Appleknocker27 wrote:
Right....per MTOE? or by what percent of fill each respective division/armored corps actually had on hand, in working condition with competent operators at the time of combat?
Not "percents". Actual figures.
From the very first moment, a conspicuous feature which catches the eye is that Glantz does not provide actual figures. Except, at the end, the number of tanks lost by the 32 Tank Division. As for the rest, the usual "percents".
For your knowledge, I had the chance to look into "Stumbling Colossus" while I was on a research leave at Konstanz University in Germany. There, I also read many other books on WW2. But there was one thing by the same David Glantz, in "When Titans Clashed" which caught my eye and determined me to look closer at this percents (and, in general, this whole business of the soviet unpreparedness).
There, Glantz makes several considerations about the Wehrmacht and mentions that, on average, a German division possessed on average 125 operational tanks out of a nominal strength of around 200. It that was about the Red Army divisions, the howling would be deafening: "The Soviet tank divisions possessed only 35% of their nominal strength (370)! How is it possible to fight in such nightmarish conditions!?"
A German Panzer division was far from having all their tanks in working condition. But the Wehrmacht apparently was always "ready for war". Hundred percent.
I am not aware of the actual figures for all the "percents" Glantz throws around. But with some I am more familiar.
So I'll shed some light on the issue of the tractors for towing artillery.
The Red Army MTOE for 1941 was the Mobilization Plan for 1941, abbreviated MP-41.
According to the organization chart of April, 1941 the anti-tank battalion of a regular infantry division was supposed to have 21 armored caterpillar tow-tractor "Komsomolets" per 18 anti-tank cannons. So, for the total level of equipment under the nominal requirements of all infantry divisions (and all mechanized divisions which according to the nominal level of equipment were supposed to have 27 "Komsomolets") were needed 4,596 tow-tractors of this type. As of 15 June, 1941 the Red Army already had 6,672 "Komsomolets". But MP-41 has the number 7,802.
Every one of the 179 infantry (excluding the mountain-infantry) divisions nominally had to have 78 tow-tractors (excluding the "Komsomolets"). At that the nominal numbers were exceptionally generous. For instance, a howitzer regiment in a regular — not to confuse with the mechanized — infantry division for 36 howitzers, according to the list of equipment, has 72 tractors. The total for the entire infantry - 13,962 tractors. The complete equipment level for all 30 mechanized corps was to be 9,330 tractors and specialized tow-tractors.
Another first-priority receiver of the mechanical towing equipment — the anti-tank artillery brigades. By 1 July, 1941 it was planned to deploy 10 such brigades, each one with 120 powerful (76-, 85- and 107-mm) cannons for whose transportation the nominal level was 165 tow-tractors. Correspondingly, for all anti-tank artillery brigades 1,650 more units of mechanical towing were needed.
The artillery regiments of the corps and the reserve artillery regiments had different equipment levels and organization. Assuming the average equipment level of 36 guns and taking into account the double reserve we come up with about 12,100 tow-tractors needed for providing for the complete equipment level in all (94 corps and 74 regiments of the reserve) nonintegrated artillery regiments.
Altogether, all combat units and groupings of the entire Red Army (including the Urals, Siberian and central Asian military districts removed by thousands of kilometers from the western border) needed, under the "super-generous" roster normative, about 37,000 tow-tractors. Actually the forces had by 15 June, 1941 36,300 tractors and tow-tractors (plus 6,700 "Komsomolets").
The MP-41 compilers demanded 83,045 tractors and tow-tractors. 36,300 is 44% from 83,000. This is where this nasty "44 percent of their tractors" comes from.
It's interesting what Zhukov has to say in his memoirs about MP-41: "Remembering how and what we, the military, demanded from the industry in the last months of peace I see that sometimes we did not fully considered the real economic possibilities of the country. Although from our so-to-speak institutional point of view we were right".
In translation:
the Red Army brass inputted into the mobilization plan exorbitant, unsubstantiated and consciously undoable requests for the material-technical supplies of the army. Those very percents Glantz (and others) are brandishing around are computed relative to the numbers in the mobilization plan MP-41.
could go on, but hopefully you get the point and will get a copy of Glantz' "Stumbling Colossus" as a starter. If your issues are with Glantz, then take them up with him. All of the above is cited from original Soviet source material and there is a mountain of it in all of Glantz' books.
Glantz's work had been subjected to some serious criticism since 1998, for instance in russian historian's work M.Solonin, where I took the data from.
Is "Stumbling Colossus" your only source on the subject?