Twice Hero who drove the 3rd Guards Tank Army from Stalingrad to Prague
During the Kursk battle, German aircraft strafed Rybalko's car. His driver was killed, his adjutant gravely wounded, and the car plunged into a ditch. Rybalko emerged unscathed, switched vehicles, and carried on commanding.
Starting as a private, he commanded the 3rd Guards Tank Army from Kursk to Prague and was twice made Hero of the Soviet Union. Wounded five times in World War I and the Civil War, he led the postwar reorganization of Soviet armor as its commander before dying of illness at 53.
Career Timeline
- 1914–1917Private, 82nd Infantry Division; siege of Przemyśl, Brusilov Offensive; wounded
- 1917–1922Red Guard partisan commander, regiment commander, brigade commissar; five wounds in the Civil War
- 1931–1934Graduated Frunze Military Academy; military advisor in Xinjiang, China (1934–1935)
- 1937–1939, 1940Soviet military attaché in Poland, then in China
- 1942–1943Commander, 5th Tank Army then 3rd Tank Army; Ostrogozhsk-Rossosh success; lieutenant-general
- 1943–1945Commands 3rd Guards Tank Army — Kursk, Dnieper, Kiev, Lvov, Vistula-Oder, Berlin, Prague
- 1943, 1945Twice awarded Hero of the Soviet Union
- 1947–1948Commander of Armored and Mechanized Forces of the Soviet Army
Related historical events
Liberation of Kiev: The Secret Redeployment from Bukrin to Lyutezh
In October 1943, the Voronezh Front (renamed 1st Ukrainian Front on 20 October) twice attempted to break out of the Bukrin bridgehead toward Kiev and failed. Front commander Vatutin ordered the 3rd Guards Tank Army to redeploy secretly to the Lyutezh bridgehead to the north. Between 25 October and 1 November, Rybalko moved his entire tank army back across the Dnieper, marched it 160 km north, and recrossed the river onto the Lyutezh bridgehead: all under night movement and strict radio silence. Dummy tanks and false radio traffic were left at Bukrin to deceive the Germans. On 4 November, Vatutin committed Rybalko's tanks to battle, and Kiev was liberated on 6 November. For this operation Rybalko was made a Hero of the Soviet Union on 17 November 1943.