tank fright

14th October 1944. Henczida village. The AT batteries of the 1st artillery division, 1st artillery regiment, Tudor Vladimirescu Division. 1700 hours. German counterattack made up of 10 Tiger tanks and 20 halftracks. Approaches 400 meters from the Romanian position. The Romanian AT batteries stay put and take out 2 tanks and 6 halftracks. A second counter-attack was repelled at night, this time the enemy tanks coming as close as 160 m from our positions.

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19th October, 1944. Romanian 4th Army Corps. Szolnok. German armor and mechanised counterattack on the right flank of Romanian 4th Division. 1000B battalion's defense was broken, its 2 47mm AT guns being unable to do anything. NW of Rakoczifalva a plutoon of the Romanian 9th AA battery, equipped with 75mm AT guns took out 2 Tiger tanks. Going into the 4th Divisions reserve area the german maneuver forces faced the 998th infantry battalion backed by 1st Regiment heavy artillery. These units, though lacking AT munition took out 4 more heavy tanks. The retreat was orderly and a new line of defense was formed.

"Romanii la Stalingrad" i am reading it ,really exceptional book 10x for the tip .
Imperialist no offence the topic is on the eastern front section,your examples ar from the western front

The first one shows very well that Romanians did not run at the very sight of enemy tanks. The second shows once again that the 47 mm AT was inefficient, and the units had to withdraw because of that, not necessarily because they had tank fright.

p.s. so do you have such examples from the eastern front?

take care

Glad you found it and have the patience to study it.

Nine years ago, my job was to sell the bills from the national energy company, at rural regions. So, from house to house... SOmetimes were old mans, veterans. I heard a loat of memoryes. One on of thme told me about the succes of his battery against T-34. They fired with 100 m.m. howitzers.

Iama

bebe, I think one of the things many members have a problem with in your post is the idea that panic or inability against tanks was somehow a uniquely romanian problem, because they're all peasants and don't understand technology the way the germans or russians did. It's hard not to see it as insulting, and more importantly, it doesn't seem to be supported by the facts.

Soldiers panic for many reasons: fatigue, bad leadership, training. But one big reason is when they are faced with weapons that they have no effective counter against. This countermeasure can be a weapon (you're being bombed and you have no air cover or AA guns) or it can be a defense (it's Ypres and you're being gassed, and you have no gas mask). There are too many examples of this to list, from Hannibal's elephants to nuclear weapons. Even the first-line Romanian units had fewer effective anti-tank weapons than their German or Russian counterparts. Among the support units, the situation was worse. What amazes me is how well they fought with what the weapons they had.

As for the national characteristics question, the average Russian soldier was a peasant just like the average Romanian. Outside the tank and motorized units soldiers in BOTH armies did not work with tanks or any kind of mechanized equipment routinely. They had not done this as civilians either -- their families did not own cars or farm tractors. Outside of the panzer, panzer grenadier and some motorized units, this was true of the Germans too. All the tanks were concentrated in those few units. The infantry walked. Most artillery was horse drawn or pulled by trucks if they were lucky. Supplies and support units moved in wagons. Longer distance moves were done by railroad. The British and the Americans were the first armies to move the average infantryman and his supplies in motorized transport.

I don't agree with you on this. In the battle for France in 1940, and I think on at least one occasion in Poland, 1939, German infantry unsupported by tanks was attacked by hostile tanks. (I don't have my references handy, sorry) They used the weapons they had: small AT guns, field artillery, AA guns like the 88mm, engineer tools like mines and satchel charges, and sometimes just hiding in trenches or buildings and waiting for the tanks to pass. If that sounds like the Romanian or Russian armies, that's because it was. The difference in result was due to the fact that the allied tanks were fewer in numbers, not well supported by infantry, mechanically unreliable, and often had short range and bad communications. It's not because the Germans were all Rambo.

This post has been edited by Jeff_S on February 02, 2007 07:06 pm

Hi Bebe, any luck finding relevant examples for these serious statements of yours:

Why did you write these things if you had no examples at hand? Who told you this? What is the source that made you think this? etc.

take care

i read this in a book written by a german general or colonel and based on what i saw on discovery channel (nothing positive about romanian army in ww2,except for one mention abouat a cavalry unit who broke the russian lines in crimea and then the germans exploited their success.

BTW bebe, I also recomend to you another very good book "Romanii in Crimeea" by Adrian Pandea and Eftimie Ardeleanu , also published by Editura Militara.

Discovery Channel docs are full of misplaced Wochenschau clips. Also, "a book written by a german general or colonel" is a vague term IMO.

