The lessons of the Battle of Brunette were poorly evaluated by the Soviets, and their discussion of Spanish tank warfare focused on the low quality of the Republican [***] infantry, its inability to consistently coordinate effectively with tanks and artillery, and the artillery's lack of flexibility in assisting offensive operations. The Soviets' comments also pointed out that the unusually high density of enemy anti-tank guns and artillery in the area where the main attack was launched was also an important reason for the failure of the republican [***] tank operation.

The International Tank Regiment was the last Soviet tank unit to be deployed to Spain. By the summer of 1937, the Soviet Union had shipped to Spain a total of 556 T-26 tanks in various battalions. The last batch of 150 units was the "BT-5" fast tank. In contrast to the T-26 light tank, the BT-5 fast tank was designed for deep breakthrough operations rather than close infantry support. They were a copy of the licensed American "Christie" tank, but the turret and artillery were designed for the Soviet Union, and, like the "T-26" tank, they were considered by Soviet advisers to be the most modern and best tanks in Spain, and were in reserve in the late summer and early autumn of 1937, waiting for the right moment to be used to their maximum effectiveness. Pavlov's 1st Armored Brigade was trained and equipped for close-range infantry support, while Kondryachev's combat unit was formed from the Soviet Union's first mechanized formation, the 5th Kalinovsky Mechanized Corps in Narofominsk, which was the model unit for Tukhachevsky's deep breakthrough operational tests. In other units deployed by the Soviet Red Army to Spain, Soviet crews made up only a small part of the regiment's personnel. However, the International Tank Regiment received the best of the Spanish trainees and the International Brigade personnel sent to the Soviet tank school in Gorky in the spring of 1937. The training of the unit, although superior to that of other republican [***] tank units, was far from complete. In order to maintain the good mechanical condition of the equipment, training was limited to static exercises, and there was no opportunity for field training at the platoon, company level. For many Soviet advisers in Spain, the International Tank Regiment was the last and best opportunity to demonstrate the power of tanks on the modern battlefield. This expectation would have been shattered by the "Battle of Zaragoza" in the autumn of 1937.

From August 1937 onwards, the northern republics [***] fought against the nationalist army in the Aragon region, culminating in the capture of Belcht on 6 September. At the beginning of October, plans to go to Fontes on the way to Zaragoza? Morality? Ebro launches an offensive. The immediate goal was to capture the city, but it was hoped that through the use of international tank regiments it would be possible to break through to Zaragoza. The assault on the city was to be carried out by the republican [***] 35th Division, which consisted of the 11th and 15th International Brigades. The preparation of the republican [***] tank forces was both careless and inadequate. The International Tank Regiment received an order at 23 o'clock the night before the attack, and marched 50 kilometers to the assembly area that night. Having arrived and refueled near the front line, it was learned only two hours before the offensive that the tanks were going to carry infantry to attack. This decision was opposed by Soviet advisers and tank regiment officers, who considered such infantry too dangerous. The "BT-5" tank was not very suitable for carrying infantry, and such tests were not carried out before the war. While the infantry of the 15th International Brigade, which was ready to carry tanks, was considered a good unit, the attack was accompanied by the 120th Infantry Brigade, which was notorious for refusing to leave the trenches. There are no infantry reserves. The plan was drawn up in such a hurry that the regimental staff officers did not even have time for battlefield reconnaissance. The Spanish Republican [***] command also did not provide sufficient details of the area of operations and the tank forces and anti-tank defenses of the possible Nationalist Army, which it considered "trivial and unimportant". This later proved to be fatal for the operation. In fact, there was almost no artillery preparation, since the two worthless artillery batteries that were rationed were armed only with 75-mm guns captured a few weeks earlier, with very little ammunition. A battalion of "T-26" tanks was planned to be used in a nearby area, but did not arrive on time to participate in the initial offensive.

The offensive began late noon. The 48 tanks of the International Tank Regiment opened the attack with a salvo and then attacked at high speed, "like an express train", with Spanish infantry climbing on either side of the tanks. In the din of the onslaught of the offensive, many infantry fell from their tanks, and some were knocked over or run over by other tanks. Crossing friendly trenches was more cumbersome than expected, with the Republican [***] infantry not being notified in advance, and there were occasional exchanges of fire between tanks and infantry in the chaos. After passing through the friendly trenches, the tanks continued to rush forward, only to suddenly find themselves on a high ground three or four meters higher than the flat ground below. The sprinting tank hurriedly braked to find the way to the lowlands. To make matters worse, the enemy position was in front of an annoying sugar cane field crisscrossed by ravines.

