I always liked isaev's arguments about artillery, that the most difficult problem was a lack of towing machines that could keep up with a mechanized column.
The fundamental problem is that it is bullshit.
Even in 1941 having captured all those western european tanks and put them into service as light tanks they were no where near a fully mechanised for when they entered Soviet territory... most of their artillery was not mechanised at all either... but the Soviet Unions biggest problem was lack of towing vehicles?
That is ridiculously stupid... early in the war they had plenty of horses which was standard for ALL military forces of that time period, and the thing with horses is that you lash more on if they can't pull that gun.
Most of the guns early war were actually rather light so horse drawn was fine, but if there were not enough horses then you got men to pull the damn things.
It hampered both organized retreats and early war offensives, when after the infantry and tanks had moved forward they lost artillery support as it was slowly plodding along somewhere in the rear.
The French army got overwhelmed and the British expeditionary force lost all their equipment... most of them didn't even have their rifles and small arms when they were picked up, but some how the Soviets were supposed to have fully mechanised artillery with radios and all the stuff everyone else developed much later.... give me a break.
He also does cover the chemicals issue quite well, but the towing problem really makes sense, especially when you see all those early-war pictures with virtually undamaged artillery being left behind.
Yeah, you are not getting it are you... those guns were left behind early on because the whole Soviet force it was attached to was surrounded and captured and sent to work in prisoner of war camps in eastern europe.
But then who cares because according to this same bullshit they likely didn't have any ammo for those guns anyway so an ability to take them back as they retreated would be a stupid use for available resources... it makes more sense to bring back something that can be used that will work.
I like that we remember the help that their grandfathers offered and it's always interesting to analyze what equipment was prized and what was not.
You mean the Soviet and Russian people should be happy being left to fight the core of the German army because after all your western allies managed to send a lot of shit they could not use themselves... I really don't think it was a balanced and fair arrangement... do you thank the shop owner where you buy your groceries for selling you food and other essentials?
I mean if he let you have them for free, then sure... thanks would be due, but he was selling them to you and earning a living from these purchases.
Like how the airacobra and kingcobra really proved to be awesome in eastern front conditions but were completely out of place in the western theatre/pacific.
The difference is that in the west they treated them as ground attack aircraft with those big nose mounted cannon, well the Soviets had Il-2s for that... their Yak-9Ts with their nose mounted 37mm and 45mm cannon tended to be used against fighters and bombers in an air to air role.
The best feature of those fighters was the number of guns which inexperienced fighters liked. The fuselage mounted cannon arrangement was preferred by Soviet and also German aces was the normal arrangement for Soviet fighters.
Same with early war deliveries like the matildas, stuarts and lees.
The less said about the General Lees the better... suffice to say the nickname was grave for 7 brothers.
The Matildas had good armour but were slow and had awful guns and the Stuarts were certainly better than the T-26s, but were no useful for all of the war.
You are right, but they still depended on lend lease for explosives.
The Soviets could buy explosives from a range of sources if the allies decided not to supply them.
The Allies were happy to supply them because they knew if the Soviets folded then they were next but they would be next against a German army with more men and more production capacity and more armour and more air power because all those forces in the eastern front could then transfer to the western front and then D Day would not work at all.
In fact the injection of all the forces sent to the east alone would probably enable a decent attempt at invading England again and without England where would US forces land from to fight in Europe?
Unless you prove that soviet wartime production of explosives for shells was enough for wartime needs, the point still stands.
When you buy potatoes in a shop because they are cheap and always available all year round.... how many potatoes do you plant in your own garden?
If they couldn't get explosives from their western allies then they would have had to put resources into making more of their own... and by the way they made all their own shells, the only ammo they didn't make was for lend lease weapons which were supplied with ammo to use with them.
Some were not really used, or given to their equivalent of dads army, like Thompsen SMGs, which lacked penetration against targets with lots of heavy clothes on.
This is generalizing bullshit. The soviets didnt always retreat. they counterattacked and had major offensives too. And even if you say they were retreating, them retreating had to do with lack of ample artillery support and german artillery superiority.
The Germans used more horses to move their artillery than they had vehicles to move them.
The Soviets had a significant advantage in rocket artillery which was highly mobile and the range of Soviet artillery was generally very good and was not overrun all the time.
The Soviets were pushed back to the gates of Moscow in early december 1941... the invasion occurred in mid 1941 so we are talking about an initial withdrawal from the Ukraine to Moscow over about 6 months with several major encirclements where enormous numbers of Soviet soldiers were captured or escaped to fight with the resistance. A lot of old obsolete artillery and armoured vehicles and obsolete fighter planes like I-15s and I-16s got captured or destroyed.
After that there was more tooing and froing.
The Soviet use of artillery was devastating.... throughout the entire battle of Stalingrad their artillery was located on the other side of the river and it was never overrun as they let the Germans take more and more of the city before springing a trap and surrounding them. IN that case it was german artillery that was cut off and lost.
The numerous failed attacks to break the leningrad siege in 1942,
What!!! how much artillery would it take to defeat an entire German Army Group? Are you joking?
