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 they were T-III tanks, T-IV, 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 believed in it sighting devices his cannons and machine guns. 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 served as an infantry officer in the Great War of 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 are not talking 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, should have pierced the forehead of the T-34, in reality ricocheted off the highly hard sloping armor without causing any harm to the tank. A statistical study of combat damage to T-34 tanks undergoing repairs at repair bases No. 1 and 2 in Moscow, carried out in September-October 1942 by NII-48, showed that out of 109 hits to the upper frontal part of the tank, 89% were safe, with dangerous injuries accounted for guns with a caliber of 75 mm and above. Of course, with the advent of a large number of 75-mm anti-tank and tank guns by the Germans, 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. Only before the 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 tanks to protect against Faust cartridges. Known cases of shielding of “thirty-fours” are the fruit of the creativity of repair shops and manufacturing plants. The same can be said about painting tanks. Tanks arrived from the factory painted in green color inside and outside. 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 who were trained as a driver, radio operator, or even commander of a T-34 tank in civilian life in one way or another 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 clear example 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 tank crews had to estimate the number of buckets each time when refueling the tank) was hidden by the thought that shells would set it on fire anti-tank guns it will be more difficult, and in the event of a fire, the tankers will 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 would not ignite 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 of the total number of hits were safe (not 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 difficult 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 the installation of a powerful weapon in the tank. 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" - the rear part of the turret was lifted with 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 bore the lion's share of responsibility for the tank, and therefore for the lives of his comrades in battle, was the driver. 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 Maybach type gearbox of the German T-III and T-IV tanks. 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 the average speed of the 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 simply a derogatory assessment: “The gearboxes of domestic tanks, especially the T-34 and KB, do not fully satisfy the requirements for modern combat vehicles, inferior to the gearboxes of both allied and enemy tanks, and are at least several years behind from 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 the experience of combat use of the 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. While on the march, the driver’s mistakes could lead to delays along the way due to repairs of one duration or another, or, in extreme cases, to the abandonment of the tank by the crew, then in battle, 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, cited above, there were the following words: “Recently, due to the strengthening of anti-tank equipment, maneuverability is at least no less a guarantee of the invulnerability of a vehicle 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 the frontal armor of the 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 that were not provided for in 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 installed 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 initial 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 clang 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 the tank crews’ poor familiarity with the tactical characteristics of their armor protection, or by 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 problem of providing better visibility was solved 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 good review 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, but it was introduced in 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 radio operator gunner was introduced because the main consumer of information from neighboring vehicles and from higher control levels, the tank commander, was simply unable to carry out Maintenance walkie-talkies. “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 the French Somua S-35 tank, the commander performed the functions of gunner, loader and tank commander, but there was also a radio operator who was 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. The last fact should not be confusing; such a 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 staff of February 1941, the light tank company had 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 towards 100% radio installation tank troops. 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 was of 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 the outside world, each tank had equipment for internal communication. 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 was not working properly. 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 - technical feasibility The T-34-85 commander no longer had the chance to put his boots on his shoulders - the gunner separated him from the control compartment.

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, commander’s tanks were often obsolete types, and in the initial period of the war - without weapons at all, with mock-ups of 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 regulations, 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. System air launch 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 through 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 were more advanced, they 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. Technological equipment their vehicles were stronger, but their combat 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 of colossal proportions. 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.

The first face is from 1940/41.

The T-34 tank became the most popular tank of 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 a very large number of shortcomings 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. On 09/15/40, only... THREE (!) production tanks came out of the KhPZ gates. 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 of stopping the production of the T-34 (the production of the tank was suspended by order of the deputy NPO) and the development of new car, T-34M, which had 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, the tank of each plant had its own appearance.

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 manufactured 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 difference The T-34, born at Factory No. 112, had 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 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 saw active use during the 1990s (for example, in the Yugoslav wars from 1991 to 1999). They were part of countless armored forces around 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.

First two prototypes took part in the run from their plant 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.

T-34 during its long life was equipped with a variety of different hatches and turrets, but almost all variants were equipped with railings on top of the hull, which allowed Soviet infantry to move 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, thus depriving the armored forces of any meaningful assistance 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 the Kursk Bulge, when the Panthers and Tigers, invulnerable from afar, were struck 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. Poor material support made such a use of the T-34, at least at first, extremely irrational.

The conveyors, due to the rapid advance of the 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.

About the T-34 tank and Comrade Stalin

If you carefully study the history of the creation of military equipment and superimpose it on the general history of those years, then the entire history of those years becomes more convex, voluminous and integral. Because in the history of the creation of weapons, in dates and documents, sometimes all the fuss, right up to the betrayal of one’s country in those years, is better visible. If you look at the biographies of those who created the weapons of Victory, and those who filled the army with rubbish under the Tukhachevskys, you will get an interesting picture. Before 1937, there were often specialists from the old, “pre-revolutionary” school, with “real higher education,” the “loss” of which today “debunkers of Stalinism” lament so much. And after that - young people, Komsomol members, “directors of confectionery factories.” These were already “Stalinist specialists” who, after the war, also created nuclear missile weapons.

