Description: RailroadTreasures offers the following item: Armored Trains of the Soviet Union 1917-1945 by Wilfried Kopenhagen Armored Trains of the Soviet Union 1917-1945 by Wilfried Kopenhagen Soft Cover 48 pages Copyright 1996 CONTENTS The Standard Armor Train Remains the Same Until the Second World War Developments in the 1920s and 1930s PB-43 On e of the Final Designs Postwar Advantages and Disadvantages of Armored Trains Special Anti-Aircraft Armored Trains Railway Guns-Standard and Improvised Technical Data of Several Soviet Railway Guns Armored Cars on Rails and Armored Motor Carriages INTRODUCTION In very many cases history is downright curious. For example, historian Dimitri Volkoganov related that in 1921 Josef Stalin was highly indignant at then chairman of the Revolutionary War Council Trotsky, the supreme military commander. During his frequent trips to visit the fighting troops Trotsky not only surrounded himself with a large party of young, leather-clad Red Army soldiers, but also frequently had two armored trains accompany him. Stalin, who in any case envied Trotsky because of his talent as a speaker, his energy and his popularity, viewed this as a challenge. At that time he had no way of knowing that he - who could not stand flying -would make use of eight armored trains of the NKVD while travelling by rail to the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 (1923 km: USSR 1095 km, Poland 594 km, Germany 234 km). For completeness sake, it should be added that there were six to fifteen sentries per kilometer of track. All told, the NKVD employed eleven regiments with 17,000 men as well as 1,515 men of its strategic personnel to guard the route. As to whether Stalin had a special personal relationship with these steel colossi on rails or whether the idea of guarding the route from Moscow to Potsdam originated from his entourage, the question remains open. As a matter of fact, one can say that this episode also marked the end of this class of weapon. The Soviets released little information concerning the command structures, organization, allocation of personnel and equipment, losses, total strength, the fate of the trains themselves or other details. After the war there were few clues as to whether plans existed in the USSR to continue using armored trains or other armored rail vehicles. Evidence of Soviet intentions in this direction was provided by the showing of the documentary film "Fruits of Victory" on East German television in 1975. It showed a modern armored train: rolling down the tracks was an extremely squat train armed with electronically-controlled quadruple anti-aircraft guns and turrets from T-62 tanks, pulled by a diesel locomotive. Soviet tank officers offered the following personal opinions on this theme: the question as to whether armored trains were practical under current conditions was difficult to answer. At the time, however, it was the opinion of the officers that placing standard tanks on armored rail cars with heavy AA defenses would be conceivable, but that such a practice would only be used in order to reach a threatened sector more quickly when railroad represented the sole transportation link. That might be large expanses of desert- or taiga-like terrain. Subsequent to this now twenty-year-old documentary on postwar Soviet developments fir the field of military technology, no further information on the theme of armored trains is known to have been released. The origins of the armored train lie in the advent of railway troops and the railway net. Railway troops appeared in most European nations almost simultaneously with the construction of railroads. Although their designation, organization, strength and equipment varied from nation to nation, the missions of the railway troops were largely similar: In peacetime they had to build strategically-important sections of track, improve their training methods in the process, eventually test new equipment for the railway industry, and erect artificial structures, including complicated bridges, more cheaply than the civilian forces. There follows a description of the railway net that existed at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. All pictures are of the actual item. If this is a railroad item, this material is obsolete and no longer in use by the railroad. Please email with questions. Publishers of Train Shed Cyclopedias and Stephans Railroad Directories. 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Price: 10 USD
Location: Talbott, Tennessee
End Time: 2024-11-04T13:38:39.000Z
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