Soviet military historians tried not to mention the existence of these units; fighters of these units are not shown in films; denunciators of the “mediocre Stalin” keep silent about them.
Probably, the fighters of these units owed such ignorance to the fact that they did not fit into the popular image of the Soviet “liberator soldier”? And indeed, in the minds of Soviet people, the Red Army soldiers of the Great Patriotic War are emaciated people in dirty greatcoats who run in a crowd to attack after tanks, or tired elderly men smoking hand-rolled cigarettes on the parapet of a trench. After all, it was precisely such footage that was mainly captured by military newsreels.
Probably, the main task for people filming newsreels was to show a soldier of the workers' and peasants' army, who was torn from the machine and the plow and, preferably, unsightly. Like, look what our soldier is - one and a half meters tall, and he defeats Hitler! This image perfectly corresponded to the exhausted, muzzled victim of the Stalinist regime. At the end of the 1980s, film directors and post-Soviet historians put the “victim of repression” on a cart, handed him a “three-line gun” without cartridges, sending him towards the armored hordes of fascists - under the supervision of barrage detachments.
Of course, reality was somewhat different from what was captured in newsreels. The Germans themselves entered the Soviet Union on 300 thousand carts. The ratio of weapons also differed from official Soviet data. In terms of the number of machine guns produced, fascist Europe was inferior to the USSR by 4 times, and in the number of self-loading rifles by 10 times.
Of course, recently views on the Great Patriotic War have changed. Society got tired of exaggerating the topic of “senseless victims”, and daring crews of armored trains, ninja scouts, border guards-terminators, and other hyperbolic characters began to appear on the screens. As they say, from one extreme to another. Although it should be noted that real scouts and border guards (as well as marines and paratroopers) were indeed distinguished by excellent training and physical fitness. In a country where sports were compulsory for the masses, “jocks” were much more common than they are now.
And only one branch of the military was never noticed by the screenwriters, although it deserves the greatest attention. It was the assault engineer brigades of the reserve of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief that were the most numerous and powerful among the Soviet special forces units during the Second World War.
During the course of the war, most of the belligerents began to realize that classical infantry was simply incapable of performing many specific tasks. This was the impetus for the creation of “commando” battalions in Britain, in the United States - detachments of Army Rangers, and in Germany, part of the motorized infantry was reformed into “panzergrenadiers”. Having launched its great offensive in 1943, the Red Army was faced with the problem of significant losses during operations to capture German fortified areas, as well as in street battles.
The Germans were great at creating fortifications. Long-term firing points, often made of steel or concrete, covered each other, behind them were self-propelled guns or batteries of anti-tank guns. All approaches to the bunkers were surrounded by barbed wire and heavily mined. In cities, every sewer hatch or basement turned into such firing points. Even ruins were turned into impregnable forts.
Of course, to take such fortifications it was possible to use penal prisoners - it is pointless to kill thousands of soldiers and officers, bringing joy to future denouncers of “Stalinism”. One could throw oneself at the embrasure with one's chest - of course, a heroic act, but absolutely meaningless. In this regard, the Headquarters, which began to realize that it was time to stop fighting with “hurray” and the bayonet, and chose a different path.
The very idea of the ShISBr (assault engineering brigades) was taken from the Germans, or more precisely, from the Kaiser’s army. In 1916, during the Battle of Verdun, the German army used special sapper assault groups that had special weapons (backpack flamethrowers and light machine guns) and had undergone a special training course. The Germans themselves, apparently counting on the “blitzkrieg,” forgot about their experience - and then for a considerable time they trampled around Sevastopol and Stalingrad. But the Red Army adopted it.
The first 15 assault brigades began to be formed in the spring of 1943. The engineering and sapper units of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army served as the basis for them, since the new special forces required mainly technically competent specialists, since the range of tasks assigned to them was quite complex and wide.
The engineering reconnaissance company primarily explored enemy fortifications. The soldiers determined the firepower and “architectural strength” of the fortifications. After this, a detailed plan was drawn up, indicating the location of bunkers and other firing points, what they were (concrete, earthen or other), what weapons were available. The presence of cover, the location of barriers and minefields are also indicated. Using this data, an assault plan was developed.
After this, assault battalions entered the battle (there were up to five per brigade). The fighters for the ShISBr were selected especially carefully. Slow-witted, physically weak and soldiers over 40 years old could not get into the brigade.
