6th Guards Tank Army
The 6th Guards Order of Red Banner Tank Army was a tank army of the Soviet Union's Red Army, first formed in January 1944 as the 6th Tank Army, and disbanded in Ukraine in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. During its service in World War II, the army was commanded by Lieutenant General of Tank Troops (later Colonel General) Andrei Kravchenko. World War II Initially commanding the 5th Mechanised Corps and the 5th Guards Tank Corps, the 6th Tank Army's first major operation was the suppression of the Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket in January–February 1944. It then fought in the Iassy-Kishinev Offensive during August 1944 before gaining a Guards title in September 1944. Under its new title, it was soon engaged in the Battle of Debrecen on the 2nd Ukrainian Front, before fighting against the Germans during Operation Frühlingserwachen in March 1945. Pushing west, the tank army moved south of Vienna, Austria and pivoted to the north in a wide encircling maneuver that cut Vienna off from the rest of the German Reich. At the end of the war, one of its subordinate formations, the 2nd Guards Mechanised Corps, ended operations in the area of Benešov, Czechoslovakia, on 9 May 1945. The 6th Guards Tank Army was then moved to the Transbaikal Military District in order to take part in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. The army, under the command of Colonel General Andrei Kravchenko spearheaded the Transbaikal Front's offensive against the Japanese Kwantung Army on 9 August 1945. The 6th Guards Tank Army consisted of the 5th Guards Tank Corps, and 7th and 9th Guards Mechanised Corps, and many smaller formations, in all, a total of 1,019 tanks and self-propelled guns. For this operation, the tank army was restructured such that the infantry, artillery, and armored components were much more balanced than they had been during the war against the Germans. This was the first example of what proved to be the standard Soviet mechanized army organization during the Cold War. During the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, the Army was operating as part of the Transbaikal Front, and during the Khingano-Mukden Operation, the Army was tasked to advance 800 kilometers. Cold War It was stationed in Mongolia, reporting to the Transbaikal Military District, for 15 years after the war. It still included the 5th Guards Tank Division (First Formation, "Stalingrad-Kiev"). The friendship with China of those days and the Nikita Khrushchev military reductions changed the fate of the Army, and in 1959 it was relocated to Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro) in the Kyiv Military District. 22nd Guards Tank Division joined the army in 1957. Toward the end of the 1980s it appears to have retained four Guards Tank Divisions – the 17th, 42nd (the former 42nd Guards Rifle Division) and the 75th (formerly the 75th Guards Rifle Division, plus the 22nd Guards Tank Division (disbanded September 1990). On 11 November 1990, following the disbandment of the 22nd and the 75th Guards Tank Divisions, the reorganisation of the 42nd