The Soviet medium tank T-34 was and remains a legend. Not only is it the most produced tank of World War II, with 84,000 built (for comparison, Sherman tanks were built at about 48,966), but it is also one of the longest-serving tanks built of all time.
Many T-34s are still in storage in Asia and Africa, some were actively used during the 90s (for example, in Yugoslav wars from 1991 to 1999). They have been part of countless armor tank troops all over the world from the fifties to the eighties.
Creation
The basic design was first tested in 1938 on the A-32, having originated in the BT-7, which in turn was an evolution of the American Christie tank.
The chief engineer, Mikhail Koshkin, promised Stalin to replace the BT series with a better and more versatile tank.
He had to have the following features:
- hull with sloped armor;
- powerful and unpretentious V-12 diesel engine, less sensitive to fuel quality and operating conditions than high-octane gasoline engines;
- long range;
- less fire hazard than BT-5 and BT-7, which showed their flammability during the Soviet-Japanese War in Manchuria.
The first prototype was an improved A-32 with thicker armor. He successfully completed his tests in Kubinka, after which his design was simplified for mass production. All this happened already at the beginning of 1939, during the rearmament of the USSR.
The first two prototypes took part in a run from their factory in Kharkov to Moscow and back in 1940, under the patronage of Sergei Ordzhonikidze. From April to May they were subjected to many difficult tests, traveling a total of about 2000 km from Kharkov to the Mannerheim Line in Finland and back to the factory via Moscow.
Design
The sloped armor was an excellent solution and allowed it to withstand many hits while still being of acceptable thickness and weight.
After completion of development and testing, the new series of tank was equipped with the final version of the 76.2 mm gun and became the basis for the creation of all subsequent versions until 1944. It was known as the T-34-76, and, after replacing the gun and turret, as the T-34-85.
Christie's coil spring suspension was adapted to front-line conditions, as were the V12 diesels along with the gearbox and clutch. The 10-RT-26 radio was replaced by the 9-RM model, the tracks were slightly expanded. The frontal armor shape was slightly simplified to facilitate mass production, as were many other elements.
The T-34 was equipped with a variety of hatches and turrets throughout its long life, but almost all variants were equipped with railings on top of the hull, which allowed Soviet infantry to move around on the tank, compensating for the lack of vehicles.
However, none of the T-34s were ever equipped with anti-aircraft weapons, which is why many were lost to Ju-87 Stuka attacks.
Combat use
Once at the front, the T-34 had no analogues in the world. This was made possible by combining speed, armor and weapons into a magic triangle.
The first version of the T-34-76 was an unpleasant surprise for the arrogant German troops in 1941, when it began to enter the army en masse. The Germans had nothing comparable.
Not only was the T-34 able to handle mud and snow with wide tracks, but it also had the perfect combination of thick sloped armor, an effective gun, good speed and endurance.
In addition, the machine turned out to be very reliable, durable and easy to manufacture and maintain. The winner of the industrial war and a significant leap in tank building in general.
The first combat clashes in July 1941 proved that no German equipment could hit the T-34 with certainty. To the disappointment of the German officers, their shots simply bounced off these heavily armored vehicles.
The sloped armor turned out to be very effective, which compensated for the not very successful gun with a relatively low projectile speed, which was roughly comparable to the armament of the Pz-3 and Pz-4 of its time.
The thirty-four diesel engine was not afraid of any weather; the wide tracks were ideal for any conditions, both for autumn thaw and snow in winter.
The T-34 was also easier to produce than its German competitors, which is why many German units found their enemies simply invincible.
Of course, it was possible to stop an individual tank with a precise shot between the track and the wheel, or destroy it completely, but there were too many of them. And even the new 88 mm German guns calmly penetrating from a distance did not save the situation.
At the end of 1942, a new version began to arrive at the front, with minor modifications to increase crew comfort and improve visibility around. The 76 mm gun received incendiary shells, which it could fire just as well as conventional armor-piercing shells. They were fatal to all enemy tanks except the latest, most heavily armored versions of the Pz-IV.
German response
Operating in conjunction with the slow but practically invulnerable KV-1, the T-34 swept away everything in its path. But the German command, as in France, rose to the occasion, and, thanks to the well-coordinated actions of the Ju-87 Stuka, together with the use of new 88 mm guns, was able to prevent the USSR tank army from destroying and sweeping away its troops.
The new German heavy Tiger was superior to the Soviet T-34 in protection and firepower, but was too expensive and unreliable. The need for a cheaper and more widespread medium tank with a powerful gun and a very high projectile speed gave impetus to the birth of such a vehicle as the Panther.
During the Moscow winter campaign and, later, in Stalingrad, T-34s were widely used for the first time and pushed through the defenses. German tanks could not stand the cold weather. The rubber from the rollers peeled off, the engines often refused to start and required gradual warming up, for which there was no time, machine guns often jammed, and the tanks themselves were practically unable to move, since due to the narrow tracks of the Pz-3 and Pz-4 they literally fell into the snow and couldn't move.
In addition, difficult meteorological conditions made any air support impossible, thus depriving armored forces any meaningful help from the Luftwaffe. However, the new Panther proved to be a deadly opponent for the T-34 at long ranges, as it easily penetrated its armor from great distances, while remaining virtually invulnerable to return fire.
But it was not technology, but tactics and mass participation that turned out to be the basis in the decisive battle on Kursk Bulge, when the Panthers and Tigers, invulnerable from afar, were hit by thousands of T-34s striking at close range from all sides. Just like the Shermans, many T-34s were sacrificed so that others could close in on the enemy and strike at vulnerable points at close range.
Flaws
The T-34 was not as ideal a tank as it seemed to the Germans at that time. Low-quality assembly, unreliable and failing parts, many other defects caused by very difficult production conditions and low-skilled personnel, low crew skills, and command errors led to large losses in each division equipped with the T-34. In some of them, non-combat losses were almost greater than combat losses, taking away more than half of the combat units due to technical problems.
Diesels were very sensitive to dust and sand, while the first versions of their filters were characterized by low efficiency, which led to frequent breakdowns. The gearbox and clutch often caused strong vibrations, jammed during shifts, and even sometimes collapsed.
It was quite common to see a tank carrying spare gears and other parts wherever possible, for example, between additional fuel tanks, next to a tarpaulin, a shovel, an ax, a tow rope and, of course, spare sections of tracks.
The T-34s that have become a familiar sight, moving quickly with platoons on their hulls, actually covered very short distances, or even did it for pure propaganda. Meager material support made such a use of the T-34, at least at first, extremely irrational.
Conveyors, due to fast progress German army, were moved far to the east, to the Dzerzhinsky Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil and the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, which later received the name "Tankograd", where there were far from the best working conditions, for example, production began under open air, even before creating a roof over it. But until the end of 1942, the largest production remained in the eastern part of Stalingrad. From there, the T-34s went into battle almost from the factory gates.
Epilogue
Armor, firepower, and ergonomics were inferior to serial enemy Tigers and Panthers and experimental monsters like Mouse, but the mass production and manufacturability were at the highest level.
Despite this, the Soviet medium tank T-34 is a legendary vehicle that has rightfully become a symbol of victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Another purely propaganda myth from the series “Russia is the homeland of elephants.” It is very easy to refute. It is enough to ask the agitprop-Stalinist a very simple question: “What exactly does the best mean?” And what period of World War II? If it’s 1941-42, then that’s one thing. If 1942-44, then something else. If 1944-45, then the third. Because in these different periods the tanks were also very different (in many ways, even fundamentally different). Therefore, the above statement is simply fundamentally methodologically incorrect.
This could be the end of the refutation of this myth. However, the topic of the T-34 is interesting enough even without this mythology to discuss it in more detail. Let's start with the fact that although the T-34 was not best tank World War II (due to the incorrectness of the very concept of “best” in this context), its design became perhaps the most influential tank design in the history of not only World War II, but tank design in general.
Why? Yes, because the T-34 became the first truly massive and relatively successful implementation of the concept of the main battle tank, which became dominant in all subsequent tank building. It was the T-34 that became the starting point, model and inspiration for the creation of a whole string of serial tanks, both World War II (Panther, Royal Tiger, Pershing) and post-war (M48, M60, Leopard, AMX-30). Only in the 80s did the world tank building make a transition to a new concept of the main battle tank, closer to the German Tiger tank.
Now let's return to the concept of “best”. First, some statistics. On June 22, 1941, in the western border military districts (Leningrad, Baltic special, Western special, Kiev special and Odessa) there were 967 T-34 tanks. That's right - nine hundred sixty seven. Which did not stop the Wehrmacht from completely destroying the ENTIRE first strategic echelon of the Red Army. And it was only thanks to his own strategic mistakes that Hitler did not win victory back in October (or even in September). I will talk more about these errors in a separate section of the book. In other words, strategically the Germans simply did not notice the T-34. How did more than 300 absolutely monstrous heavy KV-1s not notice?
Further. The overall ratio of tank losses in World War II between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht was approximately 4:1. The lion's share of these losses were T-34s. The average “lifetime” of a Soviet tank on the battlefield was 2-3 tank attacks. German - 10-11. 4-5 times more. Agree that with such statistics it is very difficult to substantiate the claim that the T-34 is truly the best tank of World War II.
The right question should not be “Which tank is the best?” and “What qualities should an ideal main battle tank have?” and “How close to ideal is this or that tank (in particular, the T-34)?”
As of the summer of 1941, the optimal medium (main battle) tank should have had a long-barreled large-caliber gun (at that time - 75/76 mm); 1-2 machine guns for protection against enemy infantry; sufficient anti-ballistic armor to hit enemy tanks and artillery while remaining invulnerable to them; crew of 5 people (commander, driver, loader, gunner, radio operator); convenient means of observation and aiming; reliable radio communication; fairly high speed (50-60 km/h on the highway); high cross-country ability and maneuverability; reliability; ease of operation and repair; ease of use; the possibility of mass production as well as sufficient development potential to constantly be “one step ahead of the enemy.”
The T-34 was more than fine with its gun and armor for a year (before its appearance in mass quantities tank PzKpfw IV with a long-barreled 75-mm cannon 7.5 cm KwK 40). Wide tracks gave the tank excellent cross-country ability and maneuverability. The tank was also almost ideal for mass production; maintainability in front-line conditions was also excellent.
Firstly, there were few radio stations, so they were not installed on all tanks, but only on the tanks of unit commanders. Which the Germans quickly knocked out (with 50-mm anti-tank guns or 88-mm anti-aircraft guns, or even 37-mm “mallets” from ambushes from a short distance) ... after which the rest poked around like blind kittens and became easy prey.
Further. As often happened in the USSR, the tank designers decided to save on the number of crew members and also assigned the functions of a gunner to the tank commander. This reduced the firing efficiency and made the tank practically uncontrollable. And also a tank platoon, a company... and so on.
