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128-599: The Voronezh front was established at the end of June 1942 when tanks of the German Wehrmacht 's 6th Army reached Voronezh during the early stages of Operation Blau . It was split off the earlier Bryansk Front in order to better defend the Voronezh region. The name indicated the primary geographical region in which the front first fought, based on the town of Voronezh on the Don River. The Voronezh Front participated in

256-613: A caterpillar track. It is true that in 1770 he patented a "machine, that should carry and lay down its own road", but this was Edgeworth's choice of words. His own account in his autobiography is of a horse-drawn wooden carriage on eight retractable legs, capable of lifting itself over high walls. The description bears no similarity to a caterpillar track. Armoured trains appeared in the mid-19th century, and various armoured steam and petrol-engined vehicles were also proposed. The machines described in Wells's 1903 short story The Land Ironclads are

384-505: A defeat on the Japanese 6th Army with his massed combined tank and air attack, the Soviets learned a lesson on the use of gasoline engines, and quickly incorporated those newly found experiences into their new T-34 medium tank during World War II . Prior to World War II, the tactics and strategy of deploying tank forces underwent a revolution. In August 1939, Soviet General Georgy Zhukov used

512-512: A field gun in an armoured box on tracks . Major William E. Donohue, of the British Army's Mechanical Transport Committee, suggested fixing a gun and armoured shield on a British type of track-driven vehicle. The first armoured car was produced in Austria in 1904. However, all were restricted to rails or reasonably passable terrain. It was the development of a practical caterpillar track that provided

640-616: A front which stretched from positions east of Warsaw southwards along the Vistula, almost to the confluence of the San . At that point there was a large Soviet bridgehead over the Vistula in the area of Baranów before the front continued south to Jasło . There were three armies in the group; the 9th Army , deployed around Warsaw, the 4th Panzer Army , opposite the Baranow salient in the Vistula Bend, and

768-440: A halt, owing to continued German resistance on his northern flank ( Pomerania ), and the advance on Berlin had to be delayed until April. In the wake of the successful Operation Bagration , the 1st Belorussian Front managed to secure two bridgeheads west of the Vistula river between 27 July and 4 August 1944. The Soviet forces remained inactive during the failed Warsaw uprising that started on 1 August, though their frontline

896-542: A heavy bombardment. The 33rd and 69th armies broke out of the Puławy bridgehead to a depth of 30 km (19 mi), while the 5th Shock and 8th Guards armies broke out of the Magnuszew bridgehead. The 2nd and 1st guards tank armies were committed after them to exploit the breach. The 69th Army's progress from the Puławy bridgehead was especially successful, with the defending LVI Panzer Corps disintegrating after its line of retreat

1024-503: A humorous objection to this, remarking that the War Office pundits would probably contract the description to 'W.C.'s for Russia', and that we had better forestall this by merely labelling the packages 'Tanks'. So tanks they became, and tanks they have remained." This appears to be an imperfect recollection. He says that the name problem arose "when we shipped the first two vehicles to France the following year" (August 1916), but by that time

1152-586: A large scale, and it was their superior tactics and French blunders, not superior weapons, that made the "blitzkrieg" so successful in May 1940. For information regarding tank development in this period, see tank development between the wars . Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union all experimented heavily with tank warfare during their clandestine and "volunteer" involvement in the Spanish Civil War , which saw some of

1280-769: A meeting took place of the Inter-Departmental Conference (including representatives of the Director of Naval Construction's Committee, the Admiralty, the Ministry of Munitions, and the War Office). Its purpose was to discuss the progress of the plans for what were described as "Caterpillar Machine Gun Destroyers or Land Cruisers." In his autobiography, Albert Gerald Stern (Secretary to the Landship Committee, later head of

1408-578: A more traditional role in close cooperation with infantry units, but in the Battle of France deep independent armoured penetrations were executed by the Germans, a technique later called blitzkrieg . Blitzkrieg used innovative combined arms tactics and radios in all of the tanks to provide a level of tactical flexibility and power that surpassed that of the Allied armour. The French Army , with tanks equal or superior to

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1536-428: A new era of combat, armoured warfare . Until the invention of the main battle tank , tanks were typically categorized either by weight class ( light , medium , heavy or superheavy tanks ) or doctrinal purpose ( breakthrough- , cavalry- , infantry- , cruiser- , or reconnaissance tanks). Some are larger and more thickly armoured and with large guns, while others are smaller, lightly armoured, and equipped with

1664-570: A repeat of the German successes of 1940. Despite early successes against the Soviets, the Germans were forced to up-gun their Panzer IVs, and to design and build both the larger and more expensive Tiger heavy tank in 1942, and the Panther medium tank the following year. In doing so, the Wehrmacht denied the infantry and other support arms the production priorities that they needed to remain equal partners with

1792-513: A small number of middle-ranking British Army officers tried to persuade the War Office and the Government to consider the creation of armoured vehicles. Amongst their suggestions was the use of caterpillar tractors, but although the Army used many such vehicles for towing heavy guns, it could not be persuaded that they could be adapted as armoured vehicles. The consequence was that early tank development in

1920-491: A smaller caliber and lighter gun. These smaller tanks move over terrain with speed and agility and can perform a reconnaissance role in addition to engaging hostile targets. The smaller, faster tank would not normally engage in battle with a larger, heavily armoured tank, except during a surprise flanking manoeuvre . The word tank was first applied in a military context to British "landships" in 1915 to keep their nature secret before they entered service. On 24 December 1915,

2048-472: A step closer, insofar as they are armour-plated, have an internal power plant, and are able to cross trenches. Some aspects of the story foresee the tactical use and impact of the tanks that later came into being. However, Wells's vehicles were driven by steam and moved on pedrail wheels , technologies that were already outdated at the time of writing. After seeing British tanks in 1916, Wells denied having "invented" them, writing, "Yet let me state at once that I

