Necessary Improvisations

The American movie Fury, which came out in 2014, was memorable, in part, due to the unusual exterior of the tank, which effectively became one of the main characters. Even though Fury's equipment was, at best, "based on a true story", and the M4A2E8 never fought with the American army, the creators of the movie managed to capture the overall idea of field improvisations. These modifications of American tanks in Europe were a widespread phenomenon, and came about out of necessity.

GVG Machinegun

The Red Army started WWII with two infantry machineguns: the light magazine fed handheld DP and heavy belt fed mounted Maxim. Both were quite aged designs by the time, so a replacement was considered. The GVG was one such replacement, eventually morphing beyond all recognition into the SG-43.

Photo #1. Magazine fed GVG machinegun in combat position (bipod with limiters)

Photo #2. View from the right. GVG machinegun in transport position.

KS-77: M-8 on T-40 Chassis

"Meeting minutes for the technical meeting on the issue of producing the first batch of the KS-77 vehicle.

Moscow, Compressor factory, October 7th, 1941

Present:

• Factory director, M.I. Boganov
• NKOM TO Chief, P.F. Ostapchuk
• NKOM TO Deputy Chief, I.S. Zakharov
• Deputy director for special production, I.A. Dorozhkin
• Chief engineer, V.P. Barmin
• Chief of the 1st Section, 3rd Department of the GUVMCh, Military Engineer 2nd Class, comrade Kopylov
• Central Committee of the VKP(b) instructor, comrade Volkov
• Military Repersentative from the GUVMCh, Military Technician 1st Class, comrade Usachev

Conclusions:

SG-122 Conversion

"To the Chief of the Red Army GAU, Colonel-General comrade Yakovlev

Report on the SG-122 SPGs

In December of 1942, factory #40 produced 20 SG-122 SPGs on the chassis of German PzIII and StuG vehicles. Production was later stopped due to defects of the gun mount.

Of the overall number produced, 12 SG-122s were passed on to equip the 1435th SPG Regiment. During fighting on the Western Front, all 12 SG-122s were disabled: of them, 3 were lost irreparably and 9 need factory repairs. Out of those that need factory repairs, 6 vehicles arrived at factory #37 on February 8th, 1943.

Reliability and Repairs in the 2nd Tank Army

At the beginning of the 2nd Tank Army's offensive during the Battle of Kursk, on July 16th, the army's technical services performed an inventory of their vehicles' remaining service life.

Type	Number	Of those, functional	Remaining engine hours
			under 50	50-100	150-200	over 200
T-34	276	238	-	167	71	-
T-70	109	92	-	67	25	-
T-60	17	16	-	16	-	-

Marder II: Light Tank Destroyer

By the end of 1941, the Germans began to understand that the time of light tanks was over. This also applied to the PzII tank. By that time, it's main enemy was medium tanks with shellproof armour, against which the 20 mm autocannon was useless. Production of light tanks ended in Germany in the summer of 1942, but that doesn't mean that the PzII chassis was done for. Work on light SPGs on its chassis began in the spring. One of them was a tank destroyer that is best known as the Marder II.

An Aryan From Poland

The Red Army GABTU had a very vague idea about the armoured vehicles of its potential enemy at the start of World War II. The same could be said about the other members of what would become the Allies. For obvious reasons, there was very little available information about tanks made by Germany and its allies. Mainly, it could be obtained from encyclopedias, which were full of errors. The ability to properly study the foreign tanks was only possible after combat began. In this respect, the USSR was ahead of the rest of the world. The first trophies began arriving from Spain: a captured PzI Ausf. A and an Italian L3/35. In the summer of 1939, a Japanese Ha-Go tank was captured in the Far East. The list of trophies grew with the start of WWII. The German PzII Ausf. C was among them.

Armoury of the Moscow People's Militia

In September of 1941, things weren't looking so good for the Red Army. The possibility of the German army reaching, and even taking, Moscow was on the horizon. A People's Militia was formed to defend the city if necessary. At the same time, an inventory of obsolete weapons was taken, to see what they could be equipped with if the regular army consumes all of the currently produced guns. Numbers of functional guns and those in need of repairs are given, the latter in brackets.

Any modern collector would be envious of the result:

Exotic Trophies

"September 15th, 1945

To the commander of the Armoured and Mechanized Forces of the Red Army, comrade Fedorenko

I present to you brief descriptions of the "Maus" superheavy tank, a self propelled AA gun, and a "Tiger-mortar" 380 mm SPG. I report that the aforementioned vehicles, as well as an 88 mm tank destroyer, were sent to Moscow to the Kubinka Scientific Research Tank Proving Grounds.

Stuart Commander

"Award Order

1. Name: Karev, Yuriy Nikiforovich
2. Rank: Major
3. Position, unit: commander of the 258th Independent Tank Battalion, Northern Group, Transcaucasian Front
   is nominated for the Order of the Red Star.