Mikhail Artemyevich Bukhtuyev

Mikhail Artemyevich Bukhtuyev was born on 23 November 1925 in the settlement of Karagash in the Tuvan People's Republic, then a separate state, now in Todzha district of the Republic of Tuva, into a worker's family. He finished seven classes of School No. 1 in Kyzyl and worked at a gold mine in place of his father, who had gone to the front. In January 1943, after his father was killed, he applied through the Soviet embassy in Tuva to join the Red Army, and was called up in July 1943. He completed a regimental school for tank crews in a reserve regiment in Chelyabinsk region and was made a sergeant. On the 1st Belorussian Front he became the driver-mechanic of a T-34 in the crew of Lieutenant Dmitry Komarov, 15th Guards Tank Brigade, 1st Guards Tank Corps, 65th Army. On 24 June 1944, the first day of the Bobruisk offensive, the corps was committed to the breakthrough south of Parichi; Komarov's tank was the first into the village of Tumarovka. At dawn on 25 June the brigade advanced on Chornye Brody station in Oktyabrsky district of Gomel region, where a German armoured train was firing on the attackers. A shell struck the turret and wounded the loader and the gunner, who were handed to the medics; Komarov and Bukhtuyev went on alone, crushed two field guns and broke into the station. A second hit set the tank on fire, and the ammunition was spent. Komarov ordered a ram, and Bukhtuyev drove the burning tank at full speed into the armoured train. Three of its cars were put out of action; the award sheet on Komarov quoted by Tank Archives records one losing an axle and two overturned. Bukhtuyev was killed. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 22 August 1944, Guards Sergeant Mikhail Artemyevich Bukhtuyev was made a Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously, with the Order of Lenin. His award sheet names him Mikhail Artyomovich. He was buried near the station and later reinterred in the mass grave in Protasy, Oktyabrsky district. By order of the USSR Minister of Defence he was entered permanently on the rolls of a tank unit. School No. 1 in Kyzyl bears his name, as does a street in Saryg-Sep, and an obelisk stands at Chornye Brody. Russian sources describe the action as the only tank ram of an armoured train in the history of war.