combat! The Russians have historically had a habbit of pitting the peoples of their once-subjugated nations against a foe before they themselves do so. My granmother remembers the Winter War against Finnland, and I mentioned that lots of Russians died for no reason in that war. She corrected me: Many Ukrainians, Poles, Estonians, Latvians and other small national peoples died, and were SPECIFICALLY selected at the regimental level for being "non-Russian" and thus "Disposable". Just making sure to put forth the idea that "Russia" was not made entirely of "Russians" but of smaller countries and peoples amalgamated through conquer into one unit. All the same, those men died, be they Russian or otherwise, and may they rest forever in the cold earth.
Russian engineering, as Ganderite said, is simple, strong and very reliable. I remember hearing stories of the Russian Forces after WWII, who would happily swap nearly anything from one tank to another interchangeably!
 
Thanks for the history lesson

Drachenblut said:
One thing I would like to note on a tangent here: There were, until later in the war, very few actual "Muscovy Russians" in combat! The Russians have historically had a habbit of pitting the peoples of their once-subjugated nations against a foe before they themselves do so. My granmother remembers the Winter War against Finnland, and I mentioned that lots of Russians died for no reason in that war. She corrected me: Many Ukrainians, Poles, Estonians, Latvians and other small national peoples died, and were SPECIFICALLY selected at the regimental level for being "non-Russian" and thus "Disposable". Just making sure to put forth the idea that "Russia" was not made entirely of "Russians" but of smaller countries and peoples amalgamated through conquer into one unit. All the same, those men died, be they Russian or otherwise, and may they rest forever in the cold earth.
Russian engineering, as Ganderite said, is simple, strong and very reliable. I remember hearing stories of the Russian Forces after WWII, who would happily swap nearly anything from one tank to another interchangeably!
Click to expand...

I was not aware that Latvian, Estonian and Polish troops took part in the invasion of Finland.

I thought the Winter War occurred between November 1939 and March 1940. Am I wrong? I must be.

I understand that the USSR invaded Poland in September 1939, following the lead of the Nazi. Are you saying that the USSR raised a Polish army and then used this to invade Finland in November 1939?

Or are you saying that Polish citizens were inducted into the USSR military and were then singled out "at the regimental level" to invade Finland?

Perhaps you are claiming that a Polish volunteer force was raised to fight in Finland on behalf of the communists, a sort of commie version of the Waffen SS. I was not aware of any of this, but please fill me in on the details.

I always thought the Poles hated the Russians and would never fight at their side. I seem to recall hearing that the USSR murdered twenty-thousand Polish officers after the conquest of Poland. I must have heard wrong, I guess.

As well, I am very interested in finding out how the USSR could use Latvia troops in Finland, when the USSR did not have complete control of Latvia until June 1940?

Who were the Estonian soldiers "selected at the regimental level" to fight for the USSR in the winter war of 1939-1940? The USSR did not invade Estonia until June 1940. Again, it might have been a volunteer force of dedicated communists who rallied to the red standard.

Yup, you learn something new every day reading history on the Internet. I can’t wait for the answer.
 
Last edited:
Ganderite said:
Churchill said something to the effect that it was the Russians that did the heavy lifting in the Eurpean war.

It is shocking to see how much war material the Americans supplied Russia. Looking back, one can see what an important move that was for the Allies.

I own a number of different Soviet weapons. They are simple, but fairly well made and 100% reliable. I don't know much about tanks, but the Russian tank appears to have a bigger gun and a bettter engine (12 cylinder diesel vs gasoline) than the Sherman. And they made a LOT of them.
Click to expand...

The T-34 was a good tank at the beginning of the war, but very poorly handled. It’s gun became outclassed relatively quickly, mind you still better than the 2-pdr. The biggest flaw was the total lack of vision for the commander and the dual roles required of him. By the time the T34/85 came around they had solved those issues. The KV-2 was a tank ahead of the drivetrain technology of the day, it could barely run under it’s own weight and most of the early marks broke down frequently, it suffered the same vision issues and commander issues as the T-34.

Funny enough, one of the lendlease tanks the Soviets quite liked where the Valentines tanks built in the Montreal locomotive works, armed with the 2pdr and them the 6 pdr. The Valentines were designed by Vicker who had been shut out of the tank competitions by the tank board. The Valentine could have been in greater service in 1939 had the board contracted with Vickers earlier.

Another excellent early tank was Czech PZ38T as a light tank it was comparable to most of the mediums of the day and served throughout the war and then postwar as the basis for the Hetzer tank destroyer and the Swedish APC.
 
Stalin did not trust his ethnic Finnish and Russian soldier that lived along the borders of Finland to fight the finns, and thus sent in among others, Ukranian soldiers to fight the Finns, who had a field day, since these soldiers from the south, did not do well in the minus 20-40 celcius and heavy snow, and who due to their fear of not to be labelled as "cowards" did not use any form for snow camo, which due to the harsh realities became standart later in that war.

Studying the and learning about Stalin's deadly purges of the mayority of the Russian brass and junior officers at all levels, just before WW2, left the Red Army at an enormous disadvantage against the invading Germans, which captures close to 4 million Russian soldiers, 3 million of whom would die in German captivity.

The 18 million Russian civilian deads are clearly ethnic Russians as well, since the invading Germans never got beyond the european Russia.