To get back on topic, on the Eastern Front, I have not heard of incidents when entire Romanian units broke and fled in panic at the apparition of Soviet tanks. Such incidents, if they would have happened, would have been included in Romanian or German reports.

So basically, as a logical extrapolation, if there is no strong documented evidence (by Romanian, German, or even Soviet after the battle reports, or reliable contemporary sources) that such incidents duly happened, then you are mistaking.

Al

This post has been edited by Alexei2102 on February 03, 2007 09:42 pm

Hi Jeff S,

I agree that there are many reasons for tank fright and it is not an inherent national characteristic issue. There are examples of tank fright in every army, including the German in WWII. However, it is not insulting to suggest that it was more prevalent in some societies than in others at particular times for particuar reasons. National cultures and national military cultures change. (Just look at the complete reversal in French and Prussian military morale between the battles of Rossbach and Jena. The French collaped into a panic stricken mob in the first and the Prussians did the same in the second.)

Tank fright was likely to be more prevalent amongst conscript troops raised from rural populations less familar with the mechanised world. Romania was a largely rural society before WWII. The landholding reforms of the 1920s had given peasants their own land, but the plots were not generally large enough for them to own tractors. By contrast, collectivisation in the USSR, while a social and productive failure, had introduced caterpillar tractors widely to the national peasantry. Soviet soldiers, even from peasant backgounds, were therefore more likely to be familiar with the mechanised world than Romanians. (Curzio Malaparte coined the phrase "industrial morale" to cover this).

This problem can be overcome by good training. For example, a French North African Division gave two attacking German panzer divisions a very hard time in Belgium in 1940. However, unlike most conscript Romanians, the North Africans were long service regular soldiers, whose extensive peacetime military training in a (for the time) well mechanised army had overcome their lack of "industrial morale".

Another factor to be taken into account is that Romania was not a totalitarian society like the USSR. It did not have a regimented and terrorised civilian society or an army stiffened by ruthless commissars.

There is no doubt that some Romanian units were very shaky in the face of "tank" attack at Odessa in 1941. I put the "tank" in inverted commas deliberately, because most of the Red Army's Odessa tanks were simply locally improvised armed and armoured versions of the caterpillar agricultural tractors widely used on the collective farms. By contrast the Red Army garrison of Odessa proved more resilent in the face of attacks by larger numbers of real Romanian tanks.

In order to face a weapon with confidence one must first understand it. Such understanding comes with familiarity. Come the next war I am likely to come down with "electronic warfare shock and awe" - the modern equivalent of tank fight!

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Sid,

I agree 100%, this was exactly my point.

More likely? I would agree with that. But I just don't have a good sense of how much the Soviet goal of mechanized agriculture actually trickled down to the average kholkoz peasant and how much was just Stalinist propaganda. Some factors that suggest it was not so widespread include the widespread use of horse-drawn transport even late in the war, how they would draft students and city-dwellers to help with the harvest (what did they do? bring their own tractors?), the widespread use of lend-lease trucks and jeeps, and the relatively poor performance of Soviet units in returning damaged vehicles to service (for sure, that's hard to do when you don't control the battlefield, but they still seem to have done worse than the Germans even late in the war). To me that indicates a low level of mechanical skill in the average soldier. I could see the Soviet economy of the 1930s at being good at PRODUCING lots of tractors, but then doing a poor job of supplying the mechanical training, spare parts, fuel distribution and so on required to actually keep them running effectively. You don't learn much by watching a broken tractor rust in a field.

My father went through US Army basic training in 1944, and told a story about having to dig a foxhole, get in it, then they had an old tank drive over it and go back-and forth over it, trying to grind the occupant into the mud and make the hole collapse. He said it was terrifying, even though there was no real danger. They never had any problems getting soldiers to dig in properly after that, I'm sure.

This is a question that's always interested me, whether soldiers from societies with more personal freedom fight better, or worse than soldiers from authoritarian societies. Supporters of each view have examples they can point to, sometimes only a few years apart... just look at the Russians in June 41 vs. Stalingrad, or the US Army of Kasserine Pass vs. the US Army in the Ardennes 44. I tend to go with what Rommel said about the Americans, that they were quicker to run away than the Germans or Russians, but also quicker to return to the fight.

Jeff

Romanian antitanc guns had used tungsten core projectiles?

Thank you,

Iama

Report of major Caruntu from the 4th Motorized Vanatori Regiment regarding the fighting on 22 and 23 December 1942.

Hi Victor,

An interesting article.

4th Motorised Vanatori Regiment was part of 1st Armoured Division and therefore one of the few Romanian infantry units familiar with tanks. It therefore knew how to handle them. Most of the Romanian Army was much less prepared.

Cheers,

Sid.