Seseña is a town more or less equidistant between Toledo and Madrid. In October 1936, the rebel Nationalist army of General Francisco Franco was moving towards the Spanish capital on its long march from the south. The Spanish government had taken delivery of T26 light tanks from the Soviet Union. Fifteen of them, armed with a 45mm cannon were deployed against the rebels on 29 October 1936 at Seseña. The tanks were massed together and advanced with each one supporting the other. Seseña was liberated and the tanks moved on to Esquivias although they were unable to capture the town. The legend is that General Franco himself had the idea of filling jam jars or bottles with gasoline, covering it with a thick material tied on with string, setting alight to the material and throwing it at the tank. On that day, three T26s were completely destroyed and three badly damaged by both the burning jam jar and artillery. That, it would appear, was where the cocktail was born although it did not yet have its name.
It was Soviet tanks that were on the receiving end of the next two conflicts that used the new cocktail. During the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, between Japan and the Soviet Union, the Japanese found themselves lacking in anti-tank equipment. Therefore the infantry attacked Soviet tanks with gasoline-filled bottles. The idea however does not seem to have caught on in any scale in the Japanese army.
On 30 November 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland. The excuses then used by the Kremlin were remarkably similar to those used to attack Ukraine 82 years later. Expecting an easy victory, the Soviet troops charged in only to be met by determined resistance and the destruction of their mechanised forces through the use of the cocktail which now had become a more sophisticated weapon with the addition of alcohol, kerosene, tar, potassium chlorate and chemicals which acted as a detonator when the outer bottle broke thus eliminating the need to pre-ignite the bottle. Filling the bottle two thirds full was found to make the weapon more effective as it was more likely to break on impact.
Possibly thinking of their probable requirement a bit closer to home, a British War Office report of June 1940 noted that:
The Finns' policy was to allow the Russian tanks to penetrate their defences, even inducing them to do so by 'canalising' them through gaps and concentrating their small arms fire on the infantry following them. The tanks that penetrated were taken on by gun fire in the open and by small parties of men armed with explosive charges and petrol bombs in the forests and villages... The essence of the policy was the separation of the armoured fighting vehicles from the infantry, as once on their own, the tank has many blind spots and once brought to a stop can be disposed of at leisure.
In that description from 1940, we can see the importance of combined arms, that of using the infantry to back up the tanks and indeed how ineffective tanks can be when operating in heavily forested regions.
In Finland, Molotov cocktails were mass-produced by the Alko corporation at its Rajamäki distillery and came equipped with two specially designed matches to light them. The matches did away with the requirement of having to set alight to a rag before throwing. The company managed to produced 450,000 units before the Winter War came to an end.
But where does the name come from? Why Molotov? Molotov was the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, the man who had signed the pact with his corresponding minister in Nazi Germany thus giving his name to the Molotov Rippentrop Pact. The Soviet Union was using cluster bombs against the Finns. Molotov denied that Finland was being bombed but did state that the Red Army was dropping bread on Finland for the starving Finnish workers. Thus the bomb casing that held the cluster bombs became known as the Molotov bread basket. The cocktail was so named as a drink to go with the food.
From this time on, the Molotov cocktail has become a feature of unrest, either in riots or as an anti armour weapon. However, whereas it was very effective against armour during WW2, its use now is somewhat limited. Early tanks had slits in them for ventilation or vision and a well placed Molotov cocktail could easily seep into the engine and once mixed with the vehicle fuel or ammunition could do a great deal of damage. These days, the situation is different. Whereas we have seen civilians making Molotov cocktails in Ukraine in large numbers, their use against a modern tank is limited although they would be just as effective against soft skinned vehicles as they always were. Today’s tanks have NBC defences and can ford through rivers or even go underwater if equipped with a snorkel so burning fuel is not going to do much damage.
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