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Students have learned about the military history of the Black Knives Division
An exhibition opened at the University in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Ural Volunteer Tank Corps (UVTC) in the Sverdlovsk Region. The mobile exposition was organized by the Airborne Guard Museum of the Airborne Forces in the framework of the agreement signed two years ago.
From photos and documents, students learned that the idea to create a corps appeared in the Urals on the days when the Battle of Stalingrad was coming to an end. The workers of the Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Molotov regions (now the Perm Krai) decided to produce in excess of the plan everything needed to equip the corps and simultaneously train their own volunteer workers to drive combat vehicles. The initiative was supported by the Chairman of the State Defense Committee I. Stalin .
The chronicle of the war years, depicted on the stands, tells: about 110 thousand Ural volunteers challenged the right to drive formidable tanks: that was 12 times more than it was required to complete the Corps. However, only 9 660 most worthy of them were assigned to the Corps.
A separate stand tells about the legendary Black Knives Division. Masters-gunsmiths made a unique gift to the tankers. For each volunteer, the Zlatoust Instrument Factory manufactured a combat knife НР-40 with a black handle. It was because of it that the enemy dubbed that military formation Black Knives Division.
Special attention of students is attracted by the stand devoted to the first battle of Ural Volunteer Tank Corps in July 1943. After the defeat at Stalingrad, the German Command decided to take revenge by developing a new combat operation «Citadel». To implement it, 900,000 soldiers from 50 crack outfits, including 16 tank divisions, were concentrated near Kursk.
The information on the offensive operations of the Tank Corps — Orel, Bryansk, Lvov- Sandomir, Prague, and Berlin — also helps to expand the boundaries of knowledge about Russian history. Not every connoisseur knows that in the course of the Proskurovsko- Chernivtsi operation, the first heroes of the Soviet Union — G.Chesak , N.Khudyakov, and Yakov Khardikov — appeared in the Ural Volunteer Tank Corps .
The exhibition finishes with photographs and facts about the Corps veterans who have survived to the present day. Today, in the region there are only six participants of the famous 10th Guards Tank Division — those who in 1943 from the Sverdlovsk railway station area went up the line.
