The Soviet Tank Thread: Transversely Mounted 1000hp Engines

[LoooSeR]

Israelis - fliping tanks, we - sinking.

[LoooSeR]

T-72AV

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BREM-1 and T-90 turret

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[LoooSeR]

[EnsignExpendable]

Ugh, why is what's obviously an urban assault squad in an open field? So ahistorical.

[Tied]

http://ciar.org/ttk/mbt/armor/armor-magazine/armor-mag.2002.ja/4RedStar02.pdf

 

 

how accurate is this write-up?

[EnsignExpendable]

It's a very old article, and the information in it ranges from incomplete and oversimplifying to largely incorrect.

[Tied]

Ya i chalked that up with the burning negative attitude toward Heavies and the usual "all soviet tanks are cramped and therefor bad" attitude

 

I still think MBT's were the right choice for the Soviet Army at the time, but i wouldnt write-off all heavy tanks completely, atleast them not being mechanical failures

[Collimatrix]

Some of the stuff T___A found suggested that the T-10 uses a very different drivetrain than the IS-3, so it would be rather strange if they had exactly the same mechanical woes.

[SuperComrade]

So, can the IS-3 and T-10 be considered successful designs, as opposed to what Sewell was writing?

[Collimatrix]

"Success" is very hard to determine with Cold War era Soviet tanks.  A lot of the information that isn't just cold, hard technical data is slanted by the respective design houses of the tanks, and as you know those guys had a serious agenda and hated each other.  This is ongoing; look at the back and forth that breaks out on Tanknet on T-72 vs T-64.

 

On top of that there were higher-level political considerations.  I've read from several sources that Khrushchev disliked heavy tanks, and we all know how hard he worked to de-Stalinize the USSR.  Given that most of the nation's heavy tanks were named after his arch nemesis, is it possible that Khrushchev-era sources unfairly slandered the IS-3 and T-10?  I wouldn't discount the possibility.

 

Note that the article above was written by the same person who wrote Why Three Tanks?  He definitely doesn't seem to care for Kotin.  I wonder how much archival material is left in Ukraine; it would be interesting to hear their side of the story.

 

From everything I can determine objectively, the IS-3 looks like an excellent design from an armor architecture standpoint and space utilization standpoint, and less amazing in other ways.  T-10 looks goddamn terrifying.

 

The late-service 122mm 3BK9M HEAT ammunition had 490mm penetration, which is substantially more than the ~380mm achieved by M469 HEAT for the M58 (which is about the same as Obus-G), and more even than the early 115mm HEAT rounds, let alone L7 HEAT.  So for a brief period near the end of its service life, the T-10 had the scariest gun of any tank in service anywhere.

 

Armor is about as good as possible for an all-steel tank that can still actually move, and the angles should induce fuse failure in some of the earlier HEAT rounds as well as really screw with period APDS.  P/W is respectable, and ground pressure was low-ish thanks to those enormously long tracks.

[SuperComrade]

Wasn't Kotin based in Leningrad?

Yes, I've read some of Sewell's other stuff as well. He was not very flattering towards the T-64 in his pieces,

[Tied]

 

That dosent look very much like a 2A46M to me

 

looks more like the HATO 120

[Tied]

"Success" is very hard to determine with Cold War era Soviet tanks.  A lot of the information that isn't just cold, hard technical data is slanted by the respective design houses of the tanks, and as you know those guys had a serious agenda and hated each other.  This is ongoing; look at the back and forth that breaks out on Tanknet on T-72 vs T-64.

 

On top of that there were higher-level political considerations.  I've read from several sources that Khrushchev disliked heavy tanks, and we all know how hard he worked to de-Stalinize the USSR.  Given that most of the nation's heavy tanks were named after his arch nemesis, is it possible that Khrushchev-era sources unfairly slandered the IS-3 and T-10?  I wouldn't discount the possibility.

 

Note that the article above was written by the same person who wrote Why Three Tanks?  He definitely doesn't seem to care for Kotin.  I wonder how much archival material is left in Ukraine; it would be interesting to hear their side of the story.

 

From everything I can determine objectively, the IS-3 looks like an excellent design from an armor architecture standpoint and space utilization standpoint, and less amazing in other ways.  T-10 looks goddamn terrifying.

