The Red Army’s Tank Force
In June 1941, the Red Army had the enormous total of 18,700 serviceable tanks available, plus another 4,500 tanks under repair. About 63 per cent of the available armour – over 14,000 tanks – were deployed in the twenty-eight mechanized corps authorized between July 1940 and March 1941. Another 1,700 tanks were included in five separate tank or mechanized divisions deployed in the Far East and Transbaikal and 6,000 were deployed with cavalry units, training schools, repair facilities and storage depots.[8] Soviet armour units were in the early stages of re-equipping with the KV-series heavy tanks and T-34 medium tank, but out of 385 KV-I and 185 KV-II built by mid-June 1941, only 433 had been issued to troop units. Similarly, about 1,000 T-34 tanks were built before the German invasion and 903 had arrived at units.
A total of eighteen of the Red Army’s twenty-eight mechanized corps were stationed in the five border districts in the west, with a total of 10,688 tanks, of which roughly 83 per cent were serviceable. Four more mechanized corps were deployed in central Russia, as second echelon forces. None of these formations had existed for even a year and only one had been able to conduct division-level training before Barbarossa began. Consequently, the level of corps and division-level training and experience within these mechanized corps was negligible in June 1941 and severely reduced their combat effectiveness. Unlike the German panzer units, the structure of the Soviet mechanized corps and its component tank and mechanized divisions was fairly uniform in June 1941, even though many units were only partially-equipped skeletons. On paper, the Soviet mechanized corps was a powerful formation that could field two tank divisions, a mechanized division, a motorcycle regiment and a motorized engineer battalion; altogether an impressive total of nine–twelve tank, nine infantry and six artillery battalions, with over 37,000 men and 6,000 vehicles. Compared to the German panzer divisions, the Soviet mechanized corps was tank-heavy, with insufficient infantry and artillery. However, the various deficiencies of the mechanized corps and their constituent divisions rapidly became irrelevant as they were destroyed or disbanded within the first three weeks of the campaign. The Soviet Stavka disbanded all remaining mechanized corps on 15 July 1941 and converted their remnants into tank brigades, which became the de facto primary Soviet armoured formation for the rest of the year. Forced onto the defensive by the violence of the German invasion, the Red Army was forced to disperse its remaining armour and commit it in the infantry support role.
Initially, the Red Army’s best armour was concentrated in the south near Kiev because that is where the Soviet general staff expected the Germans to make their main effort, but the remaining armour units were spread thinly in Lithuania and Byelorussia. The Northwestern Front’s 8th Army defended a 155km-wide front along the Lithuanian-East Prussian border with five rifle divisions and General-major Nikolai M. Shestopalov’s 12th Mechanized Corps, which had a total of 725 tanks and ninety-six armoured cars.[9]
Shestopalov’s corps had no modern tanks – BT-7s and T-26s – and it was dispersed across a 110km-wide area. Over 30 per cent of his tanks were non-operational.[10] The 12th Mechanized Corps had most of its artillery, but less than half its authorized trucks or radios, which made a war of movement or command and control difficult. On the other hand, the 12th Mechanized Corps had a fairly well-trained cadre, including Colonel Ivan Chernyakhovsky, commander of the 28th Tank Division. The remainder of the Lithuanian border was defended by the 11th Army, which had eight rifle divisions and General-major Aleksei V. Kurkin’s 3rd Mechanized Corps. Kurkin’s command had 630 tanks, including fifty-one KV heavy tanks and fifty T-34 medium tanks, but its constituent divisions were dispersed across a wide area. Altogether, the Red Army had a total of 1,355 tanks defending the Lithuanian border, although the majority were T-26 and BT-7 light tanks. In addition, the Northern Front had another 1,431 tanks available as reinforcements, with the 1st Mechanized Corps stationed near Pskov and the 10th Mechanized Corps near Leningrad; however, these were second-echelon formations equipped primarily with older light tanks, including BT-2 and BT-5s. The Red Army’s armour force in the Baltic Special Military District was inadequate in quality and was poorly deployed from the start, but also enjoyed the advantage of terrain that favored the defender, with its numerous rivers, marshes and forests.
Although the Red Army concentrated six mechanized corps with 2,200 tanks in the Western Front to defend the Bialystok salient, the only formation with any real combat capability was General-major Mikhail G. Khatskilevich’s 6th Mechanized Corps. Khatskilevich had nearly half the tanks in the Western Front under his command, including four heavy tank battalions with 114 KV heavy tanks and seven medium battalions with 238 T-34 tanks. In contrast, the 11th, 13th and 14th Mechanized Corps were at half strength or less and equipped primarily with T-26 light tanks. These four first-echelon corps – assigned to support the 3rd, 4th and 10th Armies – were arrayed in an arc from Grodno to Bialystok to Brest, and deployed 30–60km behind the border. Further back, between Baranovichi and Minsk, the Western Front had the 17th and 20th Mechanized Corps in second echelon, but these were both cadre formations with only 129 light tanks between them. General Dmitri Pavlov, who had been instrumental in guided Soviet tank developments in the late 1930s as head of the ABTU, was now in command of the Western Front and he had the four first echelon mechanized corps positioned to support his twelve front-line rifle divisions. Pavlov essentially committed all his armour to a positional infantry support role, leaving no room for maneuver options.
The Kiev Military District, soon to become the Western Front under General-Polkovnik Mikhail P. Kirponos, had a total of eight mechanized corps with over 4,400 tanks deployed in the region. Kirponos deployed the five strongest of these mechanized corps in his first echelon near the border, between Lvov and Rovno; these corps had between 45 and 90 per cent of their equipment. Among these, General-major Andrey Vlasov’s[11] 4th Mechanized Corps was the best-equipped armoured formation in the Red Army of June 1941, with 101 KV heavy tanks and 313 T-34 tanks. On paper, Vlasov’s corps was as strong as any German Panzergruppe and, in addition to its new tanks, had a full complement of artillery and over 2,000 trucks. Strikingly, the thirty-nine-year-old Vlasov had no previous experience with tanks, but was a rising star in the post-purge Red Army. Kirponos’ second echelon of armour consisted of three cadre mechanized corps deployed west of Kiev; these formations were equipped solely with light tanks and had between 20 and 40 per cent of their equipment. Further south, the Odessa Military District had two partly-equipped mechanized corps defending the Romanian border with 700 light tanks and a single battalion of T-34s. In central Russia, in the Moscow, Orel and Volga military districts, there were four more partly-equipped mechanized corps, with 2,000 light tanks but no KV or T-34 tanks. Another 5,000 Soviet light tanks were beyond the reach of the Wehrmacht, located in the Caucasus, Transbaykal, Central Asian and Far Eastern military districts. Even more important were the 15,000–20,000 tankers in these districts, who would provide the Stavka with a ready reserve of at least partly-trained armour crewmen to form new tank brigades.
8
Charles C. Sharp,
10
11
The same Andrey Vlasov who was captured in July 1942 and turned traitor, collaborating with the Germans to form the anti-Communist Russian Liberation Army (ROA).