On German Losses

"There is confusion regarding the alleged precision... I'm not going to speak for the Western Allies, that's not my topic, but I had to work with German losses. And believe me, the mess with their counting of losses is much greater than ours. We had a very specific Form #8, "Report on Losses", everyone had to fill it out, if it had to be revised then another form would be submitted. The Germans had nothing like this. As for the German data, you can take a look at just one period, with static positions, let's say Sevastopol. Here's a report by the army Senior Quartermaster. Compare it to the list of names of killed officers. They counted officers separately and NCOs and soldiers separately. The difference in numbers can be as high as 50%, one and a half times higher when you count them by name.
...
Overall, if you take 1944 and count the losses in Bagration, it's a horrible mess. Reports on losses get delayed until the fall. That same 17th Army in Crimea that was defeated on the peninsula only reports its losses several weeks later. They were only counted several weeks later. If we take the 10-day report of the medical service for the army, the number of losses in Crimea are almost an order of magnitude less than the losses that were actually taken and reported on later. This precision is greatly exaggerated. It's the opposite: the Germans were more interested in what they had now, and the losses they sustained, well, the numbers were often counted very poorly. Paulus' army doctor at Stalingrad writes reports, compare it with the 10-day reports, the difference is huge, 20%. Where it comes from, it's hard to say, but it's there a lot. The lower the level, the deeper you have to dig to discover precise numbers."

Aleksei Isayev, Battle for Moscow

T-60 Amour QA

"To the director of the Vyksa "DRO" factory, comrade Volkov
CC: GABTU Military Representative at the "DRO" factory, Military Engineer 2nd Grade comrade Zimin
CC: Military Machinebuilding Department

Reply to 5/109s

The list of parts to be tested by shooting and parts not to be tested by shooting are attached to technical requirements #060 TU-1 (wartime conditions for producing "060" T-70 hulls) sent to your address. Use these requirements as a benchmark. The conditions for testing plates (type of bullet, number of hits, range) are specified in the wartime requirements for tank armour, which are also present at your factory.

Test 10% of front, side, and rear hull plates and turrets according to the military representative's orders.

Deputy GABTU BTU Chief, Military Engineer 1st Grade, Alymov
GABTU BTU Military Commissar [illegible]"

CAMD RF 38-11355-20

Twice Hero of the Soviet Union

"Award Order

1. Name: Hohryakov, Semyon Vasilyevich
2. Title: Guards Major
3. Position: Commander of the 209th Tank Battalion, 54th Guards Tank Briade, 7th Guards Tank Corps, 3rd Guards Tank Army
   is nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

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.

s.Pz.B. 41 Extras

Here are two more diagrams to accompany the s.Pz.B. 41 article:

Damper

High explosive (left) and armour piercing (right) ammunition.

Object 237's First Steps

"Volume of trials

After assembly, the tank was broken in (before a turret was installed) over a distance of 23 kilometers.

The breaking in occurred at all gears:

• 2 km in first gear
• 3 km in second gear
• 4 km in third gear
• 5 km in fourth gear
• 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th gears were broken in over a combined distance of 9 km

After transport from factory #100 to factory #200, the Kirov factory, and back, the tank was broken in over a distance of 12 km.

After final tuning of mechanisms, the tank was sent to factory mobility trials. Overall, during factory trials, the tank traveled 630 km, of those 571 km (over three rounds) were in regular mode and 59 were in breaking in mode.

Heroic IS-85 Commander

"Award Order

1. Name: Prikhodtsev, Vasiliy Ivanovich
2. Rank: Guards Lieutenant
3. Position: Tank commander, 1st Independent Guards Tank Regiment of the Supreme Command Reserve
   is nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

A German View of Teploye: Artillery

Part 1: Tanks

" 2. Tactical artillery experience

1. Enemy artillery

Unlike previous experience, this time we could not observe Russian fire control. The Russians fired precisely. A shift towards larger calibers, 122 mm and 152 mm, was noticed. Enemy action against our artillery was insufficient. If the Russians discovered our battery, they fired too few shells to destroy it. On the other hand, in many cases, the concentrated fire of mortars, light and medium batteries, and rocket artillery could weaken the advance of our motorized infantry at its initial positions and during the attack that it lacked the strength for a penetration.

Toldi: The Hungarian Light Knight

Sometimes fairly good designs of military hardware don't reach their true potential because they appeared in the wrong time or in the wrong place. Light tanks, widely in use on all theaters of WWII, disappeared rather quickly from the Eastern Front, freeing up the space for their heavier brothers. The Hungarian Toldi tank, the first mass produced tank for the country, was one of them.