"Lend Lease Tanks: brigaded or mixed in?" Topic

Were US and British lend lease tanks likely to be in the same units or were they parceled out? Would a battalion with Valentine lights have Matilda tanks? Or was it much more "catch as catch can?" Same for Stuarts and Shermans. Would they have mixed US and Soviet kit?

For the Brits, I know that there were battles that had Grants supporting Crusaders.

Russians, I'd assume that they'd try to keep Lend-Lease in solid units to simplify supply.

Thanks – I'm only concerned with Soviets (for now)…

Far as I know, the Soviets employed the Valentines as light tanks due to the gun, so I assume they'd be separate.

The Russians would try to keep homogeneous units but it depended on vehicle availability and TOE. In mixed organisations (with light, medium and sometimes heavy companies) they were substituted by type so eg the 108th Tank Brigade in 1942 had M3 Lee instead of T34 in its medium battalion, and Valentines instead of T60 in its light battalion.

In late 41 and early 42 they often seem to have been jumbled in at random, an many were assigned to independent tank companies and battalions for infantry support.

Bob Mackenzie lists a number of different organisations in "Comrades in Arms".

Thanks. My question could have been clearer.

Building a Tank Battalion in Flames of War, it may have up to 3 tank companies – 2 medium and 1 light. I was wondering if they kept battalions of all lend lease tanks or mixed, say T34s and Valentines, or Shermans and T70s?

I'm guessing they mixed and matched early on out of necessity but would try to keep them together for supply reasons?

As MR says, the Sovs were a bit haphazard in their organizations with lend-lease equipment. Companies were usually one type of tank but companies within a battalion could have different lend-lease equipment. The only other "rule" is that a tank battalion usually had all lend-lease or all Sov manufacture (I'm sure exceptions are frequent though).

Yes, probably best to aim for homogenous companies.

Some of the late 41 Tank Brigades had a mixture of Russian, Lend Lease and captured German stuff….

I'd be very surprised to see a Russian tank _battalion_ with a mixture of light and medium companies, although there was a short lived organisational form in 1942 with a mix of light and medium companies.

I'd be very surprised to see a Russian tank _battalion_ with a mixture of light and medium companies, although there was a short lived organisational form in 1942 with a mix of light and medium companies.

Well, the Soviets had the manufacturing capability for the light tanks, so they had to stuff them somewhere in the organisational charts – and deployed on their own they could have got into trouble when faced with serious opposition.

Even more bizarre was the earlier and also rather short lived battalion organisation which included a small company of KV tanks, another company of T34 and third company of T60 tanks – with battalion commander supervising the whole lot from his radio truck!

Well, theory is one thing and practice another. My late uncle served in the 42nd Cavalry Squadron (Mechanized), 2nd Cavalry Group during World War II with Patton's 3rd Army. As a recon outfit, they were the tip of the spear (the outfit, by the way, which rescued the Lippizaner brood stock from the advancing Soviets). He described to me encountering a rag-tag Russian outfit near the end of the war. He said they had about 5 different kinds of tanks, including Russian-built, British (he couldn't identify the type), some early marks of the Sherman, and at least one captured German tank. It must have been a nightmare in terms of replacement parts and ammunition supply!

I suspect that if a Russian tactical unit had five different tanks including lend-lease, captured and Soviet manufacture, then they didn't worry too much about replacement parts or ammo supply.

Could that rag-tag circus have come into being by amalgamation of remnants of various different battalions into a single unit?

As for challenges with spare parts and ammo supply, at least the Soviets tried to limit the number of native designs that they had to supply. Germans on the other hand not only had a mind-boggling variety of designs of their own, but also captured equipment coming from at least a dozen different sources.

Martin Rapier above mentions independent tank companies and battalions used for infantry support. If a unit was not intended primarily to fight other armor, then perhaps a crazy mix of types within one unit would not have been too important. Maybe that is what my uncle encountered, as described in my previous post. Anyway, my uncle couldn't speak Russian, so he would have had no way of knowing what the explanation was.

The Russians in 1941 had the mixed battalion with light, medium and heavy tanks. Then IIRC they went to battalions all the same but a combination of light and medium in the brigade, with heavy tanks in separate regiments. Finally after Kursk they went to entire brigades equipped with the same tank.

The uncle in the 42 cav probably bumped into a Soviet recon unit, they tended to be organized uniquely by unit.

Yes – the recon unit was probably not even authorized tanks to begin with but 'acquired' them along the way….

Actually, Valentines were allocated to at least one cavalry unit in brigade strength in 44-45.

Likewise at the RKKA in WWII (Amvas) site he gives TO&Es at various times in the war and for several battles that show primarily homogenous units.

For example, the Churchills at Kursk were allocated to one of the Guards Tank formations.

According to "Commanding the Red Army's Shermans" the author had a Homogenous Battalion of M4A2 (76) W Shermans.

Later in the war, Shermans were allocated in lieu of T34, and Churchills assigned to independent heavy tank regiments.

I could never quite figure out where Matilda II fitted in.

Soviet recce battalions often had a mixture of companies of different types, motorcycle, Armoured car, mechanised or motorised infantry as well as light and or medium tank companies. There weren't really any standard organisations.

And in 1944/45, lots of units liked to drag around the odd captured German tank, at least until they broke down.

It sounds like Martin Rapier has the answer to what Uncle Bob encountered. An odd mix of tank types in the medium tank company of a Soviet recon battalion would seem a logical solution to what to do with an assortment of "leftovers." Some of the equipment could even have been acquired through "midnight requisitions." Situationally, it also makes sense for an American recon unit to encounter a Soviet counterpart near the end of the war.