Observation and aiming devices left much to be desired. As a result, when the T-34 approached a distance sufficient to see the enemy... it was already in the penetration zone of 50-mm, short-barreled 75-mm and even 37-mm guns (and 47-mm guns of the Czechoslovak 38(t) , of which the Germans had many). The result is clear. Yes, and unlike German tanks, in which each crew member had his own hatch... in the T-34 there were two hatches for four. What this meant in battle conditions for the crew of a damaged tank does not need to be explained.
Yes, by the way, the presence of a diesel engine on the T-34 did not in any way affect its fire hazard. Because it is not the fuel that burns and explodes, but its vapors... therefore, diesel T-34s (and KVs) burned no worse than gasoline Panzerkampfwagens.
As in the USSR in general, when designing the T-34, priority was given to the simplicity and low cost of the design to the detriment of the quality characteristics of the design as a whole. Thus, an important disadvantage was the control drive system, which ran through the entire tank from the driver’s seat to the transmission, which greatly increased the force on the control levers and significantly complicated gear shifting.
In the same way, the individual spring suspension system with large-diameter rollers used on the T-34, being very simple and cheap to manufacture in comparison with the Pz-IV suspension, turned out to be large in placement and rigid in movement. The T-34 also inherited the suspension system from the BT series tanks. Simple and technologically advanced to manufacture, due to the large size of the rollers, which means the small number of support points per track (five instead of eight for the Pz-IV), and spring damping, it led to strong rocking of the vehicle in motion, which made shooting with it completely impossible. go. In addition, compared to a torsion bar suspension, it occupied 20% more volume.
Let's give the floor to those who had the opportunity to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the T-34 - both at the training ground and in battle. Here, for example, is the report of the commander of the 10th tank division 15th Mechanized Corps of the Kyiv Special Military District based on the results of the battles of June - July 1941:
“The armor of vehicles and hulls is penetrated from a distance of 300-400 m by a 37-mm armor-piercing projectile. The sheer sheets of the sides are pierced by a 20-mm armor-piercing projectile. When crossing ditches, due to the low installation, the vehicles bury their noses; traction with the ground is insufficient due to the relative smoothness of the tracks. In the event of a direct hit from a shell, the driver's front hatch falls through. The machine's caterpillar is weak - it takes any projectile. The main and side clutches fail"
And here are excerpts from the T-34 test report (note - the export version, which had significantly more high quality assembly and individual components than the serial one, so we are talking about fundamental design flaws) at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in the USA in 1942:
“The first breakdown of the T-34 (the track burst) occurred approximately at the 60th kilometer, and after covering 343 km the tank broke down and could not be repaired. The breakdown occurred due to poor performance of the air cleaner (another Achilles plate of the tank), as a result of which a lot of dust accumulated in the engine and destruction of the pistons and cylinders occurred.
The main disadvantage of the hull was the water permeability of both its lower part when overcoming water obstacles, and its upper part during rain. In heavy rain, a lot of water flowed into the tank through the cracks, which could lead to failure of electrical equipment and even ammunition.
The main noted drawback of the turret and the fighting compartment as a whole is cramped conditions. The Americans could not understand how our tank crews were crazy in the tank in winter wearing sheepskin coats. A poor turret rotation mechanism was noted, especially since the motor was weak, overloaded and sparked terribly, as a result of which the rotation speed adjustment resistances burned out and the gear teeth crumbled.
The disadvantage of the gun was considered to be an insufficiently high initial speed (about 620 m/s versus a possible 850 m/s), which is attributed to the low quality of Soviet gunpowder. I don’t think there is any need to explain what this meant in battle.
The steel tracks of the T-34 were simple in design and wide, but the American ones (rubber-metal), in their opinion, were better. The Americans considered the poor tensile strength of the track to be a disadvantage of the Soviet track chain. It got worse poor quality track fingers. The suspension on the T-34 tank was considered poor, because the Americans had already unconditionally abandoned the Christie suspension as outdated.
Disadvantages of the V-2 diesel engine - a poor air cleaner, which: does not clean the air entering the engine at all; At the same time, the throughput of the air purifier is small and does not provide an influx required quantity air even when the engine is idling. As a result of this, the engine does not develop full power and dust entering the cylinders leads to their rapid firing, compression drops and the engine loses power. In addition, the filter is made from a mechanical point of view in a very primitive way: in places of spot electric welding, the metal is burned through, which leads to oil leakage, etc.
The transmission is unsatisfactory and clearly of an outdated design. During testing, the teeth on all gears completely crumbled. Both engines have bad starters - low-power and unreliable design. Welding armor plates is extremely crude and sloppy."
It is unlikely that such test results are compatible with the concept of “the best tank of World War II.” And by the summer of 1942, after the appearance of the improved “fours,” the T-34’s advantage in artillery and armor disappeared. Moreover, he began to concede in these key components to his main enemy, the “four” (and never made up for this gap until the end of the war). “Panthers and Tigers (as well as specialized self-propelled guns - tank destroyers) generally dealt with the T-34 easily and naturally. As well as new anti-tank guns - 75- and 88-mm. Not to mention the cumulative shells of the Panzerschrecks and Panzerfausts.
In general, of course, the T-34 was not the best tank of World War II. It was a generally acceptable tank (although from the summer of 1942 it was inferior to its opponents in almost all key components). But there were a lot of these tanks (in total, more than 52,000 T-34s were produced during the war). This predetermined the outcome of the war, in which it turned out that the winner is not the one who has the best soldiers, tanks, planes, self-propelled guns, etc., but who has many times more of them.
In general, as usual, they were filled with corpses and pelted with pieces of iron. And so we won. And Russian women still give birth.
The first face is from 1940/41.
The T-34 tank became the most mass tank World War 2. It was produced from 1940 to 1947 in several modifications, which differed significantly from one another. There are four main ones.
- T-34-76. Tanks of the 1940/41 model;
- T-34-76. Tanks of the 1942/43 model;
- T-34-85. Tanks of the 1943/45 model;
- T-34-85. Tanks of the 1945/1947 model.
In this article we will talk about the T-34-76 model 1940/41. As we know, the T-34 tank was adopted by the Red Army on 12/19/39, despite very a large number of deficiencies identified during field tests. You can read more about the design and its inherent design flaws on the same website. We will return to this topic later in the year.
Speaking about the first thirty-four episodes, it is necessary to note. That these machines also differed quite significantly from each other depending on the year of manufacture (1940, 1941, 1942) and the manufacturer.
In 1940, the tank factories that were entrusted with the production of a new tank (the main one was plant No. 183, the second enterprise was to be STZ) were initially tasked with producing 150 new tanks. However, in June 1940, this plan was increased to six hundred vehicles. 500 of them were to be produced by plant No. 183, 100 by STZ.
But, like most uncalculated technical assignments of that period, these figures remained only on paper. The reality looked depressing. As of 09/15/40, only... THREE (!) came out of the KhPZ gates serial tank. And the first serial thirty-four left the territory of the STZ only in 1941.
The first production samples were also sent for intensive field testing. Their results were so unsatisfactory that the question arose of stopping production of the T-34 (production of the tank was suspended by order of the deputy NPO) and developing a new vehicle, the T-34M, which had a more powerful armor (75 mm), torsion bar suspension, a turret with a significantly larger volume of armored space and a commander's cupola.
The crew of the new car was supposed to consist of five people. But before the start of the war, they did not have time to assemble even one such machine, although the main units and mechanisms had already been manufactured.
Only the personal intervention of the People's Commissar of Defense K.E. Voroshilov made it possible to resume production of the T-34 tank.
For 1941, according to a decree adopted by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on 05.05.41, tank builders were required to produce 2800 tanks (KhPZ - 1800, STZ-1000). As of 05/01/41, the Kharkovites were able to produce 525 new tanks, and the Stalingraders only 130.
So. What was the T-34 model of 1940?
The hull was welded from rolled armor plates, the front upper frontal plate of which had a slope of 60 degrees, and the upper side plates - 45 degrees. In the front plate there is a driver's hatch with a central viewing device. Lateral viewing devices were placed at an angle of 60 degrees to the longitudinal axis of the tank and were located on the sides of the hatch. To the right of the hatch, a DT machine gun was installed in a ball joint. It was covered by an armored cap.
The tank had a welded turret of a streamlined oval shape. On the sides of the tower there were observation devices. Another device, theoretically providing all-round visibility, was located in the turret hatch cover. But it was placed so poorly that it was practically impossible to use it. In the rear plate of the turret there was a bolted door. Some tanks had cast turrets with 52 mm side and 20 mm roof armor. In this case, the bases of the viewing devices were cast together with the tower.
The first tanks were armed with the L-11 cannon (barrel 30.5 caliber long). Then the F-34 (41 caliber) appeared. The replacement of weapons was painless for the design. The changes affected only the armored mask of the swinging part. By August 1941, almost all tanks began to be armed with this particular gun.
After the start of the war, another plant, No. 112, which was previously at the disposal of the People's Commissariat of Sustainable Industry, was connected to the production of the T-34 by decision of the State Defense Committee No. 1. (Plant "Krasnoe Sormovo"). At the same time, plant No. 112 was allowed to install M-17 aviation gasoline engines, the production of which was being launched at GAZ, instead of the B-2 diesel engine. This measure was forced, since the only plant that produced V-2 diesel in the USSR, No. 75 (Kharkov), was not able to produce the required number of engines. An attempt to launch their release at the KhPZ was also unsuccessful, since the rapid advance of the enemy forced the decision to evacuate all production capacity for the production of B-2 from both plants in Stalingrad (STZ). Diesel production began here in November 1941. But it was a drop in the ocean. And 75 the plant was heading to the Urals.
Plant 112 was given the task of producing 700-750 T-34 tanks in 1941. In fact, the front received 173 tanks. From October to December 1941 KhPZ did not produce any products. The plant was evacuated to the Urals.
In the fall of 1941, the only plant producing the T-34 was STZ. To increase the efficiency of the enterprise in Stalingrad, an almost closed tank production cycle was created. All the main elements. Including guns. Manufactured locally. The situation was similar at two other factories, in Tagil and Gorky.
Each of the factories had its own machine park and technological capabilities. Therefore, taking into account the above, certain additions or changes were made to the design of the tank. Theoretically, it was believed that all of them should initially be coordinated with the design bureau of plant No. 183, but only theoretically. Therefore your appearance each plant had a tank.
Until December 1941, STZ and KhPZ produced machines that were almost identical in appearance. 112 plant began to change the design first. The specifics of the shipbuilding enterprise had an impact. In December, simplified armored hulls began to be produced here (after gas cutting, no mechanical processing of the edges was carried out; the hull parts began to be joined “in quarters”. The front plate was connected to the fender liners and sides with tenon joints. And since March 1942, the turrets of Sormovo tanks were made without a stern hatch. More One characteristic feature of the T-34, born at factory No. 112, was a canopy on the roof of the hull and a large number of handrails on the turret and hull.
