CMBB v CMAK

[Mad Russian]

Now then, let's take a look at the Soviet tank force.

Modern Soviet tanks...well let's just take what was produced in 1940 as being new and not in need of major repairs. While that is not 100% accurate it should suffice to show the number of tanks that were pretty much battle worthy without any issues in June 1941.

Production figures for 1940 are:

T-26 - 1,549

BT-8 - 706

T-28 - 12

T-34 - 117

KV-1 - 141

KV-2 - 102

for a 1941 tank total of 2627. All of which would have to be considered modern and in reasonable mechanical shape. All of them capable of killing anything below a PzIII which was roughly 2/3 of the German invading tanks.

Well prepared crews as you call them mean nothing if when they hit a German tank it was with an HE round instead of an AP round.

As you point out, there were in the Soviet inventory around 800 T-34 and KV tanks available, in June of 1941. I understand that they went to war often untrained. Please explain to me what difference it makes if a tank with a trained crew or an untrained crew gets a hit on an enemy tank?

None.

What does matter is if the round that hits that tank is an HE round or an AP round. The Soviets were extremely restricted in their effectiveness by the fact, that the new guns, on the new tanks, were missing their AP rounds.

Through your meandering posts you keep getting away from that point. That was what my point has been all along. We can debate the facts and figures of tank production, preparedness, effectiveness all day long, and I'll be happy to do that with you, but the fact still remains that the Russians went to war with the backbone of their armored forces being hampered with a severe shortage of AP rounds and that is often not shown in CMBB.

Again, you prove my point. The Soviets were able to do some very impressive things with very low numbers of T-34's. What more could have been accomplished if those same tanks had been fulled equipped with their AP rounds?

I agree that the books on Glantz are good. But they deal almost exclusively with higher level Soviet operations, which earlier you disdained as being unreliable for source information about the tactical deployment of tank warfare. You wanted then to use the

"I prefer to read books, referring to official reports of engineers and officers, responsible for comparative testing and analysis of related first-eye reports from the front. Things look very different, than in general memoirs. And one should also remember that tank is not only gun and armor."

You are moving back and forth between source material as it suits you. Which is okay. That's how you figure what the closest thing we will ever define the truth to be. What makes sense and what is quoted by more than one person in more than one place. What I find interesting when you move back and forth though is your opinion sometimes changes as you go.

There are multiples of volumes on the German operations that are good. There are some good histories on Soviet operations as well, the John Erickson series on the Soviet operations to mention just one. His are classics.

Good Hunting.

MR