The Worker’s and Peasant’s Red Army revived the use of the distinctive “Guards” title in the fall of 1941 to distinguish units that had shown exceptional ability and courage during the terrible summer and fall of 1941. Subsequently it was used to honor units that had performed exceptionally in combat, and sometimes, when applied to larger units like armies and such, for purposes of inspiration. For example, a regiment, brigade, or division would be made a guards unit based on its performance. An army might be dubbed a “Guards Army” even if it contained no units that were rated guards. Another army might get the rating due to excellence in combat and might have many guards divisions assigned to it. A tank corps might contain both guards and normal tank brigades, but when the corps was designated a guards tank corps, all of the sub units might have their designations changed to guards.

A soldier would become a guardsman if his regiment, brigade, division, or tank or mechanized corps was rated guards. This was not true if the army to which his unit was attached was given a guards title. This entitled the officers and men to better pay, and theoretically better rations, although the latter was probably not often the case. If the unit made guards was a rifle unit, it was entitled to a more generous share of heavy weapons and supporting units than a normal rifle unit. (Of course when the unit was made guards it probably had lost 80% of its troops earning the title, so that the new unit would have a seasoned cadre but would be at least for a while weaker then when it had been just a rifle unit.)

Interestingly enough, tank, mechanized and cavalry units that were made guards were not reinforced with more weapons or support units, although they might receive a priority on new weapons. This was not always the case, note the 3rd Guards Tank Army whose guards tank corps were some of the last to officially receive their rocket launcher battalions.

There were two types of units that were handled very differently. These were units who were rated guards to emphasize the importance of the weapons they were armed with. These were the rocket launcher units, the “Guards Mortar” battalions, regiments, brigades and divisions, and the “Guards Breakthrough Tank Regiments.” These latter are the units we will now examine.

Although the Soviet Union started the war with two heavy tank battalions (equipped with the woefully under armored and five-turreted T-35 tanks) these were soon all gone, either destroyed by the Germans or more often by their own crews as they ran out of gas or broke down and had to be abandoned. The excellent new KV-1 (and its rare and clumsy stable mate, the 152mm armed KV-2) were attached to mixed tank units containing light, medium, and heavy tanks together. When the Soviets decided to stop trying to run large tank formations and settled on the tank brigade to rebuild their shattered armored fist with, the brigades contained typically one company of seven KV tanks, one of twenty or twenty-one T-34s, and one of twenty to thirty light tanks of whatever variety were available.

As a result of this integration, the Soviets had no real heavy tank units above the size of a company during 1941. The experience of using mixed tank units was not a happy one, however, and most of the leading Soviet tank leaders expressed themselves as General Katukov did when he said that the T-34 was fine, while the light tanks were not too useful and could not keep up with the T-34. The KVs, which terrorized the Germans and were invulnerable to all of their antitank means smaller than an 88mm antiaircraft gun, were OK when they got into action, but were slow and tended to break bridges leaving their units cut off from supply and support.

As a result the decision was made in July of 1942 to regroup the KVs into brigades of their own, and shortly after into regiments. It should be noted that Stalin was very conscious of the language used to describe units and the effect the language had on superior formations it might be subordinate to. These regiments were made up of five companies of tanks, each containing two platoons of two tanks each! (In addition there would be a regimental HQ tank, perhaps an armored car or so and some submachine gunners to accompany the tanks.) Note that a medium tank battalion would normally have twenty-one tanks. So why call these a regiment? For the same reason they were called guards; to indicate that they were meant for special important tasks and to impress the commander they were subordinate to.

These regiments were officially called Breakthrough Tank Regiments (Proryva Tank Polk)rather than Heavy Tank Regiments (Tyazhelyi Tank Polk). This officially changed in early 1944 when their KV-1s, KV-85s and Churchills were replaced with JS-IIs. However, even in official documents and official histories, they were Guards Heavy Tank Regiments from the beginning so we will call them that.

The Guards Heavy Tank Regiments were very different units from the tank brigades and tank corps, as well as the mechanized corps. Those were units designed with operational objectives in mind. They were best used when inserted into a breach in the enemy lines and allowed to run free into the enemy’s rear area, there to raise hell and reach important distant objectives that would either force the enemy to withdraw a long way or to encircle him and prevent his ever being able to withdraw. They were thus like a long handled crowbar inserted into a hole and using leverage rather than brute force to shift large chunks of enemy forces and territory. The Guards Heavy Tank Regiment was more like a short handled sledge hammer. Its job was short ranged and its effect was tactical. Its job was to help smash the hole for other forces to exploit through.