In Stalingrad, most of the stamped and welded parts were replaced with cast ones, fortunately there were all the possibilities for this. At that time, the STZ foundry ranked 2nd in the WORLD in terms of its capacity. Disruptions in the supply of tires forced us to abandon rubber bands on the tracks and switch to the production of cast rollers with internal shock absorption. It was also removed from the drive and guide wheels. Since 1942, following the example of the Gorky tank builders, STZ switched to producing turrets and hulls using simplified technologies.
In Nizhny Tagil, the chassis also underwent significant changes, similar to those introduced at STZ.
It is impossible to list all the changes even in ten such articles. Therefore, he ends about our firstborn. In the next article we will talk about the tank produced in 1942/43.
The T-34-85 tank was developed and put into service in December 1943 in connection with the advent of the T-V "Panther" and T-VI "Tiger" with strong anti-ballistic armor and powerful weapons. The T-34-85 was created on the basis of the T-34 tank with the installation of a new cast turret with an 85-mm cannon.
The first production vehicles were equipped with an 85-mm D-5T cannon, which was later replaced by a ZIS-S-53 cannon of the same caliber. Her armor-piercing projectile weighing 9.2 kg from a distance of 500 and 1000 meters penetrated 111 mm and 102 mm armor, respectively, and a sub-caliber projectile from a distance of 500 meters penetrated armor 138 mm thick. (The armor thickness of the Panther was 80-110 mm, and that of the Tiger was 100 mm.) A fixed commander’s cupola with observation devices was installed on the roof of the tower. All vehicles were equipped with a 9RS radio station, a TSh-16 sight, and means for setting up smoke screens. Although, due to the installation of a more powerful gun and increased armor protection, the tank's weight increased slightly, thanks to the powerful diesel engine, the tank's mobility did not decrease. The tank was widely used in all battles of the final stage of the war.
Description of the design of the T-34-85 tank
ENGINE AND TRANSMISSION.
The T-34-85 tank was equipped with a 12-cylinder four-stroke uncompressor diesel engine V-2-34. The rated engine power was 450 hp. at 1750 rpm, operational - 400 hp. at 1700 rpm, maximum - 500 hp. at 1800 rpm. The weight of a dry engine with an electric generator without exhaust manifolds is 750 kg.
Fuel - diesel, DT grade. Fuel tank capacity 545 l. Outside, on the sides of the hull, two fuel tanks of 90 liters each were installed. External fuel tanks were not connected to the engine power system. The fuel supply is forced, using the NK-1 fuel pump.
The cooling system is liquid, closed, with forced circulation. There are two tubular radiators, installed on both sides of the engine and tilted towards it. Radiator capacity 95 l. To clean the air entering the engine cylinders, two Multicyclone air cleaners were installed. The engine was started by an electric starter or compressed air (two cylinders were installed in the control compartment).
The transmission consisted of a multi-disc main dry friction clutch (steel on steel), a gearbox, final clutches, brakes and final drives. The gearbox is five-speed.
CHASSIS.
In relation to one side, it consisted of five double rubber-coated road wheels with a diameter of 830 mm. Suspension - individual, spring. The rear drive wheels had six rollers for engagement with the ridges of the track tracks. The guide wheels are cast, with a crank mechanism for tensioning the tracks. The tracks are steel, fine-linked, with ridge gearing, 72 tracks each (36 with a ridge and 36 without a ridge). The track width is 500 mm, the track pitch is 172 mm. The weight of one caterpillar is 1150 kg.
ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT.
Made according to a single-wire circuit. Voltage 24 and 12 V. Consumers: electric starter ST-700, electric motor of the tower turning mechanism, electric fan motors, control devices, external and internal lighting equipment, electrical signal, radio station umformer and TPU lamps.
MEANS OF COMMUNICATION.
The T-34-85 was equipped with a short-wave transceiver simplex telephone radio station 9-RS and an internal tank intercom TPU-3-bisF.
From the history of the creation (modernization) of the T-34-85 medium tank
Production of the T-34 tank, armed with an 85-mm cannon, began in the fall of 1943 at plant No. 112 "Krasnoye Sormovo". An 85-mm D-5T cannon designed by F. F. Petrov and a coaxial DT machine gun were installed in a cast three-man turret of a new form. The diameter of the turret ring was increased from 1420 mm to 1600 mm. On the roof of the tower there was a commander's cupola, the double-leaf lid of which rotated on a ball bearing. An MK-4 periscope viewing device was fixed in the lid, which made it possible to conduct a circular view. For firing from a cannon and a coaxial machine gun, a telescopic articulated sight and a PTK-5 panorama were installed. The ammunition consisted of 56 rounds and 1953 rounds of ammunition. The radio station was located in the hull, and the output of its antenna was on the starboard side - just like the T-34-76. The power plant, transmission and chassis have undergone virtually no changes.
|
Crew |
Weight |
Length |
Height |
Armor |
Engine |
Speed |
A gun |
Caliber |
|
|
people |
mm |
hp |
km/h |
mm |
|||||
|
T-34 mod. 1941 |
26,8 |
5,95 |
L-11 |
||||||
|
T-34 mod. 1943 |
30,9 |
6,62 |
45-52 |
F-34 |
|||||
|
T-34-85 mod. 1945 |
8,10 |
45-90 |
ZIS-53 |
All changes to the design of the T-34 tank could only be made with the consent of two authorities - the Office of the Commander of Armored and Mechanized Troops of the Red Army and the Main Design Bureau (GKB-34) at Plant No. 183 in Nizhny Tagil.
Layout of the T-34-85 medium tank.
1 - ZIS-S-53 gun; 2 - armored mask; 3 - telescopic sight TSh-16; 4 - gun lifting mechanism; 5 - loader MK-4 observation device; 6 - fixed gun fence; 7 - commander’s MK-4 observation device; 8 - glass block; 9 - folding fence (gilzoulavtvatep); 10 - armored fan cap; 11 - rack ammunition storage in the turret niche; 12 - covering tarpaulin; 13 - clamp installation for two artillery rounds; 14 - engine; 15 - main clutch; 16- air purifier "Multicyclone"; 17- starter; 18 - smoke bomb BDSh; 19 - gearbox; 20 - final drive; 21 - batteries; 22 - stacking shots on the floor of the fighting compartment; 23 - gunner's seat; 24 - VKU; 25 - suspension shaft; 26 - driver's seat; 27 - stacking of machine gun magazines in the control compartment; 28 - side clutch lever; 29 - main clutch pedal; 30 - compressed air cylinders; 31 - driver's hatch cover; 32 - DT machine gun; 33 - clamp stacking of shots in the control compartment.
The TsAKB (Central Artillery Design Bureau), led by V.G. Grabin, and the design bureau of plant No. 92 in Gorky proposed their own versions of the 85-mm tank gun. The first developed the S-53 gun. V. G. Grabin made an attempt to install the S-53 cannon in the T-34 turret of the 1942 model without widening the turret ring, for which the front part of the turret was completely redone: the cannon trunnions had to be moved forward by 200 mm. Firing tests at the Gorokhovets training ground showed the complete failure of this installation. In addition, tests revealed design flaws in both the S-53 and LB-85 guns. As a result, a synthesized version, the ZIS-S-53 cannon, was adopted for service and into mass production. Her ballistic characteristics were identical to the D-5T cannon. But the latter was already in mass production and, in addition to the T-34, was installed in the KV-85, IS-1 and in the D-5S version in the SU-85.
By Decree of the State Defense Committee of January 23, 1944 tank The T-34-85 with the ZIS-S-53 cannon was adopted by the Red Army. In March, the first cars began to roll off the assembly line of plant 183. On them, the commander's cupola was moved closer to the rear of the tower, which eliminated the need for the gunner to sit literally in the commander's lap. The electric drive of the turret rotation mechanism with two speed levels was replaced by an electric drive with commander control, ensuring rotation of the turret from both the gunner and the crew commander. The radio station was moved from the building to the tower. Viewing devices began to be installed only of a new type - MK-4. The commander's panorama of PTK-5 was confiscated. The remaining units and systems remained largely unchanged.
The turret of a tank produced by the Krasnoye Sormovo plant.
1 - loader hatch cover; 2 - caps over fans; 3 - hole for installing the tank commander's observation device; 4 - commander's cupola hatch cover; 5 - commander's cupola; 6 - viewing slot; 7 - antenna input glass; 8 - handrail; 9 - hole for installing a gunner's observation device; 10 - hole for firing from personal weapons; 11 - eye; 12 - sight embrasure; 13 - visor; 14 - axle tide; 15 - machine gun embrasure; 16 - hole for installing a loader observation device.
The chassis of the tank consisted of five rubberized road wheels on board, a rear drive wheel with ridge gearing, and a idler wheel with a tensioning mechanism. The road wheels were individually suspended on cylindrical coil springs. The transmission included: a multi-disc main dry friction clutch, a five-speed gearbox, final clutches and final drives.
In 1945, the double-leaf hatch cover of the commander's cupola was replaced with a single-leaf one. One of two fans. installed in the rear part of the turret, were moved to its central part, which contributed to better ventilation of the fighting compartment.
The T-34-85 tank was produced at three factories: No. 183 in Nizhny Tagil, No. 112 Krasnoye Sormovo and No. 174 in Omsk. In just three quarters of 1945 (that is, until the end of World War II), 21,048 tanks of this type were built, including the flamethrower version T-034-85. Some combat vehicles were equipped with a PT-3 roller mine sweeper.
General production of T-34-85 tanks
|
1944 |
1945 |
Total |
|
|
T-34-85 |
10499 |
12110 |
22609 |
|
T-34-85 com. |
|||
|
OT-34-85 |
|||
|
Total |
10663 |
12551 |
23 214 |
T-34: tank and tankers
German vehicles were crap against the T-34.
Captain A. V. Maryevsky
“I did it. I held out. Destroyed five buried tanks. They couldn’t do anything because these were T-III, T-IV tanks, and I was on the “thirty-four”, whose frontal armor their shells did not penetrate.”
Few tankers from the countries participating in World War II could repeat these words of the commander of the T-34 tank, Lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Bodnar, in relation to their combat vehicles. The Soviet T-34 tank became a legend primarily because those people who sat behind the levers and sights of its cannon and machine guns believed in it. In the memoirs of tank crews, one can trace the idea expressed by the famous Russian military theorist A. A. Svechin: “If the importance of material resources in war is very relative, then faith in them is of enormous importance.”
Svechin became an infantry officer Great War 1914 - 1918, saw the debut of heavy artillery, airplanes and armored vehicles on the battlefield, and he knew what he was talking about. If soldiers and officers have faith in the technology entrusted to them, then they will act bolder and more decisively, paving their way to victory. On the contrary, distrust, readiness to mentally or actually throw a weak weapon will lead to defeat. Of course we're talking about not about blind faith based on propaganda or speculation. Confidence was instilled in people by the design features that strikingly distinguished the T-34 from a number of combat vehicles of that time: the inclined arrangement of armor plates and the V-2 diesel engine.
