Among all the branches of the Red Army during the Second World War, self-propelled artillery is probably the most overlooked and misinterpreted. Attention has focused on the tanks the Red Army deployed against the Germans on the Eastern Front, the T-34 in particular; the self-propelled guns, which played an increasingly important tactical role after the shocking defeats of 1941 and 1942, have been neglected. Alexey Tarasov, in this detailed, wide-ranging and very heavily illustrated history, describes how the Soviets rose to the challenge of creating a series of self-propelled guns in extraordinarily difficult wartime conditions, and he assesses, and illustrates, all the types they produced. Also he covers the organization, training, tactics and combat operations of the self-propelled artillery units.

When the Germans invaded the Soviets lacked self-propelled artillery, believing that tanks and field guns would provide sufficient support for their infantry. But the effectiveness of the German assault guns persuaded them that they had to design similar armoured vehicles and rapidly they did so. As the author shows, by the end of the war, after an intense process of improvisation and development, they fielded self-propelled guns, in particular the SU-76, SU-122 and SU-152, which matched those of the Germans in terms of performance and heavily outnumbered them on the battlefield.

Alexey Tarasov’s photographic history will be essential reading for anyone who has a special interest in Soviet armour and armoured warfare in general, and it will be a valuable source for modellers.