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Documentation of daisy-chain mine use in Russia by the Germans


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Found this while looking for something else and thought I'd share it.  Marat Alexandrovich Kalinenok was a Junior Lieutenant in the 86th Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Tank Corps and was in Operation Bagration in a T-34/85, which makes his story very much on point for CMRT.

 

(Fair Use)

 

"It turned out that the platoon commander’s tank had fallen on its side in the water from a 10 meter long bridge over the rivulet, and Vladimir trying to catch up with him, picked up speed and slipped over his tank as if it were a bridge and at only the end of the village triggered three anti-tank mines at a time, got damaged though not very heavily. It turned out that in a small trench were the Germans who dragged the mines with ropes under the tank."

 

(Rant mode on)

 

I HATE the fancy new I Remember site! Why? I can't find things there! The old one had the soldiers, pilots, sailors broken out by category, making it fairly straightforward to find accounts, but in the English version, at least, the page lists them randomly, and the search function is useless. The Russian version of the page still has the categories and appears to work fine, but even switching the tankisti page to English still brings up the muddled martial mass I previously described. I am so frustrated that a valuable resource has been all but rendered useless!

 

(Rant mode off)

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

Edited by John Kettler
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I have read the article with Kalinenok Marat Alexandrovich's memoirs. Very interesting.

 

For example:

 

"Yes, for a year of my stay at the front seven of my tanks were destroyed or burned. As for the crews, I changed them even more. For example, in late February in heavy fighting in East Prussia our corps suffered heavy casualties. In those days, German troops made desperate attempts to unblock their forces surrounded in and around Konigsberg, so we had to fight heavy defensive battles. Every day we had to repulse 6 to 9, and once even 11 (!) attacks. And in those fights my tanks were destroyed for five days in a row: one tank burned and other four were knocked out.
 
So, by their own traction or pulled by a tractor they were evacuated to our FRF (field repair facilities) and while the tank was being repaired I was assigned to another armored vehicle with a new crew. Slightly injured, stunned and with a lot of bruises I still remained on duty. But within those five days 13 men in my crews were killed and 6 wounded..."
 
From crews of 5 destroyed  tanks - 25 people - 13 were killed and 6 wounded.  That's an average of 2.5 dead and 1 wounded for a killed T-34/85. 
 
I wondered what was the probability of not being killed 5 times in a row in a tank. Probability of surviving what he described.
Let's assume casualties were random and independant from each other. Probability of being killed or wounded in single vehicle knock-out was (as it turned out) 3.5/5 so 70%, and probability to be NOT killed or seriously wounded was 1.5/5 so 30%. 
Chance to be NOT killed or even wounded 5 times in a row was 0.3*0.3*0.3*0.3*0.3 so 0.3^5 = 0.00243 which means about 0.25%.
He was really lucky man....
Edited by Amizaur
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