Secrets of the theory and tactics of a tank ram. The main purpose of a tank ram is to disable enemy equipment. First of all, the attacker seeks to damage the most vulnerable element of the opponent's tank - the chassis.
An aerial ram is a rather complicated maneuver: in most cases, especially in direct collisions, both aircraft crash, and only occasionally the attacking pilot manages to escape by jumping out with a parachute. A unique master of air ramming was, in particular, Boris Kovzan, who in 1941-1942 shot down four enemy aircraft by ramming and in three cases managed to successfully return to base (however, in the fourth battle he also survived, as he was thrown out of the cockpit of a burning La-5 and he managed to open his parachute).
A land ram certainly does not pose such a danger. Its main purpose is to disable enemy equipment; the crew of the attacked vehicle most often survives in a collision. First of all, the attacker with a tank ram seeks to damage the most vulnerable element of the opponent's tank - the chassis in order to immobilize the enemy. In this case, the tank driver must have serious experience - including to determine the capabilities of his own vehicle. Because in a land ram - as opposed to an air ram - keeping your tank intact is considered the norm, and if both vehicles are immobilized as a result of a collision, this can be attributed to the attacker's mistake. So tactics.
Tank to tank
Despite the fact that armored vehicles were already widely used in the First World War, there were no officially recorded cases of tank ramming until 1936. This is partly due to the low operating speeds of armored vehicles and tanks of the early period: it is impossible to make a sensible ram at a speed of 6-10 km / h.
The first to use such tactics was on October 29, 1936, the commander of a tank platoon of the Spanish Republican Army … Semyon Kuzmich Osadchiy. Yes, oddly enough, international participation in the Spanish Civil War was wide enough; The USSR provided the republican side with a significant amount of equipment and weapons, plus more than 2,000 Soviet soldiers fought in 1936-1939 under Spanish skies. Lieutenant Osadchiy, a graduate of the armored school, took part in one of the largest tank battles of that time, the Battle of Sesenye, under the command of Colonel Paul Armand (by the way, also a Soviet officer, whose French name is explained by the fact that he and his family lived in France as a child). It was during this battle that Osadchy, with a non-standard maneuver, directed his T-26 at the Carro CV3 / 33 tankette and overturned it, pushing it into a ditch. This event became the first tank ram recorded in history.
It is worth noting here that Osadchy's maneuver, like the first tank rams of the Second World War, was a spontaneous and witty decision that arose directly in the course of a tense battle. At that time, no tactics and theory of tank ramming existed - it appeared much later.
However, Osadchy intuitively followed the method, which was subsequently tested many times on the battlefield. In an air battle on a lighter and nimble aircraft, it is advantageous to ram a less agile and heavy aircraft. In a ground battle, heavy armored vehicles have a clear advantage, therefore the lion's share of tank rams was made on heavy tanks against light tankettes, guns, aircraft standing at the airfield and other objects of relatively small mass.
It is interesting that the first ram of the Great Patriotic War occurred on its very first day - June 22, 1941. The heavy tank KV-1 under the command of 22-year-old Lieutenant Pavel Gudzia (later he would become a famous tanker-ace and rise to the rank of colonel-general) collided with the German Pz Kpfw III, knocked down a caterpillar and pushed the enemy into a ditch, knocking over on its side. In that battle, the Guja platoon destroyed five tanks and a number of enemy armored vehicles, the lieutenant himself received the Order of the Red Banner, but it was the first tank ram in WWII that singled out the battle on June 22 from the total number of numerous battles of the first days of the war.