Although in 1945 the Red Army would combine three such regiments to make a heavy tank brigade, an awesome mass of 65 JS-II tanks, usually these regiments were used singly, or paired with self propelled guns. Their job was to give fire support to an attack, to lay back and knock out enemy strongpoints, antitank guns, machinegun nests, and anything else holding up an attack. They advanced at the pace of infantry and were directly attached to infantry units.

If you were in the Red Army in a combat arm, the best place to be was in a JS-II heavy tank. Their loss rate was only a third that of their comrades in the T-34s and only two thirds that of those in the SU assault guns.

One interesting thing that distinguished Soviet heavy tank units was that from the very beginning they were all equipped with radios, although only the company commanders and higher ranks had transmitters in theirs; everyone else had only a receiver. Some tankers have suggested that this is not such a bad system, as it allows commands to actually get through without a lot of cross-talk cluttering up the radio nets.

As a result of their being auxiliary forces, supporting units attached to larger formations to facilitate their breaching of the enemy front lines, the Guards Heavy Tank Regiments have not had as much written about them as their larger sister formations the tank corps and armies. But they played an important part, and a difficult one. A tank corps was, if possible, to avoid the actual job of breaking the enemy front. Soviet studies showed that up to 40% of the tank losses expected from an operation would occur in this part of the battle, when the enemy was dug in, with his mines and antitank guns covering the sectors in which tanks could advance. By contrast, this is where the Guards Heavy Tank Regiments worked!

The 12th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment was originally formed in September, 1941, as part of the group of thirty tank brigades that Lieutenant General Lelyushenko was ordered to organize. Named the 21st Tank Brigade, it was formed in Vladimir in the Moscow Military District as an oversized tank brigade. It contained three tank battalions, the 1st having seven KV-1s in one company and two companies of ten T-34s each. The other two battalions of the brigade, the 2nd and 3rd, each contained about 30 light tanks, apparently T-26s. With 87 tanks the brigade would seem to have been slated for important tasks. When the German offensive against Moscow, Operation Typhoon burst over the Soviet front line at the end of September, 1941, its sister brigades went to find glory at the front. The 17th Tank Brigade fought to the death with the officer cadets defending the Malo Yaroslavets approaches to Moscow, while the 18th and 19th Tank Brigades fought heroically on the Borodino battlefield, supported by the 20th and 22nd Tank Brigades, barring the Moscow-Minsk highway to the Germans.

The 21st Tank Brigade, commanded by Colonel B. M. Skvortsov, was sent in early October to the Kalinin Front. The Germans had driven a thin wedge deep into the Soviet Western Front, seizing the major city of Kalinin on the Moscow-Leningrad Railway by coup de main on October 14th. The Soviet command reacted strongly, sending strong forces to attempt to cut off the German 1st Panzer Division in the city. The 29th Army attacked from the west, while the 30th Army pushed from the east. The 21st Tank Brigade was committed against the southeast side of the city on October 16th, where it engaged elements of the 36th Motorized Division reinforced by tanks of 1st Panzer Division.

During this fighting the brigade was supporting and supported by the 20th Reserve Rifle Regiment. The tank brigade constituted the left flank of the 30th Army, attempting to curl in around Kalinin from the southeast and south. Its own left flank hung in the air, off to the south were some of Dovatar’s cavalry of 16th Army.

On October 17th the German 1st Panzer Division pushed west from the city, only to find itself in danger of being cut off by the 29th Army to its south. The effect of this thrust was to force 29th Army to divert four rifle divisions that were planning to attack to the southwest in order to cut off the Rzhev-Kalinin road and link up with 21st Tank Brigade. Meanwhile 8th Tank Brigade stopped 1st Panzer. By the 20th the 21st Tank Brigade had edged forward towards the road, but 29th Army was pulling away from it. The 29th Army resumed its push, getting two divisions across the Volga on 22nd of October while the German 161st Infantry attacked them from the northeast and the 162nd Infantry from the southwest. Finally on the 24th the Soviets nearly linked up, with Kalinin almost surrounded.