2176-560: A thaw later in the month, and the tanks needed hard ground for the offensive. It was not done to assist American and British forces during the Battle of the Bulge , as Stalin chose to claim at Yalta. Two fronts of the Red Army were directly involved. The 1st Belorussian Front, holding the sector around Warsaw and southward in the Magnuszew and Puławy bridgeheads, was led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov;

2304-532: A total of 150. Production models of "Male" tanks (armed with naval cannon and machine guns) and "Females" (carrying only machine-guns) would go on to fight in history's first tank action at the Somme in September 1916. Great Britain produced about 2,600 tanks of various types during the war. The first tank to engage in battle was designated D1 , a British Mark I Male, during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette (part of

2432-415: Is a large- caliber tank gun mounted in a rotating gun turret , supplemented by machine guns or other ranged weapons such as anti-tank guided missiles or rocket launchers . They have heavy vehicle armour which provides protection for the crew, the vehicle's munition storage, fuel tank and propulsion systems. The use of tracks rather than wheels provides improved operational mobility which allows

2560-474: Is also used colloquially. The Polish name czołg , derived from verb czołgać się ("to crawl"), is used, depicting the way of machine's movement and its speed. In Hungarian the tank is called harckocsi (combat wagon), albeit tank is also common. In Japanese, the term sensha ( 戦車 , lit. "battle vehicle") is taken from Chinese and used, and this term is likewise borrowed into Korean as jeoncha ( 전차 / 戰車 ); more recent Chinese literature uses

2688-489: Is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat . Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower , strong armour , and battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engine; their main armament is often mounted within a turret . They are a mainstay of modern 20th and 21st century ground forces and a key part of combined arms combat. Modern tanks are versatile mobile land weapons platforms whose main armament

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2816-499: Is really to Mr Winston Churchill that the credit is due more than to anyone else. He took up with enthusiasm the idea of making them a long time ago, and he met with many difficulties. He converted me, and at the Ministry of Munitions he went ahead and made them. The admiralty experts were invaluable, and gave the greatest possible assistance. They are, of course, experts in the matter of armour plating. Major Stern , (formerly an officer in

2944-501: The Samokhodnaya ustanovka families of AFV's for the Soviets: such turretless, casemate -style tank destroyers and assault guns were less complex, stripped down tanks carrying heavy guns, solely firing forward. The firepower and low cost of these vehicles made them attractive but as manufacturing techniques improved and larger turret rings made larger tank guns feasible, the gun turret

3072-459: The 17th Army to their south. The force had a total complement of 450,000 soldiers, 4,100 artillery pieces, and 1,150 tanks. Army Group A was led by Colonel-General Josef Harpe (who was replaced, after the offensive had begun, by Colonel-General Ferdinand Schörner on 20 January). German intelligence had estimated that the Soviet forces had a 3:1 numerical superiority to the German forces; there

3200-644: The Auschwitz concentration camp . Despite attempts by retreating SS units to destroy parts of the camp, the Soviet forces still found graphic evidence of the Holocaust . The Soviets would also liberate camps such as Płaszów , Stutthof , and Ravensbrück . In anticipation of the approaching Red Army, the retreating Wehrmacht left parts of the German territory largely abandoned. With widespread unchecked chaos erupting, numerous reports of looting and attacks against ethnic Germans emerged. Nazi propaganda had furthermore demonized

3328-711: The Battle of Voronezh , the defensive operations on the approaches to Stalingrad, and in the December 1942 Operation Saturn , the follow-on to the encirclement of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad where it destroyed the Hungarian Second Army . Following Operation Saturn, the front was involved in Operation Star , which included the Third Battle of Kharkov , which resulted in a long battle from 2 February to 23 March 1943, and

3456-575: The Cold War , the main battle tank concept arose and became a key component of modern armies. In the 21st century, with the increasing role of asymmetrical warfare and the end of the Cold War, that also contributed to the increase of cost-effective anti-tank rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) worldwide and its successors, the ability of tanks to operate independently has declined. Modern tanks are more frequently organized into combined arms units which involve

3584-562: The Courland Pocket to the Reich via the Baltic Sea to get the necessary manpower for the defence, but Hitler forbade it. In addition, Hitler commanded that one major operational reserve, the troops of Sepp Dietrich 's 6th Panzer Army , be moved to Hungary to support Operation Frühlingserwachen . The offensive was brought forward from 20 to 12 January because meteorological reports warned of

3712-488: The Hussite-wars . The continuous " caterpillar track " arose from attempts to improve the mobility of wheeled vehicles by spreading their weight, reducing ground pressure, and increasing their traction. Experiments can be traced back as far as the 17th century, and by the late nineteenth they existed in various recognizable and practical forms in several countries. It is frequently claimed that Richard Lovell Edgeworth created

3840-795: The Prague Offensive which became the final battle of World War II in Europe , therefore ending the war. Following the war, the Front headquarters formed the Central Group of Forces of the Red Army in Austria and Hungary till 1955, and re-instituted in 1968 in Czechoslovakia as a legacy of the Prague Spring events. The armies that were part of the 1st Ukrainian Front included: Tank A tank

3968-516: The Republican side were equipped with cannon, and of those 64 nearly all were World War I vintage Renault FT tanks, while the 331 Soviet supplied machines had 45mm main guns and were of 1930s manufacture. The balance of Nationalist tanks were machine gun armed. The primary lesson learned from this war was that machine gun armed tanks had to be equipped with cannon, with the associated armour inherent to modern tanks. The five-month-long war between

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4096-559: The Second Battle of El Alamein , the Afrika Korps, crippled by disruptions in their supply lines, had 95% of its tanks destroyed and was forced to retreat by a massively reinforced Eighth Army , the first in a series of defeats that would eventually lead to the surrender of the remaining Axis forces in Tunisia . When Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa ,

4224-509: The T-34 , one of the predecessors of the main battle tank . Less than two weeks later, Germany began their large-scale armoured campaigns that would become known as blitzkrieg ("lightning war") – massed concentrations of tanks combined with motorized and mechanized infantry , artillery and air power designed to break through the enemy front and collapse enemy resistance. The widespread introduction of high-explosive anti-tank warheads during

