Armor is strong and our tanks are fast
25 June 1941 - the fourth day of the war. In the book of records, the chief of the German general staff, Colonel General Halder, one after another victorious reports and suddenly after talking on the phone with the headquarters of Army Group Center there should be an entry: "The data on the new type of Russian heavy tank was obtained: 52 tons of weight, frontal armor - 37 cm (?), Airborne armor - 8 cm ... 50-mm anti-tank gun penetrates armor only under the gun turret.88-mm anti-aircraft gun, apparently, also pierces airborne armor (it is not yet known). one new tank, thief the 75-mm cannon and three machine guns. "
So the German command first learned about the new Soviet tanks KB and T-34.
Strictly speaking, even before the war, German intelligence learned of the existence of the T-34 and KV tanks. But this information was contradictory and was not brought to the attention of the field forces.
It immediately turned out that all German tank and anti-tank guns (PTP) did not penetrate the armor of KB and T-34 tanks, and Soviet 76-mm tank guns with a length of 30 klb. (L-11 and F-32) and in 40 CL. (F-34 and ZIS-5) pierce the armor of all German tanks at a distance of up to 1000 m. After the first battles, the German soldiers christened 37-mm * PTP "door hammers" and "army crackers". One of the reports said that the calculation of 37-mm PTP achieved 23 hits in the same T-34 tank and only when the shell hit the base of the tower, the tank was incapacitated. The T-III tank from 50 meters hit the T-34 four times, and then from 20 meters again, but all the shells broke into pieces without damaging the armor.
Here a quite reasonable question arises from the reader (the author claims that our PTP and tanks were qualitatively superior to the German ones), so how can we explain that in the 1941, the Red Army lost 20,5 thousands of tanks and 12 thousands of anti-tank guns? There are more than enough reasons for this. But the most important thing is that the unmoved unmobilized Red Army faced an army that had fought for two years. Army, which had the best equipment in the world and the best soldier in the world; It took the army only a month to defeat the united armies of England, France, Belgium and Holland in 1940.
New tanks KB and T-34 just started to enter the army and were not mastered by personnel. Few of the drivers had more than five hours of tank driving experience, and many crews had never conducted training shooting. And not only tanks fought. Everyone knows the absolute superiority of the Germans in the air. And our field troops could fight off the Luftwaffe exclusively from Maxim’s 7,62-mm machine guns. German artillery was motorized almost 100%, and ours - 20%. Finally, the level of senior officers left much to be desired. The repression of 1937 significantly weakened the power of the Red Army, although they should not overestimate their role. After all, the repressed marshals and commanders were mostly not professional military men, but heroes of the Civil War, promoted by Trotsky and Sklyansky. Civil war or unrest in the state usually leads to the leadership of an army of incompetent people. Among the brilliant pleiad of Napoleon's marshals, there were no heroes who fought Bastille, Lyon and Marcel, and the commanders of the Civil War during the Great Patriotic War who had survived the repression did not show themselves. Locksmith can hang marshal shoulder straps, personal security guard - generals, journalist - rear admiral, and they will faithfully serve the owner, protecting his power from the "internal enemy", but in the fight against the external enemy, you can only expect defeats.
We will return to the narrow topic of the article on the ratio of losses of Soviet heavy and medium tanks and anti-tank guns of the Reich. By 1 June 1941, the armed forces of the Wehrmacht consisted of 181 - 28-mm, 1047 - 50-mm and 14459 - 37-mm anti-tank guns. In addition, the Germans had several thousand captured PTP: Czech 37-mm and 47-mm PTP, Austrian 47-mm PTP arr. 35 / 36, French 25-mm and 47-mm PTP.
The leadership of the Wehrmacht at the end of 1941 of the year and the first half of 1942 of the year undertook emergency measures to provide the troops with a materiel capable of hitting T-34 and KV tanks. The Germans took two paths: first, they created new ammunition for tank and anti-tank guns that were in service, and secondly, new, more powerful TAPs appeared in the troops.
In the ammunition of all tank and anti-tank guns were introduced sabot shells, sharply increased armor penetration, however, at short distances. The guns of caliber 75 mm and above received cumulative projectiles, armor penetration of which did not depend on the firing range. For 37-mm PTP was adopted over-caliber cumulative mine, charged from the barrel. The tabular firing range of such a mine was 300 m, and there is no reason to speak about the rate of fire and accuracy of mine firing. Presumably, the mine was adopted mainly to raise the morale of the calculations.
In 1941-1942, the Germans didn’t follow the path of creating heavy TAPs, hopes for a "blitzkrieg", for light TAPs with a conical bore, and the conservatism of German generals, who are not psychologically ready to move from 37 / 35 CANCER, to two years of shooting tanks all over Europe, to 36-mm or 88-mm guns.