The principle of increasing the effectiveness of tank protection due to the inclined arrangement of armor plates was clear to anyone who studied geometry at school. “The T-34 had thinner armor than the Panthers and Tigers. Total thickness approximately 45 mm. But since it was located at an angle, the leg was approximately 90 mm, which made it difficult to penetrate,” recalls the tank commander, Lieutenant Alexander Sergeevich Burtsev. Use in a security system geometric constructions Instead of brute force, simply increasing the thickness of the armor plates gave, in the eyes of the T-34 crews, an undeniable advantage to their tank over the enemy. “The placement of the Germans’ armor plates was worse, mostly vertical. This is, of course, a big minus. Our tanks had them at an angle,” recalls the battalion commander, Captain Vasily Pavlovich Bryukhov.
Of course, all these theses had not only theoretical, but also practical justification. In most cases, German anti-tank and tank guns with a caliber of up to 50 mm did not penetrate the upper frontal part of the T-34 tank. Moreover, even the sub-caliber shells of the 50-mm anti-tank gun PAK-38 and the 50-mm gun of the T-III tank with a barrel length of 60 calibers, which, according to trigonometric calculations, were supposed to pierce the forehead of the T-34, in reality ricocheted off the highly hard sloping armor without causing any harm to the tank. Conducted in September-October 1942 by NII-48 statistical research combat damage to T-34 tanks undergoing repairs at repair bases No. 1 and 2 in Moscow showed that out of 109 hits on the upper frontal part of the tank, 89% were safe, with dangerous hits occurring on guns with a caliber of 75 mm and higher. Of course, with the advent of the Germans large number 75-mm anti-tank and tank guns, the situation became more complicated. 75-mm shells were normalized (turned at right angles to the armor when hit), penetrating the inclined armor of the forehead of the T-34 hull already at a distance of 1200 m. 88-mm anti-aircraft gun shells and cumulative ammunition were equally insensitive to the slope of the armor. However, the share of 50-mm guns in the Wehrmacht until the Battle of Kursk was significant, and faith in the sloping armor of the “thirty-four” was largely justified.
Any noticeable advantages over the T-34 armor were noted by tankers only in the armor protection of British tanks, “... if a blank pierced the turret, then the commander of the English tank and the gunner could remain alive, since practically no fragments were formed, but in the “thirty-four” the armor crumbled, and those in the tower had little chance of survival,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov.
This was due to the exceptionally high nickel content in the armor of the British Matilda and Valentine tanks. If the Soviet 45-mm high-hardness armor contained 1.0 - 1.5% nickel, then the medium-hard armor of British tanks contained 3.0 - 3.5% nickel, which ensured a slightly higher viscosity of the latter. At the same time, no modifications to the protection of the T-34 tanks were made by the crews in the units. Just before Berlin operation, according to Lieutenant Colonel Anatoly Petrovich Schwebig, who was the deputy brigade commander of the 12th Guards Tank Corps for technical matters, screens made of metal bed nets were welded onto the tanks to protect against faust cartridges. Known cases Screening of "thirty-fours" is the fruit of the creativity of repair shops and manufacturing plants. The same can be said about painting tanks. The tanks arrived from the factory painted green inside and out. When preparing the tank for winter, the task of the deputy commanders of tank units for technical matters included painting the tanks with whitewash. The exception was the winter of 1944/45, when the war raged across Europe. None of the veterans remembers camouflage being applied to the tanks.
An even more obvious and confidence-inspiring design feature of the T-34 was the diesel engine. Most of those trained as a driver, radio operator or even commander of a T-34 tank in peaceful life One way or another we encountered fuel, at least gasoline. They knew well from personal experience that gasoline is volatile, flammable and burns with a bright flame. Quite obvious experiments with gasoline were used by the engineers whose hands created the T-34. “At the height of the dispute, designer Nikolai Kucherenko in the factory yard used not the most scientific, but a clear example of the advantages of the new fuel. He took a lit torch and brought it to a bucket of gasoline - the bucket was instantly engulfed in flames. Then the same torch was lowered into a bucket of diesel fuel - the flame went out, as if in water...” This experiment was projected onto the effect of a projectile hitting a tank, capable of igniting the fuel or even its vapors inside the vehicle. Accordingly, T-34 crew members treated enemy tanks to some extent with contempt. “They had a gasoline engine. This is also a big drawback,” recalls gunner-radio operator senior sergeant Pyotr Ilyich Kirichenko. The same attitude was towards tanks supplied under Lend-Lease (“Very many died because a bullet hit them, and there was a gasoline engine and nonsense armor,” recalls the tank commander, junior lieutenant Yuri Maksovich Polyanovsky), and Soviet tanks and a self-propelled gun equipped with a carburetor engine (“Once SU-76s came to our battalion. They had gasoline engines - a real lighter... They all burned out in the very first battles...” recalls V.P. Bryukhov). The presence of a diesel engine in the engine compartment of the tank gave the crews confidence that they had much less chance of suffering a terrible death from fire than the enemy, whose tanks were filled with hundreds of liters of volatile and flammable gasoline. The proximity to large volumes of fuel (the tankers had to estimate the number of buckets of it each time they refueled the tank) was masked by the thought that it would be more difficult for anti-tank gun shells to set it on fire, and in the event of a fire, the tankers would have enough time to jump out of the tank.
However, in this case, the direct projection of experiments with a bucket onto tanks was not entirely justified. Moreover, statistically, tanks with diesel engines had no advantages in fire safety compared to vehicles with carburetor engines. According to statistics from October 1942, diesel T-34s burned even slightly more often than T-70 tanks fueled with aviation gasoline (23% versus 19%). Engineers at the NIIBT test site in Kubinka in 1943 came to a conclusion that was directly opposite to the everyday assessment of the ignition potential of various types of fuel. “The Germans’ use of a carburetor engine rather than a diesel engine on the new tank, released in 1942, can be explained by: […] the very significant percentage of fires in tanks with diesel engines in combat conditions and their lack of significant advantages over carburetor engines in this regard, especially with the proper design of the latter and the availability of reliable automatic fire extinguishers.” By bringing a torch to a bucket of gasoline, designer Kucherenko ignited vapors of volatile fuel. There were no vapors above the layer of diesel fuel in the bucket favorable for igniting with a torch. But this fact did not mean that diesel fuel will not flare up from a much more powerful means of ignition - a projectile hit. Therefore, placing fuel tanks in the fighting compartment of the T-34 tank did not at all increase the fire safety of the T-34 in comparison with its peers, whose tanks were located in the rear of the hull and were hit much less frequently. V.P. Bryukhov confirms what was said: “When does the tank catch fire? When a projectile hits a fuel tank. And it burns when there is a lot of fuel. And at the end of the fighting there is no fuel, and the tank hardly burns.”
Tankers considered the only advantage of German tank engines over the T-34 engine to be less noise. “The gasoline engine, on the one hand, is flammable, and on the other hand, it is quiet. T-34, it not only roars, but also clacks its tracks,” recalls the tank commander, junior lieutenant Arsenty Konstantinovich Rodkin.
The power plant of the T-34 tank initially did not provide for the installation of mufflers on the exhaust pipes. They were placed at the rear of the tank without any sound-absorbing devices, rumbling with the exhaust of a 12-cylinder engine. In addition to the noise, the tank's powerful engine kicked up dust with its muffler-less exhaust. “The T-34 raises terrible dust because the exhaust pipes are directed downward,” recalls A.K. Rodkin.
The designers of the T-34 tank gave their brainchild two features that distinguished it from the combat vehicles of allies and enemies. These features of the tank increased the crew's confidence in their weapon. People went into battle with pride in the equipment entrusted to them. This was much more important than the actual effect of the slope of the armor or the real fire hazard of a tank with a diesel engine.
Tanks appeared as a means of protecting the crews of machine guns and guns from enemy fire. The balance between tank protection and anti-tank artillery capabilities is quite precarious, artillery is constantly being improved, and the newest tank cannot feel safe on the battlefield. Powerful anti-aircraft and hull guns make this balance even more precarious. Therefore, sooner or later a situation arises when a shell that hits the tank penetrates the armor and turns the steel box into hell.
Good tanks solved this problem even after death, receiving one or more hits, opening the way to salvation for people within themselves. The driver's hatch in the upper frontal part of the T-34 hull, unusual for tanks from other countries, turned out to be quite convenient in practice for leaving the vehicle in critical situations. Driver mechanic Sergeant Semyon Lvovich Aria recalls:
“The hatch was smooth, with rounded edges, and getting in and out of it was not difficult. Moreover, when you got up from the driver’s seat, you were already leaning out almost up to your waist.” Another advantage of the driver’s hatch of the T-34 tank was the ability to fix it in several intermediate relatively “open” and “closed” positions. The hatch mechanism was quite simple. To facilitate opening, the heavy cast hatch (60 mm thick) was supported by a spring, the rod of which was a gear rack. By moving the stopper from tooth to tooth of the rack, it was possible to firmly fix the hatch without fear of it falling off on potholes in the road or battlefield. Driver mechanics readily used this mechanism and preferred to keep the hatch ajar. “When possible, it’s always better with an open hatch,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov. His words are confirmed by the company commander, senior lieutenant Arkady Vasilyevich Maryevsky: “The mechanic’s hatch is always open to the palm of his hand, firstly, everything is visible, and secondly, the air flow with the top hatch open ventilates the fighting compartment.” This ensured a good overview and the ability to quickly leave the vehicle if a projectile hit it. In general, the mechanic was, according to the tankers, in the most advantageous position. “The mechanic had the greatest chance of surviving. He sat low, there was sloping armor in front of him,” recalls the platoon commander, Lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Bodnar; according to P.I. Kirichenko: “The lower part of the hull, as a rule, is hidden behind the folds of the terrain, it is difficult to get into. And this one rises above the ground. Mostly they fell into it. And more people died who were sitting in the tower than those below.” It should be noted here that we are talking about hits that are dangerous for the tank. Statistically, in the initial period of the war, most of the hits fell on the tank hull. According to the NII-48 report mentioned above, the hull accounted for 81% of hits, and the turret - 19%. However, more than half total number the hits were safe (non-through): 89% of hits in the upper frontal part, 66% of hits in the lower frontal part and about 40% of hits in the side did not lead to through holes. Moreover, of the hits on board, 42% of the total number occurred in the engine and transmission compartments, the damage to which was safe for the crew. The tower, on the contrary, was relatively easy to break through. The less durable cast armor of the turret offered little resistance even to 37-mm automatic anti-aircraft gun shells. The situation was worsened by the fact that the T-34's turret was being hit heavy guns with a high line of fire, such as 88 mm anti-aircraft guns, as well as hits from long-barreled 75 mm and 50 mm guns of German tanks. The terrain screen that the tanker was talking about was about one meter in the European theater of operations. Half of this meter is ground clearance, the rest covers about a third of the height of the T-34 tank’s hull. Most of The upper frontal part of the hull is no longer covered by the terrain screen.