At that point additional German forces arrived from the south, pushing the Soviets back. The 21st Tank Brigade was pushed to the southeast by the 6th Panzer Division coming up on its open southern flank. The brigade had taken some losses and was pulled out of the front on November 2nd. The Germans continued to widen the shoulders of the salient, hammering the 29th and 30th Armies. On November 15th the German 86th Infantry Division, supported by up to 50 tanks from 1st or 6th Panzer Divisions, attacked to the southeast, pushing the tank brigade before it. Soon the attack was joined by the whole 6th Panzer and the 14th Motorized Division as well. The brigade was forced back, first to the northern bank of the Moscow Reservoir (“Sea”), and then across it and half way to Klin.

When the Soviet counteroffensive began rolling westward on December 5, the 21st Tank Brigade began its drive supporting the 371st Rifle Division, a brand new unit. As the Germans cracked and began their retreat, the 21st was attached to the mobile group of the 30th Army. It included two other tank brigades, the 8th and the 35th and the 46th Motorcycle Regiment. Perhaps the only people more miserable than the tankers in this running fight through heavy woods and deep snow were the motorcyclists trying to push their sidecar combinations through the snowy forests. The tankers played a key role in keeping this offensive going, as the artillery was left far behind in the trackless winter forests and had little ammunition even when it did appear, while the rifle units following in the tank’s deep trails were for the most part green, newly raised, and suffering from among other things from a lack of many necessary supplies. For example, the 371st Rifle Division had no wire to even establish communications with the army that commanded them.

The 30th Army nonetheless drove 3rd Panzer Group before them, fighting through snowy woods the whole way, until they butted up against the German last ditch defenses in front of Rzhev. During this drive the tanks were subject to terrible conditions, with a general lack of support services and supply meant that spare parts, servicing, and at times fuel and ammunition were hard to come by. Despite this, the few KVs of 21st Tank Brigade gave the Germans a sound thrashing. This period was the peak of their ascendancy, when they earned the nickname of the “White Mammoths”. Slow though they might be, their presence terrorized the Germans, who simply could not penetrate their armor with the available 37mm and 50mm antitank guns in general use. One or two KVs could roam at will through a German position, with AT shot bouncing off of them leaving hardly a mark. German tanks, armed with a low velocity 75mm short barreled cannon or a short barreled 50mm gun were hardly better off. Only an 88mm antiaircraft gun or a 100mm cannon could hope to penetrate the mammoth’s tough hide, and these guns were big, awkward, and hard to hide or maneuver, so that they often fell prey to the mammoth’s 75mm gun. The next summer, when the Germans reequipped with long barreled 75mm high velocity guns and developed high velocity armor piercing rounds for their 50mm guns, the mammoths became a large slow target rather than an unstoppable force. Attacks by 30th Army continued until late in the winter. At this point the 21st Tank Brigade was pulled back to the Moscow Military District for rebuilding. The brigade was reduced to the two battalions of tanks and a battalion of infantry that was more common at that time. The T-26s were all gone by now and the 12th Battalion had T-34s and KV-1s while the 21st Battalion received the T-60 light tank with its two man crew and its 20mm main gun.

The brigade spent the summer and fall as a part of the 41st Army of the Kalinin Front located in the “Toropets Bulge” west of Rzhev. They operated in the swampy and heavily wooded terrain, supporting the infantry holding the front and occasionally attacking forward German positions. Due to the lack of good roads and clear terrain, the tanks were often used in small groups to provide support for the infantry. During this period the brigade was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel D. Ya. Klinfelyd. In this area the brigade prepared to take part in the unfortunate “Operation Mars” that jumped off in late November, 1942.

Before they could take part in this operation, however, the brigade received new orders. It was ordered disbanded, and its troops moved to the large tank training school north of Tula. Here it was equipped as an all-KV-1 tank regiment with twentyone tanks. Its new title was the 12th Guards Breakthrough Tank Regiment. After brief training, it was dispatched to the Northwestern Front’s 11th Army, holding the northern face of the Demyansk Pocket. Arriving in late December, the regiment was committed to support attacks near Rosino, attempting to snap the neck of the bulge. Two other heavy tank regiments were committed alongside of it, the 3rd and 11th Guards Tank Regiments. This made a total of 50-60 heavy KV tanks attacking together. Unfortunately the attacks were a flop. This was primarily because maneuvering was very difficult in the marshy terrain, because the Germans were well dug in on what ground was above the water level, and because the fresh and full strength 225th Infantry Division and the 184th Sturmgeschutz Battalion were committed against them. The assault gun battalion, equipped with both long and short barreled 75mm guns was particularly effective. Sergeant Horst Naumann became the first NCO in the assault gun arm to win the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, in his case for knocking out twenty-one tanks.

