No.403418
1. The indomitable Marshal Zhukov, bane of fascist aggressors.
2. Semyon Nomokonov, the shaman sniper
>He killed 368 enemy soldiers, including one major general. His exploits were legendary, and the Germans purportedly nicknamed him “the Taiga shaman.” Often while on a mission, he utilized mirrors to distract the enemy with flashes, and used empty helmets on sticks to create “prosthetic” soldiers around him. Nobody could disguise himself better than Nomokonov.
>He kept track of his kills by making notches on his smoking pipe, and he often used a simple rifle without a telescopic sight. “One could think that the hunter is using some type of impure force,” a journalist once wrote of Nomokonov.
3. Zinoviy Kolobanov, legendary tank commander
>The 6th Panzer Division's vanguard entered directly into the well-prepared Soviet ambush. The gunner in Kolobanov's KV-1, Andrej Usov, knocked out the leading German tank with its first shot. The German column assumed that the tank had hit an anti-tank mine and, failing to realize that they were being ambushed, stopped. This gave to Usov the opportunity to destroy the second tank. The Germans realized they were under attack but were unable to locate the origin of the shots. While the German tanks fired blindly, Kolobanov's tank knocked out the trailing German tank, boxing in the entire column.
>Although the Germans now knew where they were being attacked from, they could not spot Lieutenant Kolobanov's tank, and now attempted to engage an unseen enemy. The German tanks got bogged down when they moved off the road onto the surrounding soft ground making them easy targets. Twenty-two German tanks and two towed artillery pieces were knocked out by Kolobanov's tank before it ran out of ammunition.[1] Kolobanov ordered in another KV-1, and 21 more German tanks were destroyed before the half-hour battle ended. A total of 43 German tanks had been destroyed by the five Soviet KV-1s (two more remained in reserve).