4352-742: The Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Company in Birmingham and tested in Switzerland and Norway, and can be seen in action in Herbert Ponting 's 1911 documentary film of Scott's Antarctic Terra Nova Expedition . Scott died during the expedition in 1912, but expedition member and biographer Apsley Cherry-Garrard credited Scott's "motors" with the inspiration for the British World War I tanks, writing: "Scott never knew their true possibilities; for they were

4480-614: The 1st Ukrainian Front had forced crossings of the Nida river, and began to exploit towards Radomsko and the Warthe . The 4th Panzer Army's last cohesive formation, the XXIV Panzer Corps, held on around Kielce until the night of 16 January, before its commander made the decision to withdraw. The 1st Belorussian Front, to Konev's north, opened its attack on the German 9th Army from the Magnuszew and Puławy bridgeheads at 08:30, again commencing with

4608-511: The 1st Ukrainian Front, occupying the Sandomierz bridgehead, was led by Marshal Ivan Konev . Zhukov and Konev had 163 divisions for the operation with a total of: 2,203,000 infantry, 4,529 tanks, 2,513 assault guns , 13,763 pieces of field artillery (76 mm or more), 14,812 mortars , 4,936 anti-tank guns , 2,198 Katyusha multiple rocket launchers, and 5,000 aircraft. Soviet forces in this sector were opposed by Army Group A , defending

4736-448: The 21st Army encircled the area from the north. He then ordered Rybalko's 3rd Guards Tank Army, moving on Breslau, to swing southwards along the upper Oder from 20 January, cutting off 17th Army's withdrawal. In the meantime, the shattered remnants of the 4th Panzer Army were still attempting to reach German lines. By 18 January, Nehring and the XXIV Panzer Corps found that their intended route northwards had been blocked, so pulled back to

4864-410: The 59th and 60th armies, in conjunction with the 4th Guards Tank Corps, forced the German defenders to withdraw hurriedly. The second stage of the 1st Ukrainian Front's objective was far more complex, as they were required to encircle and secure the entire industrial region of Upper Silesia, where they were faced by Schulz's 17th Army. Konev ordered that the 59th and 60th armies advance frontally, while

4992-764: The 8th Guards Army began to fight its way into the city on the following day, though there was protracted and intense fighting in the Siege of Poznań before the city would finally be taken. To the northeast of Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, the lead elements of Marshal Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front taking part in the East Prussian offensive had reached the Baltic coast of the Vistula delta by 24 January and so succeeded in isolating Army Group Centre in East Prussia. On 27 January,

5120-475: The 9th Army's retreat, it was forced to withdraw southwest toward the Warthe. On 17 January, Konev was given new objectives: to advance towards Breslau using his mechanised forces, and to use the combined-arms forces of the 60th and 59th armies to open an attack on the southern flank towards the industrial heartland of Upper Silesia through Kraków . Kraków was secured undamaged on 19 January after an encirclement by

5248-474: The Arab world, tanks are called Dabbāba (after a type of siege engine ). In Italian, a tank is a " carro armato " (lit. "armed wagon"), without reference to its armour. Norway uses the term stridsvogn and Sweden the similar stridsvagn (lit. "battle wagon", also used for "chariots"), whereas Denmark uses kampvogn (lit. fight wagon). Finland uses panssarivaunu (armoured wagon), although tankki

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5376-417: The Baranow bridgehead at 04:35 on 12 January with an intense bombardment by the guns of the 1st Ukrainian Front against the positions of the 4th Panzer Army. Concentrated against the divisions of XLVIII Panzer Corps, which had been deployed across the face of the bridgehead, the bombardment effectively destroyed their capacity to respond; a battalion commander in the 68th Infantry Division stated that "I began

5504-469: The British War Office . In Russia, Vasiliy Mendeleev designed a tracked vehicle containing a large naval gun. All of these ideas were rejected and, by 1914, forgotten (although it was officially acknowledged after the war that de Mole's design was at least the equal to the initial British tanks). Various individuals continued to contemplate the use of tracked vehicles for military applications, but by

5632-662: The British and French built thousands of tanks in World War I, Germany was unconvinced of the tank's potential, and did not have enough resources, thus it built only twenty. Tanks of the interwar period evolved into the much larger and more powerful designs of World War II . Important new concepts of armoured warfare were developed; the Soviet Union launched the first mass tank/air attack at Khalkhin Gol ( Nomonhan ) in August 1939, and later developed

5760-412: The Cold War had been hammered out in the closing stages of World War II. Large turrets, capable suspension systems, greatly improved engines, sloped armour and large-caliber (90 mm and larger) guns were standard. Tank design during the Cold War built on this foundation and included improvements to fire control , gyroscopic gun stabilization, communications (primarily radio) and crew comfort and saw

5888-481: The Committee in view of his experience with the engineering methods it was felt might be required; the two other members were naval officers, and a number of industrialists were engaged as consultants. So many played a part in its long and complicated development that it is not possible to name any individual as the sole inventor of the tank. However leading roles were played by Lt Walter Gordon Wilson R.N. who designed

6016-494: The English-derived 坦克 tǎnkè (tank) as opposed to 戰車 zhànchē (battle vehicle) used in earlier days. The modern tank is the result of a century of development from the first primitive armoured vehicles, due to improvements in technology such as the internal combustion engine, which allowed the rapid movement of heavy armoured vehicles. As a result of these advances, tanks underwent tremendous shifts in capability in

6144-457: The FT was its engine located at the rear. This pattern, with the gun located in a mounted turret and the engine at the back, has become the standard for most succeeding tanks across the world even to this day. The FT was the most numerous tank of the war; over 3,000 were made by late 1918. Germany fielded very few tanks during World War I , and started development only after encountering British tanks on

