The most important tanks

Hi.

If you mention the russian advance in the late stages of the Nomonhan-Incident as a Blitzkrieg-war, you must also add the japanese operation Jehol from 1933. The First Independent Mixed Brigade made 320 km within 3 days of heavy fightings with it´s armoured element (1. Special tank company with 11 type 89 tanks and 2 type 92 heavy armoured vehicles) used as spearhead and massive air support. OK, the chinese forces had no anti-tank weapons and were overunned but nevertheless an early type of Blitzkrieg.


By the way, the soviet advance at Nomonhan made 40 km within 10 days.......


Yours

tom!

 

You are definitely along the right path of thinking; medium armour, a good main gun, fairly dependable performance in all areas; for the time of its inclusion in mass manufacturing. The Germans studied tank warfare with the Russans before operation Barbarossa; they knew how the Russans thought armoured warefare should be used in lightning fast movements to smash through the enemy lines, encircle the enemy, cut off its support and let the infantry and other facets of the army eliminate those forces. The Germans learned, taught their own forces upon their improvements, taking into account the manufacturing abilities of their war industries; to give their forces a winning edge. It worked up until late 1943, early 1944, but by then it was over for the Germans.

 

Nice post. The influence of Russian pre-war training is often overlooked; the Soviets were also the first to study and apply the new idea of mass airdrops. However we should not level out the fact that the main theories behind Blitzkrieg tactics came from England, from men like Fuller; France, with De Gaulle; and Germany with Guderian.

 

We shouldn't forget either, that Blitzkrieg as a seperate, purpose-conceived strategy, only exists in the mind of post-war authors, and that the tactics used by the Germans in World War II can be traced back for more than a century, and that the general principles are thousands of years old.