History 31/12/19 Why the beetles began to attack Berlin at night
the participants of the storming of the Seelow heights near Berlin, April 1945, there were different points of view about the effectiveness of Soviet troops floodlights when attacking Nazi positions. Different even information on the number of lighting devices that were used.
So how many were there?
Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who came up with the idea to use spotlights during the attack on the German positions, claimed that then had 140 lighting (to give weight to this action, those who want to appreciate its complimentary, often refers to such unit of power as millions and even billions of candles). The writer Yulian Semenov in his book “Ordered to survive” mentions “thousands” of lights. Operational summary of the Soviet 5th shock army cites about 26 units.
Historians argue that to enhance the effect of the screening technique on the enemy, its amount in the memoirs of military leaders have been deliberately exaggerated.
what was the benefit of the spotlight?
According to Zhukov, the use of the floodlights gave double effect – thus illuminated the path of advance in a night attack, especially for heavy equipment and at the same time blinded them to the enemy, who were distracted by a powerful light. Subsequently, the injured were interviewed who participated in the storming of the Seelow heights. Some of them agreed that for the tank gunners and searchlight illumination was really good. Interrogated German prisoners talked about using new Russian weapons, the panic in their units – they did not immediately understand what was happening.
them really were useless?
This was the opinion of the commander of the 8th guards army Vasily Chuikov. According to the memoirs Chuikov, advanced nearly a half-hour artillery preparation on the enemy positions created continuous dense smoky-dusty veil, and the light does not was to punch her. Command post of the army, which was and Chuikov, were covered by a haze, to control the troops could only by phone and using messengers. These effects artillery barrage coupled with a backlight, according to Chuikov, greatly complicate the offensive.
Chuykov believed that if the projectors were not installed on the active offensive sites may benefit from them would be greater. Operational summary of one of the Soviet shock armies testified that the spotlight often disoriented and our soldiers. In addition to dusty smoky veil there was another factor that allowed us to make a conclusion about the low efficiency of the impact of flood attacks: almost half of 26 light vehicles, according to the same perswade, idle – some of them disabled the guns of the enemy, and most did not work because the commanders searchlight mouth and could not sensibly to organize and supervise this process.
as a result, the lights reaching only to the front edge of the deeply echeloned defense of the enemy, and the good that it turned out to be insignificant.
Russian Seven
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