I don’t see any support for that idea in the sources linked - can you please help out? Thanks
If you drill down into the orders of battle for the main units you’ll eventually be able to get some decent info on how they were equipped. It’s a chore, and it’s tedious, but the info is available.
The thing is, there were two full Army Groups (“Fronts” in Red Army jargon) involved in this operation, with thousands of AFVs, so I think your approach of assuming that otherwise-common vehicles were present is really OK. For example, every tank brigade would have a handful of M3A1 Scout Cars or BA-64 scout cars…those are very safe choices.
I would not expect the SU-85 or SU-122 to be extremely likely, but the SU-85M was definitely there; photos exist of those with the 3rd Guards Tank Army.
Also, don’t forget the Polish 1st Army.
Some searching on the Russian page led to the following being used as reference…
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Svirin M.N. Stalin’s self-propelled guns. History of the Soviet self-propelled guns 1919-1945. - M. : Yauza, Eksmo, 2008. - S. 152. - 384 p. - (War and us. Soviet tanks). — 10,000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-699-20527-1 , BBC 68.513 C24.
Berlin 45-go : srazhenii͡a v logove zveri͡a : Isaev, A. V. (Alekseĭ Valerʹevich) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Many thanks to you two, certainly a vehicle type you don`t see often at this stage of the war, added it to the list!
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Have to agree with Dan there, some fascinating (and terrifying) clips in there but at least the Valentine Clip seems not plausible, especially given what seems to be whitewash on the vehicle, thank you nonetheless
I`m actually trying to depict some lesser known vehicles. I do not want to necessarily be the 100th time someone builds a mangled T-34/85 with Volkssturm on the side.
I am not afraid to do some more research. There seems to be quite good documentation right down to brigade level considering the order of battle yet I have to find any actual information on unit composition (strength, type of vehicles in use, number of vehicles etc.) during that time. Am I just searching wrong?
Yes, thanks, I saw that, but don’t see where it mentions the SU-122.
The SU-122 wasn’t all that common a vehicle in the first place and was long out of production by April 1945 so I am just slightly skeptical there’d be any in Berlin. of course it’s far from impossible; there are several photos of narrow-turret T-34s in Berlin so a stray SU-122 wouldn’t be impossible either.
The numbers are so specific, that it seems likely not to have been made up…
The data are available. But yeah it is tedious finding it. I have had good luck with the Russian-language “Frontline Illustrated” series, which often have extensive tables showing the exact equipment types in each regiment or brigade. Sometimes they’ll show strength reports over time too, which is super helpful - you can see what kinds of losses a unit took.
I do not read Russian beyond a handful of military terms, but it’s not hard to work out what these tables mean. There are often really interesting oddballs too, e.g. tank brigades with a handful of SUs in addition to their tanks & stuff like that. I have pretty good info on the 3rd Guards Tank Army in Berlin but they’d be one of many units of that size. If I remember I’ll look up if they had any oddballs.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
So after some more digging around in the internet it seems like a couple of Valentine tanks were involved in actions north of berlin … even though I have to say the source seemed a little shotty referencing a 198th tank regiment I could not find anywhere in the Soviet army structure of that time, even less with the armies involved in the battles around berlin. Even if this information is correct still no informations on Valentines entering berlin during the fighting!
While searching for more sources I stumbled across this picture:
Judging from the picture alone one cannot be 100% sure but judging from it`s lack of a longer gun barrel SU-122 seems plausible. And judging from the German writing on the shops it seems to have been taken somewhere in Germany.
Found some more Soviet Lend-lease M4A2 Sherman images.
This one was ID’d as from the 219th Tank Regiment, 1st Tank Army.
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This is definitely an SU-85M or SU-100. Definitely not an SU-122.
I am merely commenting on this one photos. Not making any larger claim about SU-122s in Berlin.
I trust you on that one but what`s the deciding feature? The spare track links on the front glacis plate? Other than that I have a hard time making out any possibly distinguishing features considering how grainy the picture is.
Thanks for posting this film. A lot of great diorama ideas sparked by watching it. These period propaganda / yeah us films aways amaze me with their melodramatic music, the map overlays, and their, well, their inflated everything. It truly is an art in itself.
I was also impressed by how influenced this film is by the Miniart catalogue. 
You can see the long gun tube, so, while I can;t tell if its a 100mm or 85mm, it’s not a 122mm. I cant see the mantle, which is the easiest way to tell which gun it is.
I looked up all the 3rd Guards Tank Army tables I have in “Frontline Illustrations”. Good news and bad news.
The bad news is that their AFVs were exactly what you’d expect - by far most were T-34-85, IS-2, SU-100, ISU-152, SU-76 and a few others. There were no lend-lease tanks of any kind in this unit.
The good news is there are still some oddballs including at least two narrow-turret T-34s (76mm gun, single-piece hatch) one of which is an STZ1942 model. There is some kind of command vehicle built on a BA-10 or BA-6 chassis. It’s a poor photo, so I can’t quite make it out, but I suspect it’s a one-off unit mod - which would be cool to make.
They also had over a hundred SU-57 (US T48 57mm gun motor carriage). There’s no kit of that as far as I know, although a kitbash is obviously possible. They also had a T-34-85 with mesh shields taken off a Panzer IV J or Panzer IV/70 (I wouldn’t know the difference). This is not the usual turret-mounted ‘bedspring’ armor but straight German parts hung on the hull. Adam Wilder did a model of that setup once.
Remember this is solely for 3rd GTA and there were plenty of other large mech formations in this battle. So I am not making any claim that there were no Valentines around. I do, however, think the evidence is pretty good that 3rd GTA didn’t have any.
This reminded me - which I fully admit probably adds nothing very much at all: when I was a young Clerk in a NATO Army Group HQ back in the late 70s, I ended up typing a paper produced by our Branch Chief (a Bundeswehr full Colonel) suggesting an initiative - to offset Soviet tank superiority - whereby troops could be issued with mountain bikes (then just coming to fruition I believe), loaded with as many 66mm LAWs (one-shot disposable anti-tank rocket) as could be carried, and sent on their way to deplete as much of Group of Soviet Forces Germany as they could, should the Cold War turn hot.
I thought this was pretty ballsy stuff so once I’d typed it all up, I queried the Colonel as to what had prompted this; he replied, “Well Corporal, it’s what I did in Berlin in 1945”. It transpired thay he’d been in the Hitler Youth back then (hadn’t everyone?) and had been equipped with a bicycle and half a dozen Panzerfausts. After much nagging he admitted that he’d destroyed around 3-4 Russian tanks, but didn’t really wish to talk about the detail: “What matters Corporal is that it worked”.
I mean, stone me! I keep meaning to build this model as a sort of homage to that particular Colonel (long passed on obviously):
One day perhaps, one day.
(Apologies for what amounts to a Thread Hijack).
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Hello gentlemen.
No matter what, you can ask a Russian - and get an answer.
Nothing else - I guess we can talk)
There are a huge number of photographs.
These photos are not involved at all in this thread.
What you need - just say it.
Don’t be angry for my English)
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