Being large and heavy, the T-35 was a surprisingly fragile vehicle, extremely prone to mechanical breakdowns. Its sheer size and mass made this heavy tank exceedingly difficult to operate in any terrain but the most favorable. In the era of no power steering, it was physically exhausting for its drivers to maneuver the heavy tank. Before the war, almost all the operational T-35s were concentrated in the VIII Mechanized Corps of the Kiev Special Military District. Less than a handful actually came to grips with the enemy on the battlefield, the majority of them being lost to breakdowns and air attacks on the march. In all, between 1935 and 1939, only sixty-one of these monstrous tanks were produced.[19]
Another heavy Soviet tank, the KV-1 (named after Kliment Voroshilov, a leading Soviet marshal and Stalin’s crony) was a much more successful version. Designed to replace the T-35, the KV-1 initially resembled a heavier version of the T-34, even being armed with the same caliber cannon, the 76mm. Slightly over six hundred KV-1s were produced from mid-1940 to mid-1941.
The KV-2 was the poor relation of the KV-1. Designed specifically for suppressing and destroying enemy fortifications, the KV-2 mounted a 152mm howitzer in a tall, square naval gun turret mounted on KV-1 chassis. Even though slightly over 330 of these tanks were produced in 1940 and the first half of 1941, less than 100 of them were operational when the red balloon went up. Like the T-35, very few of them engaged the enemy on the battlefield. When they did, the results were almost invariably pathetic. Designed to engage stationary fortifications, the KV-2 did not have armor-piercing ammunition and, being armed with a howitzer, could not effectively engage enemy in a tank-versus-tank combat. Virtually all of the KV-2s perished in 1941.
Well into the first year of the brutal campaign against the Soviet Union, Hitler has been said to have stated: “Had I known that the Soviet Union had so many tanks, I would not have attacked.” Indeed, the number of tanks in the Soviet arsenal has been almost unanimously placed by historians between twenty-three thousand and twenty-four thousand machines. This number, even though including older versions of these combat vehicles, was larger than almost all other tanks in the world put together.
On paper, the Red Army tank park was indeed impressive. Regulations of 1940 created eight mechanized corps numbering 1,031 tanks each, with twenty-two more corps added the next year. At full strength, this would have amounted to a staggering 30,930 tanks in just the mechanized corps alone, plus a large fleet of armored cars, many of which had mounted cannons capable of defeating light tanks. In addition to the above numbers, additional thousands of light tanks and armored cars were to be assigned to rifle and cavalry divisions and training institutions.
A significant portion of 1,031 tanks comprising a new mechanized corps was to be composed of the medium T-34 and heavy KV-1 machines (420 and 126 respectively), amounting to 53 percent of the total number. These new machines were superior to any tank in the world. While the senior German military command had an inkling about the existence of new Soviet heavy tanks, this information was not disseminated down to the lower echelon, and the presence of these new combat vehicles came as a rude shock to German troops within the very first days of the war.
The T-34 medium tanks went into serial production in July of 1940, and by June 22, 1941, only 1,225 of these machines had been produced. Their distribution was uneven. Almost all of the T-34s were delivered to the mechanized corps created in 1940 and were located in the first echelons of the western border districts. The mechanized corps created in spring of 1941 and garrisoned deeper in the Soviet territory either did not receive any new tanks by the start of the war or received them in single-digit numbers. Diluting their strength further, the new tanks were often not concentrated in units but were distributed in penny packets among many formations within a mechanized corps.
To further exacerbate the problem, the tanks that were available to the mechanized corps were an ill-matched collection of vehicles. By 1939 the existing mechanized corps were disbanded and the armored vehicles were organized into tank brigades and separate battalions. There were two types of tank brigades, the light and heavy ones. The heavy tank brigades were assigned the mission of cooperating and supporting the infantry in breaching enemy defenses. The light tank brigades were to operate independently or in close cooperation with cavalry in exploiting breakthroughs and carrying out attacks in depth.
The heavy tank brigades of 1939 to early 1940 were equipped with T-28 medium tanks and a small number of heavy T-35s. The light brigades were allocated fast BT tanks and light T-26s. Reconnaissance detachments of both also had a sprinkling of light T-37 and T-40 reconnaissance tanks capable of swimming. No other country in the world at the time had amphibious tanks.
When the first nine mechanized corps were reconstituted in late 1940, the new T-34 and KV-1 began arriving in small numbers. Demand for these new vehicles totally exceeded production capacity. Despite being produced in numbers unheard of in western Europe, the Red Army needed another two to three years to acquire the proposed number of tanks.
However, before the first wave of the nine mechanized corps was fully organized, the Soviet government high-handedly ordered creation of twenty-one more corps. Bottoms of barrels were scraped to come up with the needed combat vehicles. Almost any tank was used to make up the desired numbers. This resulted in many nonoperational tanks being delivered to units so that their inventory would show numbers on hand. This created a bewildering array of vehicular hodge-podge. Zhukov described the situation:
We did not objectively consider capabilities of our tank industry. To completely equip the new mechanized corps [we] needed 16,600 tanks of just the new types, with 32,000 tanks being the total number. It was practically impossible to obtain these numbers in one year; there were shortages of technical and command personnel as well.[20]
As mentioned previously, there were multiple models of BT tanks, with the BT-5 and BT-7 being most common. However, small numbers of earlier versions, like the BT-2, were still around. Even within the BT-5 and BT-7 series there were multiple models. As one type or model was taken out of serial production, manufacturing of spare parts for them ceased as well. However, the existing tanks of discontinued models were not taken out of circulation, instead being retained for training purposes. When the new mechanized corps were formed, the “training park” vehicles were again listed as operational. This resulted in units still being equipped with obsolete models without means to replace the worn-out parts to keep them operational. A small number of them were kept running by salvaging parts from vehicles beyond repair or manufacturing replacement parts in local machine-shops on an individual basis. The German invasion found large numbers of these older versions still sitting immobile in their motor pools. A similar situation existed for earlier versions of still T-26 and for still T-28 and T-35, the last two already being taken out of production.
When the red balloon finally went up, the Soviet mechanized corps differed drastically in strength and composition. The corps re-created in the first wave in 1940 were the most combat capable. Some of them, like the IV and VIII Mechanized Corps, deployed in the first echelon of the Kiev Special Military District, numbered over nine hundred tanks each and contained hundreds of new T-34s and KV-1s. On the other hand, their poor brethren of the second wave of spring in the 1941 were mere shadows of their envisioned selves. The IX and XIX Mechanized Corps, also located in the Kiev Special Military District, but further east, numbered less than three hundred tanks each, mainly T-26s and BTs. Neither corps had the modern models, and around 15 percent of the tanks that they did have were nonfunctional. The July 1940 directive that reconstituted the mechanized corps envisioned each comprised of two tank divisions, one mechanized infantry division, a motorcycle regiment, and supporting units, including an air force squadron. None of these aviation squadrons were actually created and remained on paper only. Otherwise, the mechanized corps were allotted formidable 38,000-plus personnel, 1,031 tanks, 358 artillery pieces and mortars, and 384 armored cars.[21]