Hello everybody,
After reading „panzers in berlin 1945“ (great book by the way!) and planning my own diorama decipting that battle I turned my focus to the other belligerents participating in it, the soviets. Sadly it seems like the photographic documentation of soviet losses is far more lackluster. Nonetheless I could piece together this list of tank types I am certain by photographic evidence did participate in the battle of Berlin:
quite the number of T-34/85 both with and without „bespring“ armor
at least two T-34/76, both model 1943, one with mounting points for a mine roller
many lend-lease M4A2 shermans, seemingly all of them with the 76 mm gun
some IS-2
some SU-76
SU-85*
SU-100*
at least 7 SU-122, two of wich were used by the 4th guards, five of wich were used by 7th guards, of wich two were destroyed*
some ISU-152
ISU-122*
at least one BA-64
lend-lease M3 White Scout Cars*
lend-lease US halftracks*
Vehicles marked with * were added by community support.
I am aware all of those vehicle types were quite common at this stage in the war and me finding even one picture leads to the reasonable conclusion there being more of this type involved in the battle.
Nonetheless I was quite surprised me not being able to find any evidence of other vehicles types being involved, especially british and canadian lend-lease vehicles. This leads me to my question. Would you be able to add to my list with more types of soviet armored vehicles being involved in the battle of Berlin?
here’s a good image of post battle. Vehicles being gathered up. You can see T_34/85s, a coupel M4A2 Shermans, a panther, a King Tiger in the background.
The white turret bands were used with white roof crosses by the Soviets to prevent their tanks from being mistakenly engaged by American or British tanks and aircraft approaching Soviet lines from the west.
If you can get your hands on the Soviet post war movie about the battle of berlin there will be lots to choose from. One always has to be careful how much of it was really shot in Berlin (did they really have KVs in their oob then?) but it seems clear that a lot of it was. I’ve seen at least one clip of a late model Valentine in Soviet markings making its way through urban rubble.
Those tanks sure were mangled after going through urban combat, plus I‘ve seen some lend lease vehicles I hadn`t seen in involved in this operation before, thank you!
Interesting, I knew about the identification stripes and also the use of handpainted numbers on Soviet tanks but those markings were new to me, a great feature for painting!
What movie are you talking about? I skipped through „The battle for Berlin“ as well as „The Fall of Berlin“ but to me it seems both have been shot well after the thing, especially considering the use of IS-3 tanks and Btr-152 during the filming.
Even though the opportunity to build a Valentine tank involved in this battle seems interesting if it turns out to be plausible.
According to Wikipedia, the SU-122 was also present in Berlin:
Dennoch nahmen sie an der Schlacht um Berlin teil. Am 15. April 1945 verfügte die 4. Gardepanzerarmee über zwei SU-122; das 7. mechanisierte Gardekorps setzte fünf solche Fahrzeuge ein, zwei von ihnen wurden von deutschen Panzerfaustsoldaten während der Schlacht um Bautzen zerstört.
Well, here is the Valentine footage, but it’s from a documentary on the Battle of Berlin, and I have no idea whether the footage is from Berlin as just before there is some well-known footage taken from the Ardennes. So, FWIW: Berlin 1945: Last Stand of the Nazis | Frontlines Ep. 07 | Documentary - YouTube (Valentine is at 25:54 if the link doesn’t take you straight there).
