МУЗЕЙ БОЕВОЙ СЛАВЫ УРАЛЬСКОГО ДОБРОВОЛЬЧЕСКОГО ТАНКОВОГО КОРПУСА ШКОЛЫ № 38 ГОРОДА ЗЛАТОУСТ

The Ural Volunteer Tank Corps is the only tank unit in the world, completely created with funds voluntarily collected by the residents of three regions: Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk and Molotovskaya (today - Perm Territory). The state has not spent a single kopeck on the armament and uniform of this corps. And all combat vehicles were built by the Ural workers overtime, after the end of the main working day. - The idea to make a gift to the front - to create your own, the Ural tank corps - was born in 1942, in the last days of the Battle of Stalingrad, when almost every family has already received a "funeral" On the call, thrown by Uralmash tank-builders, who deducted part of their salary for the construction of tanks, all responded. Students collected scrap to send it to the furnace for melting. And the Urals women, who themselves did not have enough money to feed their families, gave their last savings. In January 1943, a set of volunteers was announced in Udmurt. By March, more than 110,000 applications had been submitted - 12 times more than required. I had to arrange a hard selection. Only 9660 people were able to go to the front. A total of 536 of them had experience of fighting, the rest took up arms for the first time. On May 1, 1943 the soldiers of the corps took the oath, vowed to return home only with Victory and soon received orders to go to the front UDTK joined the 4th Tank Army and on July 27 received baptism of fire on the Kursk Bulge, just north of the city of Orel. After the first battles for the incredible resilience and unparalleled courage Udtk was awarded the honorary title of the Guards Corps. And the fascists appreciated the heroism of the Urals in their own way - they called the corps "Schwarzmesser Panzer-Division", which translates as "Tank division of black knives". "For every volunteer who went to fight the enemy, the Zlatoust gunsmiths forged as a gift on the knife НР-40 - this abbreviation stands for" Army knife of the 1940 model ", - tells the correspondent of the military historian Leonid Marchhevsky. - Zlatoust knives differed in appearance from the standard ones: the hilt was made of black ebonite, the metal on the scabbard was blued. Such knives had previously been included in the equipment of paratroopers and scouts, in some units they were handed in only for special merits - for example, after the scout took several "languages". And in UDTK they were worn by everyone, from the soldier to the general. And it was these black knives that became legendary. The nickname given to them by the fascists, the Ural tankmen perceived with pride. In 1943, Ivan Ovchinin, who later died in the battles for the liberation of Hungary, wrote a song that became an unofficial anthem of the "Black Knife Divisions". There were some lines in it: The fascists whisper in terror to one another, Tucking in the darkness of dugouts: Tankmen appeared from the Urals - Division of black knives. Selfless fighters detachments, Their courage does not kill anything. Oh, do not like the fascist bastards Our Ural steel black knife! "UDTK really inspired a real horror to the fascists, as it swept away not only the usual parts, but the elite tank detachments of the enemy that got in its way," says Sergey Spitsin. - The skill of the Ural tankmen is quite understandable: many of them used to build tanks before they fought on them. And that's why they were well versed in their arrangement, armament and driving qualities, knew the strong and weak points of technology collected by their own hands. If we take this into account, it becomes clear how some UTTK tankmen managed to score 20-30 tanks during the war years.