The high requirements for candidates were explained simply: an attack fighter who carried a load that was several times greater than that of a simple infantryman. The standard soldier’s kit included a steel breastplate, which provided protection from small fragments, as well as pistol (machine gun) bullets, and a bag containing a “explosive kit.” Pouches were used to carry increased ammunition for grenades, as well as bottles with Molotov cocktails, thrown into window openings or embrasures. Since the end of 1943, assault engineer brigades began to use backpack flamethrowers.
In addition to traditional machine guns (PPS and PPSh), soldiers of the assault units were armed with light machine guns and anti-tank rifles. Anti-tank rifles were used as large-caliber rifles to suppress gun emplacements.
To teach the personnel to run with this load on their shoulders and to minimize its possible losses, the soldiers were given rigorous training. In addition to the fact that the SHISBr fighters were running on the obstacle course in full gear, live bullets were whistling over their heads. Thus, the soldiers were taught to “keep their heads down” even before the first battle and to consolidate this skill at the level of instinct. In addition, the personnel were engaged in training shooting and demining and explosions. In addition, the training program included hand-to-hand combat, throwing axes, knives and sapper blades.
The training of the ShISBr was much more difficult than the training of the same intelligence officers. After all, the scouts went on the mission light, and the main thing for them was not to be discovered. At the same time, the attack fighter did not have the opportunity to hide in the bushes, and he did not have the opportunity to quietly “sneak away.” The main goal of the SHISBr fighters was not drunken single “tongues”, but the most powerful fortifications on the Eastern Front.
The battle began suddenly, quite often even without artillery preparation, much less shouts of “Hurray!” Detachments of submachine gunners and machine gunners, whose main goal was to cut off German pillboxes from infantry support, quietly passed through pre-prepared passages in the minefields. Flamethrowers or bombers dealt with the enemy bunker itself.
The charge placed in the ventilation hole made it possible to disable even the most powerful fortification. Where the grate blocked the way, they acted witty and ruthlessly: several cans of kerosene were poured inside, after which they threw a match.
The fighters of the ShISBr in urban conditions were distinguished by their ability to appear suddenly from a side unexpected for German soldiers. Everything was very simple: assault engineering teams literally walked through walls, using TNT to pave the way. For example, the Germans turned the basement of a house into a bunker. Our fighters entered from the side or behind, blew up the wall of the basement (and in some cases the floor of the first floor), and then fired several jets of flamethrowers there.
The Germans themselves played an important role in replenishing the arsenal of assault engineering brigades. In the summer of 1943, the Nazi army began to receive “Panzerfaust” (Faust cartridges), which the retreating Germans left behind in huge quantities. The SHISBr fighters immediately found a use for them, because the Faustpatron could be used to break through not only armor, but also walls. Interestingly, Soviet soldiers came up with a special portable rack that made it possible to fire salvo fire from 6 to 10 Faust cartridges simultaneously.
Also, ingenious portable frames were used to launch Soviet heavy 300mm M-31 rockets. They were brought into position, positioned and released with direct fire. For example, during the battle on Lindenstraße (Berlin), three such shells were launched at a fortified house. The smoking ruins that remained of the building buried everyone inside.
All kinds of amphibious transporters and companies of flamethrower tanks came to support the assault battalions in 1944. The effectiveness and power of the ShISBr, the number of which by that time had increased to 20, increased sharply.
However, the successes of the assault engineering brigades shown at the very beginning caused real dizziness among the army command. The leadership had the wrong opinion that brigades could do anything and they began to be sent into battle on all sectors of the front, often without support from other branches of the military. This became a fatal mistake.
If German positions were covered by artillery fire, which was not previously suppressed, the assault engineer brigades were practically powerless. After all, no matter what training the soldiers received, they were just as vulnerable to German shells as recruits. The situation was even worse when the Germans recaptured their positions with a tank counterattack - in this case, the special forces suffered huge losses. Only in December 1943 did the Headquarters establish strict regulations for the use of assault brigades: now the ShISBr was necessarily supported by artillery, auxiliary infantry and tanks.