Eventually the Germans were forced to evacuate the Demyansk salient, in February of 1943. By this time the 12th Guards Tank Regiment was already back in Stavka reserves being rebuilt again. In March of 1943 it was assigned to the 61st Army in the Bryansk Front. Here it trained and prepared for big things to come. The veterans of previous campaigns must have been thankful to at last get out of the swampy terrain of the north. Of course the veterans also knew that moving south meant moving closer to the center of the action. That was sure to mean tougher fighting and more losses, but at least one didn’t have to worry about the tanks sinking in the mud! In July the Germans attacked the Kursk bulge. Their attempt to pinch off this large protrusion into their lines ended in complete failure. Their most successful penetration was against the southern face of the bulge, where it took the Soviets two weeks of preparation after the Germans had been driven back before they could commence their counter offensive. Not so in the north, where the German 9th Army was barely able to dent Rokossovsky’s Central Front. While the Germans were still attacking on this front, the Soviets opened an offensive of their own, striving to destroy the Germans in the bulge north of Kursk centered around Orel.

It was here that the 12th Guards Tank Regiment attacked, moving south towards Orel. On July 11 it moved out, supporting the 9th Guards Rifle Corps of the 61st Army. This effort involved the following units: the 12th, 76th, and 77th Guards Rifle Divisions, the 68th Tank Brigade, the 1539th SU Regiment (with twelve SU-152s), the 16th and 17th Artillery Divisions, the 13th Mortar Brigade, the 310th and 311th Guards Mortar (rocket)Regiments (twenty-four BM-13 “Katyusha” rocket launchers each), the 310th Army Engineer Battalion and attached engineer battalions from two other rifle divisions. Of course you have to understand that this was a secondary sector! In two years of heroic work, the Soviet people, with a bit of help from their allies, had provided their soldiers with an abundance of supporting arms. It must have brought tears to the eyes of some of the veterans of 1941 who had had to make do with a few guns and tanks. The attack was launched on a frontage of 9.5 kilometers, with the main concentration on a 6 kilometer front. On this 6 kilometers were concentrated 17 out of 27 rifle battalions, all 67 tanks and SUs contained in the tank brigade, the heavy tank regiment and the SU regiment, 17 companies of engineers and 984 out of 1564 guns and mortars. Although no spectacular breakthroughs resulted, the Germans were forced to call a halt to their failed offensive and by August 18th were forced back out of the Orel bulge. Successive lines of prepared fortifications prevented any deep Soviet successes. When the Germans were forced behind their switch line across the base of the salient, once again the regiment was pulled out to be reequipped.

Between August and November the regiment trained on their new weapon, the KV-85. This was a KV chassis with a new, more efficient turret equipped with an 85mm gun. This tank was a kind of a hybrid, mating a turret designed for a new heavier tank with a modified hull of a KV. In late November the word came again to load the tanks onto flatcars and to head south to the 1st Ukrainian Front west of Kiev. Between December 7th and 14th the tanks off-loaded at Gostomel Station and proceeded by night marches to the assembly area of the 18th Army. This army, along with 1st Guards Army and 1st Tank Army were massed just behind the Soviet lines, although the Germans were blissfully unaware of their presence.

The German 4th Panzer Army had been conducting a series of attacks against the 38th and 60th Soviet armies, driving them back but failing to destroy them, while the German armor strength took considerable losses. Finally, on December 24, the curtain ran up on a new Soviet offensive. The Soviets changed their usual pattern of a dawn barrage, opting instead to attack in the middle of the day, when it was hoped that the Germans would be well into their liquid Christmas Eve celebrations.

Lieutenant General V. S. Golubovsky’s brand new 101st Rifle Corps was assigned the 12th Guards Breakthrough Tank Regiment for support. In addition it had the 117th Guards and 24th and 389th Rifle Divisions, a dozen SU-76s of the 1812th SU Regiment, the 2nd and 28th Antitank Brigades and seven artillery and mortar regiments. It’s mission was to attack straight down the Kiev-Zhitomir Highway through Stavische to Kocherovo. The 12th Guards Breakthrough Tank Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Ivanovich Ilyushkin, played a crucial role in the attack, suppressing enemy firing points and repelling enemy tank counterattacks.