6272-556: The German tanks in both quality and quantity, employed a linear defensive strategy in which the armoured cavalry units were made subservient to the needs of the infantry armies to cover their entrenchment in Belgium. In addition, they lacked radios in many of their tanks and headquarters, which limited their ability to respond to German attacks. In accordance with blitzkrieg methods, German tanks bypassed enemy strongpoints and could radio for close air support to destroy them, or leave them to

6400-602: The Mechanical Warfare Supply Department) says that at that meeting: Mr. (Thomas J.) Macnamara ( M.P. , and Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty ) then suggested, for secrecy's sake, to change the title of the Landship Committee. Mr. d'Eyncourt agreed that it was very desirable to retain secrecy by all means, and proposed to refer to the vessel as a "Water Carrier". In Government offices, committees and departments are always known by their initials. For this reason I, as Secretary, considered

6528-568: The Oder almost unopposed; a unit of the 5th Shock Army crossed the river ice and took the town of Kienitz as early as 31 January. Stavka declared the operation complete on 2 February. Zhukov had initially hoped to advance directly on Berlin, as the German defences had largely collapsed. However, the exposed northern flank of the 1st Belorussian Front in Pomerania , along with a German counter-attack ( Operation Solstice ) against its spearheads, convinced

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6656-617: The Royal Naval Air Service) a business man at the Ministry of Munitions had charge of the work of getting them built, and he did the task very well. Col Swinton and others also did valuable work. Whilst several experimental machines were investigated in France, it was a colonel of artillery, J.B.E. Estienne , who directly approached the Commander-in-Chief with detailed plans for a tank on caterpillar tracks, in late 1915. The result

6784-479: The Somme. The A7V , the only type made, was introduced in March 1918 with just 20 being produced during the war. The first tank versus tank action took place on 24 April 1918 at the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux , France, when three British Mark IVs met three German A7Vs . Captured British Mk IVs formed the bulk of Germany's tank forces during World War I; about 35 were in service at any one time. Plans to expand

6912-593: The Soviet Army so much that most Germans attempted to run. Millions of ethnic German refugees fled west , seeking relative safety in central or western Germany, or even in the custody of the Americans and British west of the Rhine . The Vistula–Oder offensive was a major success for the Soviet military. Within a matter of days, the forces involved had advanced hundreds of kilometers, taking much of Poland and striking deep within

7040-422: The Soviet Union and the Japanese 6th Army at Khalkhin Gol ( Nomonhan ) in 1939 brought home some lessons . In this conflict, the Soviets fielded over two thousand tanks, to the around 73 cannon armed tanks deployed by the Japanese, the major difference being that Japanese armour were equipped with diesel engines as opposed to the Russian tanks equipped with petrol engines. After General Georgy Zhukov inflicted

7168-408: The Soviet command that it was essential to clear German forces from Pomerania in the East Pomeranian offensive before the Berlin offensive could proceed. In July 1944, the Soviet 8th Guards liberated Lublin , and after a brief skirmish with German forces outside the city, came upon the Majdanek concentration camp . Although the Soviets invited press from around the world to witness the horrors of

7296-414: The Soviet offensive was voluntarily halted, though Berlin was undefended and only approximately 70 km (43 mi) away from the Soviet bridgeheads across the Oder river. After the war, a debate raged, mainly between Vasily Chuikov and Georgy Zhukov, whether it was wise to stop the offensive. Chuikov argued Berlin should have been taken then, while Zhukov defended the decision to stop. The operation

7424-475: The Soviets had a superior tank design, the T-34 . A lack of preparations for the Axis surprise attack, mechanical problems, poor training of the crews and incompetent leadership caused the Soviet machines to be surrounded and destroyed in large numbers. However, interference from Adolf Hitler , the geographic scale of the conflict, the dogged resistance of the Soviet combat troops, and the Soviets' massive advantages in manpower and production capability prevented

7552-432: The Soviets, when entering World War II six months later (December 1941), the United States' mass production capacity enabled it to rapidly construct thousands of relatively cheap M4 Sherman medium tanks. A compromise all round, the Sherman was reliable and formed a large part of the Anglo-American ground forces, but in a tank-versus-tank battle was no match for the Panther or Tiger. Numerical and logistical superiority and

7680-409: The US Army in May 1945. The military historian Earl Ziemke described the advance thus: On the 25th, Zhukov's main force passed Poznań heading due west towards Kuestrin , on the Oder forty miles [64 km] east of Berlin. The path of the Soviet advance looked like the work of a gigantic snowplough, its point aimed on a line from Warsaw to Poznań, to Berlin. All of Army Group A was being caught up by

7808-411: The US, Charles de Gaulle in France, and Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the USSR. Liddell Hart held a more moderate view that all arms – cavalry, infantry and artillery – should be mechanized and work together. The British formed the all-arms Experimental Mechanized Force to test the use of tanks with supporting forces. In the Second World War only Germany would initially put the theory into practice on

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7936-402: The United Kingdom was carried out by the Royal Navy . As the result of an approach by Royal Naval Air Service officers who had been operating armoured cars on the Western Front, the First Lord of the Admiralty , Winston Churchill , formed the Landship Committee , on 20 February 1915. The Director of Naval Construction for the Royal Navy, Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt , was appointed to head

8064-400: The Xiongnu's powerful cavalry charges , and allowed Han troops to utilize their ranged weapons ' advantages of precision . This forced a stalemate and allowed time for his troops to recover strength, before using the cover of a sandstorm to launch a counteroffensive which overran the nomads . Many sources imply that Leonardo da Vinci and H. G. Wells in some way foresaw or "invented"

8192-445: The abandoned Wolf's Lair – Hitler's former headquarters on the Eastern Front, was captured. After encircling Poznań, the 1st Guards Tank Army advanced deep into the fortified region around the Obra River against patchy resistance from a variety of Volkssturm and Wehrmacht units. There was heavier resistance, however, on the approaches to the fortress of Küstrin . The German reorganisation of command structure that resulted in