The vanguard of the assault engineering brigades were mine clearance companies, including one company of mine-detecting dogs. They followed the ShISBr and cleared the main passages for the advancing army (the final clearance of the area fell on the shoulders of the rear sapper units). Miners also often used steel breastplates - it is known that sappers sometimes make mistakes, and two-millimeter steel could protect them from the explosion of small anti-personnel mines. This was at least some kind of cover for the stomach and chest.
The golden pages in the assault engineering brigades were the battles in Konigsberg and Berlin, as well as the capture of the fortifications of the Kwantung Army. According to military analysts, without the engineering assault special forces, these battles would have dragged on, and the Red Army would have lost many more soldiers.
But, unfortunately, in 1946, the main composition of the assault engineering brigades was demobilized, and then they were disbanded one by one. At first, this was facilitated by the confidence of the military leadership that the Third World War would be won thanks to the lightning strike of the Soviet tank armies. And after the appearance of nuclear power, the USSR General Staff began to believe that the enemy would be destroyed by an atomic bomb. Apparently, it did not occur to the old marshals that if anything would survive a nuclear cataclysm, it would be underground forts and bunkers. Perhaps only assault engineering and sapper brigades could “open” them.
The unique Soviet special forces unit was simply forgotten - so that subsequent generations did not even know about its existence. Thus, one of the most glorious and interesting pages of the Great Patriotic War was simply erased.
During the Great Patriotic War, the Germans showed themselves to be masters of military engineering. Their obstacles in the blitzkrieg were considered impregnable. But the sapper-engineering assault units of the Red Army, created in 1943, broke into the most complex German fortified areas.
German historians, speaking about the war with the USSR, like to repeat that the Russians turned out to be excellent students in military affairs and surpassed their teachers - soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht. As an example, the engineering and sapper assault battalions of the Red Army are given, which broke into the impregnable fortified areas of Germany.
However, the use of technical solutions to achieve military advantage has been taking place since the time of Alexander Nevsky. The capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible can also be attributed to the asset of Russian military engineering.
By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, it was believed that the Soviet sapper troops fully met the requirements of the time. They were equipped with the necessary means to overcome obstacles, in particular, IT-28 tank bridge laying vehicles, a pontoon fleet, and equipment for electric barriers. There was even a special swimming bag for IPC horses. At the same time, these battalions were auxiliary units of the Red Army and were not equipped with the necessary road transport.
Panzergrenadiers from the SS Totenkopf
Military engineering played a huge role in the war. Having broken through our fronts with tank formations, the Nazis quickly built obstacle courses around the encircled Soviet units, including minefields.
The time required to overcome them turned out to be sufficient to destroy the advancing Red Army infantry with dense machine-gun and mortar fire.
Soviet fortified areas were stormed by German special forces - panzergrenadiers, the basis of which was the Wehrmacht motorized infantry.
Of these types of German units, the most famous is the SS Totenkopf (Totenkopf) division of the 1939 and 1942 models, which included a special sapper battalion. In the arsenal of enemy sappers and attack aircraft there were special means for destroying our pillboxes and bunkers, but most importantly, they were specially trained to take layered defensive structures.
Beginning of the war
Without effective anti-personnel defense, equipped with engineered barriers, the German blitzkrieg would have been a journey of fascist tanks across the vast Russian expanses. That is why the Red Army armies that found themselves in the cauldrons, finding themselves reliably cut off from the rear, surrendered after grueling bombings and depletion of resources.
Our sapper troops were bled dry at the very beginning of the war, being busy building a new fortified area on the border with Poland. They were among the first to find themselves in the line of fire, lacking heavy weapons and vehicles for evacuation.
The remaining engineering units perished, covering the waste of the main units, blowing up bridges and leaving minefields. Sappers were often used as infantry. The headquarters responded to this situation as quickly as possible under those conditions, and on November 28, 1941, it issued an order banning the use of sappers for other purposes. In fact, in the autumn of the first year of the war, the sapper troops had to be created anew.
Strong in spirit and body
The headquarters not only quickly controlled military operations, but also carried out analytical work. The command noted that the fighting engineering troops, due to their specific nature, were a formidable force. For example, the famous “Pavlov’s House” in Stalingrad was defended for 56 days by 18 sappers, commanded by Sergeant Yakov Pavlov. The commander of the 6th German Army, Field Marshal von Paulus, was also captured by sappers of the 329th Engineer Battalion and soldiers of the motorized rifle division.
