Question on WW II tankodesantniki (tank riders)

[John Kettler]

According to Suvorov, tankodesantniki are from the penal battalions and expiate their guilt in blood.

Sometimes, though, they may catch a break. He says, for example, that in wartime an advanced detachment commander who meets the target distance, say, 100 kilometers, gets the HSU, his men all receive lesser decorations, and the tankodesantniki will have their offenses expunged and be returned to normal duty. What I'd like to know, though, is whether tank riding was also practiced by regular units or was the exclusive province of the ShtrafBat (penal battalion) types?

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

It is just utter nonsense. It was a regular job and the men involved were considered a minor kind of elite, among the various Russian infantry subtypes. Not as elite as recon, but on a par with assault pioneers.

All the penal battalion crapola is spoon fed propaganda for westerners. There was one per *front*. Armies had 1-3 *companies* of them, for NCOs rather than for officers. Neither was for rankers, neither was common, and none had important tactical roles.

Their purpose was "to encourage others" because men could be threatened with transfer to them - and also as a means of regular rehabilitation of men the chekaa would otherwise had shot on the spot, allowing cadre material to be "recycled".

But when a journalist level westerner in interviewing a Russian vet, it becomes a Yorkshireman skit "when I was a lad, we had to walk uphill to school both ways", "school hah, we had to crawl across broken glass to the mill" "mill hah, we were ground up in industrial shredders and served to the foremen on toast" etc etc.

[George MC]

Tank Rider is a worthwile read - written by a surviving tank rider it backs up what jasonC has written above.

[Bigduke6]

A practical problem with Suvorov's claim is that tank riders by their job have to be on the ball, organized, and practiced at combined arms. Their job was to protect something considered quite valuable by the party: a tank.

Typically, tank riders were assigned to tanks for the duration of a campaign, for instance the Bagratian campaign or the Silesia campaign. The Mech formations all had dedicated SMG units whose job it was to ride the tanks, but assignment as a rule took place only once every couple of months. Since cooperative training took place prior to offensive ops (almost always), once the fighting started quite the result was combined arms elements quite capable at their jobs, and used to working with each other on the squad/vehicle level.

None of which would be possible, with punishment units, or indeed criminals put into uniform.

[John Kettler]

Appreciate all your replies and definitely plan to read that book when I get a chance!

Regards,

John Kettler

[DavidFields]

Bigduke6: I don't understand your last sentence. Young men will do some incredibly dangerous things with minimal incentive--often then called elite or special forces.

Probably genetically favored, in part, for thousands (10s of thousands, 100s, millions) of years?

[sonar]

Jasonc, said "when I was a lad, we had to walk uphill to school both ways", "school hah, we had to crawl across broken glass to the mill" "mill hah, we were ground up in industrial shredders and served to the foremen on toast" etc etc.

You were lucky.

[Bigduke6]

What I mean is that tank-infantry coordination in a variety of missions and environments is complicated, it takes training and teamwork, and prison conscripts would necessarily do a bad job. This isn't an infantry assault where you can line up the NKVD machine gun companies behind it; this is mobile warfare taking place over dozens and even hundreds of kilometers, both sides getting enrcircled sometimes, troops needing to live off the countryside, find their way, and do the generic combined arms dance.

You stick a squad of prison conscripts on a tank, you're undermining all that. Maybe they'll desert - it's not like the NKVD had a policeman aboard each tank. Maybe they're illiterate, or criminally-inclined, or untrained for the job. And if they've been in prison for any length of time odds are good they are physically ill as well. And these are the people you want at the spear tip of the Red Army, taking care of the arm of decision, the Red armor?

Ideally, what the Soviets wanted on their tanks was Slavic, educated, Russian-speaking officers with some brights and moxie, and a mix of Slavs and Asians used to working with one another, carrying the tommy guns.

There was a place for prison troops, for instance when you need infantry to charge across a mine field, or begin the "crumbling" fight into a German defensive network, or a spot so exposed to enemy fire that running away from it constituted suicide. For jobs like that you needed expendable men, and prison troops suited the task quite well.

But those jobs were rare. By comparison, the need for infantry capable of basic combined arms tactics was large, and the men that met the need weren't from the Gulag.

I'll leave the discussion of elite and special forces for another post, except to say that elite forces and special forces don't win wars, and frankly they don't have much influence on the outcome of war, but infantry competent at basic infantry tasks across the force has been pretty much a sine qua non for as long as there have been wars. The important thing is not to have some gee-whiz elite troops, the important thing is to have a body of infantry that will fight the way you need it to fight.

This is why morale is so critical in a war of any size. It is possible to manufacture infantry unit motivation in a tiny elite unit, but it is impossible to manufacture motivation on the strength of unit loyalty alone, or indeed fear of further criminal punishment, across a infantry force of tens or even hundreds of thousands of men.

Originally posted by Rankorian:

Bigduke6: I don't understand your last sentence. Young men will do some incredibly dangerous things with minimal incentive--often then called elite or special forces.

Probably genetically favored, in part, for thousands (10s of thousands, 100s, millions) of years?

[undead reindeer cavalry]

According to Suvorov, tankodesantniki are from the penal battalions and expiate their guilt in blood.

on reason for the misunderstanding might be that some of them called themselves penal troops because of their ****ty tasks.