All "foreigners" and "criminals" are in any army considered "disposable".
The French and Spanish Foreing Legions, The Mexican Santa Patricia Brigade, the Nazi-German and Russian spearhad units of "political criminals", often from the Gulags, are just few examples of "disposable" military units.

It havde now been learned, that many Russian units, that were sent, running ahead of the tanks, were political prisoners from the Gulags, and about a million of them died, saving the Russian tanks form land mines. To make it certain that they did their duty, heavely armed NKVD units made sure that they did their final "duty".
 
T-34 was junk, but it was junk that would run in cold weather, a lesson the Germans STILL haven't learned. For fighting in thhhe really cold weather, you can't use finely-made equipment.
I worked for an SS Oberscharfuhrer who was in a Panzer regiment for a couple of years and he told me about winter in Russia..... watching the bolt go slowly forward on your MG-34, building a fire to toss the loaded MG into to warm it up enough to jack the round out of the chamber, cleaning the thing with gasoline and firing with zero lube, then going out with knives to 'borrow' guns from Ivan which DID work in the cold. No, thanks!
But Jerry still hasn't learned his lesson. When they had the pre-production Leopard A2 testing here, they brought 5 tanks (the world supply) but they did not get enough running for a troop exercise, even once. Wonderful tank when it's warm, halfway to useless in 30 below.

It is interesting to note that while Canada was building those Valentines for Russia, our own army was training with Renault FTs from the First World War.

Maybe, next time, they'll remember that Canada helped them, too, that time. And again in the Khrushchev famine and again in the late 70s/early 80s.... but that tale still can't be told.... except possibly as hearsay.

Still, nice to see a positive step being taken to bury the hatchet, It's sure taken long enough.
 
A few years ago there was an article where the Russians had found an almost perfectly preserved Valentine in a bog - made in Monetreal. When the plant inMontreal asked for it back, the Russians said no, it was theirs under lend lease. The serial number was tracked down and it was discovered that the Russians never paid for the tank in question. Of course, they never did a follow up to report how it all played out in the end.
 
Ganderite said:
I own a number of different Soviet weapons. They are simple, but fairly well made and 100% reliable. I don't know much about tanks, but the Russian tank appears to have a bigger gun and a bettter engine (12 cylinder diesel vs gasoline) than the Sherman. And they made a LOT of them.
Click to expand...

The T34 (I think) was supposed to be the best tank of WW2. Simple, brutal and effective with the first sloped armour, a great gun that could open up the much more expensive and complicated German tanks and simple enough to have an uneducated peasant farmer operate in a few hours of training... Aside from numbers the Sherman was probably the worst tank fielded in the war with gas engines and big tanks that exploded often. All of this is from books though... The only tank I've been in was a Merkava.

Jeff
 
In the 1970s I had a tour of the Israeli Armored School where models of all of the Russian tanks from the T34 to T62 were on display. One thing that was quite fascinating was a display of the various engines. They all seemed to be an evolution from the basic T34. Russian equipment, right up to the more current T72, is quite basic for ease of training and maintenance.
 
You have to look at tanks within the timeframe they came into play. At the beginning of the war the Germans fielded mostly Pz I’s armed with a couple of MG and thin armour, however they had lots of radios and good coordination between all arms include air support, this was the reason the blitzkrieg worked. Zopposing them, the French had the CharB which on paper was a powerful tank, armed with a 75mm howitzer, 47mm turret gun and MG’s the problem was that the layout inside was terrible and the tactical use by the French was the terrible as well, the other French mediums suffered the same crappy ergonomics. The British fielded the Matilda II as their premier tank, heavy armour, decent layout and the 2pdr gun was one of the better guns fielded from a tank punching view, the problem was they had no HE ability at that time. The Brits fielded the Matilda I which was heavily armoured but only armed with a MG. British mediums had ok armour for the time, the 2pdr, but reliability and short track life were major issues. The lack of good air-ground, tank infantry cooperation spelt their defeat in 1940. British tank designs were hampered by the tank board who had insane ideas and also by inter arms rivalry where the Royal artillery would take anything with HE ability. The churchil debuted before it was ready, later proved it self as tough customer. The 6 pdr at 57mm actually had better armour penetration than the Sherman’s 75mm, but less HE performance. Much of the problems with the Sherman was bad handling and bad infantry-tank cooperation, letting tanks drive into kill zones. The brits also had a gun equivalent to the German 88, but never used it as a anti-tank gun until almost the end of the war, a very odd decision. The 17pdr was an excellent gun.
The US entered the war with the M2 Combat car and a small number of M3 Mediums and M3 light tanks. The M3 morphed into the Lee/Grant and then into the Sherman. The M3 Stuart was well liked by it’s crews for being fast decently armoured, but by the time it showed up the 37mm gun was inadequate. The M4 Sherman ended the war with a decent 76mm gun and dual GMC diesels. Decent amounts of good armour piercing rounds were however never adequate. The Sherman was an excellent tank for ergonomics and maintenance. The size of Allied tanks was also constrained by the need to ship them across the Atlantic and the Channel and was the major limiting factor.

The Sherman served as battle tank until the 90’s in various armies as did the M5 Stuart. The T-34/85 is still encountered in some African armies. Syria used the PZ IV until the 1967 war. The PZ38t chassis served up into the 80’s in various roles. The Irish retired it’s Comets in the late 80’s and Lebanon was using Charioteers based on the Cromwell in 1982.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom