At the outbreak of WWI, only one of the combatants had any
appreciable investment in the concept of at the outbreak, and that was Russia.
Its immense size and lack of quality roads made it even more dependent on
rail-lines than any other belligerent power, and as such had constructed four
examples (Or two. Or ten. Sources disagree). In the west, there was no
pre-existing stock, but a few examples were hastily constructed by adding armor
and weaponry to existing boxcars and locomotives. The Belgians had two examples
in action, and the British Naval Division (an infantry unit of Royal Navy
reservists and Marines unneeded for service at sea) created two as well which
saw action outside Antwerp. The Germans followed suit on the Western Front with
a few examples they used to protect against possible partisan attacks in
Belgium, and a light armored train that ‘invaded’ Luxembourg in 1914, but the
quick stagnation of the fighting saw no further advancement of the concept in
the west.
The Eastern Front was a different matter though. As they
already had some number of trains, composed of armored locomotive and a couple
of armored cars carrying machine-guns or light artillery, and already having
trains ready to go at the very start gave Russia a leg up. They almost
immediately saw use both offensively and defensively. The Russians already had
experience with armored trains, having deployed improvised examples against
Japan in 1904 and during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. In one of the earliest
actions of the war, an armored train was used to capture a bridge at Stanislav.
In offensive roles, infantry cars would be stocked with troops to quickly
dismount before the shock of the train’s sudden arrival wore off, but the war
quickly ruined any track that crossed between the lines. There remained the
occasional case where the changing movement of the fronts left intact rail line
allowing for an attacking role, but more generally they were restricted to more
defensive roles through 1915 and 1916.
The use of a train would be to have it stay behind the
front, and if there was a report of an enemy attack, it would be switched to
the appropriate track and choo-choo off there to provide firepower - usually
two 76mm guns and numerous machine guns. They proved to be very effective in
this role of mobile defensive platforms, and the Russian Army had built nearly
a dozen more by the end of 1915, with at least 15 in service at that time, spread
out between various fronts. Inspired by the success of the Russian’s trains,
the Germans and the Austrians copied them, with the first Austro-Hungarian
example, the Pz.Zug I, entering service in early 1915, and a German train close
on its heel’s that fall.
The evolution of the trains between 1914 and 1917 was quite
incredible. The Russian trains at the beginning of the war were comparatively
crude affairs, essentially an armored locomotive with armored boxcars attached
to protect the crew for the guns and machine guns, but within a few years sleek
designs that evoked the image of a battleship on land, with turreted guns and
absolutely bristling with machine guns. The Austrians followed in the footsteps
of the Russians, imitating their opponent in design, and putting them into
action against both the Russians and the Italians. The German High Command
never put as much stock into the concept, so while a number were operating by
the end of the conflict, they were mostly assembled on the local level, with a wide
variation in workmanship, and never taking on the finished appearance of the
Russian examples.
Up to this point, armored trains had been been built in the
image of any other train. The locomotive was attached to some number of cars
which served various functions - infantry cars, artillery cars, command cars,
AA cars etc. During World War I though was developed the rail-cruiser. Cruisers
were single cars and capable of supplying their own power, giving them much
greater speed and flexibility than a regular armored train. Both Russia and
Austro-Hungary developed examples, ranging from the small trollies like the
Motorkanonwagen to the impressive Russian railcruiser [Zaamurets] (later to
become better known for serving with the armored train Orlik with the Czech
Legion). Rail-cruisers could be attached to a larger train, but if needed,
unhitched and sent off on their own. While incredibly useful in the defensive
roles that they filled, even on the Eastern Front the relatively conventional
fighting meant that armored trains weren’t used quite to their full potential.
It would take the next big conflict to see them at their height of power.
The Russian Civil War
With the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 and ensuing
withdrawal from the war, the Russian Civil War gave the fleet of armored trains
a new purpose. The vast expanses of the country made control of the rail lines
absolutely vital, and both sides made use of armed and armored trains
extensively. At the beginning of the war, most of the Imperial Army’s fleet had
either been requisitioned by the Germans or else fallen into White Russian
hands. The Red forces quickly put into action a building program, churning out
not only the well developed and battle tested designs of the Tsarist regimes
from the factories they controlled, but improvising a wide array of ingenious
designs, perhaps the most interesting being to build an interior wall in a
boxcar and fill the gap with concrete to create a protected infantry car (these
semi-armored trains were known as blindirov). In all, well over 200 armored and
blindirov trains of varying quality operated with the Reds during the Civil
War, and another 80 or so with the Whites. While the Reds were able to build
quality trains using Czarist designs, the Whites generally lacked access to the
factories and their quality rarely equalled that of their opponents’.
With the front lines much more amorphous, a general lack of
air support, and neither side willing to uproot miles of vital track that would
prefer to fight for control over, the train could truly perform as an offensive
weapon, serving as a spearhead of the attack, instead of the savior in the
defense. Trains would travel with raiding teams “desantniy otryad” of infantry
and cavalry. The infantry would ride in armored box-cars providing protection
on the move, deploy out when stopped and vulnerable, and also allow the train
to strike away from the tracks, with the infantry operating under protection of
its artillery. The cavalry would travel as a screening force to protect the
train from ambush - although in numerous engagements the trains proved they
could hold their own against enemy cavalry formations, such as a veritable slaughter
outside Tsaritsyn in 1918. Many trains would carry an observation balloon,
primarily for artillery spotting but also to allow for more effective
reconnaissance outside of the narrow corridor of rail track.
With 37,000 miles of rail, and generally poor quality roads,
the importance of the armored train during the war can’t be understated, and
personnel were almost exclusively to be drawn from party members and the most
literate at that. Although how much this was done in practice is up in the air.