If the driver's hatch is unanimously assessed by veterans as convenient, then tankers are equally unanimous in their negative assessment of the turret hatch of early T-34 tanks with an oval turret, nicknamed the “pie” for its characteristic shape. V.P. Bryukhov says about him: “The big hatch is bad. It is heavy and hard to open. If it jams, then that’s it, no one will jump out.” He is echoed by the tank commander, Lieutenant Nikolai Evdokimovich Glukhov: “The large hatch is very inconvenient. Very heavy". The combination of hatches into one for two crew members sitting next to each other, a gunner and a loader, was uncharacteristic of the world tank building industry. Its appearance on the T-34 was caused not by tactical, but by technological considerations related to installation in the tank powerful weapon. The turret of the predecessor of the T-34 on the assembly line of the Kharkov plant - the BT-7 tank - was equipped with two hatches, one for each of the crew members located in the turret. For its characteristic appearance with the hatches open, the BT-7 was nicknamed “Mickey Mouse” by the Germans. The Thirty-Fours inherited a lot from the BT, but the tank received a 76-mm gun instead of a 45-mm cannon, and the design of the tanks in the fighting compartment of the hull changed. The need to dismantle the tanks and massive cradle of the 76-mm gun during repairs forced the designers to combine two turret hatches into one. The body of the T-34 gun with recoil devices was removed through a bolted cover in the rear niche of the turret, and the cradle with a serrated vertical aiming sector was removed through the turret hatch. Through the same hatch, fuel tanks mounted in the fenders of the T-34 tank hull were also removed. All these difficulties were caused by the side walls of the turret sloping towards the gun mantlet. The T-34 gun cradle was wider and higher than the embrasure in the front part of the turret and could only be removed backwards. The Germans removed the guns of their tanks along with its mask (almost equal in width to the width of the turret) forward. It must be said here that the designers of the T-34 paid a lot of attention to the possibility of repairing the tank by the crew. Even... ports for firing personal weapons on the sides and rear of the turret were adapted for this task. The port plugs were removed and a small assembly crane was installed into the holes in the 45 mm armor to remove the engine or transmission. The Germans had devices on the tower for mounting such a “pocket” crane - a “piltse” - only appeared in the final period of the war.
One should not think that when installing a large hatch, the designers of the T-34 did not take into account the needs of the crew at all. In the USSR before the war, it was believed that a large hatch would facilitate the evacuation of wounded crew members from the tank. However, combat experience and tankers’ complaints about the heavy turret hatch forced A. A. Morozov’s team to switch to two turret hatches during the next modernization of the tank. The hexagonal tower, nicknamed the “nut,” again received “Mickey Mouse ears” - two round hatches. Such turrets were installed on T-34 tanks produced in the Urals (ChTZ in Chelyabinsk, UZTM in Sverdlovsk and UVZ in Nizhny Tagil) since the fall of 1942. The Krasnoye Sormovo plant in Gorky continued to produce tanks with the “pie” until the spring of 1943. The problem of removing tanks on tanks with a “nut” was solved using a removable armor jumper between the commander’s and gunner’s hatches. The gun began to be removed according to the method proposed to simplify the production of a cast turret back in 1942 at plant No. 112 "Krasnoe Sormovo" - rear end The turret was lifted by hoists from the shoulder strap, and the gun was pushed into the gap formed between the hull and the turret.
The tankers, in order to avoid the situation of “searching for the latch with bare hands,” preferred not to lock the hatch, securing it... with a trouser belt. A.V. Bodnar recalls: “When I went on the attack, the hatch was closed, but not latched. I hooked one end of the trouser belt to the hatch latch, and wrapped the other a couple of times around the hook that held the ammunition on the turret, so that if something happened, you hit your head, the belt would come off and you would jump out.” The same techniques were used by commanders of T-34 tanks with a commander's cupola. “On the commander’s cupola there was a double-leaf hatch, locked with two latches on springs. They even healthy man It was difficult to open it, but a wounded man definitely couldn’t. We removed these springs, leaving the latches. In general, we tried to keep the hatch open - it would be easier to jump out,” recalls A. S. Burtsev. Note that not a single design bureau, either before or after the war, used the achievements of soldiers’ ingenuity in one form or another. Tanks were still equipped with latched hatches in the turret and hull, which the crews preferred to keep open in battle.
The daily service of the "thirty-four" crew was replete with situations when the same load fell on the crew members and each of them performed simple but monotonous operations, not much different from the actions of a neighbor, such as opening a trench or refueling a tank with fuel and shells. However, the battle and march were immediately distinguished from those forming in front of the tank with the command “To the car!” people in overalls of two crew members who had primary responsibility for the tank. The first was the commander of the vehicle, who, in addition to controlling the battle on the early T-34s, acted as a gunner: “If you are the commander of the T-34-76 tank, then you shoot yourself, you command by radio, you do everything yourself” (V.P. Bryukhov).
The second person in the crew who was responsible for lion's share The driver was responsible for the tank, and therefore for the lives of his comrades in battle. The commanders of tanks and tank units rated the driver in battle very highly. “... An experienced driver is half the success,” recalls N. E. Glukhov.
This rule knew no exceptions. “The driver-mechanic Grigory Ivanovich Kryukov was 10 years older than me. Before the war he worked as a driver and had already fought at Leningrad. Was injured. He felt the tank perfectly. I believe that it was only thanks to him that we survived the first battles,” recalls tank commander Lieutenant Georgy Nikolaevich Krivov.
The special position of the driver in the “thirty-four” was due to relatively complex control, requiring experience and physical strength. To the greatest extent, this applied to the T-34 tanks of the first half of the war, which had a four-speed gearbox, which required the gears to move relative to each other with the engagement of the required pair of gears on the drive and driven shafts. Changing gears in such a box was very difficult and required great physical strength. A. V. Maryevsky recalls: “You couldn’t turn on the gear shift lever with one hand, you had to help yourself with your knee.” To make gear shifting easier, boxes were developed with gears that were constantly in mesh. Changing the gear ratio was no longer carried out by moving gears, but by moving small cam clutches sitting on the shafts. They moved along the shaft on splines and engaged with it the required pair of gears that were already in mesh from the moment the gearbox was assembled. For example, the pre-war Soviet motorcycles L-300 and AM-600 had a gearbox of this type, as well as the M-72 motorcycle produced since 1941, a licensed copy of the German BMW R71. The next step towards improving the transmission was the introduction of synchronizers into the gearbox. These are devices that equalize the speeds of cam clutches and gears with which they engage when a particular gear is engaged. Shortly before downshifting or upshifting, the clutch engaged with the gear by friction. So it gradually began to rotate at the same speed as the selected gear, and when the gear was engaged, the clutch between them was carried out silently and without shock. An example of a gearbox with synchronizers is the German Maybach type gearbox. T-III tanks and T-IV. Even more advanced were the so-called planetary gearboxes of Czech-made tanks and Matilda tanks. It is not surprising that the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, Marshal S.K. Timoshenko, on November 6, 1940, based on the results of tests of the first T-34, sent a letter to the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars, which, in particular, said: “In the first half of 1941, factories should develop and prepare planetary transmission for T-34 and KV for serial production. This will increase average speed tanks and make it easier to control.” They didn’t have time to do any of this before the war, and in the first years of the war the T-34s fought with the least advanced gearbox that existed at that time. “Thirty-fours” with a four-speed gearbox required very well-trained driver mechanics. “If the driver is not trained, then instead of the first gear he can put in the fourth, because it is also backward, or instead of the second - the third, which will lead to a breakdown of the gearbox. You need to bring the switching skill to automaticity so that you can switch with your eyes closed,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. In addition to difficulties in changing gears, the four-speed gearbox was characterized as weak and unreliable, often breaking down. The gear teeth colliding during switching broke, and even ruptures of the gearbox housing were noted. Engineers from the NIIBT test site in Kubinka, in a lengthy 1942 report on joint testing of domestic, captured and Lend-Lease equipment, gave the T-34 gearbox early episodes just a derogatory assessment: “Gearboxes domestic tanks, especially the T-34 and KB, do not fully satisfy the requirements for modern combat vehicles, being inferior to the gearboxes of both allied and enemy tanks, and are at least several years behind the development of tank building technology.” Based on the results of these and other reports on the shortcomings of the T-34, the State Defense Committee issued a decree of June 5, 1942, “On improving the quality of T-34 tanks.” As part of the implementation of this decree, by the beginning of 1943, the design department of plant No. 183 (the Kharkov plant evacuated to the Urals) developed a five-speed gearbox with constant gear meshing, which tankers who fought on the T-34 speak with such respect.
The constant engagement of gears and the introduction of another gear made it much easier to control the tank, and the gunner-radio operator no longer had to pick up and pull the lever together with the driver to change gear.
Another element of the T-34 transmission, which made the combat vehicle dependent on the training of the driver, was the main clutch that connected the gearbox to the engine. This is how A.V. Bodnar, who trained driver mechanics on the T-34 after being wounded, describes the situation: “Very much depended on how well the main clutch was adjusted for freewheeling and disengagement and how well the driver could use it when starts moving. The last third of the pedal must be released slowly so as not to rip, because if it rips, the car will slip and the clutch will warp.” The main part of the main dry friction clutch of the T-34 tank was a package of 8 driving and 10 driven disks (later, as part of the improvement of the tank’s transmission, it received 11 driving and 11 driven disks), pressed against each other by springs. Incorrect disengagement of the clutch with friction of the discs against each other, their heating and warping could lead to failure of the tank. Such a breakdown was called “burning the clutch,” although formally there were no flammable objects in it. While ahead of other countries in putting into practice such solutions as the 76-mm long-barreled gun and inclined armor, the T-34 tank still noticeably lagged behind Germany and other countries in the design of the transmission and turning mechanisms. On German tanks, which were the same age as the T-34, the main clutch had discs running in oil. This made it possible to more effectively remove heat from the rubbing discs and made it much easier to turn the clutch on and off. The situation was somewhat improved by the servomechanism that was equipped with the main clutch release pedal, based on experience combat use T-34 in the initial period of the war. The design of the mechanism, despite the “servo” prefix that inspires some reverence, was quite simple. The clutch pedal was held by a spring, which, in the process of pressing the pedal, passed the dead center and changed the direction of the force. When the tanker pressed the pedal, the spring resisted pressure. At a certain moment, on the contrary, she began to help and pulled the pedal towards herself, ensuring the desired speed of movement of the scenes. Before the introduction of these simple but necessary elements, the work of the second tank crew in the hierarchy was very difficult. “During the long march, the driver lost two or three kilograms in weight. I was all exhausted. This, of course, was very difficult,” recalls P.I. Kirichenko. If on the march the driver’s mistakes could lead to a delay in travel due to repairs of one or another duration, in as a last resort to abandon the tank by the crew, then in battle the failure of the T-34 transmission due to driver errors could lead to fatal consequences. On the contrary, the skill of the driver and vigorous maneuvering could ensure the survival of the crew under heavy fire.
