Wednesday 26 June 2019

Big Caliber

"To the Commander of the 370th Order of the Red Banner Order of Kutuzov 2nd Class Rifle Division

I report that:
At [illegible] the enemy used 210 mm guns in the artillery barrage of [illegible], which resulted in a direct hit to the turret of IS tank #113 (serial number 41046), as a result of which internal equipment and the engine compartment burned up, and the turret was thrown to the side by the shockwave.
Out of the 6 men inside the tank at the time, the following casualties were taken:
  1. Mechanic-driver Sergeant Romanov: killed
  2. Gunner Starshina Golakhov and loader Private Panov: wounded
Company commander Guards Lieutenant Minulov, technical deputy commander Junior Lieutenant La[illegible] and tank commander Guards Lieutenant Bilanov were not injured.

The majority of the damage was caused by 3 near misses. As a result of fragments and shockwave, 4 men were killed, 4 wounded, and 2 contused.

Regiment commander, Lieutenant-Colonel [signature]
Chief of Staff, Major [signature] 
February 26th, 1945"

The handwritten text over the top of the report is hard to read, it but orders that all IS tanks must be carefully dug in and concealed to prevent this from happening again.

20 comments:

  1. 1) The tank commander survived unhurt when the turret was blown off? Wow!!

    2) 6 men in an IS-2 that is normally crewed by four men? Why were the other two there and what were they doing?

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    1. Yeah, very strange, judging by the dead driver I would have guessed that the shell hit the hull, but it said turret.

      The company commander and his technical deputy were in the tank, so perhaps they were in the vicinity when the barrage started and got inside to avoid being hit by shell fragments.

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  2. Key factor in why they would be able to survive is the fact that turret didnt came off from internal explosion but was dislodged by outside shockwave. In a way turret absorbed most of the shockwave and came off with the crew that were thrown probably no more then few meters. Over all they were lucky. It would also explain why driver was killed as his head is literally under the turret ring. If that makes sense.

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    1. You do realise that if the turret actually physically separated from the hull it'd have torn them in half right. That everyone in there didn't need to be buried in pieces implies it didn't shift all that far. And the driver more likely died of loose bits of equipement bouncing around the crew compartement, or from the fire because he could not evacuate/be evacuated (possibly because of the displaced turret and/or damaged turret basket getting in the way?).

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    2. It occurred to me that the 'turret thrown to the side' might indicate just a displacement of the turret from the ring; though the word choice ('thrown') sure suggest complete removal.

      The IS-2 didn't have a turret basket. I thought the IS-2's driver had an escape hatch out the tank's bottom, though now I can't find a bottom view of the IS-2 to confirm. Certainly later Soviet heavy tanks had a bottom escape hatch for the driver, even those like the T-10 that had a hatch out the top for him too.

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    3. IS-2 tank have floor hatch, which was located front off driver seat. I live in Poland, in Lębork, and we have IS-2 tank as monument.

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    4. AKMS, are you Amizar (sp?) the guy who did all the armor thickness measurements on two IS-2 models 1944 and posted them online? That was an outstanding piece of work; my compliments.

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    5. No, I'm not Amizaur. But I know about it's measurements.

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  3. It's hard to picture what happened, but I've seen people fly 10 meters from explosions and miraculously stay alive. Plenty of videos out there where people have been thrown out the vehicle from car accidents and stay alive. Report does not say how badly they are injured. They just say wounded. That could be missing half of their limbs for all we know.

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    1. Being bodily thrown by a blast wave yourself is one thing. Having your lower body in the hull and upper body in the turret when the latter goes flying sideways is... something else entirely, and wont to result in what I believe is technically termed "shearing".
      Also an awful mess and a closed-casket funeral.

      Do also note that the three commanders are reported to have emerged more or less unscathed and it's hard to picture them being crammed anywhere else BUT the turret, or as close as makes no difference - oughta been a tight fit that.