8320-459: The abandonment of the "fortress", arresting Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin , head of the Operations Branch of OKH , and sacking both the 9th Army and XXXVI Panzer Corps commanders; generals Smilo Freiherr von Lüttwitz and Walter Fries . The 2nd Guards Tank Army pressed forward to the Oder, while to the south the 8th Guards Army reached Łódź by 18 January, and took it by 19 January. The 1st Guards Tank Army moved to encircle Poznań by 25 January, and

8448-504: The advancing Red Army. The death marches , which took place over hundreds of kilometers in sub-zero conditions without food and medicine, resulted in thousands of concentration camp prisoners and Allied POWs dying en route. It is estimated that in March and April 1945, at least 250,000 men and women were marched on foot to the heartland of Germany and Austria sometimes for weeks at a time. On 27 January, troops from Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front ( 322nd Rifle Division , 60th Army ) liberated

8576-435: The area undamaged. On Konev's northern flank, the 4th Tank Army had spearheaded an advance to the Oder, where it secured a major bridgehead at Steinau . Troops of the 5th Guards Army established a second bridgehead upstream at Ohlau . In the northern sector of the offensive, Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front also made rapid progress, as the 9th Army was no longer able to offer coherent resistance. Its XXXVI Panzer Corps, which

8704-438: The basis of blitzkrieg in the opening stages of World War II. During World War II , the first conflict in which armoured vehicles were critical to battlefield success, the tank and related tactics developed rapidly. Armoured forces proved capable of tactical victory in an unprecedentedly short amount of time, yet new anti-tank weaponry showed that the tank was not invulnerable. During the Invasion of Poland, tanks performed in

8832-551: The battles of Korsun-Shevchenkivskyy , and the battle of Hube's Pocket in Ukraine. It conducted the Lviv-Sandomierz Offensive , during which the Front was controlling the Soviet 1st Guards Tank Army , 3rd Guards Tank Army , 4th Tank Army , 3rd Guards , 5th Guards Army , 13th , 38th , and 60th Armies and 1st Guards Cavalry Corps . It then took part in the battle for Ternopil'. The front participated or conducted battles in Ukraine , Poland , Germany , and Czechoslovakia during 1944 and 1945. The 1st Ukrainian often spearheaded

8960-466: The camp, other war news overshadowed the event. After being caught off guard at Majdanek, the Nazis realized that the Soviets would end up finding every camp within Eastern Europe (with all of the prisoners and guards still present) if something were not to be done. As a result, by mid-January, the SS and Nazi-controlled police units had begun forcing thousands of camp prisoners from Poland, East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania to walk westward away from

9088-423: The chief of the Operational Branch of the Army General Staff ( Generalstab des Heeres ) gave Army Group A permission to retreat from Warsaw, overruling a direct order from Hitler for them to hold fast. Three days later von Bonin was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned first at Flossenbürg and then Dachau concentration camp . The officer was eventually liberated along with other prisoners in South Tyrol by

9216-532: The combined force of tanks and airpower at Nomonhan against the Japanese 6th Army; Heinz Guderian , a tactical theoretician who was heavily involved in the formation of the first independent German tank force, said "Where tanks are, the front is", and this concept became a reality in World War II. Guderian's armoured warfare ideas, combined with Germany's existing doctrines of Bewegungskrieg (" maneuver warfare ") and infiltration tactics from World War I, became

9344-633: The creation of Army Group Vistula was accompanied by the release of a few extra formations for the defense; the V SS Mountain Corps , with two reserve infantry divisions, was deployed along the Obra and the prewar border fortifications known as the Tierschtigel Riegel , while the Panzergrenadier-Division Kurmark was ordered to reinforce it. On 16 January 1945 Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin,

9472-539: The defenders at Kielce . The armored reserves of the 4th Panzer Army's central corps, the XXIV Panzer Corps, were committed but had suffered serious damage by the time they reached Kielce, and were already being outflanked. The XLVIII Panzer Corps, on the Fourth Panzer Army's southern flank, had by this time been completely destroyed, along with much of Recknagel's XLII Corps in the north. Recknagel himself would be killed by Polish partisans on 23 January. By 14 January,

9600-521: The direct ancestors of the 'tanks' in France". In 1911, a Lieutenant Engineer in the Austrian Army, Günther Burstyn , presented to the Austrian and Prussian War Ministries plans for a light, three-man tank with a gun in a revolving turret, the so-called Burstyn-Motorgeschütz. In the same year an Australian civil engineer named Lancelot de Mole submitted a basic design for a tracked, armoured vehicle to

9728-512: The earliest examples of successful mechanized combined arms —such as when Republican troops, equipped with Soviet-supplied tanks and supported by aircraft, eventually routed Italian troops fighting for the Nationalists in the seven-day Battle of Guadalajara in 1937. However, of the nearly 700 tanks deployed during this conflict, only about 64 tanks representing the Franco faction and 331 from

9856-515: The first time in September 1915 and served to develop the form of the track but an improved design, better able to cross trenches, swiftly followed and in January 1916 the prototype, nicknamed "Mother", was adopted as the design for future tanks. The first order for tanks was placed on 12 February 1916, and a second on 21 April. Fosters built 37 (all "male"), and Metropolitan Railway Carriage and Wagon Company , of Birmingham, 113 (38 "male" and 75 "female"),

9984-407: The front included 38th , 40th , 27th Armies ; the 6th and 5th Guards ; and the 1st and 5th Guards Tank Armies. During this battle both the 1st and 5th Guards Tank Armies made their main effort in the 5th Guards Army sector, and succeeded eventually in liberating both Belgorod and Kharkov. One of the divisions in the 5th Guards Army was the 13th Guards Rifle Division . The front also fought in

10112-416: The future arrangements were under discussion for transporting the first landships to France a question arose as to how, from a security point of view, the consignment should be labelled. To justify their size we decided to call them 'water-carriers for Russia' —the idea being that they should be taken for some new method of taking water to forward troops in the battle areas. Lt.-Col. Swinton ... raised