On May 30, 1943, the formation of the first 15 assault engineering brigades, which were tasked with breaking through German fortified areas, was completed. The fighters of these units were physically strong young men, under the age of forty, well versed in technology. Basically, these units were formed on the basis of already fighting sapper battalions, which showed themselves well in battle. In August 1943, assault engineer brigades arrived at the front.
Hard to learn, easy to fight
Before going to the front, soldiers of assault engineering brigades underwent a special course. They were especially carefully taught how to throw grenades and covert movement.
For example, Captain M. Tsun, commander of the 62nd assault battalion of the 13th ShISBr, fired live ammunition in classes in which future sappers crawled on their bellies.
As a result, his fighters were not inferior to the best instructors. Attack sappers were also trained to make quick dashes over rough terrain with heavy ammunition loads of grenades and explosives. Of course, they taught hand-to-hand combat techniques.
Attack sappers have mastered the tactics of joint attacks with infantry. To do this, they compiled a detailed map of the German defense and calculated its weak points. The soldiers of these battalions went into battle wearing steel breastplates, wearing padded jackets underneath. For this they were sometimes called armored infantry.
“The brigade’s personnel are special sappers, attack aircraft with bulletproof vests, wearing steel helmets, all armed with machine guns,” recalled the head of the engineering troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front, General Galitsky. “They are intended to fight together with the infantry and must participate in breaking through the defense: in the destruction of pillboxes, bunkers, machine gun nests and enemy OP...".
In addition to machine guns, many Red Army attack aircraft were armed with backpack flamethrowers, machine guns and anti-tank rifles, which they used as large-caliber rifles. A reinforced set of grenades was also required. Having made openings in the defense lines, the assault sappers were immediately withdrawn to reserve.
Defeat of Germany
The Germans considered Konigsberg an impregnable fortress, but the city fell in a matter of days. Soldiers from engineer assault battalions broke through to fortified areas and blew them up with powerful explosive charges. Nikolai Nikiforov in his book “Assault Brigades of the Red Army in Battle” gave the following example: “... to blow up a reinforced concrete shelter in the Parshau area, a charge of 800 kg of explosives was required. The garrison of 120 people surrendered after the explosion.”
Here is another quote from the same book:
“In the battles for Berlin, the 41st Regiment burned 103 buildings. The experience of using backpack flamethrowers once again gave reason to assert that they are one of the effective means of fighting in the city, due to their lightness, the ability to approach attacked objects through hidden access and the high efficiency of flamethrowing.”
The headquarters considered the engineer-sapper assault brigades to be the elite of the Red Army.
Isn't it an unexpected picture for a story about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945? Maybe the author mixed up the eras? I’m not confused, these are really cuirassiers from the time of 1812. But let’s not rush, below we will talk about cuirasses and the exploits of cuirassiers of the last world war (and God forbid it be the last).
From the history of the city of Kovel during the Great Patriotic War. The city was occupied by German troops on June 28, 1941. He was liberated on July 6, 1944 by units of the 47th Army of the 1st Belorussian Front during the Belarusian Operation. By order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the USSR No. 0206 dated July 27, 1944, nine military formations and units that liberated the city were given the honorary name “Kovel”. Our fellow countryman, senior sergeant Sergei Nikitich Trofimov, also served in one of these formations. This is the 18th assault engineer-sapper Kovel brigade. But first of all, we should talk about what these brigades were like. Perhaps this is one of the brightest pages in the history of the Second World War - the so-called Assault Engineer Reserve Brigades (SHISBR), which were directly subordinate to the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and instilled fear in the Nazis with their very appearance.
Soviet cuirassiers. Photo chronicle of the Great Patriotic War.
In 1943, our troops launched an offensive on almost all major fronts, and new offensive engineering formations were urgently needed to break through the enemy’s powerful defensive fortifications. It was decided to create such formations on the basis of already existing engineering units. Each brigade consisted of a headquarters, command, control and engineering reconnaissance companies, several assault engineer battalions and a company of mine detector dogs.
Soviet cuirassiers in battle. Photo chronicle of the Great Patriotic War.
