Garry

I recently read the memories of Zhukov about 1944-45 operations. He stated that German division were quite inefficient in stopping Russian T-34 armies from breaking though and encircling those tank divisions BECAUSE OF MIX. Indeed most German divisions had few Tigers/Panther’s or heavy anti-tank self propelleds mixed with other lighter tanks like Type III and Type IV. However this divisions moved with the SPEED OF THE SLOWEST TANK IN THE RANK!!! Moreover it rarely got splitted!!! Hence the few Tigers or other heavy vehicles slowed down the mobility of the whole division!!!

On the opposite Zhukov’s tank divisions and armies were HOMOGENOUS. For example 3rd guard tank army had only T-34-85 in its ranks… 4th guard army had mix of T-34-76 and SU-100 on the T-34 platform. No MIX OF HEAVY TANKS. Due to this these armies had very impressive mobility… Imagine when the force of THOUSAND tanks become highly mobile and covers 600km in your rear in just 7 days? Whenever they met heavy tanks of other pockets of resistance they would move ahead around these and don’t waste time…

And what happened to those German tank divisions in encirclement? Especially with heavy Tiger which needed refueling almost every next day? They had to fight on a small area or could make only one relocation on their internal fuel. In encirclement this meant no chance to escape/break though. They were abandoned in hundreds… disabled though….

Zhukov in his memory notes also criticized the use of the heavy tank brigades in Red Army. THEY WERE ALWAYS LATE. In his view whenever you need a heavy tank brigade they are 3-4 days away…. By the time they arrive situation changed and there was little need in those heavy tanks.

So in his memories he stated that Germans could have had been much more efficient in counter attacking his tank armies if they had some mobile formations made of only Panzer IV…. These could have moved up to 150km away from initial location and attacked the flanks of his advancing tank armies. However we know what happened…..