Formed on the basis of the 50th Rifle Corps under the command of Major General Vladimir Ivanovich Shcherbakov.
The 51st Corps, 690th Anti-Tank and 740th Artillery Regiments, and the Krasnogvardeisk Fortified Region soon joined the Army.
Feskov et al 2013, 131) while David Glantz in an earlier 2009 document lists the army on an order of battle for November 1945 in the Baltic Military District with no forces assigned.
During August 1941 the army formed a defensive line to the west, northwest and southwest of Krasnogvardeisk.
The army's final line of defence was formed on August 21, 1941, when German troops were forced to suspend the offensive in the south-western approaches to Krasnogvardeisk and go on the defensive.
At the start of the German offensive the 42nd Army was composed mostly of militia units and inexperienced soldiers and lacking in weapons, ammunition, transport and communications.
On 15 September German forces broke through to Strelna, cutting off part of the 10th and 11th Rifle Divisions on the right flank of the army.
The last attempt to break through the defensive lines was on 23 September on the armies right flank in the Pulkovo Heights area but the attack was repelled.
In January 1943 the army allocated half of it forces to participate in Operation Spark, an attempt to break the blockade of Leningrad.
[9] In the late hours of January 13, 1944, long-range bombers from the Baltic Fleet attacked the main German command points on the defensive line, presaging the Krasnoye Selo-Ropsha Offensive.
[10] The 42nd Army was tasked with breaking through the heavily fortified bands of enemy defenses established over the past two years.
The front line of defense was from the coast of the Gulf of Finland to the river Izhorka Popova in the east.
In the main line of defense, there were 13 German centers of resistance: Uritsk, Old Panov, Novo-Panov, Finnish Koyrovo, Kokkolevo rarely Kuzmino - Alexandrovka Big Kuzmino station Children's Village, New, State Farm "Pushkin", settlement Volodarskogo Pushkin and Slutsk.
On the right flank was not as successful, with the army taking almost a week to break through the front lines and into the German rear areas.