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Posts posted by Jim Warford
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17 hours ago, LoooSeR said:
I don't understand what is special about it. It looks like WW2 dead end TD.
LoooSeR; good question...first of all, it was right in the middle of the two most significant Soviet Army events of the 1960s: exercise Dnepr in 1967 and Operation Danube (the invasion of Czechoslovakia), in 1968. These two events shaped the Soviet Army of the Cold War and provided very real rehearsals for WWIII. You're correct, the SU-122-54 was the product of the Soviet Army experience in WWII...especially during the Manchuria campaign against the Japanese. The Soviets developed tactics for combined-arms organizations known as "Assault Groups," "Storm Teams," and "Forward Detachments," with assault guns/tank destroyers at their core. After the war, the SU-122-54 (probably known as the SU-122 (M1954) by the Soviets), was secretly fielded in companies/batteries that were organic to select/high-priority MRRs and TRs. As mentioned above, the SU-122-54 was deployed for both Dnepr and Operation Danube.
Since it wasn't forward deployed in the Groups, it was almost missed by Western intelligence through it's development, short life, and death (at Khrushchev's hand...guns bad, missiles good). The first mention of the SU-122-54 in an official US military reference manual was in a USMC MCIA manual in 1996...that's 41 years after it was fielded by the Soviet Army. There was limited intel available on this vehicle as early as 1958 but most of it was Top Secret so it didn't reach many folks in the field. The CIA gave it the designation SU-100 (M1968).
I could go on...the SU-122-54 truly made the D-25 122mm main gun (versioned for the SU-122-54 as the D-49), what it was meant to be...etc.
- Mighty_Zuk, Akula_941, LostCosmonaut and 1 other
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9 hours ago, Collimatrix said:
Welcome to SH, Jim Warford!
Thanks Collimatrix...glad to be here!
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22 hours ago, T___A said:
The SU-122-54 is a very interesting vehicle...one of my favorites. It was a big deal back in the 1960s and was almost completely missed by the US/NATO intel agencies. Had it been given a chance, it could have been a very important weapon for the Soviet Army during the Cold War.
The Soviet Tank Thread: Transversely Mounted 1000hp Engines
in Mechanized Warfare
Posted
Baka; here's a quick overview of the technology successfully built into the SU-122-54 - many of the identified issues/problems associated with previous Soviet assault guns and 122mm-armed tanks were solved:
From my perspective, the combination of lessons-learned from WWII and new (at the time) technology, make the SU-122-54 very interesting. We also need to remember that the Soviets thought it was interesting as well...the SU-122-54 was approved both for mass production and upgrading by fitting the M62-T2 122mm main gun (with its 3BM11 APDS ammo)...the upgraded vehicle was designated SU-122L. Also, just to clarify, I said that the D-49 made the D-25 (series) 122mm main gun what it was meant to be...which doesn't include the M62-T2. The T-10M had a more powerful main gun to be sure...but it was less accurate and had a lower rate of fire. Finally, while Kubinka is full of interesting prototypes, the SU-122-54 was produced, deployed, and would have seen combat had things gone differently in Czechoslovakia.