Directly behind the 18th Army was coiled the 3rd Guards Tank Army. When the 101st Rifle Corps broke through the German lines on the first day, threatening to pocket the spindly 8th and 19th Panzer Divisions (each of which had the strength of a weak regimental combat group). Driving the Germans before them, and hurrying to keep up with the rampaging 3rd Guards Tank Army, the 101st Rifle Corps stormed Berdichev on January 5th, winning an honorific title for most of its sub units, including the 12th Guards Breakthrough Tank Regiment, as well as a brigade of the 1st Tank Army and a Sturmovik Division.

After a brief lull, in February the 12th Guards Tank Regiment was shifted to the 1st Guards Army, but as the offensive ground towards the Carpathian foothills they were pulled back into Front reserve for a rest and refit. This was only brief, as they were then assigned to the 1st (now Guards) Tank Army’s 11th Guards Tank Corps when it broke into Starokonstantinov on March 9, 1944. In April the regiment was back in reserve for the front, no doubt receiving new tanks.

These new tanks were the JS-II heavy tanks. Here the Soviets caught up again with German tank design, and surpassed it. The JS-II only weighed as much as a Panther medium tank, but carried a 122mm gun. True, the size of the gun limited the amount of ammunition that could be carried and kept the rate of fire quite slow (it used separately packaged propellant and shells). Its armor was superb and the gun…well, the first test of the gun was a shot at the awe inspiring frontal armor of a captured tank. The shot was fired at 1500 meters. It punched through the front armor with so much energy left over that it proceeded to plow through the engine compartment and emerge through the back armor! The Germans first ran into the 122mm gun carried by the JSU-122 assault guns at the Korsun Shevchenkovsky. After a disastrous exchange of fire at long range, Hitler ordered that henceforth such tanks or assault guns should not be fought in a meeting engagement, but rather the panzers should retreat to a good defensive position from which they could engage from a hull down position.

At any rate, the KV-85 had only been a stop gap measure until the JS-II could be produced in quantity. In May the regiment was attached to the 1st Guards Army again, and then on July 12th, one day before the Lvov-Sandomirez Operation, the regiment was transferred to the 38th Army under General Kiril Semenovich Moskalenko. This army had a key role in the operation, it was to open the way through the deep German defensive positions for the 3rd Guards Tank Army.

For this task, the army planned to attack on a front of only 8.6 kilometers. Four rifle divisions, two each from the two first echelon rifle corps, the 52nd and 101st, would attack in front, with one division in the second echelon of each corps. In the army’s second echelon was another rifle corps, the 67th, with two more rifle divisions, and yet another division was in army reserve. The infantry were not expected to do the job by themselves, they were supported by the 3rd Breakthrough Artillery Division which had four artillery brigades and a mortar brigade, by two antitank brigades, plus an antiaircraft division, and two Guards Mortar (rocket) regiments. The only thing the army lacked was armor. In addition to the twenty-nine tanks in 12th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment, it also had two SU regiments. Moskalenko in his memoirs claims these contained 45 SUs, all SU-76s. It would appear, however that the second regiment was the 349th Heavy SU Regiment, equipped with 21 JSU-152 heavy assault guns.

But why did the 12th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment have twenty-nine tanks you ask? Its table of organization and equipment only called for twenty-one JS-IIs and in fact it only had twenty. The other nine turn out to be T-34/85s, scrounged up somewhere (there hadn’t been a tank unit in the 38th Army for months!). Never underestimate the ingenuity of the soldier in the field to acquire reinforcements where they can be found. The attack kicked off on July 14. The Soviets had indications that the Germans intended to withdraw from their forward positions just before the Soviet offensive to avoid the effects of the expected massive artillery barrage. The Soviet command consequently launched reconnaissance in force attacks on July 13 to ascertain the Germans intentions. On the 38th Army’s front it appeared that the German had no intention of withdrawing, so the attack went in as planned. Well, not quite as planned as bad weather precluded air support or good observation for artillery spotting on the morning of July 14th and the attack was not begun until 14:35 hours (2:35 PM) when more than 300 bombers and ground attack aircraft hammered the German positions. An artillery barrage of an hour and a half duration finished what the airplanes had left undone and the attack then went in. Despite the massive artillery fire and air strikes, and the heavy tanks and assault guns, the rifle divisions were able to overcome the German front line positions and advance a total of only 7 kilometers into enemy territory. That was as far as they got, as German counterattacks began rolling in on July 15th.