10240-627: The gearbox and developed practical tracks and by William Tritton whose agricultural machinery company, William Foster & Co. in Lincoln, Lincolnshire , England built the prototypes . On 22 July 1915, a commission was placed to design a machine that could cross a trench 4 ft wide. Secrecy surrounded the project with the designers locking themselves in a room at the White Hart Hotel in Lincoln. The committee's first design, Little Willie , ran for

10368-440: The gearbox and hull, and by William Tritton of William Foster and Co. , who designed the track plates. This was a prototype of a new design that would become the British Army's Mark I tank , the first tank used in combat in September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme . The name "tank" was adopted by the British during the early stages of their development, as a security measure to conceal their purpose (see etymology ). While

10496-572: The increasingly sophisticated tanks, in turn violating the principle of combined arms they had pioneered. Soviet developments following the invasion included upgunning the T-34, development of self-propelled anti-tank guns such as the SU-152 , and deployment of the IS-2 in the closing stages of the war, with the T-34 being the most produced tank of World War II, totalling up to some 65,000 examples by May 1945. Much like

10624-452: The infantry. A related development, motorized infantry , allowed some of the troops to keep up with the tanks and create highly mobile combined arms forces. The defeat of a major military power within weeks shocked the rest of the world, spurring tank and anti-tank weapon development. The North African Campaign also provided an important battleground for tanks, as the flat, desolate terrain with relatively few obstacles or urban environments

10752-427: The insistence of Colonel J.B.E. Estienne , rejected in favour of char d'assaut ("assault vehicle") or simply char ("vehicle"). During World War I, German sources tended to refer to British tanks as tanks and to their own as Kampfwagen . Later, tanks became referred to as " Panzer " (lit. "armour"), a shortened form of the full term " Panzerkampfwagen ", literally "armoured fighting vehicle". In

10880-450: The introduction of laser rangefinders and infrared night vision equipment. Armour technology progressed in an ongoing race against improvements in anti-tank weapons , especially antitank guided missiles like the TOW . Vistula-Oder offensive Soviet victory The Vistula–Oder offensive ( Russian : Висло-Одерская операция , romanized :  Vislo–Oderskaya operatsiya )

11008-499: The large Baranow/Sandomierz bridgehead, the Fourth Panzer Army was required to defend from "strongpoints" in some areas, as it lacked the infantry to man a continuous front line. In addition, on Hitler's express orders, the two German defence lines (the Grosskampflinie and Hauptkampflinie ) were positioned very close to each other, placing the main defences well within striking range of Soviet artillery. The offensive commenced in

11136-577: The major part of the Halbe Encirclement , in which most of the German 9th Army was destroyed south of Berlin. By this time the Polish Second Army was operating as part of the Front. Finally 1st Ukrainian Front provided the defence against the counter-attacks by Armee Wenck which aimed to relieve Berlin and the 9th Army , later uniting with the Americans on the Elbe River. The front then completed

11264-591: The modern tank. During the 119 BC Battle of Mobei of the Han–Xiongnu War , the Han general Wei Qing led his army through a fatiguing expeditionary march across the Gobi desert only to find Yizhixie chanyu 's main force waiting to encircle them on the other side. Using armored heavy wagons known as "Wu Gang Wagon" ( Chinese : 武剛車) in ring formations that provided Chinese archers , crossbowmen and infantry protection from

11392-464: The name "tank" had been in use for eight months. The tanks were labelled "With Care to Petrograd," but the belief was encouraged that they were a type of snowplough. The term "tank" is used throughout the English speaking world, but other countries use different terminology. In France, the second country to use tanks in battle, the word tank or tanque was adopted initially, but was then, largely at

11520-403: The near invulnerability to common infantry small arms and good resistance against heavier weapons, although anti-tank weapons used in 2022, some of them man-portable, have demonstrated the ability to destroy older generations of tanks with single shots ), all while maintaining the mobility needed to exploit changing tactical situations. Fully integrating tanks into modern military forces spawned

11648-453: The necessary independent, all-terrain mobility. In a memorandum of 1908, Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott presented his view that man-hauling to the South Pole was impossible and that motor traction was needed. Snow vehicles did not yet exist, however, and so his engineer Reginald Skelton developed the idea of a caterpillar track for snow surfaces. These tracked motors were built by

11776-518: The north, while the 61st and 1st Polish armies encircled the city from the south. The only major German response came on 15 January, when Hitler (against the advice of Guderian) ordered the Panzerkorps Großdeutschland of Dietrich von Saucken from East Prussia to cover the breach made in the sector of the 4th Panzer Army, but the advance of Zhukov's forces forced it to detrain at Łódź without even reaching its objective. After covering

11904-524: The operation with an understrength battalion [...] after the smoke of the Soviet preparation cleared [...] I had only a platoon of combat effective soldiers left". The initial barrage was followed by probing attacks and a further heavy bombardment at 10:00. By the time the main armored exploitation force of the 3rd Guards and 4th Tank armies moved forward four hours later, the Fourth Panzer Army had already lost up to ⅔ of its artillery and ¼ of its troops. The Soviet units made rapid progress, moving to cut off

12032-570: The outbreak of the War no one in a position of responsibility in any army seems to have given much thought to tanks. The direct military impact of the tank can be debated but its effect on the Germans was immense, it caused bewilderment, terror and concern in equal measure. It was also a huge boost to the civilians at home. After facing the Zeppelins, at last Britain had a wonder weapon. Tanks were taken on tours and treated almost like film stars. From late 1914

12160-427: The point and the left blade and thrown across the Oder. On the right the German had nothing except a skeleton army group that Hitler had created some days earlier and named Army Group Vistula. On 25 January, Hitler renamed three army groups. Army Group North became Army Group Courland ; Army Group Centre became Army Group North and Army Group A became Army Group Centre. The 2nd Guards Tank and 5th Shock armies reached

12288-496: The pre-war borders of the Reich. The offensive broke the back of Army Group A and much of Germany's remaining capacity for military resistance. However, the stubborn resistance of German forces in Silesia and Pomerania, as well as continuing fighting in East Prussia, meant that the final offensive towards Berlin was delayed by two months, by which time the Wehrmacht had once again built up a substantial force on this axis. On 31 January,