The development of the design of the T-34 tank during the war went primarily in the direction of improving the transmission. In the 1942 report of engineers from the NIIBT test site in Kubinka, quoted above, there were the following words: “In Lately in connection with the strengthening of anti-tank equipment, maneuverability is at least no less a guarantee of the vehicle’s invulnerability than powerful armor. The combination of good vehicle armor and the speed of its maneuver is the main means of protecting a modern combat vehicle from anti-tank artillery fire.” The advantage in armor protection lost by the final period of the war was compensated by the improvement in the driving performance of the Thirty-Four. The tank began to move faster both on the march and on the battlefield, and maneuver better. To the two features that tankers believed in (the slope of the armor and the diesel engine), a third was added - speed. A.K. Rodkin, who fought on the T-34-85 tank at the end of the war, formulated it this way: “The tank crews had this saying: “Armor is garbage, but our tanks are fast.” We had an advantage in speed. The Germans had gasoline tanks, but their speed was not very high.”
The first task of the 76.2 mm F-34 tank gun was “to destroy tanks and other mechanized enemy vehicles.” Veteran tankers unanimously call German tanks the main and most serious enemy. In the initial period of the war, the T-34 crews confidently went into battle with any German tanks, rightly believing that a powerful gun and reliable armor protection would ensure success in battle. The appearance of the Tigers and Panthers on the battlefield changed the situation to the opposite. Now German tanks received a “long arm”, allowing them to fight without worrying about camouflage. “Taking advantage of the fact that we have 76-mm cannons, which can take their armor head-on only from 500 meters, they stood in the open,” recalls platoon commander Lieutenant Nikolai Yakovlevich Zheleznoye. Even sub-caliber shells for the 76-mm cannon did not provide advantages in a duel of this kind, since they penetrated only 90 mm of homogeneous armor at a distance of 500 meters, while frontal armor T-VIH "Tiger" had a thickness of 102 mm. The transition to an 85 mm gun immediately changed the situation, allowing Soviet tankers to fight new German tanks at distances of over a kilometer. “Well, when the T-34-85 appeared, it was already possible to go one-on-one,” recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov. A powerful 85-mm gun allowed the T-34 crews to fight with their old friends T-IV at a distance of 1200 - 1300 m. We can find an example of such a battle on the Sandomierz bridgehead in the summer of 1944 in the memoirs of N. Ya. Zheleznov. The first T-34 tanks with the 85-mm D-5T gun rolled off the assembly line of plant No. 112 "Krasnoe Sormovo" in January 1944. Mass production of the T-34-85 with the 85-mm ZIS-S-53 gun began in March 1944, when tanks of a new type were built at the flagship of the Soviet tank building during the war, plant No. 183 in Nizhny Tagil. Despite a certain rush to re-equip the tank with an 85-mm gun, the 85-mm gun, which was included in the mass production, was considered reliable by the crews and did not cause any complaints.
Vertical guidance of the T-34's gun was carried out manually, and an electric drive was introduced to rotate the turret from the very beginning of the tank's production. However, tankers in battle preferred to rotate the turret manually. “The hands lie crosswise on the mechanisms for turning the turret and aiming the gun. The turret could be turned by an electric motor, but in battle you forget about it. You turn the handle,” recalls G. N. Krivov. This is easy to explain. On the T-34-85, which G.N. Krivov talks about, the manual rotation handle for the turret simultaneously served as a lever for the electric drive. To switch from a manual drive to an electric one, it was necessary to turn the turret rotation handle vertically and move it back and forth, forcing the engine to rotate the turret in the desired direction. In the heat of battle, this was forgotten, and the handle was used only for manual rotation. In addition, as V.P. Bryukhov recalls: “You need to know how to use an electric turn, otherwise you’ll jerk, and then you have to turn it further.”
The only inconvenience caused by the introduction of the 85 mm gun was the need to carefully ensure that the long barrel did not touch the ground on potholes in the road or battlefield. “The T-34-85 has a barrel four or more meters long. In the slightest ditch, the tank can peck and grab the ground with its barrel. If you shoot after this, the trunk opens with petals in different directions, like a flower,” recalls A.K. Rodkin. The total barrel length of the 1944 model 85-mm tank gun was more than four meters, 4645 mm. The appearance of the 85-mm gun and new rounds for it also led to the fact that the tank stopped exploding with the turret falling off, “... they (shells. -A.M.) do not detonate, but explode one by one. On the T-34-76, if one shell explodes, then the entire ammunition rack detonates,” says A.K. Rodkin. This to some extent increased the chances of survival for the T-34 crew members, and from photographs and newsreels of the war the picture that sometimes flashed in the footage of 1941 - 1943 disappeared - a T-34 with the turret lying next to the tank or turned upside down after falling back onto the tank .
If German tanks were the most dangerous enemy of the T-34s, then the T-34s themselves were effective means defeating not only armored vehicles, but also guns and manpower of the enemy, hindering the advance of their infantry. Most of the tankers whose memories are given in the book have to their credit best case scenario several units of enemy armored vehicles, but at the same time the number of enemy infantrymen shot from a cannon and machine gun is in the tens and hundreds of people. The ammunition load of the T-34 tanks consisted mainly of high-explosive fragmentation shells. Standard ammunition of the "thirty-four" with a "nut" turret in 1942 - 1944. consisted of 100 rounds, including 75 high-explosive fragmentation and 25 armor-piercing (of which 4 sub-caliber since 1943). The standard ammunition of the T-34-85 tank included 36 high-explosive fragmentation rounds, 14 armor-piercing rounds and 5 sub-caliber rounds. The balance between armor-piercing and high-explosive fragmentation shells largely reflects the conditions in which the T-34 fought during the attack. Under heavy artillery fire, tankers in most cases had little time for aimed shooting and fired on the move and in short stops, counting on suppressing the enemy with a mass of shots or hitting the target with several shells. G. N. Krivov recalls: “Experienced guys who have already been in battle tell us: “Never stop. Strike on the move. Heaven and earth, where the projectile flies - hit, press.” You asked how many shells I fired in the first battle? Half the ammunition. Beat, beat..."
As often happens, practice suggested techniques not provided for by any charters or methodological manuals. A typical example is the use of the clang of a closing bolt as an internal alarm in a tank. V.P. Bryukhov says: “When the crew is well-coordinated, the mechanic is strong, he himself hears what kind of projectile is being driven, the click of the bolt wedge, it is also heavy, more than two pounds...” The guns mounted on the T-34 tank were equipped with semi-automatic opening shutter This system worked as follows. When fired, the gun rolled back; after absorbing the recoil energy, the knurl returned the body of the gun to its original position. Just before the return, the lever of the shutter mechanism ran into the copier on the gun carriage, and the wedge went down, the ejector legs associated with it knocked the empty shell casing out of the breech. The loader sent the next projectile, which with its mass knocked down the bolt wedge, which was held on the ejector legs. The heavy part, under the influence of powerful springs sharply returning to its original position, produced a fairly sharp sound that covered the roar of the engine, the clanging of the chassis and the sounds of combat. Hearing the clanging of the shutter closing, the driver, without waiting for the command “Short!”, chose a fairly flat area of terrain for a short stop and an aimed shot. The location of the ammunition in the tank did not cause any inconvenience to the loaders. Shells could be taken both from stowage in the turret and from “suitcases” on the floor of the fighting compartment.
The target that appeared in the crosshairs of the sight was not always worthy of being fired from a gun. The commander of the T-34-76 or the gunner of the T-34-85 fired at the German infantrymen running or caught in the open space from a machine gun coaxial with the cannon. The front-mounted machine gun installed in the hull could only be used effectively in close combat, when the tank, immobilized for one reason or another, was surrounded by enemy infantry with grenades and Molotov cocktails. “This is a melee weapon when the tank is hit and stops. The Germans are approaching, and you can mow them down, be healthy,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov. While on the move, it was almost impossible to shoot from a course machine gun, since the telescopic sight of the machine gun provided negligible opportunities for observation and aiming. “And I, in fact, didn’t have any sight. I have such a hole there, you can’t see a damn thing through it,” recalls P.I. Kirichenko. Perhaps the most effective machine gun was used when it was removed from the ball mount and used for firing from a bipod outside the tank. “And it began. They pulled out the frontal machine gun - they came at us from the rear. The tower was turned around. The machine gunner is with me. We placed a machine gun on the parapet and fired,” recalls Nikolai Nikolaevich Kuzmichev. In fact, the tank received a machine gun, which could be used by the crew as the most effective personal weapon.
Installing a radio on the T-34-85 tank in the turret next to the tank commander was supposed to finally turn the gunner-radio operator into the most useless member of the tank crew, the “passenger”. The ammunition load of the machine guns of the T-34-85 tank, compared to earlier tanks, was more than halved, to 31 discs. However, the realities of the final period of the war, when the German infantry acquired Faust cartridges, on the contrary, increased the usefulness of the machine gun shooter. “By the end of the war, he became needed, protecting against the Faustians, clearing the way. So what, what is hard to see, sometimes the mechanic would tell him. If you want to see, you will see,” recalls A.K. Rodkin.
In such a situation, the space freed up after moving the radio into the tower was used to place ammunition. Most (27 out of 31) discs for the DT machine gun in the T-34-85 were placed in the control compartment, next to the shooter, who became the main consumer of machine gun cartridges.
In general, the appearance of Faust cartridges increased the role of the “thirty-four” small arms. Even shooting at Faustniks with a pistol with the hatch open began to be practiced. The standard personal weapons of the crews were TT pistols, revolvers, captured pistols and one PPSh submachine gun, for which a place was provided in the equipment stowage in the tank. The submachine gun was used by crews when leaving the tank and in battle in the city, when the elevation angle of the gun and machine guns was not enough.