Coming on in groups of up to a regiment of infantry supported by ten to fifteen tanks at a time, the German 1st and 8th Panzer Divisions succeeded in rolling the 38th Army back 2-4 kilometers. To prevent the German armor from completely defeating the army’s forward elements, the 2nd Air Army was called on to conduct continuous air strikes. They responded with 1,800 sorties that dropped 716 tons of bombs, rockets, and other ordinance on a 7 square kilometer area east and northeast of Zborov, all on the afternoon of July 15th. This effectively relieved the pressure on the forward infantry units. By July 18th the 38th Army was beating off up to twelve counterattacks a day supported by large groups of tanks, including Tigers and Panthers.

It was determined that 38th Army, under the veteran general Moskalenko, had made numerous mistakes on July 15th, including failing to coordinate its artillery well with the forward troops, failure to bring its antitank units forward fast enough to deal with the enemy counterattacks, and a failure of army headquarters to maintain communications with all its units (the army commander had gone too far forward and was only in communication with one of his corps.) As a result, the decision was made early to divert the 3rd Guards Tank Army to the north, where it exploited a hole in the German lines created by 60th Army and already widened by 4th Tank Army.

The 38th Army was left to soldier on, pushing to the southwest towards the Carpathian foothills. The German defenses were 25 kilometers deep, although all the five defensive lines were not manned. The terrain grew increasingly hilly the further the army advanced. While the 60th Army and the tank armies got the laurels for liberating Lvov, the 38th Army found itself facing successively higher ridges and counterattacks from the 1st, 8th, 16th and 17th Panzer Divisions. Although they were faced with superior numbers of enemy tanks, the 38th Army managed to continue to push the Germans back through all of July. This was in no small part due to the expertise of the 12th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment.

In August the army paused to catch its breath, lick its wounds, and bring up ammunition and replacements. This apparently did not include much in the way of tank replacements, because when the offensive resumed at 0845 on September 8th, between the 12th Guards and the 349th Guards Heavy SU Regiment they could muster only twenty-two vehicles. That is about 50% strength. To reinforce the attack the similarly depleted 25th Tank Corps was ordered to commit 25 out of its 86 workable tanks to support the infantry in the break in operation.

Once again the 12th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment found itself in terrain little suited for its best use. First it had been the swamps and forests in the north in 1941 and 42. Now it found itself engaged in mountain fighting. Attacking on a line of Yaslo-Emigrud- Novy-Lysa Gura-Dukla Pass, the 38th Army was advancing into terrain ranging up to 700 meters (2200 feet) and so steep that the fighting justly was described as “mountain warfare.” The aim of the attack was to break over the Carpathians and relieve the national uprising taking place in Slovakia against the Nazis.

The initial attacks involved once again the 52nd and 101st Rifle Corps operating with two divisions each in their first echelon and one each in their second. Massed behind them was the 17th Artillery Division, an extra artillery brigade, a mortar brigade, two brigades of heavy rocket launchers and two regiments of mediums. All of this was unleashed for a 125 minute barrage, which produced a concentration of 140 tubes per kilometer of front. This artillery inferno was further concentrated so that the two leading divisions of Lieutenant General A. L. Bondarev’s 101st Rifle Corps actually were supported by 82% of this fire. This is almost certainly also where the 12th Guards Tank and 349 Guards Heavy SU Regiments were committed. The barrage was very carefully planned so that its back edge stayed only 100 meters in front of the advancing troops. The German front line was pulverized up to 1500 meters in depth.

In army reserve was its mobile group, consisting of the 25th Tank Corps and the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps. Additional army reserve was provided by the 1st Czechoslovak Corps. The first day of the assault produced an advance of 6-8 kilometers in the first few hours. The army promptly committed its mobile group and reserve through the breach. Progress was slow thereafter, with a further barrage of 30 minutes being ordered on September 10 to help get the infantry unstuck. The Germans, however, committed the 78th “Sturm” Infantry Division supported by tanks to counter attack. The 12th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment was praised for its role in repulsing the enemy attacks. To increase the rate of advance, the 4th Guards Tank Corps was committed on the afternoon of September 10th although all it had was 50 tanks and nine SUs still running. It struck the Germans on the army’s right flank.