Railroad men were impressed into the service due to their existing expertise,
and at least one foreign observer described the crew of a train he traveled on
as “a choice selection of human scum”. Whether they were the cream of the
communist party or the scum of the earth, the crews were certainly capable of
great deeds, and when used at their best, could take on all comers, perhaps
best exemplified during the Civil War by Train No. 1 Rifle Regiment in Honor of
Karl Marx, which sped into the town of Liski, catching the garrison by surprise
and capturing the town and two idling White trains to boot! Describing the
Soviet use of trains in 1920, a Polish officer noted that, “Armored trains are
the most serious and terrible opponent. [...] Our infantry are powerless
against them.” It isn’t much of an exaggeration to say they they were simply
the best weapon of the war.
The Whites lacked the organization with their trains
displayed by the Reds, and not just because they had few facilities for
manufacturing. While this certainly meant that there was a lot of diversity in
their fleet, the much more fractured force simply couldn’t develop a unified
doctrine, although they certainly emulated the successes of the Reds when
possible. In addition to the anti-Bolshevik Russian groups, both the British,
French, and Americans operated lightly armored trains during their fruitless intervention
of 1918-1920. And while the Whites generally were playing second fiddle to the
Red in terms of effective train deployment, no one used them better than the
Czech Legion as they fought their way east.
Perhaps the most famed armored train of the war - if not
period - was Orlik. Originally a Russian rail-cruiser named Zaamurets that was
captured from the Bolshevik’s by the Czech Legion as they trekked east in their
effort to leave Russia and join the fighting on the Western Front, Orlik Vuz
cis. 1 (Vehicle One) became part of their armored train Orlik. The train helped
the Czechoslovakians control a vast swathe of the Trans-Siberian Railroad from
late 1918 through early 1920, until they finally were able to evacuate Russia
via Vladivostok. Orlik ended up in White hands before finding its way into the
hands of Chinese Warlords, and eventually the Kwantung Army, a puppet force of
Japan, some time around 1931.
By the end of the Russian Civil War, the Soviets had a well
established armored train doctrine, originally with light trains revolving
around the raiding parties on the one hand (bronyepoyezd), and heavy trains
more centered on providing heavier fire support (bronyobatoreyo). In both cases,
they generally consisted of a armored locomotive in the center flanked by two
gun cars, and control cars on each end. The variation was in the armament, the
light train carrying 76.2mm pieces, and the heavy trains armed with between
100mm and 150mm (the heavy trains would be the least armored though, as it
referred simply to the armament. A Heavy train was not meant to get close to
the fighting, so was lightly armored compared to the light trains, which needed
the protection. Confusing, I know!). Infantry cars could be added if needed, as
well as a rail-cruiser. This was changed to three classes, of ‘A’ - the
heaviest armored train, with 4x76.2mm guns; ‘V’ (or ‘C’) - 4x152mm or 203mm
guns; and ‘B’ - 4x107mm or 4x122mm guns, in 1920. Type ‘M’ trains also existed,
but more akin to railroad guns, mounting heavy naval artillery for coastal
defense.
The Interwar Years
The years between the wars saw considerable use of armored
trains, aside from the Russian Civil War that is, and few more so than the
Poles, who fully embraced the concept and were running about 70 of them in the
early 1920s. Their initial fleet was made up of examples captured either from
the Austro-Hungarians and Germans at the end of World War I, or else from the
Soviets during the Polish-Soviet War in 1919-1921, a conflict that saw numerous
use of trains as raiding weapons, and even duels between Soviet and Polish
trains! One of the greatest innovations of the Poles during the war was the use
of flatbeds with Renault FTs placed on them, allowing the tank to fight from
the train if needed, but able to dismount and range outside of the corridor of
track if needed. Given the limitation on tank designs at the time, the speed
and firepower offered by a train was simply unsurpassed at the time, and in
regions where rail-lines went, there was no weapon a Polish or Soviet commander
was happier to have at his disposal.
The other major utilization of armored trains in the period
occurred in China. Plagued by warlords in the 1920s and the Japanese in the
1930s, and lacking major roads, the rail-lines were just as vital in the as in
Russia, and consequently much of the fighting happened within a stone’s throw
of them. The long travels of the Orlik, but it was
hardly alone in traveling the rails of warlord-torn China in the 1920s. The
defeat of the Whites saw many of them flee from Vladivostok into northern
China, where they offered their equipment and services to Chinese warlords as
mercenaries. In his efforts to bring down the warlords, Chiang Kai-Shek
followed suit by paying the Soviet’s for their expertise in constructing
armored trains for him and training men in their use. By the time the Warlords
had been mostly suppressed in the late 1920s, the National Revolutionary Army
was fielding 20 trains, and the Manchurian Army under Zhang Xueliang had
another dozen to support them with. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931
would turn most of the latter over to the invader’s Kwantung Army.
The Japanese would add a few new construction to their force, but their favored vehicle for patrolling the rail lines were armored trolleys, similar in function to the rail-cruiser, but essentially an armored car fitted with rail wheels. The Type 91 could have road and rail wheels switched, allowing it to function in either capacity and the Type 95 was a tracked vehicle with rail wheels that could be lowered from the hull onto the tracks.
The Japanese would add a few new construction to their force, but their favored vehicle for patrolling the rail lines were armored trolleys, similar in function to the rail-cruiser, but essentially an armored car fitted with rail wheels. The Type 91 could have road and rail wheels switched, allowing it to function in either capacity and the Type 95 was a tracked vehicle with rail wheels that could be lowered from the hull onto the tracks.