As German anti-tank artillery strengthened, visibility became an increasingly important component of tank survivability. The difficulties that the commander and driver of the T-34 tank experienced in their combat work were largely due to the meager capabilities of observing the battlefield. The first "thirty-fours" had mirrored periscopes on the driver and in the tank's turret. Such a device was a box with mirrors mounted at an angle at the top and bottom, and the mirrors were not glass (they could crack from shell impacts), but made of polished steel. The image quality in such a periscope is not difficult to imagine. The same mirrors were in the periscopes on the sides of the turret, which were one of the main means of observing the battlefield for the tank commander. In the above-quoted letter from S.K. Timoshenko dated November 6, 1940, there are the following words: “The driver and radio operator’s viewing devices should be replaced with more modern ones.” During the first year of the war, tankers fought with mirrors; later, instead of mirrors, prismatic observation devices were installed, i.e., a solid glass prism ran the entire height of the periscope. At the same time, limited visibility, despite the improvement in the characteristics of the periscopes themselves, often forced T-34 drivers to drive with the hatches open. “The triplexes on the driver’s hatch were completely ugly. They were made of disgusting yellow or green plexiglass, which gave a completely distorted, wavy image. It was impossible to disassemble anything through such a triplex, especially in a jumping tank. Therefore, the war was waged with the hatches slightly open,” recalls S. L. Ariya. A. V. Maryevsky also agrees with him, also pointing out that the driver’s triplexes were easily splashed with mud.
In the fall of 1942, NII-48 specialists, based on the results of an analysis of damage to armor protection, made the following conclusion: “A significant percentage of dangerous damage to T-34 tanks was on the side parts, and not on the frontal parts (out of 432 hits to the hull of the tanks studied, 270 were on its sides. - A.I.) can be explained either by poor familiarity of tank teams with tactical characteristics their armor protection, or poor visibility from them, due to which the crew cannot timely detect the firing point and turn the tank into a position that is least dangerous for breaking through its armor.
Familiarity needs to be improved tank crews with the tactical characteristics of the armor of their vehicles and provide the best overview of them(emphasis added) - A.I.)".
The task of providing better review was resolved in several stages. Polished steel “mirrors” were also removed from the commander’s and loader’s observation devices. The periscopes on the cheekbones of the T-34 turret were replaced by slits with blocks of glass to protect against fragments. This happened during the transition to the “nut” turret in the fall of 1942. New devices allowed the crew to organize all-round monitoring of the situation: “The driver is watching forward and to the left. You, commander, try to observe all around. And the radio operator and loader are more on the right” (V.P. Bryukhov). The T-34-85 was equipped with MK-4 surveillance devices for the gunner and loader. Simultaneous observation of several directions made it possible to timely notice danger and adequately respond to it with fire or maneuver.
The problem that took the longest to solve was providing a good view for the tank commander. The point about introducing a commander’s cupola on the T-34, which was already present in S.K. Timoshenko’s letter in 1940, was implemented almost two years after the start of the war. After much experimentation with attempts to squeeze the freed tank commander into the “nut” turret, turrets on the T-34 began to be installed only in the summer of 1943. The commander still had the function of a gunner, but now he could raise his head from the sight eyepiece and look around. The main advantage of the turret was the possibility of all-round visibility. “The commander’s cupola rotated around, the commander saw everything and, without firing, could control the fire of his tank and maintain communication with others,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. To be precise, it was not the turret itself that rotated, but its roof with a periscope observation device. Before this, in 1941 - 1942, the tank commander, in addition to the “mirror” on the cheekbone of the turret, had a periscope, formally called a periscope sight. By rotating its vernier, the commander could provide himself with a view of the battlefield, but a very limited one. “In the spring of 1942, there was a commander’s panorama on the KB and the T-34s. I could rotate it and see everything around, but it was still a very small sector,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. The commander of the T-34-85 tank with the ZIS-S-53 cannon, relieved of his duties as a gunner, received, in addition to the commander's cupola with slits along the perimeter, his own prismatic periscope rotating in the hatch - MK-4, which even allowed him to look behind him. But among tankers there is also the following opinion: “I didn’t use the commander’s cupola. I always kept the hatch open. Because those who closed them burned down. We didn’t have time to jump out,” recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov.
Without exception, all tankers surveyed admire the sights of German tank guns. As an example, let us cite the memoirs of V.P. Bryukhov: “We have always noted the high-quality Zeiss optics of sights. And until the end of the war it was of high quality. We didn't have such optics. The sights themselves were more convenient than ours. We have a reticle in the form of a triangle, and to the right and left of it are marks. They had these divisions, corrections for wind, for range, and something else.” Here it must be said that in terms of information there was no fundamental difference between the Soviet and German telescopic sights of the gun. The gunner saw the aiming mark and, on both sides of it, “fences” for angular velocity corrections. The Soviet and German sights had a range correction, they just introduced it different ways. In the German sight, the gunner rotated the pointer, aligning it opposite the radial distance scale. Each type of projectile had its own sector. Soviet tank builders passed this stage in the 1930s; the sight of the three-turret T-28 tank had a similar design. In the “thirty-four” the distance was set by a sight thread moving along vertically located range scales. So, functionally, the Soviet and German sights did not differ. The difference was in the quality of the optics itself, which especially deteriorated in 1942 due to the evacuation of the Izyum optical glass plant. Among the real disadvantages of the telescopic sights of the early “thirty-fours” is their alignment with the gun barrel. Pointing the gun vertically, the tanker was forced to rise or fall in his place, keeping his eyes on the eyepiece of the sight moving with the gun. Later on the T-34-85, a “breakable” sight, characteristic of German tanks, was introduced, the eyepiece of which was fixed, and the lens followed the gun barrel due to a hinge on the same axis with the gun trunnions.
Shortcomings in the design of observation devices had a negative impact on the habitability of the tank. The need to keep the driver's hatch open forced the latter to sit behind the levers, “also taking on the chest the flow of freezing wind sucked in by the fan turbine roaring behind him” (S. L. Aria). In this case, the “turbine” was a fan on the engine shaft that sucked air from the fighting compartment through a flimsy engine bulkhead.
A typical complaint about Soviet-made military equipment from both foreign and domestic specialists was the Spartan environment inside the vehicle. “As a disadvantage, we can highlight the complete lack of comfort for the crew. I climbed into American and British tanks. There the crew was in more comfortable conditions: the inside of the tanks was painted with light paint, the seats were semi-soft with armrests. There was none of this on the T-34,” recalls S. L. Ariya.
There really were no armrests on the crew seats in the turret of the T-34-76 and T-34-85. They were only in the seats of the driver and radio operator. However, the armrests themselves on the crew seats were a detail characteristic primarily of American technology. Neither English nor German tanks (with the exception of the Tiger) had crew seats in the turret with armrests.
But there were also real design flaws. One of the problems faced by the creators of tanks in the 1940s was the penetration of gunpowder gases into the tank from increasingly powerful guns. After the shot, the bolt opened, ejected the cartridge case, and gases from the gun barrel and the ejected cartridge case entered the fighting compartment of the vehicle. “... You shout: “armor-piercing!”, “fragmentation!” You look, and he (loader. -A.M.) lies on the ammunition rack. He got burned by the powder gases and lost consciousness. When the battle was tough, rarely did anyone survive it. Still, you get burned,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov.
Electric exhaust fans were used to remove powder gases and ventilate the fighting compartment. The first T-34s inherited from the BT tank one fan in the front of the turret. It looked appropriate in a turret with a 45 mm gun, since it was located almost above the breech of the gun. In the T-34 turret, the fan was not above the breech, which was smoking after the shot, but above the gun barrel. Its effectiveness in this regard was questionable. But in 1942, at the peak of the shortage of components, the tank lost even this - T-34s left the factories with empty turret caps, there were simply no fans.
During the modernization of the tank with the installation of a “nut” turret, the fan was moved to the rear of the turret, closer to the area where powder gases accumulated. The T-34-85 tank already received two fans in the rear of the turret; the larger caliber of the gun required intensive ventilation of the fighting compartment. But during the intense battle, the fans did not help. The problem of protecting the crew from powder gases was partially solved by blowing the barrel with compressed air (Panther), but it was impossible to blow through the cartridge case, which spreads choking smoke. According to the memoirs of G.N. Krivov, experienced tank crews advised to immediately throw the cartridge case through the loader’s hatch. The problem was radically solved only after the war, when an ejector was introduced into the design of the guns, which “pumped out” gases from the gun barrel after the shot, even before the automatic shutter was opened.
The T-34 tank was in many ways a revolutionary design, and like any transitional model, it combined new items and forced, soon outdated, solutions. One of these decisions was the introduction of a radio operator gunner into the crew. The main function of the tankman sitting at the ineffective machine gun was to maintain the tank radio station. On early "thirty-fours" the radio station was installed on the right side of the control compartment, next to the gunner-radio operator. The need to keep a person on the crew involved in setting up and maintaining the functionality of the radio was a consequence of the imperfection of communications technology in the first half of the war. The point was not that it was necessary to work with a key: the Soviet tank radio stations installed on the T-34 did not have a telegraph mode and could not transmit dashes and dots in Morse code. The gunner-radio operator was introduced because the main consumer of information from neighboring vehicles and from higher levels of control, the tank commander, was simply not able to carry out maintenance of the radio. “The station was unreliable. The radio operator is a specialist, but the commander is not such a specialist. In addition, when the armor was hit, the wave was disrupted and the lamps failed,” recalls V.P. Bryukhov. It should be added that the commander of the T-34 with a 76-mm cannon combined the functions of a tank commander and gunner and was too heavily loaded to deal with even a simple and convenient radio station. The allocation of a separate person to work with the walkie-talkie was also typical for other countries that participated in the Second World War. For example, on French tank“Somua S-35” the commander performed the functions of gunner, loader and tank commander, but at the same time there was a radio operator, freed even from servicing the machine gun.
In the initial period of the war, the “thirty-four” were equipped with 71-TK-Z radio stations, and not all vehicles. Last fact should not be confusing, this situation was common in the Wehrmacht, whose radio coverage is usually greatly exaggerated. In reality, unit commanders from the platoon and above had transceivers. According to the state of February 1941 in light tank company Fu transceivers. 5 were installed on three T-IV and five T-III, and on two T-IV and twelve T-III only Fu receivers were installed. 2. In a company of medium tanks, five T-IV and three T-III had transceivers, and two T-II and nine T-IV were only receivers. On T-I transceivers are Fu. 5 were not installed at all, with the exception of special commander kIT-Bef. Wg. l. The Red Army had an essentially similar concept of “radio” and “linear” tanks. The crews of “linear” tanks had to act while observing the commander’s maneuvers, or receive orders with flags. The space for the radio station on the “linear” tanks was filled with disks for DT machine gun magazines, 77 disks with a capacity of 63 rounds each instead of 46 on the “radium” tank. On June 1, 1941, the Red Army had 671 “linear” T-34 tanks and 221 “radio” tanks.
But main problem communications equipment of T-34 tanks in 1941 - 1942. it was not so much their quantity as the quality of the 71-TK-Z stations themselves. Tankers assessed its capabilities as very moderate. “She covered about 6 kilometers while moving” (P.I. Kirichenko). Other tankers express the same opinion. “Radio station 71-TK-Z, as I remember now, is a complex, unstable radio station. It broke down very often, and it was very difficult to put it in order,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. At the same time, the radio station to some extent compensated for the information vacuum, since it made it possible to listen to reports transmitted from Moscow, the famous “From the Soviet Information Bureau ...” in the voice of Levitan. A serious deterioration of the situation was observed during the evacuation of radio equipment factories, when from August 1941 the production of tank radios was practically stopped until mid-1942.