Its help was needed, because by now the Germans had an estimated 180 tanks concentrated around the key Dukla Pass area from the 1st, 8th and 24th Panzer Divisions. (It is hard to see how deployment space could have been found for so many vehicles). The Dukla Pass had to be taken if any help was to be brought to the Slovaks. With the weather fast deteriorating, the Czechoslovak Corps was thrown in to the fighting for the pass and finally took it after suffering 6,500 casualties. No breakthrough resulted, however, and the Germans managed to both successfully crush the national rising and hold off the Soviet forces in the Carpathians. By late October the fighting died away as the Soviets began to stock up on artillery ammunition and prepare for the next operation. The operation, which had been in pursuit of no obvious strategic goal except solidarity with the Czechoslovak peoples in their uprising, had cost the Red Army in excess of 90,000 killed and wounded.

It was at about this time that the 38th Army fielded a very unusual unit, that may have operated in conjunction with the 12th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment. This was Guards Lieutenant Sotnikov’s special tank platoon, equipped with at least three captured Panther tanks, painted in the usual German panzer yellow with camouflage pattern oversprayed, but with big red stars on the turret sides for obvious reasons.

The next operation of the 38th Army was the “Yaslo-Gorlits Operation” which kicked off at 09:50 hours on January 15th. This was three days after the massive “Vistula- Oder Operation” involving the 1st Ukrainian and 1st Belorussian Fronts to the north had drawn away and consumed all the German reserves in the area. With 181 guns and mortars for each kilometer of front, and the usual four divisions attacking on about a 2100 meter front each, the army broke through in about 8 hours of heavy fighting and committed its mobile group by 18:00 hours. This group consisted of the 42nd Tank Brigade (with 40 T-34/85s), the 208th SU Brigade (with 50 SU-100s) as well as an antitank regiment, a heavy rocket launcher battalion, an artillery regiment, and two rifle regiments from a rifle division that were motorized in an impromptu manner and finally with an engineer battalion.

The German defenders of the 11th SS Korps, including the 545th Volksgrenadier Division and part of the 320th Volksgrenadiers, was knocked out of the way in short order. The 101st Rifle Corps was 6 kilometers into the German lines on the first day and two days later had penetrated 15-20 kilometers and the operation turned into a pursuit of the fleeing German remnants. During the next 15 days the 38th Army advanced 205 kilometers and assault crossed seven rivers.

A typical small unit action during this operation took place on February 10th, 1945, near Zabzhet on the Little Vistula. A force consisting of the 227th Rifle Regiment supported by eight SU-76s of the 1666th SU Regiment and eight JS-IIs of the 12th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment. To clear a German rearguard out of the way and reach the Vistula, the regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai P. Chalov, ordered two reinforced infantry platoons, each with one tank in support, to conduct a night attack. The infantry were to creep up to within 50 meters of the German position while the noisier tanks stayed back about 500 meters. The attack went in on the night of February 10, 1945. As soon as the infantry made their move, the tanks opened up with supporting fire and advanced to close up with the infantry. The Germans retreated through a woods, over a road, and away from the river crossing.

The next morning the riflemen of the regiment were loaded on the tanks and were thus able to maneuver around the enemy remaining in their way and to go through Gurna- Konets and Edes and force a crossing of the Vistula south of Maly Vistula. By the end of the day the other two regiments of the 185th Rifle Division were able to join up and a solid bridgehead had been established.

From February through the end of the war in May, the 12th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment continued to provide direct support to the infantry of the 38th Army as it pushed slowly towards Prague. They were particularly helpful in dealing with the old Czechoslovak border defenses, which consisted of concrete bunkers, pillboxes, and dragon’s teeth. Along with the heavy tanks, 152mm gun-howitzers were dragged up for direct fire, one pillbox with nine firing positions took 28 rounds of 152mm fire before it was subdued.

Never quite as glorious as their fellow tankers in the tank corps and mechanized corps, the men (and sometimes women) of the Guards Heavy Tank Regiments had the thankless task of smashing the well dug in and well armed German front line defenses so that their speedier comrades could drive through and achieve deep objectives. They did so repeatedly, in part because of their superior equipment, and in part because of their courage and dedication