Soviet tanks continued to storm, but got bogged down in sugar cane thickets and waterlogged land. They began to come under fire from the field guns of the Nationalist Army and from anti-tank guns in adjacent buildings. The offensive could not continue due to the terrain, and there were not enough follow-up infantry to consolidate the occupied positions. When the ammunition ran out, the tanks began to slowly retreat to the starting point, without unified command and control, leaving behind those tanks stuck in the mud. The tank was ordered to return to the rescue of the stranded tank after being refilled. In its replacement, a battalion of "T-26" tanks, which had been supposed to be used for the first attack, set off with some infantry support. The operation to recapture the stranded tanks cost another 80 people. In total, the International Tank Regiment lost 48 out of 19 tanks in the offensive, several more were wounded, and a third of the tank crews were killed or wounded. The remaining tanks were attacked by four more "Devil Tanks" as they retreated, losing 15 tanks, while the attackers retreated on their own initiative after one tank was injured and the turret could not be turned.

An American tank crew member of the International Tank Regiment wrote briefly after the attack: "Spain is full of fearless courage and heroism, and the Spaniards do not lack these." What they need is tactics. In terms of tactics, on October 13, the 'BT' tank regiment was completely lacking. "In the report to Moscow, the commander of the 35th Infantry Division did not place the blame on Kondrachev and his subordinates, but fairly blamed the commander of Army Group North. The "Great Purge" was in full swing at the time, and Soviet officers on the battlefield undoubtedly thought it was wise to justify their performance in the fiasco. The skirmishes on the afternoon of October 13, 1937 were undoubtedly the best and most detailed of the entire civil war, with nearly a hundred pages of accounts sent to Moscow with the regiment commander, his assistants, company commanders, and even several tank crews. As a result of their testimony, Kondryachev was exempted from accusations, but, unlike other Soviet commanders of the main Spanish Civil War, he was not awarded the medal "Hero of the Soviet Union". Kondryachev was mortally wounded at the later Battle of Teruel. Ardent expectations for the "BT" tank were shattered by the harsh realities of the battlefield.

October 13, 1937 in Fontes? Morality? The fiasco of the Ebro was the "swan song" of the Soviet tank forces in Spain. While Soviet tankmen continued to serve as advisers, the number of Soviets continued to dwindle, and by the end of 1937 the tank force was mostly Spanish. After 150 "BT-5" tanks of the International Tank Regiment, the Soviet Union stopped transporting a large number of tanks. In October 1937, the head of the Republican [***] tank forces, Sanchez? Colonel Perarez began the reorganization and integration of tank units. Four armoured brigades, one tank regiment and each of its smaller units were organized into two armoured divisions. These armoured divisions are not multi-arms, lack infantry or artillery as an integral part, and are smaller. When Soviet tank imports ended in 1938, the Republic[***] tried to make up for the shortage of equipment through local production. From 1926 there was a locally designed tank called "Tubia" that was produced on a small scale, but it was a tank with an odd design that was not very successful. As an alternative, a large number of cars and trucks were improvised into armored vehicles, using boiler steel plates and non-hardened steel plates. Some of them are very specialized, such as those made in Valencia, but many are crude, exotic devices with poor mobility, lack real armor protection, and have very poor firepower. As a result, in May 1938, the republican [***] armored forces had a total of 376 tanks and 585 armored vehicles, and by November there were only 126 tanks and 291 armored vehicles. As the stock of tanks was dwindling as a result of combat losses and mechanical wear, the armoured forces became more and more road-dependent, mainly improvised armoured vehicles. Apart from a large number of obsolete Renault FT tanks purchased from Poland, the Republic [***] has not been able to get any tanks from other sources.

The last major battle in which Soviet tank crews participated was the fierce battle at Teruel from December 15, 1937 to January 22, 1937. The first newly formed armored division was put into service, consisting of two tank battalions "T-26", the remainder of the International Tank Regiment and other support units. A total of 104 tanks took part in the operation, accounting for the bulk of the Republican [***] tank force at that time. The division was not used as a whole and was not even intended as such. Instead, battalions were sent to support the various attacks. The battle took place in very difficult conditions - extremely cold weather, heavy snowfall, poor road surfaces, mountainous rural terrain. The efforts of the tank units were praised by the infantry they supported. The Battle of Teruel received little attention, but the Soviet Red Army carefully studied it. The most striking thing about the campaign was that the tank units were finally able to function normally. By the end of 1937, the tanks had exceeded their expected mechanical life, but the tank units were still unable to maintain a relatively high percentage of tanks, and under such unfavourable conditions, the losses became unbearable - 34 tanks were destroyed, 12 of which were captured by the Nationalist Army. A total of 63 tanks (more than half of the total) need to be repaired or overhauled.

And at this point in the war, the outcome of the victory or defeat is already obvious.

The Spanish Civil War ended with a complete victory for Franco's nationalist army. There is a great deal of variance in the lessons learned about the role of tanks on the Spanish battlefield. Those armies that had already used tanks as an offensive, such as the Wehrmacht, continued their plans, despite the poor performance of their tanks in Spain. The Wehrmacht did not believe that the use of poorly trained foreign tank crews in small tank formations to support equally poorly trained civilian units was an accurate reflection of the combat potential of a large armoured force. Other armies were less optimistic about the future of tanks after the Spanish Civil War, while others simply ignored the issue. For most countries' armies, the Spanish Civil War brought more controversy than insight into armored warfare.