12416-399: The proposed title totally unsuitable. In our search for a synonymous term, we changed the word "Water Carrier" to "Tank," and became the "Tank Supply" or "T.S." Committee. That is how these weapons came to be called Tanks. He incorrectly added, "and the name has now been adopted by all countries in the world." Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest Swinton, who was secretary to the meeting, says that he

12544-491: The reversal of much of the Soviet gains by the Germans. During Zvezda the front included the 38th , 40th , 60th , and 69th Armies plus the 3rd Tank Army , resulting in the reorganisation of the 3rd Tank Army as the 57th Army due to its destruction. In the Battle of Kursk in August 1943, the front operated on the southern shoulder, during which it commanded the Battle of Prokhorovka on the Soviet side. During Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev , which began on August 3, 1943,

12672-574: The second half of World War II led to lightweight infantry-carried anti-tank weapons such as the Panzerfaust , which could destroy some types of tanks. Tanks in the Cold War were designed with these weapons in mind, and led to greatly improved armour types during the 1960s, especially composite armour . Improved engines, transmissions and suspensions allowed tanks of this period to grow larger. Aspects of gun technology changed significantly as well, with advances in shell design and aiming technology. During

12800-451: The start of the Soviet offensive. On 25 January, Schulz requested that he be allowed to withdraw his 100,000 troops from the developing salient around Katowice /Kattowitz. This was refused, and he repeated the request on 26 January. Schoerner eventually permitted Schulz to pull his forces back on the night of 27 January, while Konev – who had allowed just enough room for the 17th Army to withdraw without putting up serious resistance – secured

12928-475: The subsequent liberation of eastern Ukraine . On October 20, 1943, the Voronezh Front was renamed to the 1st Ukrainian Front. This name change reflected the westward advance of the Red Army in its campaign against the German Wehrmacht , leaving Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic behind and moving into Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic . During 1944, the front participated with other fronts in

13056-496: The successful use of combined arms allowed the Allies to overrun the German forces during the Battle of Normandy . Upgunned versions with the 76 mm gun M1 and the 17-pounder were introduced to improve the M4's firepower, but concerns about protection remained—despite the apparent armour deficiencies, a total of some 42,000 Shermans were built and delivered to the Allied nations using it during

13184-402: The support of infantry , who may accompany the tanks in infantry fighting vehicles , and supported by reconnaissance or ground-attack aircraft . The tank is the 20th-century realization of an ancient concept: that of providing troops with mobile protection and firepower. The internal combustion engine , armour plate , and continuous track were key innovations leading to the invention of

13312-399: The tank programme were under way when the War ended. The United States Tank Corps used tanks supplied by France and Great Britain during World War I. Production of American-built tanks had just begun when the War came to an end. Italy also manufactured two Fiat 2000s towards the end of the war, too late to see service. Russia independently built and trialed two prototypes early in the War;

13440-444: The tank to overcome rugged terrain and adverse conditions such as mud and ice/snow better than wheeled vehicles, and thus be more flexibly positioned at advantageous locations on the battlefield. These features enable the tank to perform in a variety of intense combat situations, simultaneously both offensively (with direct fire from their powerful main gun) and defensively (as fire support and defilade for friendly troops due to

13568-444: The tank. Leonardo's late-15th-century drawings of what some describe as a "tank" show a man-powered, wheeled vehicle surrounded by cannons. However, the human crew would have difficulty moving the heavy vehicle over long distances, while usage of animals was problematic in a space so confined. In the 15th century, Jan Žižka built armoured wagons known as ‘ Wagenburg ’ containing cannons and used them effectively in several battles during

13696-434: The tracked, two-man Vezdekhod and the huge Lebedenko , but neither went into production. A tracked self-propelled gun was also designed but not produced. Although tank tactics developed rapidly during the war, piecemeal deployments, mechanical problems, and poor mobility limited the military significance of the tank in World War I, and the tank did not fulfil its promise of rendering trench warfare obsolete. Nonetheless, it

13824-471: The war years, a total second only to the T-34. Tank hulls were modified to produce flame tanks , mobile rocket artillery , and combat engineering vehicles for tasks including mine-clearing and bridging . Specialized self-propelled guns, most of which could double as tank destroyers , were also both developed by the Germans—with their Sturmgeschütz , Panzerjäger and Jagdpanzer vehicles—and

13952-428: The west, absorbing the remnants of XLII Corps that had escaped encirclement. Much of the remainder of XLII Corps was destroyed after being trapped around Przysucha . Screened by heavy fog, the lead elements of XXIV Panzer Corps reached the Warthe on 22 January, and having linked up with Grossdeutschland Panzer Corps of von Saucken, were finally able to cross the Oder, some 350 km (220 mi) from their positions at

14080-641: The whole Eastern front. The 1st Ukrainian and the 1st Belorussian fronts were the largest and most powerful of all Soviet fronts as they had the objective of reaching Berlin and ending the war. In 1945, the front participated in the Vistula-Oder offensive , and conducted the Silesian and Prague Operations, and the siege of Breslau . It also participated in the Berlin operations in Germany and Poland. The front also conducted

14208-509: The wider Somme offensive ) on 15 September 1916. Bert Chaney, a nineteen-year-old signaller with the 7th London Territorial Battalion, reported that "three huge mechanical monsters such as [he] had never seen before" rumbled their way onto the battlefield, "frightening the Jerries out of their wits and making them scuttle like frightened rabbits." When the news of the first use of the tanks emerged, Prime Minister David Lloyd George commented, It

14336-556: The world he was known as the "Instructional Demonstration Unit." "Little Willie's" hull was called in the shop orders a "water carrier for Mesopotamia"; no one knew that the hull was intended to be mounted on a truck. Naturally, the water carrier began to be called a "tank". So the name came to be used by managers and foremen of the shop, until now it has a place in the army vocabulary and will probably be so known in history for all time. (*F.J. Gardiner, F.R.Hist.S.) D'Eyncourt's account differs from Swinton's and Tritton's: ... when

