The Soviet Theory On Tank Use Secret Revealed

The theories of employment in Soviet Union initially heard again some current conceptions, so much that the Soviet wagons in the years winds were or extremely light or colossuses with two or more turrets, practically incapable of movement.

Nevertheless the marshal Tucha.evskij, treasuring the collaboration with the Reichswehr, it developed his based theories of employment of the armed wagons on a concept for the times revolutionary: the battle in depth (what, in the eighties, it will be the theoretical base for the Airland Battle 2000 in the United States).

Considering that the future of the battles was in the strengths' penetration mechanized in depth in the hostile device, they had to entirely be build great unities battleships, whose employment had to substantially foresee operations of trickery of the front (obviously Tucha.evskij had in mind the ample level spaces of Russia: an operation of the kind would have been very more difficulty in Central Europe). This involved a narrow collaboration among armored strengths and tactical aviation, is in operation of interdiction of the hostile lines of restocking, is in operation of the strengths' contrast armored hostile.

In the conception of Tuchacevskij the armored departments had to have both departments of infantry that of wagons, supported by a thick quantity of mechanized artillery and wagon-artillery. The wagons had to be type middle and it was considered fundamental the mobility, the possibility to engage both hostile wagons and (above all) departments of infantry. Particular importance was given to the autonomy, to the reliability of the tracks and the systems of transmission, to the train of reliable rolling also in cold environments, muddy, sandy or innevati. Close to the middle wagons they served heavy wagons thought, unlike the heavy wagons in study in Germany (means exclusively anti wagon) as wagons endowed with a powerful person artillery of support. Tuchacevskij and his collaborators debated then whether to build or less some great heavy wagons from staving in, usable only to break the hostile lines and left together with the infantry, between them idea was set aside, to be proposed then after 1937 with "monsters" pluritorretta. The armed wagons over that against the armored troops and the hostile trenches as fundamental means were thought for surprising to the sides the centers of command, the airports, the points of passage forced, the streets of communication and the fords, the arsenals and the polverieres hostile, penetrating in depth in way coordinated with a light (mechanized in theory, but in the experiments of the years '20-'30 he continued to also use departments climbed on to horse) infantry, parachutists (also thinking about building some airports over the hostile lines) and aerial restocking.

In the 1937 Tucha.evskij you/he/she was shot, for order of Stalin, together with almost all his collaborators and all the officers that didn't originate from his "gang of the turns" in the great purgations. However the projects for the wagons that he had developed (exploiting, among the other, the mechanical intuitions of Christie, fundamental for mobility and speed) continued their development. In 1941 USSR had available the wagons developed on the base of the theories of employment of Tucha.evskij: the heavy wagon KV 1 and the middle wagon T -34. Besides the Soviet theories insisted a lot on the big caliber of the guns of the wagons, with pieces notably more powerful persons (at least in the role of support of artillery) of those German, French and British.

To the eve of the war USSR was endowed with the best and more reliable wagons armed with the world. These however you/they had been impoverished after the purgations since not inclusive to full; the radio had for example been removed by the T-34s, anticipated in the first project, and they had been abolished the armored (you replace with the brigades) divisions, besides they missed the good official carristi, also because many veterans of the war of Spain had been eliminated in the purgations that followed him in the slow years'30. The armed wagon was tied up to the infantry, used as a strength of artillery of mobile support, role that (also anticipated also from the Soviet reformers of the years '20-'30 unlike theirs homologous German) was enormously limitative for the abilities of mobility and fight anti wagon of the Ts -34.