Since the tasks assigned to the assault battalions were the most serious, they did not take just anyone there. All candidates for the ShISBr had to have real combat experience, excellent physical health and be no older than 40 years. I will quote words from the book by Nikiforov N.I. “Assault brigades of the Red Army in battle”:
“Armored infantry” of the Red Army, “Soviet cuirassiers” - for most readers, even those familiar with the history of the Great Patriotic War first-hand, these words will only cause bewilderment. So who are they, these soldiers in steel cuirasses? In the first ranks of the attackers, they suppressed enemy firing points and stormed barricades on the streets of German cities, built bridges under fire and gnawed through the concrete of enemy defenses. Their name is assault engineering brigades. Here is what Hero of the Soviet Union General Galitsky, chief of the engineering troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front, wrote about them:
“The brigade’s personnel are special sappers, attack aircraft with
bulletproof vests, steel helmets, all armed
automatic machines. They are designed to fight alongside infantry and must
participate in the breakthrough of defense: in the destruction of pillboxes, bunkers, machine guns
nests and enemy OP..." Created at the turning point of the war, the Soviet
“Armored infantry” has rightfully earned the title of Guards of the Engineering Troops.”
In the spring of 1944, battalions of ROKS-3 backpack flamethrowers were added to the brigades. More details about such battalions are described in the article “Breathing Fire”.
Memorial of Glory. Plate 27. Trofimov S.N.
So, what do we know about our fellow countryman?
Last name Trofimov
Name Sergey
Patronymic Nikitich
Date of birth/age __.__.1922
Place of birth Moscow region, Mytishchi district, Kostino
Date and place of conscription 10/20/1941, Mytishchi RVK, Moscow region, Mytishchi district
Last duty station 18 assault. sap engineer br. RGK
Military rank Art. sergeant
Reason for retirement killed
Date of departure 03/22/1944
Primary burial place: Ukrainian SSR, Volyn region, Kovel district, Kovel, southeast, 2 km, near the railway bed of the Kovel-Sarny road, mass grave No. 1
The funeral service for the deceased soldier was sent to his mother Olga Ilyinichna Trofimova at the address: Kostino, st. Kurakinskaya, 59. The place of his burial is known, and I tried to find a description of this mass grave near Kovel.
The mass grave of soldiers is a memorial opened in honor of the fallen soldiers who fought for the liberation of Kovel in 1944. It is a two-meter sculpture of a warrior kneeling on one knee in front of the grave of his fellow soldiers. Nearby there is a tombstone with information data. Here, during the war, large ravines were hastily torn apart, in which hundreds of dead soldiers and civilians who helped in the battles for the city were buried. The townspeople marked one of these graves with a special sculpture, around which a low fence was erected.
How to get to the mass grave in Kovel? You can find the monument to the mass grave of soldiers from the railway side. The line runs a few meters from the memorial. The first streets of Kovel after entering the city begin in this area. You should focus on the bus station of the 448th kilometer, or on Lutskaya Street, which intersects with the railway line. This is for those who will be in Kovel. True, given Ukraine’s attitude towards ours, our common military graves, whether this grave exists now is a big question.
Every army in the world at some stage was faced with the problem that conventional infantry was not capable of effectively solving many problems that arose during battle. Special forces were needed, and “commandos” were created in England, army rangers were created in the USA, and “panzergrenadiers” were created in Germany.
The Red Army faced this problem in 1943, when the great offensive into Europe began. The Germans, due to their national character, were great masters in creating defensive lines: they meticulously “sown” fields with mines and traps, hardworkingly built pillbox after pillbox, and dug trench after trench.
The doomed heroism of the penalty box and the submissive diligence of the infantry in breaking through such a defense were almost useless; each success had to be paid for with huge losses. But the Red Army had to break through dozens of such defensive lines and take hundreds of cities.
The General Staff did not reinvent the wheel and remembered the idea of the Kaiser’s army: sapper assault units, which the Germans used very successfully in the last years of the Great War. The Red Army modernized this old idea. If the German attack aircraft were armed with light machine guns and backpack flamethrowers, the Soviets were also given anti-tank rifles (used as large-caliber rifles, specialists used them to shoot enemy snipers and machine gunners directly through the walls of buildings), sniper rifles, machine guns and self-loading rifles. Each fighter carried a large number of grenades and Molotov cocktails, as well as a supply of explosives.