Anti-tank cannons with a conical bore 28 / 20-mm S.Pz.B.41, 42 / 28-mm CANCER 41 and 75 / 55-mm CANCER 41 were, of course, engineering masterpieces. Such trunks consisted of several alternating conical and cylindrical sections. The shells had a special design of the lead, allowing for a reduction in its diameter as the projectile moves along the channel. Thus, the most complete use of the pressure of powder gases to the bottom of the projectile was ensured (by reducing the cross-sectional area of the projectile). In 28-mm PTP arr. 1941 g. Bore was reduced from mm xnumx to mm xnumx; in 28-mm PTP arr. 20 g. - from 42 to 1941 mm; and 42-mm PTP arr. 28 g. - from 75 to 1941 mm.
The guns with a tapered barrel ensured good armor penetration at small and medium shooting distances. But their production was very difficult and expensive. Barrel vitality was low - no more than 500 shots, that is, 10-20 times less than conventional PTP. The Germans did not manage to establish large-scale production of such cannons with a tapered barrel, and in 1943, their production was completely stopped.
It should be noted that experiments with cannons with a tapered barrel were also conducted in the USSR. Thus, in 1941-1948, several samples of such tools were developed and tested in the Central Design Bureau of Grabin and in OKB-172, but the management decided that their disadvantages were superior to their merits. In the USSR, guns with a conical canal were not commercialized either during or after the war.
More successful was the use of captured technology. In 1941, the Germans put a 50-mm CANCER 38 on the gun carriage of a French 75-captured divisional cannon arr. 1897 g., Providing it with a muzzle brake. But the most effective German anti-tank gun (up to 1943 of the year) was ... the Soviet X-NUMX-mm divisional gun F-76, which received the German name PAK 22. Several hundred of captured F-36 were redone in PTP both in towed version and on the chassis of T-II and 22 (t) tanks. The Germans squandered the chamber F-38, increased the charge 22 times, set the muzzle brake, reduced the angle of elevation and eliminated the mechanism of variable rollback. It should be noted here that the Germans simply corrected the “whims” of Tukhachevsky and a number of other figures who at one time forced Grabin in such a powerful weapon to use the sleeve of the 2,4 g., Which limited the weight of the charge, and enter the elevation angle + 1900 - ... for firing at airplanes.
SAU Marder II with a captured Soviet gun (full name 7,62 cm PaK (r) auf PzKpfw ll Ausf D Marder II (SdKfz 132). 20 December 1941 of the year Alkett received an order to install a trophy Soviet divisional gun F-22 sample. XNXX FNXX, XNXX, XNXX, XNXX, XNXX) The German light tank chassis PzKpfw ll Ausf D. The F-1936 cannon was seized by the Wehrmacht in the first weeks of the war against the USSR and modernized by the Germans: in particular, the muzzle brake was introduced, and ammunition production was established in Germany. 22 mm armor-piercing the Pzgr 76 projectile left the barrel of this gun at a speed of 39 m / s and at a distance of 740 m punched 1000-mm armor.
Soldiers of the German 19 Tank Division induce an 28-mm light anti-tank gun s.Pz.B.41. The 2,8 cm schwere Panzerbüchse 41 in the Wehrmacht was classified as a heavy anti-tank gun, but since it had all the signs of artillery (projectile shooting, large enough caliber, gun carriage, recoil devices, inability to carry by one person (weight 229 kg), in the Soviet, American documents of the war he was attributed to light anti-tank guns.
As a result, the susceptibility of Soviet heavy and medium tanks grew steadily. So, until September 1942, the through holes of these tanks were 46% and non-through 54% (i.e. most of the projectiles hit did not penetrate the armor), but during the battle for Stalingrad these figures were already 55% and 45%, in Kursk the battle, respectively, 88% and 12%, and finally, in 1944-1945, from 92% to 99,% of the shells that hit heavy and medium tanks pierced their armor.
Light sub-caliber shells often, after breaking through armor, lost most of the kinetic energy and could not destroy the tank. So, at Stalingrad, on one T-34 tank that was put out of action, 4,9 had average shells hit, and in 1944-1945, 1,5-1,8 hits were required for this.
The wounded T-34 tank No.563-74 from the 15-th tank regiment of the 8-th tank division, which crushed the German anti-tank gun PaK-38 during the battle. 25 June 1941, the machine as part of the regiment participated in the battle with the Wehrmacht 97 light infantry division under the settlement of Magerov (22 km east of Nemirov). Also, in the battle, the crew of this tank destroyed the artillery on the basis of the captured French wedge heel “Renault UE”.
The total destruction of the T-34 tanks occurred only with the simultaneous explosion of the ammunition, which was achieved by direct hit in the ammunition ammunition shells that had after the penetration of armor large kinetic energy or cumulative shells. Hit of small-caliber shells rarely led to an explosion of ammunition on the T-34. Thus, during the Stalingrad operation, the percentage of destroyed tanks of the total number of irretrievable losses was about 1%, and in 1943 in different operations this figure was already 30-40%. It is curious that there were no cases of complete destruction of the T-70 and other light tanks from an explosion of ammunition during the war. By tests, it was found that 45-mm ammunition shells do not detonate. Cases of complete destruction of the KB tanks were slightly less than the T-34, which is explained by the lower residual energy of the projectiles after penetrating thicker armor, which was insufficient for the explosion of ammunition.
