US Lend Lease Armor Captured by the Romanians

In early February 1943 the Soviet Army lost thirty-two tanks and some two thousand troops during an unsuccessful amphibious landing at Ozereika Bay near Novorossiysk in the Kuban. Twenty-one of those tanks lost were M3A1 Stuart light tanks, recently obtained from the United States in Lend-Lease aid shipments (Paul Carell's OPERATION BARBAROSSA IN PHOTOGRAPHS, published by Schiffer Books in 1991, has a nice photograph of these tanks on pages 298 & 299); as many had suffered no battle damage but were simply waterlogged due to faulty landing procedures, they were quickly recovered and impressed into Romanian service (after all, this sector was under the protection of elements of the Royal Romanian Army's 38th Infantry Regiment, together with selected German formations). A number of these Stuarts saw limited service with both the 6th and 9th Cavalry Divisions, performing coastal protection patrols while still operational as well as similar duties in a more static role after a lack of spares left them immobilised.

Several other Stuart tanks were captured, or more accurately recovered from the battlefield, following the elimination of the Soviets' Eltigen beachhead in the Kuban at the end of December 1943, four such tanks serving briefly with Romanian forces in the Crimea before being repatriated to Romania as part of an assortment of captured unserviceable tanks in March 1944, spending their final days as static antitank targets with Romanian training units.

Four Grant/Lee tanks, serving with the Soviet Army via US Lend-Lease, were captured, or more accurately recovered from the battlefield, by Romanian troops following the elimination of the Soviet Eltigen beachhead in the Kuban in December 1943. Any subsequent career with the Royal Romanian Army appears to have been brief, as all four tanks, perhaps following service with coastal protection units in the Crimea earlier in the year, were included in an assortment of unserviceable captured tanks that was shipped back to Romania in March 1944, ending their days as static antitank targets for training schools.

In August or September 1942 the Romanian 4th Infantry Division is reported to have annihilated a Soviet division at Kotelnikovo in the northern Caucasus, capturing an assortment of military equipment which was subsequently impressed into service, including no fewer than thirty (!!) M4 Sherman tanks. During World War Two the Soviet Union received thousands of American-built tanks, including over four thousand Shermans, via Lend-Lease aid shipments. Instances of American tanks in Soviet service captured by Romanian troops appear in both Axworthy and Nafziger among others; however, these accounts refer to M3A1 Stuarts and M3A3 Grant/Lees with no mention of Shermans. Indeed, the only such reference appears in the memoirs of Ion Emilian, a Romanian cavalry officer serving with the 2nd Calarasi Regiment during the war (see his "Squadrons of the Apocalypse," originally published in France under the title LES CAVALIERS DE L'APOCALYPSE [Editions de la Pensee moderne, 1974] and later in German as DER PHANTASTISCHE RITT [Schutz, 1977] and Spanish as LOS ESCUADRONES DEL APOCALIPSOS [Juventud, 1977] , especially Chapter 23, for details).

While Emilian's experiences seem genuine, discrepancies elsewhere in his memoirs suggest either hazy memories or, um, "editing for effect" as it were; for example, the 4th Infantry Division's encounter with M4 Shermans in the autumn of 1942 when few Shermans had even arrived in the Soviet Union (okay, perhaps he meant 1943, but by then Romanian dispositions in the Caucasus were largely limited to the Kuban region), while at the same time he names General Barbu Alinescu as the 4th Infantry Division's commander, a name I can't find on any roster of Romanian Army officers, even if I spell it Elinescu, Ilinescu, and the like (Nafziger places Gheorghe Cialac in that position in 1941, who I've seen reported elsewhere as a cavalry commander, while Axworthy and others place Platon Chirnoaga in command of the 4th Infantry Division by 1944, so, who knows). Perhaps Emilian mistook Stuarts or Grant/Lees, both of which saw service with Romanian forces as captured booty? As for Shermans in Romanian service, well, intriguing as such a prospect may appear, I must conclude it to be very unlikely.

http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/romafv.html#Heading24

 

General Hube capture a train loaded with supplies while probing the northern flank at stalingrad in august of '42 which had not been unloaded. it was written the officers of the 16th panzer division especially appreciated the American jeeps, fresh in their Russian markings, which they considered a much better vehicle then their own equivalent the Kubelwagon..perhaps if armour was also seized, and being this was considered inferior to the German made tanks, perhpas these where left for the satellite armies of Germany to use???

 

Bump for one of our new members from Romania. Hopefully he can comment on this.

 

How did I miss this and an excellent idea. Excellent and interesting reading.

 

Thanks. Did you see my thread about the 60,000?

 

I was doing another post elsewhere on these tanks so thought I would add it here as well

 

I wonder if those photos are of the Ganikale Beachhead ?

Cheers

BW