Soviet Artillery Tractors of World War II

Packed with rare and unpublished photographs, this is a new history of the Red Army’s tracked artillery tractors that were pivotal to its success in World War II.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 industrialise the Soviet Union as well as to mechanise 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 This new research is used here for the first time in English, alongside unpublished images, to tell the remarkable story of the artillery tractors that delivered Red Army artillery into combat throughout World War II.