Five Years of Blogging

In my update a year ago, I promised something big by my fifth blogging anniversary. I'm happy to report on not just one, but two notable milestones!

The first, and probably most significant, is moving from online to paper. My translations have been published before, but this year saw the release of my first completely original work being printed. In addition to that, I started writing articles for the Russian military history website Warspot, which many of you will recognize as the source of many translations on this blog. So far I'm writing at a rate of about one article per month, but that might increase in the future. Articles about British and American evaluations of German armour seem to be most popular so far, with an analysis of the King Tiger sitting at nearly 20,000 views, the Panther at over 12,000 views, and the Tiger at nearly 10,000. Articles on Sherman tanks are proving to be quite popular as well, with the Sherman V and M4A1(76)W sitting at over 7,000 each, despite being significantly more recent. Canadian subject matter is proving to be less popular, with the Valentine VII falling short of 7,000 views and the Ram at under 5,000.

Unfortunately for my English speaking readers, all of these articles are in Russian. Currently, The Armor Journal has first dibs on the English versions, but the articles will be posted here some time after they are published. 

Another new feature (or so old it's new again) is my Twitter, which is slowly but surely gaining followers at an average rate of one per day (give or take). 

Now, for the stats you're used to. I'm up to 1687 published articles (up from 1381), and 3,039,948 views (up from 2,161,945). Google Analytics congratulated me on a record high number of unique users for the month of January. It's great to see how my readership is growing!

The demographics haven't changed much. The US preserves its lead, but the UK broke away from Germany, setting second and third place pretty steadily. Russia, Canada, Poland, and France keep their positions. Finland has a fair lead on Austria for eighth place, and the tenth place now belongs to Spain instead of South Korea. 

Aside from that, a few more book citations, a handful of new archive sources, and an upcoming appearance in a podcast, so if you just can't get enough of Tank Archives, there's plenty of content to look forward to. Thank you for five wonderful years!

Aircraft Costs

"Prime cost of important products of the People's Commissariat of Aircraft Production

Item	Factory	Prime in thousands cost during			% change in May
		June 1941	1st quarter 1942	May 1942	Compared to June 1941	Compared to 1st quarter 1942
Aircraft
PE-2	#22	455.9	406.3	-	-	-
PE-2	#39	577.1	524.0	462.6	-19.8	-12.0
IL-4	#126	1148.0	479.0	409.4	-64.4	-14.5
IL-2	#18	308.5	214.5	208.0	-32.6	-3.0
PS-84	#84	569.1	574.3	531.0	-6.5	-7.5
LAGG-3	#21	265.5	154.3	118.9	-55.0	-23.9
YaK-1	#292	188.7	112.0	93.8	-50.5	-16.2
UT-2	#47	34.5	40.0	40.8	+9.0	+1.0
U-2	#387	29.6	26.9	23.2	-21.8	-14.0
Engines
M105R	#16	71.7	77.3	-	-	-
M82	#19	157.7	82.0	73.8	-53.2	-10.0
M62IR	#19	56.8	45.0	44.9	-21.0	-0.2
AM38	#24	60.5	87.0	54.1	-10.5	-37.8
M105P	#26	43.4	67.7	51.0	+9.0	-24.4
M88	#29	52.2	53.5	49.5	-5.2	-7.5
M11	#154	11.1	11.0	9.9	-11.0	-10.0

"

Via Yuri Pasholok.

SU-152 in Combat

"1836th Heavy Self Propelled Artillery Regiment

The 1838th Guards Heavy Self Propelled Artillery Regiment participated in offensive and defensive combat.

In offensive combat, the regiment fought among the tanks and behind them, destroying Tiger tanks and Ferdinand SPGs in counterattacks and ambushes, as well as enemy fortifications and dugouts.

In defensive combat, the regiment fought from ambushes, by the battery, positioned in locations of likely enemy tank attacks. Ambushes and maneuvers ensured that enemy tanks and SPGs were destroyed while SU-152s remained invulnerable.

An Alternative from Gorky

The history of Soviet light SPGs is inseparable from the city of Gorky, modern day Nizhniy Novgorod. Guns installed on Soviet light SPGs were developed and built here. The ZIS-30, the first Soviet wartime light SPG, was also created here. Gorky housed the main manufacturing base of T-60 and T-70 tanks, which were used as SPG chassis. It's not surprising that the design bureau of the Molotov GAZ factory eventually switched to building SPGs. The GAZ-71 and GAZ-72 SPGs might have become the main light SPGs of the Red Army.

Intermediate Cartridge

"Act
December 25th, 1941
Chebarkul, Chelyabinsk oblast

We, the undersigned, Chief of the 1st Department of the NIPSVO, Military Engineer 1st Class R.A. Kulinich, Chief of the Design Department, Intendant 1st Class V.F. Kuzmischev, and an engineer of the Design Department, Military Technician 1st Class Yermolenko, compose this act to certify that the NIPSVO Design Department worked  on a 5.6 mm semiautomatic rifle according to GAU project #380.

Moonlighting

"From March 26th to April 1st, 1942

There is no change in the [123rd] brigade's location. Training continues. Tank companies are working on exercise 4 of the KOP-38 manual.

Between March 26th and March 28th, the brigade Staff, commanders, and company commissars participated in communications, chemical, and small arms training: exercise 2 of the KOP-38 with personal weapons.

45 mm Tank Destroyer

"Attachment #3 to GOKO decree #2429ss

October 19th, 1942

Tactical-technical characteristics for a 45 mm SPG

1. Purpose of the SPG

The 45 mm SPG is designed to function as a weapon in tank destroyer regiments and in anti-tank batteries of moto-mechanized units to combat enemy infantry and tanks.

Shermans in the Mud

Few people interested in WWII armoured warfare haven't seen this video depicting Swedish trials of a Sherman, a Churchill, and a Panther in difficult off-road conditions. Many people, after having seen this video, readily claim that the Sherman had inferior off-road mobility to the Panther. Certainly, it's hard to argue with the video, but there is a caveat. There were many different kinds of Shermans, and the video only tests one of them. I thought I'd take a look at some trials performed by the Western Allies in Europe to see if they arrived at the same results.

British Prime Minister in the USSR

Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, visited Moscow in August of 1942. However, a Churchill arrived a month prior to that in another Soviet city, Archangelsk, with the PQ-17 caravan, and not just one. These, of course, were Churchill II and III infantry tanks. 301 tanks of this type were sent to the USSR, 253 of which arrived at their destination. Despite a rather small volume of shipments, the prime minister's namesake played an important role on the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War. Suffice it to say that these tanks, along with the KV-1S, were the primary heavy tanks of the Red Army during the Battle for Prokhorovka.

AK Accessories

The accuracy of an automatic weapon is important, and many experiments were run on the AK platform to figure out if it can be increased. A number of experimental muzzle devices were built for this purpose. _tezka provided this picture.

Left to right: similar to stock type, brake-compensator, two chamber, flash suppressor, single chamber, reactive.