Theory and tactics
With the course of the war, from spontaneous actions, the tank ram passed into the category of a pre-planned maneuver. The most effective method was to ram a tank of an enemy gun. This can be easily explained: it is extremely difficult (even more precisely, impossible) to hit a fairly compact weapon with a projectile, especially while moving, and when stopped, the tank itself becomes a target. Thus, more or less effective offensive tactics appeared: the tank was constantly on the move, making it difficult for the enemy to target, and managed to get to the gun and its crew before it fired the second or third aimed shots. The frontal armor of the heavy KV (however, this partly concerned the T-34 as well) was practically invulnerable to most German guns - this led to several precedents when a Soviet tank successfully reached the location of an enemy battery or, for example, a moving column of light vehicles and banal”There, crushing and ramming everything that came under the tracks. Several similar attacks by columns were recorded throughout the war. Deliberate battering rams usually ended in the destruction of the tank, but up to this point he had time to "take with him" up to four or five units of enemy equipment, not to mention light weapons like mortars.
A famous reportage frame from German newsreels: on October 18, 1941, a Soviet T-34 tank of the 21st Tank Brigade rammed the StuG III self-propelled artillery mount of the 660th assault gun battery.
Deliberate rams against aircraft were used in a similar way. The most famous precedent was the battle on December 24, 1942, near the Tatsinskaya station near Stalingrad. The vehicles of the 24th Panzer Corps broke into the location of two German supply airfields and methodically, saving ammunition, crushed or simply damaged more than 300 enemy aircraft intended for the rear support of Paulus' 6th Army. There were several similar cases during the war, but usually the number of destroyed aircraft did not exceed 20-30 - according to their presence at airfields; the battle on Tatsinskaya was unique for the huge amount of the enemy's equipment that was rendered unusable.
In addition to the mass destruction of light enemy vehicles, deliberate tank rams were also used in one-on-one battles against serious armored vehicles. They usually rammed into the side in order to overturn, push into a trench or damage the chassis - there were about a hundred such rams, although it is no longer possible to name the exact number (in the special literature, the number is mentioned from 50, which is clearly underestimated, to 150, which is also, most likely does not reflect reality). In most cases, the attacking tank remained on the move, although the ram posed a threat to him too - for example, when the fuel tanks of the attacked vehicle exploded, both sides suffered; you could also damage your own chassis or weapon.
German beast
It is interesting that in foreign practice, tank rams were used extremely rarely; even foreign sources in 95% of cases cite Soviet rams as examples. One "import" case was documented during Operation Goodwood (July 18-20, 1944), and a few more were described orally, but no more.
Nevertheless, even in this method of struggle, not inherent in European tactics, the Teutonic gloomy genius manifested itself in the person of the famous designer Ferdinand Porsche. After the repeated successful use of tank rams by Soviet soldiers at Stalingrad, Hitler gave a personal order to hastily develop a tank intended solely for a ram attack. By December 1942, development was completed, and in January 1943, three VK4501 (P) chassis were allocated for the installation of ram hulls on them.
In general, the VK4501 (P) was a joint Porsche project as part of a government order for a heavy tank capable of carrying the 88mm KwK L / 56 gun. The order was received by two companies - Porsche and Henschel, the project meant only the development of the chassis, and the tower was provided as a standard, already created by Krupp. As a result, Henschel won the tender - the result was a 54-ton "Tiger", Panzerkampfwagen VI "Tiger I" Ausf E. And the Porsche, VK4501 (P) or Tiger (P) chassis, built in only a few copies, remained out of work.
This is where the order for the ramming tank worked. The chassis was already ready, the body was created in just a few weeks, and by August 1943, three terrible cars were supposed to be born at once - the Räumpanzer Tiger (P). However, most likely, only one tank was actually brought to a more or less high stage of readiness (at least its hull was made), and the other two chassis remained unclaimed and were later used in the development of the second generation of the Porsche tank - VK4502 (P), which did not see the light of day even in a prototype. The Räumpanzer Tiger (P) was not field tested. It has been proven that the only photograph of a tank ram against the background of Soviet tanks - according to legend, it was captured as a trophy - is a fake. Räumpanzer remained a "resident" of the test shop, and only drawings of a strange machine have survived to this day.
Since no photographs of the Räumpanzer Tiger (P) hull have survived, the artist's imagination is based on a sketch design and drawings.