The Spanish Civil War is considered by many military historians to be a testing ground for the weapons and tactics of the later World War II. The war did offer some valuable lessons for armies around the world in terms of technology, training and tactics, but sadly some of them were learned and many were ignored.

Coordination between tanks on the battlefield proved to be much more difficult than expected. Only one out of every three tanks of the Soviet Red Army was equipped with a radio station, which was generally assigned to a company, and the battalion commander's seat car sometimes included the platoon commander's car. The radio station is extremely vulnerable to damage, and it is basically unusable when the tank is moving, because it is difficult to tune the station to the correct frequency band during movement, and the "clothesline" antenna is also fragile. The lack of reliable radio stations made it almost impossible to command operations above the size of the company, since the units were unable to coordinate their actions as soon as the fighting began. The prescribed method of communication between the rows is colored flags. This method proved to be not only useless but also dangerous. In addition to the best lighting conditions, the color of the flag can be easily misunderstood. The use of flags also makes the platoon commander highly recognizable by the enemy and under the threat of enemy fire. In the autumn of 1936, the Republican [***] tank units abandoned the use of the flag, and it was not widely used in other units. As an alternative, tank crews were asked to keep an eye on the platoon leader and follow along. The platoon commander usually leads a platoon of three tanks, but the lead car is often knocked out by enemy tank or artillery fire. The training of Soviet tank crews was not entirely satisfactory, let alone the Spaniards, and once the commander was lost, the crews rarely showed the initiative surname.

Inadequate means of communication is one of the root causes of the difficulties experienced by tank battalions in coordinating with friendly infantry and artillery. If the communication between tanks and infantry is poor, then the communication with artillery is essentially non-existent. The lack of direct radio communication between tanks and artillery meant that tanks could not be supported by artillery fire to the enemy's most dangerous enemy, the anti-tank guns. When the tank is in motion, or at a slightly distance, the radio rarely works properly. Soviet tank units could only use Morse code, but there were few trained radio crews.

The theoreticians of the Soviet Red Army did not immediately abandon the concept of large-scale mechanized forces fighting in depth because of the Spanish experience. And to armored theorists such as Fuller, Liddell? Measured by the exorbitant expectations of Hart and others, the performance of the tank in Spain was far from impressive and satisfying. But many of the evaluations of experts from Western European countries are based on incomplete newspaper reports on the use of tanks in Spain. These newspapers generally have a simplistic approach, sometimes fueled by extremists in the tank war theory. The "experience of the Spanish war" is very important in the study of Western experts, because all modern combat weapons participated in the battle, and the results are likely to be studied by all modern European armies. Lessons learned from specific aspects of tank tactics in this war were emphasized, including the need for tank support for infantry offensives, the need for infantry, tank, and artillery coordination, and the vulnerability of tanks to anti-tank defenses when there was no coordination. With regard to the use of tanks in defense, Western experts have affirmed that tanks are a key element in a counterattack on the spot, based on several examples. The study was very cautious in drawing on the experience of tank units in depth, since there was no experience of using large-scale armored units in Spain. Some studies have also questioned the possibility of a breakthrough in the face of a well-prepared defense using a fleet of readpower tanks.

For China, which secretly participated in this war, some of the tactical experience of the Spanish war was given unprecedented attention, and the opinion of the Chinese General Staff was that the full potential of tanks did not show itself in Spain, and that solutions to the use of tanks should continue to be sought.

One of the lessons of the Spanish Civil War, which attracted much attention from the countries of the East and the West, was the aspect of tank design. The Soviets were generally dissatisfied with the surname of the "T-26" light tank. Although it has always been considered a robust and capable tank, it is especially good compared to the "terrible" Italian "CV3/35" ultralight tank, the thinly armored German "1" light tank, and the Spanish Army's aging "Renault FT" light tank. Both tanks of the nationalist army were armed only with machine guns, so it was impossible to defeat the "T-26" tanks in battle, and their armor was too thin to withstand the 45-mm guns of the "T-26". But in the face of the "devil tank" of the nationalist army, its "T-26" looks so vulnerable. After the end of the Spanish Civil War, reports on the "devil's tank" were sent to the military commissars, which attracted the attention of Stalin himself, and although the Red Army leadership did not show the need for a revolutionary change in tank design because of the purge and the shooting of Tukhachevsky, some tank designers did not think so. Earlier in 1938, the design team of the Kharkov Power Locomotive Plant attended a meeting of the Military Council in Moscow, at which the assistant commander of the International Tank Regiment in charge of technical affairs, Alexander Brown? Answering questions about the lessons learned in Spain, Vitrov believed that the new fast tank should have thicker armor and a better gun than the old 45-mm "shotguns" of the "T-26" and "BT". The new tank was the "T-34", and a design with a revolutionary surname appeared.

(To be continued)