The unit's most notable moment was in the raid on Tatsinskaya during Operation Little Saturn in World War II.

After the war, it continued to serve with the Soviet occupation forces in Central Europe.

It was assigned to the 6th Army and participated in the Stalingrad Defensive Operation on the Don River in July 1942, where it lost approximately two-thirds of its tanks.

Its 24th Motorized Brigade conducted offensive operations along the Don together with 25th Guards Rifle Division.

Support units included the 13th Mining Engineer Company; the 158th Mobile Repair Base; and the Corps Train.

[2] German forces engaged in the relief of Stalingrad had to be withdrawn to deal with the raiders, and many irreplaceable transport planes of the Luftwaffe had been destroyed, with their crews and ground personnel mostly killed.

In the midst of the successful raid it was renamed the 2nd Guards Tank Corps and given the honorific 'Tatsinskaya.'

Guards Sergeant Mariya Oktyabrskaya was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously in 1945 for her actions in the fighting around Vitebsk in March 1944.

For the successful operations during the liberation of the capital of Belarus, the city of Minsk, the corps headquarters, as well as the 4th, 25th, 26th Guards Tank and 4th Guards Motor Rifle Brigades, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 23 July 1944, were awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Members of the corps committed the notorious Nemmersdorf massacre during the Gumbinnen Operation, torturing and killing tens of German civilians in October 1944.

The corps was tasked with developing the offensive beginning on the morning of the second day of the Insterburg-Königsberg Offensive, without being bogged down in protracted combat with the German defenders and swiftly bypassing strongpoints, in order to capture the large highway junctions of Groß Skaisgirren and Mehlawischken highways by the end of the fourth day of the operation.

[4] After suffering heavy losses during the offensive, the corps was withdrawn to the front reserve on 3 February, and did not return to combat again.

On 24 July 1945, the corps became the 2nd Guards Tank Division in Pskov, part of the Leningrad Military District.

[8] Following the beginning of the 2008 Russian military reform, in June 2009 the "Tatinskaya" honorific was assigned again to an active organisation.

The 6th Guards Weapons and Equipment Storage Base was disbanded, and the divisional battle banner, honorary name, and awards bestowed on the newly formed 5th Separate Guards Tank Brigade at Divizionnaya, Ulan Ude.

On February 16, 2016, the brigade commander, Colonel Ruslan Galitsky, was decorated on the anniversary of the Debaltsevo fighting, but then he was killed in December 2016 in Aleppo, Syria.

The brigade then played a leading role in the Selenga-2016 military exercises held in August and September 2016 with the Mongolian Armed Forces.