More to the point Leningrad had excellent artillery support from ground based artillery, but also from the ships in the port of Leningrad delivering salvos to shell the attacking forces.
Leningrad was a German siege... they never committed forces anywhere strong enough to take the city, they only had forces strong enough to contain and prevent forces inside the city from breaking out. Stalingrad was a Soviet trap to capture the Germans and it worked very well. Leningrad was a holding siege to contain that flank of the battle while Moscow and the oilfields to the south were taken... there was no intention of capturing Leningrad any time soon... it was in effect a perpetual artillery duel... which the Soviets eventually won.
operation Mars, and the extreme casaulties suffered attacking the northern flank of stalingrad in 1942 are examples of massive soviet attacks that could've been more successful with on call artillery support.
So you don't know anything about the war then because all the ineffective counter attacks that failed always had artillery support... they normally failed because of a lack of coordination or experience of operating large armoured formations that the Soviets would suffer from for most of the early part of the war.
The French had the same problem but that was not so obvious because they surrendered... or the British who ran away.
SO far you haven't proven that on call indirect on call artillery support is not useful, nor that the soviets had it. You just use "oh but the french were worse" type excuses.
Cell phones are fucking useful... the only combatant that had on call artillery and aircraft support for most of WWII was the Germans which is why they were so successful.
The US probably had on call artillery support but then their tanks were all shit... so in many ways the Soviets were better off having better tanks and less radios.
Of course if you think lend lease won the war then you must be counting how many radios and variable time fuses for artillery shells the west was sending to the Soviets to make their artillery better and more effective.
Stalin was asking for B-17 bombers and was getting B-25s, if your local grocery store fucked up your order that bad and that often you would be looking for another place to shop.
Actually the soviets produced a very modest number of ML-20 152mm and A-19 122mm guns(corps level artillery) and their tonnage of shells expended was much lower than that of germans, british, or Americans.
And yet 2/3rds of Germans killed on the battlefield were killed by the Soviets.
They had about a dozen different 152mm guns and howitzers, both towed and tracked like the IS-152 and SU-152 and ISU-152 vehicles, including a tracked towed gun.
Were those radios used by artillery observers for on call indirect artillery support. Its not only about radios, but adequate training, and theres no proof the USSR had trained artillery observers, hence why they used preplanned barrages and direct fire.
They also had Il-2 armoured ground attack aircraft... a type the western allies didn't have... the fact that they did the bulk of the fighting and won suggests they did OK.
And it exposes artillery crews and the artillery piece to much more danger.
You mean like the danger the troops in tanks and infantry faced... yeah.. that happens in war time I am told.
Also massed indirect artillery fire rpvided on-call with a trained artillery observer is vastly more efficient.
The Western Allies levelled entire German cities trying to hit individual german factories... and missed... and you are whining about efficiency?
Massed direct fire is almost useless for obvious reasons.
Of course... the Germans thought Soviet artillery and their skills in battle were a total joke and would stand up in the middle of combat and laugh at them because they were rubbish...
Except preplanned barrages and direct fire were a relic of WW1 and before.
Preplanned barrages and direct fire artillery are still used today.
Most machine gun tactics were developed during WWI but no mention of them being obsolete too?
The only reasons the soviets didnt use on call indirect fire was due to not having enough shells, not enough radios and lack of trained artillery observers.
They didn't have Armata T-14 tanks either.
The Germans didn't use 120mm mortars until they came up against Soviet forces using them and captured as many as they could and put them into production in Germany and started making their own ammo for it.
They used as many 76.2mm Soviet Artillery guns as they could get their hands on too and also put that ammo into production as well.
Its about ability to produce explosives for shells, not producing artillery pieces
It is about a lack of testicles that led to the western allies hiding behind the English Channel and sending the stuff they didn't want and thought was useless to the Soviets so they could keep fighting the Germans.
They finally grew a pair when in 1944 they realised that the Soviets were definitely going to win and if they didn't hurry up and invade Europe it would all be occupied by the Soviets pretty soon.
Does he prove that soviets had artillery observers that could direct on call fire?
Don't be silly... they couldn't even speak English... how could they possibly fight a war?
It was not the fighters and tanks that helped.
Of course it wasn't because the ones that were sent were ordinary to useless.
Trucks were the real deal.
The Trucks didn't make much of a difference till Bagration.
Without US providing 400,000 motor vehicles (vs 130,000 produced in the USSR) USSR would still have won the war but at a slowe pace, all large sccale offensives like Dnepr offensive, Kutuzov and Polkovodets Rumyantsev, Bagration, Lvov-Sandomierx, Vistula Oder etc.would not be possible due to constraints of logistics. It would ake until 1946-7 to reach Berlin
If the western allies really wanted to speed up the war they could have launched D Day in 1942 when it would actually have been useful to the Soviets.
Western claims that lend lease took years off the war ignore that Germany was actually on its knees it had no fuel for aircraft and no fuel for armour... they were screwed.
Without those trucks the Soviets would have pushed them back slower but the Soviets could have used their airpower to just hammer them even more than they did.
There is no way it would have taken more than an extra few months.