Soviet Rear Turret Tanks

The idea of a rear fighting compartment was first implemented in several KV-4 projects. This concept was picked, for example, by K.I. Kuzmin, P.S. Tarapanin, and V.I. Tarotko, who took second place in the tender. Other engineers, for example, K. Buganov, picked that layout as well. It was explored several times more. In the spring of 1944, N.F. Shashmurin proposed a modernization of the IS-2. This tank had 5 crewmen, two of which were in the front, in the driver's compartment, and 3 were in the turret. The turret was in the rear of the hull, and the engine compartment was in the middle. The Object 705A, a competitor of the Object 260, took a similar shape. The rear fighting compartment layout was not unpopular among Soviet designers. However, each time the development stopped at the drawing board.

Imagination Versus Hitler

As practice shows, the temptation to make up your own tank is great. Sadly (or thankfully), few people are destined to become tank designers. Here is where limitless human imagination steps in to create more "improved" or completely fictional projects than there were real tanks made.

Most of these made up tanks and SPGs belong to Germany. This is not surprising, since German dreams of Wunderwaffen firmly lodged themselves in people's heads. However, a lot of made up tanks were "invented" for Germany's enemies. There are a few of these vehicles in World of Tanks, but this article is not only dedicated to them. There were plenty of authors around the world, including during the war. Of course, some of these tanks were only partially fictional.

Provornov's Light Tank: T-34 in Miniature

Hundreds of tank-themed proposals were sent to the Main Automobile and Armour Directorate of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. There was a wide spectrum of ideas and inventors. There were workers, scientists, engineers, ordinary citizens. A significant percentage was made up of military men of all ranks and branches. One of these men was Lieutenant Provornov, who proposed a light tank in July of 1942 with a number of original solutions. It was never built in metal, but fans of World of Tanks know it as LTP.

World of Tanks History Section: Star Over Kharkov

An enormous breach formed in the Soviet-German front after the encirclement and defeat of Paulus' 6th Army at Stalingrad. Another breach formed soon after, as a result of the Voronezh-Kastornaya Operation in January of 1943. This second breach was very tempting for the Soviets as it opened up a route to liberate Kharkov and the Donbass.

At the same time, Manstein was desperately holding onto Rostov-on-the-Don, saving the German 1st Tank Army. Even the tried and true German technique of shortening the front to increase the concentration of forces wasn't enough to resolve this crisis. The only weight that could tilt the scales in the Germans' favour was the injection of new forces.

World of Tanks History Section: Weathering the Winter Storm

In the winter of 1942, a noose tightened around over 200,000 men in the German 6th Army at Stalingrad. Hermann Goering, the commander of the Luftwaffe, beat his chest promising that aircraft could provide everything the encircled soldiers needed. However, German generals were not as optimistic. Too many men needed food, ammunition, and other necessities. Many kilometers of snowy steppe separated the airstrip at Morozovsk and Tatsinskiya from Stalingrad proper.

The only chance of survival for Paulus' army was a breakthrough. Sooner, rather than later, while the army could still fight.

World of Tanks History Section: How Nikolai Simonyak became General Breakthrough

The name Nikolai Pavlovich Simonyak is closely connected with the Red Army's successes in the Battle of Leningrad. In the winter of 1943, when the blockade was punctured, his 136th Rifle Division was fighting in the main assault, and its actions brought greatest success to the Red Army on January 12th. Here is where N.P. Simonyak earned the nickname "General Breakthrough".

Before the Breakthrough

Way back during the defense of the Hanko peninsula in 1941, Simonyak thoroughly built up a functional staff, a rare occurrence among Red Army commanders in the early war. This was noticeable in how the journals of the 8th Independent Rifle Brigade and then division which Nikolai Pavlovich commanded. Even in the battles of August-September of 1942 that ended poorly for the Red Army, his division, fighting in the 55th Army, probably performed better than any Soviet unit at Leningrad.

In November of 1942, Simonyak's 136th division was taken out of the 55th Army to the front reserve. The troops were busy with training. Everyone understood that a new breakthrough attempt was coming, and there was a lot to do before it could be successful.

World of Tanks History Section: Panfilov's Last Step Back

The front line passed near Kryukovo in late November of 1941: a settlement and a railway station. The Red Army and the Wehrmacht pushed against it like two boxers. One, more vicious and more experienced, was still attacking, but his blows lacked the crushing strength they had at the start of the bout. The other, forced to keep his guard up, was barely standing. He missed hits, spat blood, fell down. But every time he got up again and kept fighting.

One of Panfilov's men, regiment commander Bauryzhan Momysh-Uly, was looking for a place to stand for his men, the last line of defense. He couldn't find it. Then the senior lieutenant pulled out his knife. "I carefully cut the map in half and gave one half to Sulima. "Here," I said. "Burn it. We won't need to study terrain east of Kryukovo."" Moscow lay to the east, and Momysh-Uly hid it beyond the "end of the world", not just from the Germans, but from himself.

