BT Tank - Combat History - Battle of Khalkhin Gol (Nomonhan)

Battle of Khalkhin Gol (Nomonhan)

See also: Soviet–Japanese Border Wars

During the Battles of Khalkhin Gol (also known as the Nomonhan Incident), which lasted from May to September in 1939, BT tanks were easily attacked by Japanese "close quarter" teams (tank killer squads) which were armed with petrol bottles (later called "Molotov Cocktails"). The Soviet BT-5 and BT-7 light tanks, which had been operating in temperatures greater than 100F on the Mongolian plains, easily caught fire when a molotov cocktail ignited their gasoline engines. General Georgy Zhukov made it one of his "points" when briefing Joseph Stalin, that his "...BT tanks were a bit fireprone...." Conversely, many Japanese tankers held the Soviet 45mm anti-tank/tank guns in high esteem, noting, "...no sooner did they see the flash from a Russian gun, than they'd notice a hole in their tank, adding that the Soviet gunners were accurate too!"

After the Khalkhin Gol War in 1939, the Soviet military had broken into two camps; one side was represented by Spanish Civil War veterans General P. V. Rychagov of the Soviet Air Force, Soviet armour expert General Dimitry Pavlov, and Stalin's favorite, Marshal Grigory Kulik, Chief of Artillery Administration. The other side consisted of the Khalkhin Gol veterans led by Generals Zhukov and G.P. Kravchenko of the Soviet Air Force. Under this cloud of division, the lessons of Russia's "first real war on a massive scale using tanks, artillery, and airplanes" at Nomonhan (Khalkhin Gol) went unheeded. Consequently, during the Finland War (Winter War) the BT-2 and BT-5 tanks were less successful, and it took the Soviet Union three and a half months, and over a million men to do what Zhukov did in just ten days at Nomonhan.

After the German war broke out, the Spanish Civil War faction fell in disfavor, with Marshal Kulik in particular being court-martialed and demoted. Gen. Zhukov and the majority of his surviving Nomonhan veterans were appointed to commands throughout European Russia, in time to engage the German armies.

Read more about this topic:  BT Tank, Combat History

Famous quotes containing the word battle:

    “In a time of war the nation is always of one mind, eager to hear something good of themselves and ill of the enemy. At this time the task of news-writers is easy, they have nothing to do but to tell that a battle is expected, and afterwards that a battle has been fought, in which we and our friends, whether conquering or conquered, did all, and our enemies did nothing.”
    —Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)