Russia and Ukraine

[Anomalocaris]

The T-34 didn’t have as much effect on the course of the war as often attributed to them.  some of the attribution came from post war german accounts design to explain why the germans didn’t do better, as their boasts of the superior tactical skills of the germany army imply they should. 

When the T-34 had a decisive superiority over german tanks, which is in 1941 and early 1942, there were very few of them.   Maybe 5% it the russian tank forces were T-34s.  By mid 1942, they were still superior to vast majority of germany tanks, but by a much smaller margin as the germans have introduced better tank guns and heavier armor on their existing tanks.  yet T-34 still only made up a small part of the Russian tank force.    By mid 1943, the germans have largely caught up in the technical quality of tanks by further upgrades of existing model as well as new models that were considerably superior to the T34.   Yet even then, T34 still made up less than half of the strength of each soviet tank division. The other half were still made up of light tanks that were not competitive with even the German tanks of 1941.    

Yet by autumn of 1943, the russians have beaten the germans in stalingrad, at Kursk, and  have completely seized the strategic and tactical initiative from the germans, and further have driven the germans largely out of much of ukraine.

The T-34 excelled in numbers, which I specifically mentioned in my post. If you look at Soviet tank production (by 1943, the Soviets were cranking out 1,300 T-34s per month), you'll see German tank production in the rear-view mirror. The Soviet tank also had much better mobility and somewhat better reliability than any German tank fielded in the war (needless to say, in much smaller numbers). Of course it was inferior to some German tanks, but how many of those did the Germans field? I'll let you look up those numbers yourself. You'll get a rude shock, I think.

The T-34 didn't win the war for the Russians, but the numbers of them sure helped. Between 1940 and 1945 the Soviets turned out almost 58,000 T-34s of various stripes. Now throw in 36,000 Il-2s, and you'll see that operational art isn't really needed, which, again, is shown by the Russian casualty rates. Compare those numbers to total German tank production, or total Stuka production, and see for yourself.

So, where are these factories nowadays pumping out thousands of tanks and planes a month? Oh, that's right, there are none. It follows therefore that using the WWII strategy of throwing masses at a problem and swamping it will not work nowadays with a smaller and weaker Russian army which seems to have forgotten some of the basic rules of warfighting, like cover your flanks, defend your supply lines, and combined arms operations.

The T-34 did not excel in numbers in the sense of being actually encountered in greatly superior numbers by the Germans until late 1943 or early 1944 despite consistently greater production figures compared to the German industry since around mid 1942.   There are several reasons for this:

1. The Soviets were on the defensive and retreating for much of 1942, and again for early parts of 1943.  So immobilized vehicles are permanently lost behind advancing German lines while germans retain possession of their own damaged and immobilized vehicles for potential recovery. 

2. The Soviets did not develop a sound system of damaged vehicle recovery until late 1943 or later,  so few recoverable damaged or immobilized vehicles were systematically recovered.  the germans had a highly efficient system for recovering, repairing and returning to service vehicles damaged in battle.   There are accounts of a single german tank having many crews being killed inside it, but the being recovered each time and repaired and returned to service each time.

3. Soviet tank crews and low level unit support elements through late 1943 were mostly undertrained to perform routine vehicle maintenance, so vehicle breakdowns were much more frequent than they should be, and vehicles are often abandoned after minor malfunctions that a better trained crew or low level logistic support could easily deal with.  there are many accounts of soviet tanks being discovered abandoned with minor mechanical issues that in the german army would have resulted in severe discipline for the crew to abandon. 

4. Soviets also had underdeveloped system of buddy recovery techniques and approaches. So vehicles immobilized by being stuck is also often abandoned rather than towed out by a buddy.   one observation germans made is stuck german tanks that can’t be pulled out is usually missing their tow cables.   stuck russian tanks usually still have their tow cables stowed. 

The result is while Soviet tank production had greatly surpassed German tank production by early 1943, the balance of strength actually on the battlefield did not begin to show it until we’ll after summer of 1943.