Page 76 - The Chief Culprit

On the “Obsolete” Soviet Tanks y 53

of what was most important for the BT tanks, its wheels or its caterpillar tracks, Soviet text-
books give a clear answer—the wheels. e BT’s most important characteristic, its speed, was
achieved through use of its wheels.
Seventy years ago, there were no highways on Soviet territory. And in 1939, not a single
immediate Soviet neighbor had an autobahn either. But in the following year, through the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin divided Poland and established common borders with a na-
tion that had autobahns. is nation was Germany.
ey say that Stalin’s tanks were not ready for war. is is not true. ey were not ready
for a defensive war on their own territory. ey simply were prepared to fight on different
territories.
Here is another family of Soviet tanks: T-37A, T-38, and T-40. e T-37A was received
by the Red Army on August 11, 1933. It weighed 3.2 tons, its crew consisted of two men,
and it had bullet-proof armor. It was armed with one DT machine gun, had a 40-horsepower
engine and a maximum speed of 36 to 40 km/h on paved roads and 6 km/h in the water.
e T-37A was a light tank—but light does not mean bad and obsolete. e T-37A was the
14
first amphibious tank in the world to be regularly used by troops. Even if the T-37A really
was a bad tank, its inclusion in the armed forces still meant a technological breakthrough of
historical importance, because there was nothing comparable or close in the armies of other
countries at the time. e Japanese actively pursued amphibious tank warfare in the 1920s
and 1930s. ey even tested a few prototype models. But not one of the models was mass-
produced as a part of the Japanese armed forces before 1941.
e German Pz-I was accepted by the army a year later—in 1934. It had almost the
same weight—3.5 tons, the same crew—two men, the same bulletproof armor, and the same
caliber machine gun. Only it could not float. When the high-minded scholars laugh at the
T-37A that could float, I offer to compare the characteristics of the oldest, lightest Soviet am-
phibious tank with the characteristics of the best, most powerful German amphibious tank.
Here, the laughter stops. It turns out that Germany does not have and never had amphibious
tanks. Before the war it had none, and during the war none appeared. e great Germany
entered the twenty-first century without amphibious tanks. It is unknown when it will begin
producing them. Stalin on the other hand had amphibious tanks in the early ’30s. In this field
Stalin was many decades ahead of Hitler.
France did not have amphibious tanks at that time. Britain also had none before or
during the war. e birthday of American tank forces is July 10, 1940. When the Wehrmacht
Heer crushed with its tanks Poland, Belgium, Holland, France, and the British army on the
continent, the Red Army tanks were crushing the Japanese Sixth Army at Khalkhin-Gol and
were “liberating” Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Bessarabia, and Bukovina. America at
that time had no tank troops at all. After the defeat of French and British troops on the con-
tinent, American generals realized that it was time to get off horses and to think of creating
tank troops. A year later, in June 1941, the United States had less than four hundred tanks.
15
ese were weak, old-fashioned machines, very tall, with very light armor and a multi-tiered
distribution of completely obsolete weapons. e most powerful tank weapon of American
tanks in 1941 was the 37-mm cannon. Even this was mounted only on some tanks. e ma-
jority of American tanks had only machine guns. America had no amphibious tanks at the
time. By the end of the war, in 1944, the United States had developed amphibious armored
personnel carriers of huge dimensions, and some of them had the turrets of light tanks. ese