Recently there was a question about the effectiveness of the Gatling gun during its first implementations. I wanted to pose this question involving another wartime weapon.
The "Tachanka" refers to a horse drawn cart with a machine gun mounted on the back. I learned about it through the game Rainbow Six: Siege, as its the nickname of one of the characters in it. My Russian boyfriend pointed me to an old propaganda video about the Tachanka, which portrays the soldier as a brave unit charging in the battle, blazing his gun and mowing down German soldiers.
However, the gun is mounted on the back of the cart, so I figured it would be more of a rapid mobile defense kind of weapon. I also find it hard to believe that this simple cart could fight against German soldiers armed with tanks, MG42's, etc. Though I do know that the Russian strategy during WW2 was just "throw people at it until it stops shooting at us" so it makes sense as a cheap way to employ heavy weapons.
How effective were these Tachankas in battle? Did they come anywhere close to the praise that the propaganda film portrayed?
Though I do know that the Russian strategy during WW2 was just "throw people at it until it stops shooting at us" so it makes sense as a cheap way to employ heavy weapons.
Uh oh, I think you're going to attract some criticisms here... This myth has been often debunked and is not pretty popular here.
The FAQ of the subreddit can provide you with some infos about his : https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/militaryhistory/wwii/ussr#wiki_soviet_tactics
E : sorry about the edit, but I forgot to ping the author of the linked answer of the FAQ, so /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov !
Since your misconception of the Red Army's strategy, was already addressed, I will talk about the use of the Tachanka in battle.
The Tachanka was not a WWII weapon. The idea of using a heavy water-cooled machinegun on a horse towed mount arose during the Russian Civil War. WWI tanks and armoured cars were supplied by the former Entente nations in small numbers to the Whites, but due to the poor reliability of these early models and rather poor organization, they were not decisive weapons. Armoured trains did better, but they could only follow established railroads. The #1 force out in the open steppe was cavalry.
The main advantage of cavalry was its speed, since it could perform a raid relatively quickly and disappear before the enemy could scramble heavy weapons. Because of this, heavy machineguns that were previously transported by horse carts and dismounted could no longer spend the time to be set up, and were fired directly from the carts while still in motion. In time, all sides of the war came to appreciate this weapon, and special tachanka cards were designed instead of using whatever was at hand. These carts would have leaf spring suspensions, rather than rigid ones, and the truck bed that the gunner was positioned on would be suspended on flexible poles, also giving a dampening effect. This reduced the shaking during movement at high speed.
The tachanka concept was not exclusive to Russia. During the Polish-Russian war, the Polish forces used tachankas as well, and even formulated technical requirements for a new tachanka design after the war.
During the inter-war years, the Red Army began rapid mechanization. Budyonny was a big proponent of armoured cavalry, and armoured vehicles increased in speed and reliability to the point where they could easily keep up with horses. All but the lightest tanks and armoured cars provided superior firepower to a tachanka, and were, at the very least, bulletproof. When WWII came around, tachankas were no longer a thing, nor was WWII a war of rapid raids like the Russian Civil War was. While it's very possible that partisans cobbled something like this together, the tachanka concept did not return on an industrial scale, and remains a relic of the Civil War.
Sources:
A. Oleynikov Machinegun Tachanka
S. Knyazev Menacing Weapon: The role of mobile machinegun crews in the Russian Civil War