The most noticeable part of the uniform of the fighters of the assault engineering brigades was a steel 3-mm breastplate, weighing about 3.5 kg. Reviews from front-line soldiers about these body armor were contradictory: while they were praised in street battles, in the field they were rather a hindrance: you can’t really crawl with a steel sheet on your chest. Most often, the fighters went into battle covering their breastplates with camouflage suits, which drove the Germans to madness as they pumped bullet after bullet into them to no avail.
Veteran of the assault engineer brigade Andrei Cherkashin recalls his first battle in a bulletproof vest: “I almost didn’t feel the weight of the shell; in the heat of the attack, I carried my legs myself. I don’t remember how we burst into the German trench. Hand-to-hand combat began, shots were fired at point-blank range... I will never forget the face of the fascist machine gunner. Pressing his back into the earthen traverse, he fires at me from a dueling distance... Three strong blows to the chest - three hits to the shell. I could barely stand on my feet, but I did. The machine gunner sees that his bullets are bouncing off me like peas. Behind the glasses are eyes distraught with horror. I didn’t shoot at him, I jumped over and go ahead!”
Because of these breastplates, sapper stormtroopers at the front were nicknamed “armored infantry” and “crayfish.” However, there were few brave souls who called the attack aircraft “cancer” to his face. The guys in these units were meticulously chosen, they were the best of the best: with rich combat experience, with the skills of 3-5 military specialties, not older than 42 years, capable of performing forced marches with a load of 15-20 kg. During training, they were driven in such a way that no one would find it enough: hand-to-hand combat skills, throwing knives, fighting with a mining shovel... Try saying “cancer” to this one!
Danzig
The assault on the well-fortified Danzig became one of the best battles in the history of the armored infantry. By 1945, behind all the vicissitudes of the six-year war in Europe, it was somehow forgotten that it began precisely because of Danzig, which, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, moved away from Germany to Poland, and Hitler promised the Germans to return it to the Germans at the elections. The Poles refused to give up the city voluntarily, and when Germany attacked them, France and England declared war on it.
And now, of course, Hitler was not going to surrender the city over which he started the war to the Soviets. Danzig was very well prepared for defense. Almost all large stone buildings were turned into strongholds. The buildings were connected by trenches, the streets were blocked off with barricades, they were mined, iron hedgehogs were installed, and long-term firing points were built at intersections. Many houses were prepared to be blown up, and guided mines were installed on the streets.
The "Armored Infantry" was also well prepared for the assault. Moreover, the Germans themselves helped her in this: in the summer of 1943, the Wehrmacht began to receive Faust cartridges, which Soviet attack aircraft immediately fell in love with. After all, they were suitable not only for destroying tanks, but also for breaking through the walls of buildings and destroying firing points in street battles.
Again, Soviet soldiers developed the German idea: they built a special installation that made it possible to launch 6-10 Faust cartridges at once (from these installations they also hit the enemy with direct fire with 300-mm Katyusha rockets). The effect was stunning! But what infuriated the Germans most of all was the habit of the “armor men” to pass through the walls of buildings, blowing them up with TNT: this destroyed the entire well-thought-out defense system.
Danzig was stormed by the 49th Army, which was assigned the 3rd Assault Engineer Brigade specifically for this purpose. The brigade was reinforced with the best army personnel and divided into 30 assault groups. The group of Lieutenant Vadim Efimov, in addition to a dozen machine gunners, consisted of 4 flamethrowers, 4 “Faustniks” with 60 Faust cartridges and several demolitionists with a decent supply of TNT.
On March 28, Efimov’s group reached the northeastern outskirts of Danzig. Having discovered a building occupied by the Germans, the attack aircraft first of all “extinguished” the machine guns with captured Faust cartridges, then blew up the wall and directed several jets of flamethrower into the opening at once. A few minutes later, there was nothing alive left in the house, which had burned out from the inside. Where it was impossible to burn out the enemy, he was chopped into pieces with sapper blades in hand-to-hand combat. Thus, Efimov’s group cleared 45 buildings in 7 city blocks in a day and in the evening reached the bank of the Dead Vistula.
