6th Panzer Army (Red Army)

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6th Panzer Army

active January 1944 to 1991/93
Country Soviet Union 1923Soviet Union Soviet Union
Armed forces Soviet Union 1923Soviet Union Red Army
Armed forces Land Forces
Type army

The 6th Panzer Army ( Russian 6-я танковая армия ), from September 1944 6th Armored Guard Army , was the last of the six armored armies of the Red Army formed during World War II . Deployed on the 1st , 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian fronts , she fought in the Dnepr-Carpathian operation , the Jassy-Kishinev operation , in the fighting in Hungary and in the Vienna and Prague operations . Relocated to the Far East in Europe after the end of the war, she was used as part of the Transbaikal Front in the Manchurian operation against the armed forces of the Japanese Empire .

In the post-war period she remained stationed in the Far East, where she was known at times as the 6th Guards Mechanized Army . At the end of the 1950s she was stationed in the Ukrainian SSR , transferred to the Ukrainian Armed Forces after the collapse of the Soviet Union and converted into the 6th Army Corps in 1993 .

history

Second World War

On the instructions of the Stawka on January 20, 1944, five days later the 6th Panzer Army was set up in the 1st Ukrainian Front . At the beginning, the 5th Armored Guard Corps and the 5th Mechanized Corps were under their command, along with other units. Immediately after its formation, the army took part in the Korsun-Shevchenkovsk operation together with the 1st and 2nd Panzer Armies and the 5th Guards Armored Army . After its completion, she was transferred to the inventory of the 2nd Ukrainian Front and was involved in the fighting of the Uman-Botoșan operation until mid-April.

At the end of August 1944, the army took part in Operation Jassy-Kishinev and then advanced into the interior of Romania. Here she took, among other things, Ploiesti and marched into Bucharest on August 31 . Then it was turned to the west for the operations in Transylvania . By decree of the High Command of September 12th it was renamed the 6th Guards Armored Army , the 5th Mechanized Corps was renamed the 9th Guards Mechanized Corps . In October 1944 the army took part in the Debrecen operation of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, after which it was in the Front Reserve until the beginning of December. This was followed by participation in the Battle of Budapest on December 20 , before the army returned to the front reserve at the end of January 1945.

On March 16, 1945, the order was issued by the Stawka to subordinate the 6th Guards Armored Army to the 3rd Ukrainian Front , which was under attack from three directions in the course of the German Balaton offensive . The army was assigned for this:

Through their efforts, the German offensive intentions could be thwarted and the German associations were forced to withdraw. Directly after the armies of the 3rd Ukrainian Front went to Vienna Offensive on, the city of Vienna was able to weeklong heavy street fighting on April 13 by the 6th Guards Tank Army in cooperation with the 4th and 9th Guards Army and the 46th Army of 2 Ukrainian front to be captured. The army was then reassigned to the 2nd Ukrainian Front, with which it took part in the offensive towards Brno . In the final operations in Czechoslovakia , the army took part in the Prague operation , reaching Benešov (about 30 km southeast of Prague) by May 9, the official day of the end of the war .

On June 3, 1945, the Soviet General Staff issued an order to relocate the 6th Guards Armored Army along with other formations by rail to the Transbaikal Front by July 14, and to subordinate it to it. On August 9, the army advanced over the Great Hinggan Mountains to Mukden as part of " Operation August Storm " . On the third day of the operation, it reached the Manchurian Plain in Lubei County and developed its attack on Mukden, with parts of the army being deployed on the city of Changchun . The Japanese Kwantung Army had nothing to counter the attacks from three directions and surrendered on August 19th, a few days after the imperial address of August 15th. In total, the 6th Guards Armored Army covered 800 kilometers in the Manchurian operation.

post war period

For the next 15 years the army was stationed on the territory of the Mongolian People's Republic and was subordinate to the Transbaikal Military District. In 1960 it was withdrawn to Ukraine and reassembled in the process. Until the 1980s, their equipment consisted of T-54 / T-55 and T-10 / T-10M tanks .

In the late 1980s there was a reduction in troops, the medium tanks were replaced by the T-64 and the heavy T-10 were abolished and melted down. With the withdrawal of the southern group of armed forces from Hungary in 1990/91, some of their units came into the army. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the army joined the newly formed Ukrainian ground forces and was converted into the 6th Army Corps in 1993.

Commander in World War II

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