In the Game, Call of Duty, the Soviet campaign eventually has your character promoted to Sergent and at one point, given temporary command of a T-34 because of a lack of experienced tank commanders(So they pick from amongst experienced infantry).
I know the Russians were rather desperate during WW2, but did they really assign infantry to be tank commanders, or is this more of a convinent way to put a tank driving mission in Call of Duty?
Two things
First your probably correct in your thinking that its convienient.
The second was that the American army did put leg infantry inside tank regiments during ww2 , due to a shortage of trained personel, so its not a stretch to think that the sovs would do the same.
Declan
As I undertand things, it was a lot more than convenient for infantry to support tanks in WWII. Tank operators have relatively poor visibility when buttoned up and need infantry in support to prevent the enemy from attacking from the flank or rear. Armored divisions always includedintegrated infantry.
As to the OP question about infantry personnel becoming tank commanders I’m inclined to doubt it, but on the other hand you sometimes must do things that are out of the ordinary.
There’s a big difference between putting leg infantry in a ‘tank regiment’ and having a leg infantryman temporarily driving a tank.
Armored units the size of a regiment almost always had infantry as part of the unit. Tanks alone don’t do a very good job of guarding the front at night, clearing out farmhouses or buildings, rounding up prisoners, etc. etc.
On the other hand, while you do what you need to when things get desperate, it’s hard to imagine that if an army did ever stick a rifleman into a tank, they’d let him go back to being a rifleman. Tank crews are more valuable than guys toting rifles.
Of course, we’re talking about a video game here. Does the video game acknowledge that the commander of a tank and the driver of a tank are two different people?
Not really. It does say in the briefing “We have crews but we lack tank commanders” but when you get into the mission, you are actually driving the tank and firing he gun by yourself, while the gun is automatically reloaded after about 5 seconds. Occasionally, one of your crew will yell various things out(“Heil Hitler in Hell!”), the only real acknowledgement of someone other then yourself in the tank.
Though Call of Duty is a First Person Shooter, not a tank simulator, so I imagine this was done to make the transition between modes easy rather then simulate realism.
From the heading it appeared to be asking something quite different, namely: Rather than assigning equipment to troops, were infantry assigned to particular small arms and other portable weaponry.
This is the ‘2 Russian infantry to 1 rifle’ legend and if true shows the abundance of Russian/Soviety manpower in comparison to the poverty of everything else. AFAIK the legend isn’t disputed.
So I think you can assume similar events are true when demonstrating abundant and superflous infantry compared to all other resources, e.g. armour, highly trained personnel.
Early in the war this might possibly have been the case. However by the time of the Battle of Kursk the Soviets certainly didn’t lack tanks and tank commanders.