Burnt tankist
A soviet tank crew member failed to bail out of his burning tank. Watch the PPSH smg in front of him.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.ww2incolor.com/gallery/dramatic-photos/20610/burnt-tankist
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.ww2incolor.com/gallery/dramatic-photos/20610/burnt-tankist
I suspect the Soviets had an equivalent to the USA’s Dog tags, etc., though IIRC, some armies’ soldiers in WWII still had only paper identification. If this was paper, you can make your own guess as to it chances for being intact. As for dental records – I think you are projecting too much of “today” into the past. Even assuming the body was in Soviet hands, instead of German, when they made any assumed effort to identify him, dental records were neither as common or easily accessible as they are today – and even if they were, many people never saw a dentist until they REALLY needed one - i.e., preventative care was hardly a common practice, so I suspect there would be few soldiers who had records to check. Then, the Soviet Union would also be suffering a many casualties, and it probably didn’t have much infrastructure or other resources to spare from its war-prosecution effort. I could go on, but I think you ought to be getting the picture…
As far as trying to ID this person going by what has been said before,chance’s would be slim or next to none if the ID tag’s were paper and the container’s plastic. Only hope i could see of some one maybe ID’ing this person, was maybe if someone from the same tankard squadron knew which tank number he had. But if fire was so intence, the paint would be gone as well. Probably marked as unknown and barried that way, very sad end indeed. ;(