World of Tanks History Section: Lieutenant Krysov vs. Leibstandarte

In the middle of November of 1943, the Germans tried to take Kiev, recently liberated by the Red Army. A powerful strike force struck at Soviet forces in two directions on November 15th, 1943: west of Fastov and south of Zhitomir.

Among others, the 1st SS Tank Division "Leibstandarte" attacked towards the Zhitomir direction. This division included 96 Panther and PzIV tanks and 27 Tigers. The division was tasked with capturing Brusilov. The Germans circled around it and prepared for an offensive from the east. The village of Yastrebenka lay between Leibstandarte and Brusilov, and the Germans had to take it first.

World of Tanks History Section: Maloyaroslavl Line

The Wehrmacht's pincer closed around Vyazma on October 7th, 1941. Soldiers of the West and Reserve Fronts, about 600,000 men, were trapped in side. On the next day, Commander-in-Chief I. Stalin sent a telegram to Lieutenant-General M. Lukin, the commander of the surrounded forces. It began with the words "If you don't break through, I will have nothing and no one to defend Moscow. I repeat: nothing and no one!"

The chief wasn't joking. A new line of defense had to be built between the Germans and Moscow after the West and Reserve Fronts fell. This cost time, time that the enemy wasn't about to donate. Precious days and hours were won in fierce battles. The battle for the Maloyaroslavl fortified region (37th UR) was one of them.

MT-25: The Last Convertible Drive

Difficult battles of the Soviet-German front in 1941-1942 negated the advantages of light tanks. Equipped with relatively weak weapons and mostly bulletproof armour, light tanks as a class were becoming obsolete. The Germans were the first to see the end of the pre-war concept of a light tank, ceasing production in 1942. In the USSR, engineers were still trying to boost the combat performance of the T-70. The result of this work was the T-80 tank, but it came too late.

Meanwhile, proposals for radically new light tanks arrived. A proposal for the MT-25 tank was sent by Chelyabinsk engineers to Stalin on February 24th, 1943. Unlike many proposals, this one contained interesting ideas and was well thought out, and piqued the interest of the Main Armoured Directorate. What were these ideas, and why was the tank never built?

World of Tanks History Section: Battle for Dompaire

In the late summer and early fall of 1944, F. Leclerc's 2nd Armoured Division was confidently leading the Allied offensive in Lorraine. Colonel Paul de Langlade was the leader among leaders. His decisive actions threatened German units south of Nancy with encirclement.

The Germans decided to deliver a counterattack to correct matters. Now de Langlade, having scorned his enemy, had to deal with the consequences of his success.

World of Tanks History Section: Sagopshin Tank Battle, Prokhorovka in the Caucasus

The Wehrmacht offensive towards the Caucasus in 1942 had two goals. The secondary was to cut the line of Lend-Lease supplies, but the primary goal was to reach the local oil supply. At the time, Caucasian wells accounted for 70% of the USSR's oil. It's not hard to imagine what a loss of these wells would mean for the USSR, which was already doing poorly in 1942, or what a godsend it would be for the fuel-starved German army.

On September 2nd, 1942, the Germans crossed the Terek river and wedged themselves into the Soviet defenses. Fierce battles were fought around Malgobek. This village and others nearby cut off the Germans from the Alkhanchurtskaya Valley, from where the precious oil was a stone's throw away. The Germans picked the Sagopshin settlement (modern day Sagopshi), just south of Malgobek, to deliver their decisive strike. The elite 5th SS Motorized Division "Viking" was chosen to attack here.

World of Tanks History Section: The British Devil and His Brothers

No one could have guessed on September 15th, 1916 that many military theory books would become obsolete in an instant. The first tank entered its baptism by fire, and an unnamed German's cry "The devil is coming!" announced the coming of the new god of war.

French and German tanks came after British ones, but the "rhombus" was the first of the first. Nine tanks belonged to this family. Some of them made it in time for the war, others remained prototoypes. Episodes collected in this article will briefly describe the "rhomboid" family.

World of Tanks History Section: Crushing the Tarnopol Fortress

The main purpose of new IS-2 heavy tanks that appeared in the Red Army in 1944 was the destruction of German pillboxes with their 122 mm guns. Fighting enemy tanks was not a priority. However, plans and forecasts rarely work in war. The IS tanks got a chance to test themselves against enemy armour soon after they arrived on the battlefield.

This happened in the spring of 1944, during the Proskurovo-Chernovtsy operation. In addition to their other objectives, the Soviet forces had to surround the German 1st Tank Army. Colonel-General Chernyakhovskiy's 60th Army participated in this task. One of the first targets in its path was Tarnopol (modern day Ternopol). Hitler declared it a Festung: a city-fortress that German forces had to hold until the last man. On April 11th, it was time for the defenders to carry out that order.