Here the attack aircraft ran into a pillbox and five machine-gun nests located on the other bank. There were two Soviet self-propelled guns nearby, Lieutenant Efimov asked their crews to cover the group with fire. While self-propelled guns fired at the pillbox and machine guns, the assault group crossed over the remains of the blown-up bridge to the other side of the river and cleared the German trenches with grenades. There was a pillbox left, the entrance to which was blocked by the Germans. This was not a problem for the attack sappers: in such cases they used ventilation shafts through which they poured gasoline inside and set it on fire. Among the Germans were four officers who had fought on the Eastern Front. Hearing the Red Army soldiers swarming around on their roof, and clearly imagining how this activity would turn out for them, they hastened to throw out the white flag.
On March 31, Danzig was taken, the remnants of the 2nd German Army defending the city retreated to the Hel Spit, where they did not surrender until the official surrender of the Reich. Vadim Efimov was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for the capture of Danzig.
Koenigsberg
26 assault detachments and 104 assault groups were created specifically for the assault on the fortifications of the capital of East Prussia. The assault detachment is 100-200 riflemen and machine gunners, reinforced with machine guns, mortars, flamethrowers, supported by several guns and one or two tanks. The fighters of these units underwent special training for combat in urban conditions.
This is how the commander of the 11th Guards Army, General Kuzma Galitsky, described the actions of the assault detachment of Lieutenant Colonel Krivich, which took the Koenigsberg theater on April 7: “When the detachment approached the theater, guns and tanks opened fire on the firing points on the approaches to the building and on the windows... The shelling continued in for 10-20 minutes. The infantry used this time to occupy a starting position 50-100 m from the attack target. The sappers managed to make passages in the barriers and barricades. At the end of the fire raid, the infantry, overcoming obstacles, through windows, doors and breaks in the walls, having previously thrown grenades at them, burst into the nearest rooms of the building from different sides...
One of the attacking groups, advancing through the garden adjacent to the theater, blew up several doors, and burst into the building through the back door. Then the attacking groups, moving towards each other, sequentially cleared one room after another. In order to make a passage to each next room, the soldiers broke down the doors or blew them up with grenades. After that, they threw grenades into the breach they had made, and the flamethrowers fired a stream of fire, forcing the enemy to surrender or retreat to the next room. Acting in this way, the attacking groups completely cleared the lower floor of the theater within an hour, killing up to 200 soldiers and capturing 250 prisoners.”
Attack aircraft Alexei Bordunov distinguished himself in the 43rd Army, which was advancing not far from the Galitsky guards. He was the first to break into the Juditten district of Königsberg, using an anti-tank rifle to suppress a machine-gun point in the building, after which he ran into this house, fortified by the Germans for defense, and killed 12 German soldiers there in hand-to-hand combat. At first he threw grenades into the rooms with the Fritzes, and when they ran out, he simply burst in and cut everyone with a knife.
During the day, Soviet troops occupied more than a hundred city blocks. Some assault groups passed through both the second and first lines of defense, ending up late in the evening in the very center of the city. Königsberg's defense system collapsed.
The next day, battles took place only for individual strongholds that were still held by German soldiers. But even there, desperate women snatched weapons from their hands, forcing them to surrender. On the morning of April 9, the military commandant of Koenigsberg, Otto Lyash, sent envoys to Marshal Vasilevsky with a message of surrender.
So, you have a Molotov cocktail, a dozen grenades and a small supply of explosives...Text: Maxim Kuznetsov
ASSAULT BRIGADESEvery army in the world at some stage was faced with the problem that conventional infantry was not capable of effectively solving many problems that arose during battle. Special forces were needed and “commandos” were created in England, army rangers were created in the USA, and “panzergrenadiers” were created in Germany.
The Red Army faced this problem in 1943, when the great offensive into Europe began. The Germans, due to their national character, were great masters in creating defensive lines: they meticulously “sown” fields with mines and traps, hardworkingly built pillbox after pillbox, and dug trench after trench.
The doomed heroism of the penalty box and the submissive diligence of the infantry in breaking through such a defense were almost useless; each success had to be paid for with huge losses. But the Red Army had to break through dozens of such defensive lines and take hundreds of cities.
