„RASEINIŲ TANKO“ ISTORIJOS KLAUSIMU
A PROBLEM OF “RASEINIAI TANK’S” HISTORY

Summary/Abstract: During the opening days of the German  – Soviet war in the area of Raseiniai took place one of the largest tank battles. Oone episode of this battle is so called history of the tank of Raseiniai. This episode of the initial period of war was researched by some historians, but almost they all used the same sources. Therefore we can find some misconstructions (e.g., that this panzer battle lasted two or even three days), sometimes even solid authors make basic geogra- phical mistakes.Heavy soviet KV tank stopped on the way Raseiniai – iluva and cut a contact between two combat groups of German 6th tank division for a whole day and held up the fast advance of German 41th motorized corps to the east. Attempts to destroy this tank with new 50 mm anti-tank cannon, bombardment of large caliber cannon, the use of engineers with explosives during the night failed. Try to request air support also failed, Luftwaffe has other more important targets. Oonly after delivering one more 88 mm cannon and with help of imitated tank attack, Germans succeeded in destroying the soviet heavy tank.To describe proceeding of the battle, to establish exact times and other facts became possible after review of archival documents (e.g., war diaries, radiograms) which was found in archives. Bbut still there are no answers in some questions. The author hopes that this study will help to find out something more about battles in the territory of Lithuania during first week of war on the Eastern Front.

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