 

The late-service 122mm 3BK9M HEAT ammunition had 490mm penetration, which is substantially more than the ~380mm achieved by M469 HEAT for the M58 (which is about the same as Obus-G), and more even than the early 115mm HEAT rounds, let alone L7 HEAT.  So for a brief period near the end of its service life, the T-10 had the scariest gun of any tank in service anywhere.

 

Armor is about as good as possible for an all-steel tank that can still actually move, and the angles should induce fuse failure in some of the earlier HEAT rounds as well as really screw with period APDS.  P/W is respectable, and ground pressure was low-ish thanks to those enormously long tracks.

 

Based Colli is based

[Tied]

Ugh, why is what's obviously an urban assault squad in an open field? So ahistorical.

 

pfft, oviously because they routed the Facists so fast they didnt have time to pick up rifles, let alone unlatch their armor

[Collimatrix]

Ugh, why is what's obviously an urban assault squad in an open field? So ahistorical.

 

They are in a city.

Or what used to be one before the artillery bombardment.

[EnsignExpendable]

Note that the article above was written by the same person who wrote Why Three Tanks?  He definitely doesn't seem to care for Kotin.  I wonder how much archival material is left in Ukraine; it would be interesting to hear their side of the story.

 

Their archives are in sad shape, but they promised to Unveil Soviet Atrocities by opening the SBU archives, so presumably they have at least something. I know people that contacted Donetsk and Lugansk archives to check on their status, and the reply was basically a giant "welp". Mariupol is safe, hopefully, but if fighting erupts in that direction again their factory might lose the archive. Then again, considering the sad state of the factories today, those archives may have been tossed long ago.

[Collimatrix]

Their archives are in sad shape, but they promised to Unveil Soviet Atrocities™ by opening the SBU archives, so presumably they have at least something. I know people that contacted Donetsk and Lugansk archives to check on their status, and the reply was basically a giant "welp". Mariupol is safe, hopefully, but if fighting erupts in that direction again their factory might lose the archive. Then again, considering the sad state of the factories today, those archives may have been tossed long ago.

 

That was more what I was wondering about; if anything valuable survived the looting of the '90s.  The civil war is at least confined to the easternmost quarter of the country.

[Mike E]

Tied, do you have any personal experience with the BTR-152?

[LoooSeR]

 

 

 

 

 

   Oplot-MO Active Protection System. A very small amount of information about this thing can be found here, in the article about Soviet R&D in the area of tank protection.

 

 

T-55 with Oplot-M minigun/APS

 

 

T-10M

 

 

 

   In accordance with the decree of the Council of Ministers on February 18, 1960, for further work in this area were attracted: the Military Academy of BT and MV (as the parent organization), VNII-100 Institute and the Kazan Aviation Institute. By working together in a matter of the year organisations designed a system for active missile defense for the production tanks like T-55 and T-10M, that received name "Oplot-MO".  

 

   The principle of operation of the complex was to detect threats by radar use it as a tracking method of approaching to the tank guided missiles or AT rocket-propelled grenades, flying at speeds of 600-800 m/s their destruction with the fire of the six-barrel anti-aircraft gun. Shooting at ATGM was conducted at a range of not more than 200 meters. For its destruction with a probability of 0.8 for the two hits, required rate of fire was 9000 rds/min at ATGM 600 m/s and 11,000 rds/min at a speed of 800 m/s.

 

   Automatic radar station, mounted on the tank, allowed tofind incoming threats in automatic search mode, the azimuth - from 0 to 360 °, elevation - from -5 to + 15 °, in the tracking mode - 90 ° and -5 to + 15 ° respectively. An antenna device, a transmitter unit, a receiver and a other parts of electronics were mounted on turret roof. The antenna height was 0.4 m, the area of ​​the antenna device - 0.15 m2. The fighting compartment housed computing unit, power supply and converter.

 

   The main mode of active protection was automatic, but also provides means to use it in manual control mode to use it as anti-aircraft machine-gun and to fire at enemy, is located near the tank. The findings of the tank protection and the effects of anti-tank weapons were used in the further development of active protection in "Protection" research program in the 1961-1965 period.

(...)

   However, further work on the use of machine-gun installations for the destruction of anti-tank rockets and missiles was cancelled due to the low efficiency, high bulkiness, and the problems with the placement of ammunition.

[LoooSeR]

5TDF engine

 

T-90S

 

T-72B

 

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T-64A

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April-May of the 1945.