Soviet Motor Gunboats of World War II: The Red Army’s River Tanks from Stalingrad to Berlin

A compelling account of the heavily armed and highly mobile Soviet river gunboats which took on the Germans during World War II.

Russia’s enormous river system has long been its highway and, as early as 1908, the Tsar’s armies were developing armoured riverboats that brought tank-like mobility, firepower and survivability to Russian battlefields.

This book, the first history of these vessels in English, explains how this concept led to one of the most remarkable naval weapons of World War II, the Soviet ’river tank’, or Armoured Motor Gun Boat (AMGB). Highly mobile, capable of carrying up to 20 infantrymen directly into action and providing immediate firepower from their tank turrets, machine guns or Katyusha rockets, their military value was widely recognized. They were versatile enough to be used in naval landing operations off the Gulf of Finland, the Azov Sea and the Black Sea, and their capabilities were prized by local commanders.

Using meticulously researched new colour profiles, rare photos and spectacular artwork, this book uncovers the history of river warfare on the Eastern Front, and the boats that played such a key part in the fighting.

Przemyslaw Budzbon is a naval architect who worked on warship construction for the Soviet Navy in the 1980s. He has written widely on the history of the Polish and Soviet navies of World War II for Warship Quarterly and other European naval magazines. He contributed to Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships series and his book Soviet Navy at War 1941-45 was published in 1989. Since 2019 he has resumed his writing for Warship and has recently published two books on Polish shipyards from the post-1990 era. He lives and works in Gdynia, Poland.

Piotr Forkasiewicz was born in 1978 in Opole, Poland, and has been a digital artist for over 20 years. In recent years his projects have ranged from graphic and industrial design to animation. His greatest passion is military history illustration, particularly aviation and naval. Following in the footsteps of traditional artists, he has created illustrations for books, magazines, model manufacturers, and for individual collectors worldwide. Piotr lives in Czestochowa with his wife and two sons.