World of Tanks History Section: Battle for Teploye

The Germans understood that the summer offensive against the Kursk salient will not be an easy one. German commanders took their time planning Operation Citadel, moving the start date several times. Meanwhile, the Red Army was digging in, wrapping the terrain in barbed wire and sowing mines. The Germans were also preparing, knowing that their units will be warmly received. Their hopes rested on new types of tanks: Tigers and Panthers, Ferdinand tank destroyers and Brummbar assault tanks.

On the north side, the Orel direction, Walter Model's 9th Army formed an armoured club. On July 5th, 1943, he sent his infantry into battle, supported by tanks, SPGs, and aircraft. Model held his main armoured force in reserve, hoping to exploit a breakthrough. On the first day of battle, the Germans reached the second line of Soviet defenses. By July 6th, main events were unfolding in two paces: near the Ponyri railroad station and in the Teploye-Olkhovatka sector. The events of the latter are, unfortunately, not as studied as well as the former.

World of Tanks History Section: Battle at Lukhanino

The Voronezh Front, protector of the south flank of the Kursk salient, found itself in the way of a powerful German offensive. However, this scenario played out quite unlike what German commanders expected. Most problems were faced by the 48th Tank Corps, which got stuck at the first Soviet line of defense on July 5th, 1943. Even 200 Panthers, thrown into battle near Cherkasskoye where Grossdeutschland division was spinning its wheels did not improve the situation.

Only late in the evening, having joined forces with the 3rd Tank Division, the German unit managed to enter Cherkasskoye. Soviet forces were fully expelled only by the next morning. The offensive had to be developed further, along the Belgorod-Oboyan highway, right through Lukhanino.

World of Tanks History Section: Nina Bondar

Flying was all the rage among Soviet youth in the few years preceding the Great Patriotic War. "Komsomol, to the skies!" the slogans called. Among the many young men and women who answered the call was a citizen of the city of Biysk named Nina Ilyinichna Bondar. In the late 1930s, while still in school, she joined and aero club and learned to fly the light U-2 biplane.

A month after the start of the Great Patriotic War, Nina came to the Biysk military commissariat and volunteered to join the Red Army. It was hard to refuse an officer's daughter, and one who could fly a plane at that. The young woman was directed to the Moscow Anti-Air Defense, where her familiar U-2 became a weapon of war. However, history clipped her wings.

World of Tanks History Section: 100 Years of Tanks

1916. For many months, endless trench warfare raged on along the fronts of the First World War. Attacks into a storm of enemy shells and bullets, thousands of dead men to push the enemy back hundreds of meters. Day after day, week after week. The way out of this dead end was coming. A new, never before seen weapon, a demon of technological warfare, was already coming to life within British arsenals. Its name was "tank".

In order to bring this fighting machine to life, four technical inventions were necessary, as well as one condition to bring them together. Here they are.

World of Tanks History Section: Liberation of Fastov

The Kiev Offensive Operation was not going smoothly for the Red Army. After penetrating the first line of enemy defenses, Soviet forces traveled 5-12 km, encountered German reserves, and started losing momentum. Nevertheless, on the second day of battles, November 4th, 1943, it was already clear that the Germans will not hold the city. The enemy started withdrawing westward. The Red Army attempted to prevent this, encircling the enemy and cutting their supply lines. The city of Fastov, some 70 kilometers south-west of Kiev, was among key positions that had to be captured for this plan to work. Tankers from P.S. Rybalko's 3rd Guards Army hit the city.

World of Tanks History Section: Breakthrough at Bogushevsk

On June 23rd, 1944, a mad steamroller entered the territory of Belarus. Thundering westward at a speed of twenty kilometers per day, it crushed and ground up German forces in its way. In mere days, Army Group Center was reduced into pitiful shreds. The demolition of German forces was unprecedented, to the point where the Western Allies were doubting Soviet reports. The only solution was to gather up foreign correspondents and hold the famous prisoner of war march. 19 German generals and 45,000 soldiers and officers became a convincing confirmation of the Red Army's success. But where did this skepticism come from?

There was a good reason for it. The winter of 1943-44 was an endless string of positional battles and unsuccessful offensives. The situation at the front was compared to the meat grinder at Verdun. Only in April of 1944 did spring rasputitsa force both sides to take a break. That is when plans for Operation Bagration took shape, envisioning simultaneous penetration of enemy defenses in six places, with surrounding and destruction of flanking groups at Vitebsk and Bobruisk, and further destruction of Army Group Center. One of the first obstacles on the way to Vitebsk was a small Belorussian village called Bogushevsk.