heretic88

Well, its not T-44, but maybe you will like this too.  Good to see these old beasts running again! Beautiful restoration btw.
 
 

Here you can see some testing, although a 6x6 version. (btw, 8x8 was originally considered for Pantsir. Using Kamaz instead of BAZ was a huge mistake!)
 

US army should really consider dropping their idiotic designation systems! 
Look at the air force. Those guys did it right. From the first letter, you immediately know the general type of aircraft. Then model number, and a letter for variant (A,B,C..etc), and finally sometimes sub-variant, for example F-16C Block 52... Also for army M1 means a tank, a truck, a rifle, a helmet, socks, pants, everything... crazy. No such thing at air force. 

T-72AV, Hungary... One of the 4 such tanks we have. (K1 bricks are just decoration. We have no explosives for them.) The rest are basic T-72As.

Nothing wrong with wheeled artillery. As long the vehicle is not a normal truck. Sadly there are few examples, like Archer, G6 and Dana. Compared to ordinary truck mounted systems, they have far superior offroad mobility, the chassis is specialized to carry heavier loads, so protection can be also higher.

Or in other words, "everything we cant produce"

Let’s remember, we’re talking about the British army here; their bosses are not known for making good decisions. 

Tulpan 240 mm mortars during exercises
 

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Was this posted before? Anyway. Contains a few interesting facts. According to the driver of Saumur tank musum's Panther, the engine is actually quite accessible and easy to maintain. Then he tells of course about the steering system, which is - no surprise - problematic. Later the curator of the museum also tells about it, and he mentions the constant need to check the steering system, and the frequent adjustings required. Maybe this was the real reason behind the low service life of the final drives? Drivers without enough experience or training, so they didnt perform the checks and adjustments, which led to early final drive failures? The drive train wasnt perfect of course, but there is evidence that with experienced drivers, the final drives lasted far, far more than the mythical "150km" (actually I believe it is a typo in the original french report! 1500km should be the real value).
 

I hope the same team will do it which restored the Ob.787, they did a wonderful job with that thing.

Funny that nowadays everybody likes to bash ww2 german stuff. Yes, interleaved road wheels had problems, but it wasnt that bad actually. What about the mythical Christie suspension? In my opinion that was far worse. Took lots of space inside and was a nightmare to repair, much worse than interleaved german suspension. Also the ride quality... I once had the opportunity to ride on a T-34, that thing has horrible,  I felt almost every bump on the road. Compared to it, the T-55 (that I drove lots) has a luxury car quality suspension.

Funny that nowadays everybody likes to bash ww2 german stuff. Yes, interleaved road wheels had problems, but it wasnt that bad actually. What about the mythical Christie suspension? In my opinion that was far worse. Took lots of space inside and was a nightmare to repair, much worse than interleaved german suspension. Also the ride quality... I once had the opportunity to ride on a T-34, that thing has horrible,  I felt almost every bump on the road. Compared to it, the T-55 (that I drove lots) has a luxury car quality suspension.

Well, lots of info in the original article (sorry I forgot the link yesterday)
http://gurkhan.blogspot.com/2019/07/80-1.html
 
All 3 of them are actually medics, but they received training to operate the tank.

T.95 Ha-Go, restored in Poland. Awesome!
Quite nimble little beast, with great sounding engine. (driving at the end of the video)
 

.  This tank was restored more then decade(!) and it was taken from Truk lagoon.
And it's wonderfull restoration -even tehnical description in japaneese are present in tank. The engine is like orginal but based on post IIWW ones whit orginal Bosh eqipment.
To be onest -it's the best restoration I'v ever seen. It's greata. Milions of $$ and a lot of time to achive sucht result. Amazing!
This tank will be in Bovington Tank Museum not in Poland. Tank belong to MV collector from UK 
 
More about this:
https://forum.odkrywca.pl/topic/765516-hago-typ-95-tank-restoration-project-robert-lewszyk/
https://www.facebook.com/pg/Hago-typ-95-Tank-Restoration-Project-1671671063107837/about/?ref=page_internal

T.95 Ha-Go, restored in Poland. Awesome!
Quite nimble little beast, with great sounding engine. (driving at the end of the video)
 

T.95 Ha-Go, restored in Poland. Awesome!
Quite nimble little beast, with great sounding engine. (driving at the end of the video)
 

In case DM33 (again - tested in Poland vs T-55AM Merida) - no doubt 2km penetration. The same Spike (700mm RHA warhed).
 
But in case older rods - interesting question! I will conisder German DM23 and DM13.
BDD Armour have layout:
60mm HHS and then 4 to 5 (dependet on angle) 5mm HHS palte spaced by 23mm melt in polymer. For most typical angle those plates wher sloped whit effective thickens (LOS) ca 10mm  so we had space layout 60+ 10 + 10 +10 + 10 + possible another 10 mm - more or less 100-110mm RHA maybe 120 on some anagle. BDD module is mounted 40mm from turret front. 
This You know:

 
So for T-62 we have at least 100-120mm RHA in spaced alyout + 40mm air gap  +  200 -157mm cast steel.
 
