Soviet Artillery Tractors of World War II - by James Kinnear (Hardcover)

About the Book

Packed with rare and unpublished photographs, this is a new history of the Red Army's tracked artillery tractors that were pivotal to its success in World War II.

Book Synopsis

Packed with rare and unpublished photographs, this is a new history of the Red Army's tracked artillery tractors that were pivotal to its success in World War II.

The development of artillery tractors in the 1930s was integral to the industrial development of the Soviet Union. The tracked tractor plants at Chelyabinsk, Kharkov and Stalingrad were built specifically to industrialize the Soviet Union as well as to mechanize the Red Army, particularly the artillery.

This new study by Russian armour expert James Kinnear tells the story of these artillery tractors. How they suffered horrendous losses in the opening months of the war but continued to be built and their numbers were bolstered by Lend-Lease tractors, primarily of American origin. At the end of the war, the same slow-moving and cumbersome artillery tractors that had served with the Red Army in the dark days of 1941 towed their heavy artillery pieces at a steady pace all the way to the streets of Berlin.

There has been a resurgence of interest in recent years in these military workhorses and wrecks have been exhumed and restored, while Soviet factory and operational records have also become available. This new research is used here for the first time in English, alongside unpublished images, to tell the remarkable story of the artillery tractors that delivered Red Army artillery into combat throughout World War II.

About the Author

James Kinnear has researched the topic of Soviet and Russian military hardware since his first visit to the Soviet Union as a young teenager. James has written hundreds of articles on Soviet and Russian technology. He is a formal contributor to IHS Jane's defence yearbooks and has published books on Soviet military technology with Barbarossa, Darlington, Osprey and Tankograd.