As evacuated enterprises returned to operation by the middle of the war, there was a trend toward 100 percent radioization of tank forces. The crews of the T-34 tanks received a new radio station, developed on the basis of the aviation RSI-4, -9R, and later its modernized versions, 9RS and 9RM. It was much more stable in operation due to the use of quartz frequency generators. The radio station had English origin and was produced for a long time using components supplied under Lend-Lease. On the T-34-85, the radio station moved from the control compartment to the combat compartment, to the left wall of the turret, where the commander, relieved of the duties of a gunner, now began servicing it. Nevertheless, the concepts of “linear” and “radium” tank remained.
In addition to communication with outside world Each tank had intercom equipment. The reliability of the early T-34 intercom was low; the main means of signaling between the commander and the driver were boots mounted on the shoulders. “The internal communication worked poorly. Therefore, communication was carried out with my feet, that is, I had the boots of the tank commander on my shoulders, he pressed on my left or right shoulder, respectively, I turned the tank to the left or to the right,” recalls S. L. Ariya. The commander and the loader could talk, although more often communication took place with gestures: “I put a fist under the loader’s nose, and he already knows that he needs to load with armor-piercing, and his outstretched palm with fragmentation.” The TPU-Zbis intercom installed on the T-34 of later series worked much better. “The internal tank intercom was mediocre on the T-34-76. There you had to command with your boots and hands, but on the T-34-85 it was already excellent,” recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov. Therefore, the commander began to give orders to the driver by voice over the intercom - the T-34-85 commander no longer had the technical ability to put boots on his shoulders - the gunner separated him from the control department.
Speaking about the communications equipment of the T-34 tank, it is also necessary to note the following. The story of a German tank commander challenging our tankman to a duel in broken Russian travels from films to books and back again. This is completely untrue. All Wehrmacht tanks since 1937 used the range 27 - 32 MHz, which did not overlap with the range of radio stations of Soviet tank radio stations - 3.75 - 6.0 MHz. Only on command tanks was a second shortwave radio station installed. It had a range of 1 - 3 MHz, again, incompatible with the range of our tank radios.
The commander of a German tank battalion, as a rule, had something to do other than challenges to a duel. In addition, command tanks were often of obsolete types, and in the initial period of the war - without weapons at all, with mock-up guns in a fixed turret.
The engine and its systems caused virtually no complaints from the crews, unlike the transmission. “I’ll tell you frankly, the T-34 is the most reliable tank. It happens that he stopped, something was wrong with him. The oil broke. The hose is not securely fastened. For this purpose, a thorough inspection of the tanks was always carried out before the march,” recalls A. S. Burtsev. A massive fan mounted in the same block with the main clutch required caution in engine control. Errors by the driver could lead to the destruction of the fan and failure of the tank.
Also, some difficulties were caused by the initial period of operation of the resulting tank, getting used to the characteristics of a particular instance of the T-34 tank. “Every vehicle, every tank, every tank gun, every engine had its own unique features. They cannot be known in advance; they can only be identified during everyday use. At the front we found ourselves in unfamiliar cars. The commander does not know what kind of fight his gun has. The mechanic doesn't know what his diesel can and can't do. Of course, at the factories the tanks' guns were shot and a 50-kilometer run was carried out, but this was completely insufficient. Of course, we tried to get to know our cars better before the battle and used every opportunity to do this,” recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov.
Tank crews encountered significant technical difficulties when mating the engine and gearbox with the power plant during tank repairs in the field. It was. In addition to replacing or repairing the gearbox and engine itself, the gearbox had to be removed from the tank when the onboard clutches were dismantled. After returning to place or replacing, the engine and gearbox had to be installed in the tank relative to each other with high precision. According to the repair manual for the T-34 tank, the installation accuracy should have been 0.8 mm. To install units moved using 0.75-ton hoists, such precision required time and effort.
Of the entire complex of components and assemblies of the power plant, only the engine air filter had design flaws that required serious modification. The old type filter, installed on T-34 tanks in 1941 - 1942, did not clean the air well and interfered with the normal operation of the engine, which led to rapid wear of the V-2. “Old air filters were inefficient, took up a lot of space in the engine compartment, and had a large turbine. They often had to be cleaned, even when not walking along a dusty road. And “Cyclone” was very good,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. Cyclone filters performed well in 1944 - 1945, when Soviet tank crews fought hundreds of kilometers. “If the air cleaner was cleaned according to standards, the engine worked well. But during battles it is not always possible to do everything correctly. If the air cleaner does not clean enough, the oil is not changed on time, the rig is not washed and allows dust to pass through, then the engine wears out quickly,” recalls A.K. Rodkin. “Cyclones” made it possible, even in the absence of time for maintenance, to complete an entire operation before the engine failed.
Tankers invariably speak positively about the duplicated engine starting system. In addition to the traditional electric starter, the tank had two 10-liter compressed air cylinders. The air starting system made it possible to start the engine even if the electric starter failed, which often occurred in battle due to shell impacts.
Track chains were the most frequently repaired element of the T-34 tank. The tracks were a spare part with which the tank even went into battle. The caterpillars sometimes tore during the march and were broken by shell hits. “The tracks were torn, even without bullets, without shells. When soil gets between the rollers, the caterpillar, especially when turning, is stretched to such an extent that the fingers and the tracks themselves cannot withstand it,” recalls A. V. Maryevsky. Repair and tension of the caterpillar were inevitable companions to the combat operation of the vehicle. At the same time, the caterpillars were a serious unmasking factor. “The Thirty-four, it not only roars with diesel, it also clacks with its tracks. If a T-34 is approaching, you will hear the clatter of the tracks first, and then the engine. The fact is that the teeth of the working tracks must fit exactly between the rollers on the drive wheel, which, when rotating, grabs them. And when the caterpillar stretched, developed, became longer, the distance between the teeth increased, and the teeth hit the roller, causing a characteristic sound,” recalls A.K. Rodkin. Forced wartime technical solutions contributed to the increased noise level of the tank, primarily rollers without rubber bands around the perimeter. “... Unfortunately, the Stalingrad “thirty-fours” arrived, whose road wheels were without tires. They rumbled terribly,” recalls A.V. Bodnar. These were the so-called rollers with internal shock absorption. The first rollers of this type, sometimes called “locomotive”, were produced by the Stalingrad Plant (STZ), even before really serious interruptions in the supply of rubber began. The early onset of cold weather in the fall of 1941 led to idle time on the ice-bound rivers of barges with rollers, which were sent along the Volga from Stalingrad to the Yaroslavl tire plant. The technology involved the production of a bandage using special equipment on a ready-made skating rink. Large batches of finished rollers from Yaroslavl got stuck in transit, which forced STZ engineers to look for a replacement, which was a solid cast roller with a small shock-absorbing ring inside it, closer to the hub. When interruptions in the supply of rubber began, other factories took advantage of this experience, and from the winter of 1941 - 1942 until the autumn of 1943, T-34 tanks rolled off the assembly lines, the chassis of which consisted entirely or mostly of rollers with internal shock absorption. Since the fall of 1943, the problem of rubber shortages has finally become a thing of the past, and T-34-76 tanks have completely returned to rollers with rubber tires.
All T-34-85 tanks were produced with rollers with rubber tires. This significantly reduced the noise of the tank, providing relative comfort to the crew and making it difficult for the enemy to detect the T-34s.
It is especially worth mentioning that during the war years the role of the T-34 tank in the Red Army changed. At the beginning of the war, "thirty-fours" with an imperfect transmission, which could not withstand long marches, but were well armored, were ideal tanks for direct infantry support. During the war, the tank lost the advantage in armor it had at the start of hostilities. By the autumn of 1943 - early 1944, the T-34 tank was a relatively easy target for 75-mm tank and anti-tank guns; hits from 88-mm Tiger guns, anti-aircraft guns and PAK-43 anti-tank guns were definitely lethal for it.
But elements were steadily improved and even completely replaced, which before the war were not given due importance or simply did not have time to bring to an acceptable level. First of all this power point and the tank’s transmission, from which they achieved stable and trouble-free operation. At the same time, all these elements of the tank retained good maintainability and ease of operation. All this allowed the T-34 to do things that were unrealistic for the “thirty-four” in the first year of the war. “For example, from near Jelgava, moving along East Prussia, we covered more than 500 km in three days. The T-34 withstood such marches normally,” recalls A.K. Rodkin. For T-34 tanks in 1941, a 500-kilometer march would have been almost fatal. In June 1941, the 8th Mechanized Corps under the command of D.I. Ryabyshev, after such a march from its permanent deployment sites to the Dubno area, lost almost half of its equipment on the road due to breakdowns. A.V. Bodnar, who fought in 1941 - 1942, evaluates the T-34 in comparison with German tanks: “From the point of view of operation German armored vehicles was more perfect, it failed less often. For the Germans, walking 200 km did not cost anything; on the T-34 you will definitely lose something, something will break. The technological equipment of their vehicles was stronger, but their combat equipment was worse.”
By the fall of 1943, the Thirty-Fours had become an ideal tank for independent mechanized formations designed for deep breakthroughs and detours. They became the main combat vehicle of tank armies - the main tools for offensive operations on a colossal scale. In these operations, the main type of T-34 action was marching with the driver's hatches open, and often with the headlights on. The tanks covered hundreds of kilometers, intercepting the escape routes of the surrounded German divisions and corps.
Essentially, in 1944 - 1945 the situation of the “blitzkrieg” of 1941 was mirrored, when the Wehrmacht reached Moscow and Leningrad on tanks with far from the best characteristics of armor protection and weapons at that time, but mechanically very reliable. In the same way, in the final period of the war, the T-34-85 covered hundreds of kilometers in deep envelopments and detours, and the Tigers and Panthers trying to stop them failed en masse due to breakdowns and were abandoned by their crews due to lack of fuel. Perhaps only the weapons broke the symmetry of the picture. Unlike the German tank crews of the “Blitzkrieg” period, the crews of the “thirty-four” had in their hands an adequate means of combating enemy tanks with superior armor protection - an 85-mm cannon. Moreover, each commander of the T-34-85 tank received a reliable radio station, quite advanced for that time, which allowed him to play against the German “cats” as a team.
The T-34s that entered the battle in the first days of the war near the border and the T-34s that burst into the streets of Berlin in April 1945, although they had the same name, were significantly different both externally and internally. But both in the initial period of the war and at its final stage, tank crews saw the “thirty-four” as a machine they could believe in. At first, these were the slope of the armor that reflected enemy shells, a fire-resistant diesel engine and an all-destructive weapon. During the period of victories, it means high speed, reliability, stable communication and a gun that can stand up for itself.
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