The General Staff did not reinvent the wheel and remembered the idea of the Kaiser’s army: sapper assault units, which the Germans used very successfully in the last years of the Great War. The Red Army modernized this old idea. If the German attack aircraft were armed with light machine guns and backpack flamethrowers, the Soviets were also given anti-tank rifles (used as large-caliber rifles - specialists used them to shoot enemy snipers and machine gunners directly through the walls of buildings), sniper rifles, machine guns and self-loading rifles. Each fighter carried a large number of grenades and Molotov cocktails, as well as a supply of explosives.The most noticeable part of the uniform of the fighters of the assault engineering brigades was a steel 3-mm breastplate, weighing about 3.5 kilograms. Feedback from front-line soldiers about these body armor was contradictory: while they were praised in street battles, in the field they were rather a hindrance - you can’t really crawl with a steel sheet on your chest. Most often, the fighters went into battle covering their breastplates with camouflage suits, which drove the Germans to madness as they pumped bullet after bullet into them to no avail.
Veteran of the assault engineer brigade Andrei Cherkashin recalls his first battle in a bulletproof vest: “I almost didn’t feel the weight of the shell; in the heat of the attack, I carried my legs myself. I don’t remember how we burst into the German trench. Hand-to-hand combat began, shots were fired at point-blank range... I will never forget the face of the fascist machine gunner. Pressing his back into the earthen traverse, he fires at me from a dueling distance... Three strong blows to the chest - three hits to the shell. I could barely stand on my feet, but I did. The machine gunner sees that his bullets are bouncing off me like peas. Behind the glasses are eyes distraught with horror. He didn’t shoot at him, jumped over, and go ahead!”
Because of these breastplates, sapper stormtroopers at the front were nicknamed “armored infantry” or “crayfish.” However, there were few brave souls who called the attack aircraft “cancer” to his face. The guys in these units were meticulously chosen; they were the best of the best: with rich combat experience, with skills in three to five military specialties, no older than 42 years, capable of performing forced marches with a load of fifteen to twenty kilograms. During training, they were driven in such a way that no one would find it enough: hand-to-hand combat skills, throwing knives, fighting with a mining shovel... Try saying “cancer” to this one!Danzig
DANZIG
The assault on the well-fortified Danzig became one of the best battles in the history of the armored infantry. By 1945, behind all the vicissitudes of the six-year war in Europe, it was somehow forgotten that it began precisely because of Danzig, which, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, moved away from Germany to Poland, and Hitler promised the Germans to return it to the Germans at the elections. The Poles refused to give up the city voluntarily, and when Germany attacked them, France and England declared war on it.And now, of course, Hitler was not going to surrender the city over which he started the war to the Soviets. Danzig was very well prepared for defense. Almost all large stone buildings have been turned into strongholds. The buildings were connected by trenches, the streets were blocked off with barricades, they were mined, iron hedgehogs were installed, and long-term firing points were built at intersections. Many houses were prepared to be blown up, and guided mines were installed on the streets.
The "Armored Infantry" was also well prepared for the assault. Moreover, the Germans themselves helped her in this: in the summer of 1943, the Wehrmacht began to receive Faust cartridges, which Soviet attack aircraft immediately fell in love with. After all, they were suitable not only for destroying tanks, but also for breaking through the walls of buildings or destroying firing points in street battles.Again, Soviet soldiers developed the German idea: they built a special installation that made it possible to launch 6-10 Faust cartridges at once (from these installations they also hit the enemy with direct fire with 300-mm Katyusha rockets). The effect was stunning! But most of all, the Germans were infuriated by the habit of the “armor soldiers” to pass through the walls of buildings, blowing them up with TNT - this destroyed the entire well-thought-out defense system.
Danzig was stormed by the 49th Army, which was assigned the 3rd Assault Engineer Brigade specifically for this purpose. The brigade was reinforced with the best army personnel and divided into 30 assault groups. The group of Lieutenant Vadim Efimov, in addition to a dozen machine gunners, consisted of 4 flamethrowers, 4 “Faustniks” with 60 Faust cartridges and several demolitionists with a decent supply of TNT.
On March 28, Efimov’s group reached the northeastern outskirts of Danzig. Having discovered a building occupied by the Germans, the attack aircraft first of all “extinguished” the machine guns with captured Faust cartridges, then blew up the wall and directed several jets of flamethrower into the opening at once. A few minutes later, there was nothing alive left in the house, which had burned out from the inside. Where it was impossible to burn out the enemy, he was chopped into pieces with sapper blades in hand-to-hand combat. Thus, Efimov’s group cleared 45 buildings in 7 city blocks in a day and in the evening reached the bank of the Dead Vistula.