DM23 have
DM23 have circa 360mm long rod from tungsten alooys and DM13 had main part whit lenght only 230mm. How mucht RHA both can overpas? 
Finally I have hard data that at point blank whit V=1650m/s DM23 overpas 420mm RHA. [end hard data]
In 2km it was circa 380mm in 60 degree slopped plate(this is assumption)  
DM13? Still no hard data - we just can assume it should be circa 300-310mm in 60 degre plate but no evidence still. As I remember M774 should overpas ca 320-340mm in the same condition but it's estimatous not "hard data".
 
So DM23 should on typical Fulda Gap range 800m-1km overpas BDD armour on T-55AD/AM or T-62 whit BDD. But if DM13 was able to do this? Interesting question cose RHA penetration on 2km for this round should be equal to thicknes of BDD+Main armour on T-62. But spaced layout always will be mucht powerfull then RHA plates whit the same number of mm bot in one stack. On the other hand - on 800m Dm13 should overpass more then 320mm RHA... 
 
 
 

BM15 and BM22 was tested in Germany and Poland and definetly no - this round fails completly against spaced and spaced + NERA targets. About this I have no single doubt. -NERA just cracked whole penetrator  and set tungsten subrod in non linear way - so it hit backplate mostly its no front but side way. But im not so sure about BM26 - this roudnd was developerd to overpas I gen western special armour and completly diffrent build (whit stungsten subrod (od slug) in tail not in nose like in Bm15/22 was made to burst all NERA layers and made situation "tungsten sub rod vs backplat only". God idea and IMHO against erly Leporad 2A4 ot CR1 hull - enought. 
From some polish doc I just now that Germans in 1988 just...forgot about NERA layers and start to use ceramic tiles in sevral layers and shapes to incarase protection against long rod monolitic WHA and DU rods  - it was thread more dengour then estern partial rods. From other side - BM42 and BM32 was very heavy enemy and IMHO since KWS Leopard 2 was not protected agianst them.

@UP
The second option.
 
More or less values confirmed in sevral documents give us sucht picture:
 
NATO:
Leopard 2A0-2A4:
350mm vs APFSDS i 700mm vs HEAT (hull and turret)
Challenger 1:
435mm vs APFSDS i 700mm vs HEAT (turret)
300mm vs APFDS i 500mm vs HEAT (hull)
M1:
400mm vs APFSDS  i 750mm vs HEAT (turret)
350mm vs APFSDS i 750mm vs HEAT (hull from FMV files - to validation)
Leopard 2A4 late  + all older 2A0-A4 after factory F6 
420mm vs APFSDS and 800mm vs HEAT (hull and turret )
 
And Soviet muniotion it those days:
APFSDS-T (all for 2km)
3BM9 1969 240 mm RHA for 0 deg.
3BM15  1972 310 mm RHA for 0 deg.
3BM26 1985 410 mm RHA for 60 deg. 450 mm RHA for 0 deg.
3BM32  1987 (serial prod.) 500mm RHA for 60 deg.
3BM42  1988 (serial prod)  440mm stali for 60 deg. - but this round was developed to overpas NERA armour so RHA eqivalent give us nothing.
ATGM:
9M113  1974 ~600 mm RHA
9M114 1976 650 mm RHA
9M112  1977 600 mm RHA
9M111M  1980 600 mm RHA
 
And really funny is when we put in  compare T-64B, T-72A, T-80B and...T-80U and T-72B. More or less soviet tanks where mucht more better armoured vs KE but main armour where circa 30% less vs CE then in western tanks...up to T-80U and T-72B where CE protection was on par whit western ones.

without testing on ranges from 1.5km and beyond  i can't say for sure + L52 APDS i think can kill it from 2km +
 
but one is for sure good quality of steel(doesn't cracked having so much damage from all type of ammo used against) and weld and protection even vs 105mm APFSDS could be achived without having much trouble. 
 
 from german testing of T-55 in 1970(no any details, just pieces of information, hull was penetrated from 500 meters with DM13 while turret was tested from 500, 200 and 100 meters and have only one or two penetations(no data were it hited etc, only that firing was done at frontal part without +-30 flank angle, straight in the frontal part) and report mentions that in real combat conditions (Israel) the tank really was quite resistant to hits, but without details

Well, Im not sure if it is the right place to put this.
A dutch guy bought an iraqi Type-69 tank (actually a pile of rust), and decided to restore it with the help of his friends. Despite not professional tank restorers, they do an amazing job, actually better than some more famous museums around the world. They took it apart completely, and restore it piece by piece. They have lots of videos, these are just some examples. Maybe we should have a thread for tank restorations (of course not only this) if there is interest?
 
The original sad state of the tank (I think the guys saved it from the arc furnace in the last minute. It is so badly rusted)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI32WUfkqtg
And now:
 

105mm DM13(L28) APDS vs T-62 from 200 meters(german protection thickness TL graph made for 800 meters).

"Please, please plesae, do not break down this time!"