Its entire structure was designed exclusively for one task - to ram. Smooth, aerodynamic contours of the hull contributed to an increase in speed, and a massive pointed nose, similar to a locomotive blade, made it possible to pry on an opponent's tank, overturning it on its side. However, the Räumpanzer was intended to clear the road from barriers and barricades, as well as to break through walls - in this regard, it is much closer to the bulldozer than to the tank.
Russian method
The fairly widespread use of tank ramming in the Red Army and its almost complete absence in the Allied armies is explained by a number of factors. First, by quantity: in total, for the period from 1941 to 1945, more Soviet tanks took part in the battles in Europe than all allied tanks taken together. Secondly, the good driving characteristics of the same "thirty-four", the most common as a ramming tank. And third, training: Soviet driver-mechanics were purposefully instructed on methods of fighting in the absence of ammunition. There were techniques for striking at an angle, as well as approaching the enemy in such a way that he technically could not turn the tower and shoot the "ramman" point-blank. Alexander Fen, a retired major general, recalled that the tankmen were taught to pry the enemy's cannon with their own, raising the enemy tank on the priest and forcing the enemy crew to get out - right under machine-gun fire. Similar precedents were encountered not only in theory, but also in real battles.
In principle, a ram - both air, sea and land - has always been a means of the last stage, when there were no other options, when the enemy was too close, and there was not enough ammunition. But the Soviet tank crews managed to turn it into a full-fledged tactical technique that was successfully applied even against columns of unarmored vehicles. And the one who subordinates tactics to himself gets an advantage, doesn't he?
A well-known reportage frame from German chronicles: on October 18, 1941, a Soviet T-34 tank of the 21st Tank Brigade rammed the StuG III self-propelled artillery mount of the 660th assault gun battery. The picture shows the Germans opening a Soviet tank to take the crew prisoner. Machine with combat number 4. In the photo, presumably Dmitry Grigorievich Lushchenko, lieutenant, platoon commander in the 21st brigade, went missing in the OBD.
In particular, on the official website of the Prokhorovskoye Pole State Military History Museum-Reserve. Ivan Gusev is presented as one of the heroes of the first ram of the Prokhorov battle: “… lieutenant, tank commander. During the Battle of Kursk, he was the commander of a T-34 tank. During the battle on July 12, Captain Skripkin was in the tank. A shell hit the tank, Skripkin was seriously wounded. Gusev ordered Nikolayev and the radio operator Zyryanov to pull the battalion commander out of the car and cover them in a funnel. Noticing a stopped tank and tankers bustling around it, the "tiger" intended to finish off the car and the crew. The first to notice him was Gusev, who was in the car with the loader Chernov. Shouting to the driver-mechanic Nikolayev to hurry into the tank, Gusev opened fire from a cannon at the "tiger". Lieutenant Gusev gave the order: "Sasha, ram!" This command was heard over the radio in other tanks. " The tower commander Ivan Gusev was only 21 years old, the driver-mechanic Alexander Nikolaev was 20 years old. Both were buried in a mass grave near the village of Petrovka, Prokhorovsky district, which they defended at the cost of their own lives.
Tank versus train
Surprisingly, history has known a number of cases when a tank successfully rammed an obviously heavier and more powerful object - an armored train. The most famous incident that occurred on June 25, 1944 at the Cherny Brody station near Bobruisk. The German armored train stood at the station, holding back the advance of the tank unit with powerful fire. One of the tanks - T-34 under the command of Dmitry Komarov - was hit by a shell; the loader and gun commander were injured and the turret damaged. After unloading the wounded, Komarov and the driver-mechanic Mikhail Bukhtuev sent the tank directly to the armored train. On the way, the tank demolished two light guns, destroyed a number of German soldiers (Komarov continued to fire from the machine gun), and then at full speed, engulfed in fire from another hit, crashed into an armored train, destroying three weapon platforms and immobilizing the killer rail vehicle. Bukhtuev died in the collision, but Komarov survived and a few weeks later returned to the front, where he died a heroic death in the fall of the same year. The Germans, having lost an armored train, were forced to retreat, leaving the station.
T-34 crumpled Pz-II
