Video: How our tankers got themselves German tanks
2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55
In August 1941, the 107th separate tank battalion was formed on the Leningrad front. Initially, it was armed with BT-5 and BT-7 tanks. During the winter battles of 1942, the battalion lost all tanks and by March was in Olomn without material.
And then the battalion commander, Major Boris Aleksandrovich Shalimov, ordered the tank crews to look in the woods beyond Pogosty, where the battalion had recently fought, knocked out German tanks suitable for restoration for the purpose of their further use. A military technician of the 2nd rank Ivan Semyonovich Pogorelov, senior sergeant Nikolai Baryshev, driver-mechanics of foreman Skachkov and Belyaev were sent to search for the destroyed tanks, and with them the girl-soldier Valentina Nikolaeva, who had recently studied the specialty of a tower gunner.
At first, the search engines came across two wrecked Pz. IIIs, completely unsuitable for recovery. However, the dismemberment of these tanks helped our mechanics to study in detail the structure of enemy vehicles, and Sergeant Major Skachkov even took a set of German tools with him.
The third Pz. III tank with tactical number 121 on the hull, which looked intact from the outside, was found in no-man's land. The starboard side of the tank was facing us, and its side hatch was open. The corpses of his crew members were scattered around the tank. The tank turned out to be armed with a 75 mm cannon, which was a rarity for the Pz. III.
In short dashes, the soldiers rushed to the tank. The Germans, seeing them, opened machine-gun and mortar fire, but soon all five were in the tank and became invulnerable to enemy fire.
It turned out that an anti-personnel grenade had exploded in the tank, which had probably hit it through a hatch. There were no German corpses in the tank - they were all outside, but frozen blood remained on the floor and seats.
Only the control rods were damaged. We managed to replace them with wire. The power supply system damaged by shrapnel was patched with pieces of copper from straightened casings. The soldiers looked through all the electrical equipment, fixed the torn wiring, tried all the valves, the starter, and screwed up the pump. Instead of an ignition key, Baryshev made a suitable hook out of wire and tin.
The tank's engine started up surprisingly quickly - the batteries did not have time to sit down. Having deployed the tower in the direction of the German positions, from where they opened fire again, Baryshev fired a couple of shots. The Germans fell silent.
Sergeant Major Anatoly Nikitich Baryshev sat at the control levers. However, as soon as the tank started to move, the trophyers realized that they were in a minefield. And then it was decided to go over the corpses lying everywhere - it is unlikely, they reasoned, that the corpse would lie on a mine.
When we got out of the German shelling zone, Valentina sat down on the armor and began to sweep the red flags so that our gunners would not shoot the tank they had just captured.
On the way home, the soldiers noticed another Pz. III with a red flag. On the same day he was captured by the company commander of their battalion, senior lieutenant Dudin and the company commissar, junior political instructor Polunin.
By the end of March, the battalion already had ten repaired German tanks, with which it soon re-entered the battle.
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