BA-10M. The last Soviet tank on wheels

[@jeffyoung60]

The BA-10M Soviet armored car showed up in the undeclared border war between the Soviet Union and Imperial Japan at Khalkin Gol/Nomonhan, the frontier between Mongolia and Manchuria. I read a book on the July 1939 border conflict which included a number of photos. One showed a knocked-out BA-10M in the background with Japanese infantrymen in the foreground. At one critical juncture in the fierce battle, the Imperial Japanese Army 23rd Infantry Division a rapid, unforeseen advance northeast towards Soviet lines. The Soviet commanding general, lieutenant-general Georgi Zhukov, saw the immediate threat to his line of artillery. However, his infantry was not in the right location to counterattack. Zhukov committed to a huge risky gambit by intentionally violating a precept of modern warfare. He committed his tank and armored car units without infantry support. But he had no other options. The gamble succeeded in blunting the Japanese infantry attack. But Zhukov paid the price by losing some 130 tanks and armored cars. The Japanese infantry resorted to using artillery, infantry satchel charges, demolition charges, and Molotov cocktails as well as the desperate tactic of infantry swarming over Soviet tanks. The summer 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, was the swansong of the armored car as a major battlefield component of modern motorized warfare. The armored car almost disappeared from Soviet Red Army use. A light armored car remained in service for fast reconnaissance. A few of these light armored cars supplied the new North Korean Army in 1948 which saw limited deployment in the 1950 North Korean invasion of South Korea.

[@cracked_gonker6613]

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