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    2. You speculate that turret didnt go off by much and that is why they survived, that's a valid assumption. You also assume that body would be cut in half if turret did fly off to greater distance. I think that is wrong. At least those that were seated would go with the turret. And being exposed to blast wave is more deadly to human in the open then being protected by 60mm of steel. Whatever the case may be it's all speculation.

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    3. Those seatings are about half in the turret and half in the hull. Not really seeing how the turret could horizontally displace very far without, ahem, taking the upper bodies along while the lower bodies get left behind already because they run into the turret ring...

      Explosion shockwaves can, within reason, be survived if enough fortunate coincidences pile up to limit the damage and flying some distance and landing is not by itself terribly dangerous, it depends more on how you land and what on. But here we'd be dealing with multiple tons of steel suddenly displacing which rather obviously makes things altogether more dangerous, not entirely unlike how flying fragments and the like make explosions much more lethal (and over a far wider area) than the blast effect alone is.

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    4. Turret can not physically move horizontally, because it is inside of the turret ring. Turret can only go up to be able to move to the side. Another possibility is that the entire vehicle was blasted lifting one side then when it went down turret continued to fly off. There are hundreds of possibilities what might have happened.

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    5. This possible scenario occurred to me just this morning.

      Who was wounded or killed? KIA was the driver, and the gunner and loader were WIA. Those are the three guys in the foremost part of the tank.

      Now let's assume because this was a bombardment, the tank commander, the company commander and deputy technical commander--along with the gunner and loader--are not sitting in combat position in the tank, but are crouching below turret level near the floor. Let's say the driver continues to sit in his normal position as he's already below turret level.

      Now let's assume the shell hit the *front* of the IS-2, maybe the lower part of the turret front. The blast blows off or displaces the turret to the side (whatever the case); and in addition, there is enough blast force to crack or cave in the hull deck in front of the turret, sending metal shrapnel inside the tank.

      The driver, sitting upright, gets the shrapnel in the head--KIA.

      The loader and gunner, crouching below turret level just behind the tank driver, get shrapnel wounds in the back, but are spared lethal wounds--WIA.

      The tank commander, company commander, and deputy technical commander, all crouching below turret level in the rear of the turret, come out unscathed.

      I'm making some assumptions, but that may be the most reasonable guess of what happened here.

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    6. Clarification--I wrote "front" of the IS-2, but I meant the front of the turret; I am excluding the hull.

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  4. My theory is that they were all heaped into the bottom of the tank, and that's why the turret moving didn't end in a TPK

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  5. It is inconsistent if about one tank.
    Of the 6 men in the tank 1 was killed.
    4 men were killed, 4 wounded, and 2 confused.
    It can only mean they are first talking about one tank and then are talking about all the tanks in the unit.

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    1. The first part is about the one tank, the second part is about the whole company.

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  6. I wonder if the shell wasn't a dud? This because the report could give such a specific statement of its size and, well, because the tank didn't turn into so much confetti - the kind of spectacular destruction mere 152 mm (ca. 44 kg shell with ~6 kg explosive) wrought on tanks is well documented here, and quick parse puts the diverse 21 cm guns (domestic and foreign) the Germans had in their arsenal at ~100 to 135 kg shells with up to almost 20 kg of explosive in some designs...

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  7. This may help with the turret thing, the shell could detonate close to the area commented here but annoted as detonated in the turret,

    "Interesting thing to notice on above photo - the armor under the mantlet is only about 40-50mm thick, because it's almost horizontal and normally also shielded by lower mantlet. But if an armor piercing projectile hit top of upper front plate or even skidded from the turret ring protector and was deflected slightly upwards, it would hit exactly there with almost full energy, probably penetrating the thin cast armor there and entering turret under the gun. Especially in late tanks with 60deg upper plate I see this as a shot trap.

    Detonation of 88mm HE shell in this space (between top hull and turret, under the mantlet) would probably remove the turret from it's mounting and possibly kill the driver by splinters from the top armor above his head... "

    Source,

    http://community.battlefront.com/topic/121576-is-2-thickness-of-gun-mantlet-armor-measured/

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