6th Guards Tank Army
The 6th Guards Red Banner Tank Army was a tank army of the Soviet Union's Red Army, first formed during World War II and disbanded in Ukraine in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
6th Tank Army's first major operation was the suppression of the Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket in January-February 1944. It then fought in the Issy-Kishnev Operation (the Battle of Romania (1944)) during August 1944 before gaining a Guards title in October 1944. Under its new title it was soon engaged in the Battle of Debrecen under 2nd Ukrainian Front, before fighting against the Germans during Operation Frühlingserwachen in January 1945. Pushing west, the tank army moved south of Vienna, Austria and pivoted to the north in a wide encircling maneuver that cut Vienna off from the rest of the German Reich.
The 6th Guards Tank Army was then moved to the Far East. Under General A.G. Kravchenko's command, just before the start of Operation August Storm against the Japanese Kwantung Army on August 9, 1945, it consisted of the 5th Guards Tank Corps, and 7th and 9th Guards Mechanised Corps, as well as many smaller formations.[1] For this operation, the tank army was restructured such that the infantry, artillery, and armored components were much more balanced than they had been during the war against the Germans. This type of organization proved to be the forerunner of Soviet mechanized army organization during the Cold War.[2] During "August Storm" the Army was operating as part of the Transbaikal Front, and during the "Khingano-Mukden Operation" as it was known to the Soviets, the Army was tasked to advance 800 kilometers.
It was stationed in Mongolia, reporting to the Transbaikal Military
District, for 15 years after the war. The friendship with China of those days and the Krushchev military reductions changed the fate of the Army, and in 1959 it was relocated to
Dnepropetrovsk in the Kiev Military
District. Toward the end of the 1980s it retained three Guards Tank Divisions - the 17th, 42nd (the former 42nd Rifle
Division) and the 75th (formerly the 75th Rifle Division, though Lenskii disagrees and calls this division the 14th Guards Tank).
On 11 November 1990, following the disbandment of the 75th (or 14th) Guards Tank Division, the reorganisation of the 42nd Guards
Tank Division as the 5359th Base for Storage of Weapons and Equipment, and the arrival of the 93rd Guards Motor Rifle Division
from the Southern Group of Forces, the Army had on hand 462 Main battle tanks, all T-64s, 228
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union it became part of the Ukrainian Ground Forces. At some point during the 1990s it was disbanded by being redesignated the 6th Army Corps. Today in Ukrainian service the 6th Army Corps is still based at Dnepropetrovsk and consists of several brigades, including the 17th Armored Brigade and the 93rd Mechanized Brigade.
Sources and References
- ^ Orbat.com/Niehorster, 6th Guards Tank Army, 9 August 1945
- ^ Glantz, p.280
- ^ A.G. Lenskii, M.M. Tsybin, The Soviet Ground Forces in the last years of the USSR, St Petersburg, 1991
- Feskov et al, The Soviet Army in the Period of the Cold War, Tomsk University Press, 2004
- David M. Glantz, When Titans Clashed, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995. ISBN 0-7006-0899-0.
- Wikipedia articles mentioned above
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