14464-471: The years since their first appearance. Tanks in World War I were developed separately and simultaneously by Great Britain and France as a means to break the deadlock of trench warfare on the Western Front . The first British prototype, nicknamed Little Willie , was constructed at William Foster & Co. in Lincoln , England in 1915, with leading roles played by Major Walter Gordon Wilson who designed

14592-671: Was a Red Army operation on the Eastern Front in the European theatre of World War II in January 1945. The army made a major advance into German -held territory , capturing Kraków , Warsaw and Poznań . The Red Army had built up their strength around a number of key bridgeheads , with two fronts commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Marshal Ivan Konev . Against them, the German Army Group A , led by Colonel-General Josef Harpe (soon replaced by Colonel-General Ferdinand Schörner ),

14720-450: Was clear to military thinkers on both sides that tanks in some way could have a significant role in future conflicts. In the interwar period tanks underwent further mechanical development. In terms of tactics, J.F.C. Fuller 's doctrine of spearhead attacks with massed tank formations was the basis for work by Heinz Guderian in Germany, Percy Hobart in Britain, Adna R. Chaffee, Jr. , in

14848-459: Was cut off. Though the 9th Army conducted many local counter-attacks, they were all brushed aside; the 69th Army ruptured the last lines of defence and took Radom , while the 2nd Guards Tank Army moved on Sochaczew and the 1st Guards Tank Army was ordered to seize bridgeheads over the Pilica and attack towards Łódź . In the meantime, the 47th Army had crossed the Vistula and moved towards Warsaw from

14976-471: Was followed by a period of several weeks of mopping-up and consolidation on the part of the Red Army, along with ongoing hard fighting in pockets in the north. On 16 April, the Red Army jumped off from lines on the Oder and Neisse Rivers , the opening phase of the Battle of Berlin , which proved to be the culminating offensive of the war on the Eastern Front . The relatively rapid progress of this new offensive toward

15104-546: Was ideal for conducting mobile armoured warfare. However, this battlefield also showed the importance of logistics, especially in an armoured force, as the principal warring armies, the German Afrika Korps and the British Eighth Army , often outpaced their supply trains in repeated attacks and counter-attacks on each other, resulting in complete stalemate. This situation would not be resolved until 1942, when during

15232-520: Was in fact a 5:1 superiority. More specifically, a report compiled by General Reinhard Gehlen of the Fremde Heer Ost (Foreign Armies East) estimated the Russians had a 11:1 superiority in infantry, 7:1 in tanks and 20:1 in artillery and aircraft for the start of the offensive. Hitler reportedly scoffed at the numbers and is quoted as saying of the numbers: "It is the greatest bluff since Genghis Khan" In

15360-459: Was instructed to find a non-committal word when writing his report of the proceedings. In the evening he discussed it with a fellow officer, Lt-Col Walter Dally Jones , and they chose the word "tank". "That night, in the draft report of the conference, the word 'tank' was employed in its new sense for the first time." Swinton's Notes on the Employment of Tanks , in which he uses the word throughout,

15488-405: Was known to German intelligence. General Reinhard Gehlen , head of Fremde Heere Ost , passed his assessment to Heinz Guderian . Guderian in turn presented the intelligence results to Adolf Hitler , who refused to believe them, dismissing the apparent Soviet strength as "the greatest imposture since Genghis Khan ". Guderian had proposed to evacuate the divisions of Army Group North trapped in

15616-521: Was not far from the insurgents. The 1st Ukrainian Front captured an additional large bridgehead at Sandomierz (known as the Baranow bridgehead in German accounts), some 200 km south of Warsaw, during the Lvov–Sandomierz offensive . Preceding the offensive, the Red Army had built up large amounts of materiel and manpower in the three bridgeheads. The Red Army greatly outnumbered the opposing Wehrmacht in infantry, artillery, and armour. All this

15744-549: Was not their prime originator. I took up an idea, manipulated it slightly, and handed it on." It is, though, possible that one of the British tank pioneers, Ernest Swinton , was subconsciously or otherwise influenced by Wells's tale. The first combinations of the three principal components of the tank appeared in the decade before World War One. In 1903, Captain Léon René Levavasseur of the French artillery proposed mounting

15872-407: Was outnumbered five to one. Within days, German commandants evacuated the concentration camps , sending the prisoners on their death marches to the west, where ethnic Germans also started fleeing. In a little over two weeks, the Red Army had advanced 480 kilometres (300 mi) from the Vistula to the Oder , only 69 kilometres (43 mi) from Berlin, which was undefended. However, Zhukov called

16000-470: Was positioned behind Warsaw, was pushed over the Vistula into the neighbouring Second Army sector. Warsaw was taken on 17 January, as Army Group A's headquarters issued orders for the city to be abandoned; units of the 2nd Guards and 3rd Shock Armies entering the city were profoundly affected by the devastation wrought by German forces after the Warsaw Uprising . Hitler, on the other hand, was furious at

16128-479: Was published in January 1916. In July 1918, Popular Science Monthly reported: Because a fellow of the Royal Historical Society * has unintentionally misled the British public as to the origin of the famous "tanks", Sir William Tritton , who designed and built them, has published the real story of their name ... Since it was obviously inadvisable to herald "Little Willie's" reason for existence to

16256-473: Was recognized as the most effective mounting for the main gun to allow movement in a different direction from firing, enhancing tactical flexibility. During the Cold War , tension between the Warsaw Pact countries and North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ) countries created an arms race that ensured that tank development proceeded largely as it had during World War II. The essence of tank designs during

16384-563: Was two largely unsatisfactory types of tank, 400 each of the Schneider and Saint-Chamond , both based on the Holt tractor . The following year, the French pioneered the use of a full 360° rotation turret in a tank for the first time, with the creation of the Renault FT light tank, with the turret containing the tank's main armament. In addition to the traversable turret, another innovative feature of

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