Page 77 - The Chief Culprit

54 y e Chief Culprit

were reliable machines, they had great floating capability. But nonetheless, these were not
tanks, and nobody tried to call them such. So, the difference we have is: in America, some-
thing resembling an amphibious tank appeared by the end of the war, while in the Soviet
Union, amphibious tanks were enlisted in the armed forces long before the war’s beginning.
So, what was the nature of the “light and obsolete” T-37A? Here is some information about
it. In August 1935 upon orders from Voroshilov, the Commissar of Defense of the USSR, seven
T-37As started out from Leningrad, traversed several tens of kilometers on caterpillar tracks,
then sailed along the river Luga, through impenetrable weeds, then on to the river Shelon and
Lake Ilmen. ere was a storm on the lake. e distance across the lake was 55 kilometers. e
tanks crossed this distance in 8 hours and 15 minutes. en they came to the river Volkhov,
the Novoladozhsky Canal, and the ferocious, treacherous river Neva. All seven tanks reached
the finish line by the Petropavlov fortress. In eleven days they had crossed seven hundred
kilometers, six hundred of them by sailing—all this without a single accident or even a
breakdown.
Of course, not every single T-37A and not every tank driver was capable of setting such
a record. Nonetheless, this is a record that since 1935 has not been successfully repeated by
anybody. Nobody has even come close to reproducing it. Until 1941, the position of the rest
of the world regarding the creation of amphibious tanks had barely changed. In 1941, no
country in Europe and America (other than the Soviet Union) had amphibious tanks as part
of its national armament. at year, only in Japan did the emperor’s fleet begin implement-
ing the floating Gami tank for amphibious assaults; the Gachi and Togu floating tanks were
introduced later on. 16
e Soviet T-37A was produced from 1933 until 1936. A tank, if there is no war, can
serve for ten, fifteen, even twenty years. In theory, the T-37A tanks that were produced in
1933 were scheduled to be replaced between 1943 and 1948, perhaps even later. e last
tanks, produced in 1936, did not have to be replaced until 1951 to1955. How could they be
too old in 1941? And how did it happen that unique tanks, which by 1941 had only served
five to eight years, were completely obliterated from the historical record?
What are they needed for? What use comes from amphibious tanks? If we are defending
our own territory, if we are conducting strictly defensive warfare, amphibious tanks are not
really needed. We can get by without them. In order to stop the enemy, one wants to have
tanks with heavy armor and powerful weapons—the heavier and more powerful, the better.
If we cannot stop the enemy in defensive warfare, we are forced to retreat. We retreat
using our own bridges. When threatened with a takeover, we can detonate our bridges and
send them up into the sky. ere is little use for tanks with light armor and machine guns in
a defensive war. eir ability to float also remains completely unused: there is nowhere to sail
to in defensive war.
But if we are conducting a crusade for world domination, then in order to herd the
population of the planet into concentration camps, labor armies, and barracks, we have dif-
ferent needs. In order to break through the enemy’s front, we need heavy tanks, more armor,
and more powerful cannon. If a battle occurs, if two waves of tanks collide, once again, we
need the most powerful tanks. Once the front line is broken and the enemy’s tank waves are
deflected and crushed, our task becomes to take advantage of the moment and complete a
thrust deep into the enemy’s rear, in order to split up his defenses, to have access to his com-
munications and supply lines, to reach the aortas in order to cut them, to cut the enemy