Teltow Canal.

This is coolbert:

"'Personal to Comrades Rybalko and Lelyushenko.

Order you categorically to break into Berlin tonight.

Report execution. Konev.’"

"Konev decided to reinforce Rybalko’s tank army

with an artillery breakthrough corps -’a powerful hammer’"

Here with another instance of the Grande Batterie in action. This not from the Napoleonic Era or the time of the American Civil War. A much more recent instance - - this from the Battle of Berlin, 1945, the crossing of the Teltow Canal.

A massing of artillery assets, on a scale unimaginable by those of a much earlier period, the objective to obliterate with a massive bombardment all and any German resistance in the path of the advancing Soviets.

"Cracking the Teltow Canal line fell to General Pavel Rybalko and his 3rd Guards Tank Army. He spent all of the previous day bringing up 3000 artillery pieces, mortars, and Katyusha rocket launchers, concentrating them on a narrow front (a staggering 650 pieces of artillery per one kilometer of front. At 06:20 the barrage opened and then assault teams crossed the canal in collapsible boats . . . by early afternoon, a pontoon bridge had been constructed across the canal allowing Russian armour to cross"

Click on image to see greater resolution.

3rd Guards Tank Army crossing

the Teltow Canal at the circled # 2.

Soviet mortars of caliber 122 mm and above counted as artillery! The barrage accompanied by aviation assets of the Soviet air army attached to the front under the command of Konev. An irrestiable force pulverizing and blowing into smithereens any German opposition. The Teltow Canal crossing a success, artillery employed in a manner hitherto never seen or experienced!!

The attack by the 3rd Guards Tank Army PRIOR to and NOT to be confused with a similar canal crossing [also of the Teltow Canal] by the 1st Guards Tank Army of the Soviet front under the command of Zhukov!

"Colonel-General Mikhail Katukov's 1st Guards Tank Army attacked across the Teltow Canal."

NO mercy to the defending German, the Soviet determined in the extreme to capture the Nazi capital, the "steamroller" greatly aided and abetted by a Grande Batterie that would have done Napoleon proud!!

coolbert.