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A New Tank Rolls Up For Operation Barbarossa- Flames of War
October 17, 2014 by stvitusdancern
Battlefront is showing off a great new tank preview for Flames of War and Operation Barbarossa. The KV-1 obr 1939/1940 was a new type of heavy tank that was a rejection of the multi-turreted designs like the T-35 and T-28 that had dominated the 1930s. During combat tests against the Finns during the Winter War, the new design proved itself superior to multi-turreted SMK and T-100 designs.
This heavy includes 1 KV1-Heavy Tank and 1 Tank Commander.
Will you be adding this heavy tank to your Operation Barbarossa?
Like the tank… but the crewman…
KV-1, one of my favorites. Pretty inferior to the T-34 in many ways, but you gotta love something that’s basically invulnerable to any weapon it would realistically run into in the summer and fall of 1941. The biggest danger to a KV-1 in the Barbarossa-Typhoon-Moscow timeline is its own crew, who often had to abandon it for reasons of fuel, mechanical breakdown, or track failure. The speed was poor, the suspension overtaxed, and of course it carried the same 36 and 42 caliber guns as the T-34/a and c of the same era.
But I don’t know what it is about tanks, sometimes it’s these ugly ducklings that get the most love. And of course the KV line would finally redeem itself with roll-out of the JS I, II, and post-war III models . . . to say nothing of the ISU-152 “Animal Killer.” 😀
It just looks so scary, who wouldn’t like it 😀 I’m not a fan of the commander though, but then it is small scale.
Yep, Germans had some hard time fighting against the KV-1 in the beginning of the 1941 offensive. If I remember correctly one tank stopped elements of a German Panzerdivision for 24 hours before running out of ammunition.
The model itself looks superb but I have to agree that the commander looks like cut out of a piece of cardboard.
Some of that tank commander’s issues might stem from the paint. It almost looks like he’s wearing forest/jungle camouflage. Soviet tank commanders of the era wore black coveralls (or very, very dark gray), so oil stains wouldn’t show up as much. German tank crews also wore black, although I don’t think it was coveralls, but more traditional trousers and shirt.
I also agree with what @dorthonion says, the guy looks pretty flat from the side.
The incident you’re referring to, @yavasa , definitely sounds familiar. Smolensk or Mtensk (“my man” E. F. Katukov vs. Guderian)? Not sure, I’m actually poking around to see if I can firm that up. The problem for the Germans was that the only weapons that could reliably engage these KV-1s were of course the FlaK 36 8.8 cm AA guns, which weren’t even under army control. Instead they were under Luftwaffe control, temporarily attached to Wehrmacht units at division level. So Soviet tanks on a counterattack could conceivably break through German company, battalion, and even regimental lines before they finally ran across something that could stop them, IF that German division was lucky enough to have a FlaK artillery battalion attached to it.
Much more often (and of course you never see this in the movies), big tanks like the KV were taken out by the less glamorous German 10.5 cm fieldhaubitze (field howitzers), with barrels depressed to fire over open sights in a direct fire role. Other than that, the German PaK 36 3.7cm and PaK 37 5.0cm antitank guns were pretty much powerless against these KVs. Not until the upgunned PzKpfw Mk IVs with the L48 7.5cm guns started coming out in early-mid 42 (and of course, their StG equivalents) did the Germans have an armored, mobile solution to the this threat.
Found it. Battle of Raseiniai in Lithuania, June 24 (wow, I wasn’t even close).
http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2013/03/battle-of-raseiniai.html
This is a weird one, where a bypassed KV-1 shoots up German supply trucks, etc, then accidentally cut German communication by running over phone lines. Then the Germans have to turn around and deal with the threat.
Not sure if this is the incident you’re thinking of. There are plenty of others, including some of the exploits of Sgt Dmitri Lavrinenko, Soviet Union’s top tank ace. He destroyed 52 German tanks in 28 engagements, but only got to fight for about 6 weeks before he was killed in the counterattack in front of Moscow in December 1941 (pretty sure he was a T-34 commander, though, not a KV-1). I’ve read about him in my studies of General E. F. Katukov, far and away my favorite Soviet tank commander. Started with the 20th Tank Division, survived its destruction, then took over the 4th Tank Brigade (sort of a demotion, yes, but the Red Army was reorganizing its armor away from the tank division concept), and then the 4th was reorganized and upgraded into the 1st Guards Tank Brigade. Eventually he’d command the 1st Guards Tank Army, and end the war as pretty much the Soviet Union’s top tactical/operational armor commander.
Anyway, Sgt Dmitri Lavrinenko had his regrettably short career in Katukov’s brigade. I’ve always wondered how he would have done if he’d lived longer like guys like Otto Carius or Michael Wittman.
@oriskany Sorry for the delay in replying but I have just one thing to say: you’re amount of knowledge is awesome.
Thanks, @yavasa – Eastern Front remains my first and true love. Of course I certainly don’t know the rest of WW2 or military history to anything like this kind of detail. 🙂
And that tank commander is why I prefer PSC plastics – he looks as if someone ran over him with the tank.
Tank itself is fine but that Commander is just bad.
He’s the Swedish chef!!!
But for real. KV1 is one of my favourites too. Got Oriskany I very basic plastic one for Christmas a few years back. I was very excited to find it at a flea market.
The KV2 was a nice concept, if it didn’t have the profile of three story building.
Just a little ahead of its time. 🙂 Fast-forward two years and you have the same KV chassis as the basis for . . . you know where I’m going with this @amphibiousmonster . . . a redesigned 152mm dual purpose howitzer. No huge turret, in fact no turret at all, embodied in the SU-152 and up-armored ISU-152. 152mm Howitzer on a KV chassis . . . the “Animal Killer” is born!
The 152 is legendary and rightfully so. It must be the driver in me, but all my favourites seem to be turretless, fixed or sponsooned.