The Book of Armaments:
Stalin’s Sledgehammer
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2021

The iconic image of Soviet artillery is that of the tracked 203mm B4 howitzer, blasting the Nazis at point-blank range in the streets of Berlin. Among the Red Army’s attempts to field a heavy artillery piece, the big howitzer stands alone as an unqualified success.

The old Imperial Army ordered a 203mm howitzer, the Model 1913, based on the recommendation of ballerina Matilda Kheshinskaya, mistress of Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, the inspector-general of artillery. The design submitted by the German firm Krupp met all requirements during testing, while that by the French firm Schneider did not, but La Kheshinskaya favored Schneider. The Putilov Works managed to produce only one example before the Revolution shut down production and sent Kheshinskaya into French exile and her lover to a Bolshevik firing squad.

In late 1927, the new management at Putilov (now styled Red Putilov) proposed resuming production on the howitzer, but the Red Army’s Artillery Directorate found the howitzer outdated. On their own initiative the plant’s design bureau produced a modernized version, which failed its tests just as miserably. Sixteen of them were delivered, but by June 1941 only two remained in the Red Army’s inventory, and neither appears to have been issued to a front-line unit during the Great Patriotic War.

Sgt. Meshkov and his sledgehammer clear a Berlin neighborhood, April 1945. Note the top hat on the street behind the howitzer.

Leningrad’s Bolshevik Plant began design work on a new 203mm heavy howitzer in 1926. A prototype appeared in 1931, and did very well in field testing. The howitzer rested on a tracked carriage rather than wheels, in hopes of spreading its weight; the early models were not fired from the tracks, but rather with the howitzer’s solid base was moved off of them to rest firmly on the ground. The howitzer was accepted as the 203mm B-4 Model 1931.

Production began in 1931, with only a handful made each year until Stalingrad’s massive Barrikady Works opened a production line in 1937 and began to churn out the big howitzers. Barrikady’s engineers devised a stronger carriage that could stand the howitzer’s massive recoil, allowing it to be fired without the cumbersome dismounting process. The Bolshevik (now Kirov) Plant and the new Novokramatorsk factory adopted the Barrikady carriage as well. Despite what you can read online, the B-4’s carriage was not self-propelled; it had to be pulled by a heavy prime mover, usually a Stalinets tractor.

Even pulled by a heavy tractor, the B-4 could move only very slowly, with a top towed speed of nine kilometers per hour. It was also very difficult to move once deployed. For long-distance deployments (more than a few kilometers) the howitzer would be broken into two loads, one for the barrel and one for the carriage.

A B4 203mm howitzer outside Berlin, April 1945.

Given those problems, the Barrikady factory introduced a further modification, a four-wheeled carriage that allowed slightly greater towed speed and somewhat easier deployment. The B-4M served alongside the B-4 throughout the Great Patriotic War and unlike usual Soviet practice the two variants were apparently issued to the same regiments (or at least the 529th Regiment had both types when overrun by the Germans at Dubno in 1941). It was not identical, with a longer barrel and therefore somewhat greater range, but otherwise very similar to the original B-4. Both variants required a crew of 15.

Production ended in September 1941, with a few more assembled afterwards, and totaled 1,011 howitzers; 31 of those were early models not up to the later standard. They saw substantial action against Finnish fortifications during the Winter War, where the Red Army used them for direct-fire as well as bombardments. The Finns captured four of them. When the Axis attacked in June 1941, 872 B-4 howitzers equipped 23 special purpose high-power howitzer regiments; 75 of them were lost during the early fighting including 27 of both types assigned to the 529th Special High Power Howitzer Regiment captured intact by the 11th Panzer Division during the Brody-Dubno tank battle in June 1941.

Neither variant had sights or tables for direct fire, but that did not stop Soviet gunners from deploying it that way. At least one B-4 claimed a German panzer; at Ponyri during the Battle of Kursk in 1943 a B-4 hit and blew apart a 65-ton Ferdinand tank destroyer with a high-explosive shell fired over open sights.

This B4 203mm howitzer has the right of way.

On the night of 9-10 June 1944, Soviet batteries opened heavy fire on the Finns to mask the sound of Stalinets tractors maneuvering a pair of B-4 howitzers into the front-line trenches, 1200 meters from a three-story Finnish bunker built of steel-reinforced concrete. When dawn broke, Capt. Ivan Vedmedenko’s battery opened fire and smashed the impregnable fortress; infantry soon overran the wreckage and Vedmedenko, now nicknamed the “Karelian Sculptor” for the twisted piles of concrete blocks and rebar marking the site of the Finnish fortress, was named a Hero of the Soviet Union.

And of course, they saw action in the streets of Berlin, firing at both well-made bunkers and hastily-erected barricades, and from support positions outside the city.

The B-4 tossed a prodigious 100-kilo explosive shell, and like the other Soviet heavy artillery pieces it had a very effective concrete-piercing round. Both variants fired the same ammunition, and could fire the older stocks of 203mm rounds laid in for the abortive Model 1913 and Model 1927 howitzers. As not even Vlad Putin in his prime could have hefted the shells into the breech, the howitzer had a built-in crane to lift them into place. Even so, it had a rate of fire of just one round per minute. Elevation only went to 60 degrees, and the weapon had a traverse of just eight degrees.

This B4 203mm howitzer has been captured by the fascist scum; the barrel is carried by a tracked cart converted from a damaged tank. The howitzer’s carriage is being towed by the tractor in the left rear of the photo.

But it had been issued in good numbers, and came into its own in the last year of the Great Patriotic War as the Germans were pressed back toward their nest. As they abandoned mobile warfare, they became more dependent on fixed fortifications, and the Red Army countered this by rolling their B-4 howitzers into the front lines just as they had in Finland and obliterating their bunkers at what might as well have been point-blank range for the huge weapons.

Between 1947 and 1955, all remaining B-4 and B-4M type howitzers were upgraded with new wheeled carriages boasting four huge, fat truck-style tires in place of the caterpillar tracks or steel wheels. They remained in service through the Cold War years, and a few were exported to Cuba.

You can order The Book of Armaments: The Eastern Front right here.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children and his dog, Leopold.

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