After only two years of fighting the T-34 and KB tanks, the German leadership decided to switch to tank and anti-tank guns of a caliber over 75 mm. Such tools were created on the basis of 88-mm and 128-mm anti-aircraft guns. By the way, the same was done in the USSR, taking the 85-mm anti-aircraft gun as a basis. 1939. In 1942, the 88-mm tank gun rev.36, mounted on Tiger tanks, was adopted by the Wehrmacht. And in 1943, the 88-mm PTP revision 43 and revision 43 / 41, as well as the 88-mm tank gun, were put into service. obn.xnumx, who had the same ballistics and ammunition. The 43 tank cannon was mounted on the Royal Tiger tanks, and the 43 PTP was mounted on the Elephant, Jagdpanther, Nashorn and Horniss ACSs, as well as on a wheeled gun carriage.
The Germans considered the most favorable distances for firing tanks from their tank and anti-tank artillery, based on its armor piercing ability: for 37-mm and 50-mm guns - 250-300 m; for 75-mm guns - 800-900 m and for 88-mm guns - 1500 m. To fire from long distances was considered impractical.
At the beginning of the war, the shelling distances of our tanks, as a rule, did not exceed 300 m. With the advent of 75 caliber mm and 88 mm guns with an initial speed of an 1000 armor-piercing projectile, the tank shelling distance increased significantly.
The 735 surveys of Soviet-wrecked medium and heavy tanks and SPGs based on them, conducted by our specialists in 1943-1944, showed that the range of shelling of our tanks and SPGs from 75-mm tank and anti-tank guns ranged in most cases from 200 to 1000 and usually did not exceed 1600 m. For 88-mm guns, the distance ranged from 300 to 1400 m and usually did not exceed 1800-2000 m (see Table 1).
A rare copy of the tank EC-2. Minsk, parade 1 May 1948 of the year. In the foreground is the IS-2 tank with the “German” type of muzzle brake and the piston shutter of the D-25 cannon, one of the very first EC-2 (EC-122) tanks launched during World War II. Minsk, parade 1 May 1948 of the year.
Tank column (tanks T-34-85) "20 years of Soviet Uzbekistan" on the march. 2-th Belarusian Front. From the memoirs of the officer of the 406-th separate machine-gun artillery battalion (OPAB) L.S. Sverdlov: “On the approaches to the town of Sopot, I remember one terrible picture. There is an entire column of our tanks, 20 cars, standing on the road in line, burned by the German“ faoustists. ”There is an inscription on the tanks -“ Twenty years of the Uzbek SSR. ” “There, on the twenty-fifth of March, an unsuccessful assault on the city was undertaken, but the artillery preparation did not reach its goal, many firing points were not suppressed.”
Soviet tank EC-2 №537 Lieutenant B.I. Degtyarev from the 87-th separate Guards heavy tank regiment, shot down at Striegauer Platz in the German city of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). The tank is known from the photograph of Anatoly Egorov "Musical moment". From 1 to 7, a regiment of 5 tanks EC-2 supported the infantry of the 112 and 359 rifle divisions in the southwestern part of the city. Over the 7 days of fighting, Soviet troops advanced only a few blocks. The tank regiment did not conduct more active operations. The EC-2 in the photo is from the first issues, with a viewing "hatch-plug" of the driver.
Gunners firing from the German 75-mm anti-tank gun PaK 40. The calculation is German-Romanian: the commander and the gunner (on the left) are in German uniform, and the three on the right (loader and ammunition carriers) are in Romanian (windings on legs, characteristic belts). Soviet-Romanian border area
Consider the distribution of the loss of T-34 tanks from different calibers of guns during the war - see Table 2. Thus, starting with the Battle of Oryol 1943, the tanks suffered the greatest losses from tank and anti-tank guns of the 75 caliber and 88 mm.
In total, the USSR entered the war with 22,6 thousands of all types of tanks. During the war, 86,1 thousand arrived and 83,5 thousands were lost (see Table 3 and 4). The irretrievable loss of tanks remaining on the territory after the battle amounted to 44 as a whole of all combat losses, and specifically for T-34 - 44%.
Combat losses of our tanks in 1943-1945 by types of weapons: from artillery fire - 88-91%; from mines and landmines - 8-4%; from bombs and artillery fire aviation - 4-5%. The cause of more than 90% of the irretrievable losses was artillery fire.
These data are averaged and in some cases there were significant deviations. So, in 1944, on the Karelian front, mine losses amounted to 35% of combat losses.
Losses from bombs and artillery fire of aviation only in some cases reached 10-15%. As an example, you can bring experienced shooting at the NIIBT training ground when, in a quiet environment, from a 300 distance from 400 shots of LaGG-35 aircraft guns hit the 3 fixed tanks of the projectile, and from the IL-3 cannons you shot 2 projectile from 3.
German anti-tank towed guns of the period of the 2 th World War
- Alexander Shirokorad, magazine "Technics and weapons"
- http://waralbum.ru
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