With knowledge from educational institutions“Stalinist” education system, without currying favor with the West, they created “ Great era" In the same aviation, all the designers, except, probably, Tupolev and Polikarpov, received their education in Soviet schools - Yakovlev, Ilyushin, Lavochkin... . And their planes won the war. In the development of small arms, “continuity” has been preserved. The Russian weapons school of Fedorov, Tokarev, Degtyarev was continued by the Simonovs, Sudaevs, and Kalashnikovs. By the way, for some reason no one “repressed” the old “specialists” in small arms during the “terrible Stalinist times”. They all went to prison, but somehow these guys got out? Or maybe because gunsmiths and shooters simply did not write denunciations against each other? How the same rocket designers wrote denunciations against each other.

The designers of the BT and T-26 tanks, “specialists” of the old school, simply remade and modernized licensed American Christie and English Vickers. They also created strange three- and five-turret tanks T-28 and T-35 (“similar” to the English M-III model of ’32), with the same armor as light tanks and wedges. But the T-34 and KV with ISami were created by people already from the Soviet school, and these tanks determined the future development of the entire world tank building. Now the West and the whole world “copied” our tanks. And the “Stalinist specialists” did it.

"T-34"

Let's return to some myths associated with the weapon of Victory. In Soviet times, a fairy tale appeared that in 1939, Komsomol designers M.I. Koshkin, having received an order from the People's Commissariat of Defense for the production of a medium, wheeled-tracked tank, with projectile-proof armor and a 45 mm cannon, managed to “secretly” and “semi-legally” » also produce a tracked version of a similar vehicle, with thicker armor and a 76 mm T-34 cannon. But in fact, at the beginning of September 1938, the commission of the ABTU of the Red Army, chaired by military engineer 1st rank Ya.L. Skvirsky ordered plant N 183 to develop and manufacture one version of a wheeled-tracked tank (A-20) with a 45-mm cannon and two tracked tanks with 76-mm cannons. Those. this was an order to the plant from the state represented by the Auto Armor Tank Directorate of the Red Army.

On the one hand, this myth was launched in order to hide the trace of the “Tukhachevsky case” in the history of the T-34. On the other hand, they indirectly showed the inertia and backwardness of Stalin’s “favorites”, the “red horsemen” Voroshilov and Budyonny, who allegedly advocated the creation of “cavalry” tanks of the BT type. And at the same time they kicked Stalin, who “hindered” the development of the Red Army by listening to his “favorites” and not the “great strategists” of the Tukhachevskys.

In the books of M. Baryatinsky “T-34. The best tank of the Second World War" and "T-34 in battle" it is said that in 1937 the Kharkov Locomotive Plant, where since January 37 the chief designer of one of the three tank design bureaus (KB-190) was M.I. Koshkin, the task was set to develop modifications of the same BT-7. A light and wheeled-tracked tank, made under license from the American Christie. The tank is absolutely dead-end, with no prospects for either increasing the thickness of the armor or increasing the caliber of the gun. Koshkin began to resist and disrupted this work, arguing that it was necessary to develop a more powerful, but easier to manufacture and operate, medium tank on a caterpillar track, with non-tractor type road wheels like the (“medium”) T-28. A fundamentally new tank is needed, and not try to endlessly “modernize” the same light armored vehicles, trying to make a “medium” one out of them.

Strange as it may seem, Koshkin was not imprisoned or shot for “sabotage” and disruption of government orders in that same “terrible 1937”. Koshkin also “disrupted” the work on developing a modification of the BT tank - BT-IS, which was carried out at the same plant by a group of adjuncts of the VAMM named after. Stalin, 3rd rank military engineer A.Ya. Dick, assigned to the Koshkin Design Bureau at KhPZ. Apparently Koshkin found competent “patrons” in the People’s Commissariat of Medium Engineering? Or did he initially act on orders from above? It seems that there was a behind-the-scenes struggle between supporters of the eternal “modernization” of light armored vehicles (and in fact, marking time and a waste of “people’s” public funds) and supporters of a fundamentally new (breakthrough) middle-class tank, different from monsters with three turrets, type T -28.

As a result, on Sept. The 37th KhPZ was proposed to produce by 1939 samples of the same wheeled-tracked type tank BT-20, with “reinforced” armor compared to the BT-7 by as much as 3-5 mm and heavier by a whole ton. (This tank, like the BT-IS, differed from the BT-7 only in the appearance of the hull, it had inclined sheets of frontal and side armor, it already looked “from afar” like the future thirty-four, but the propulsion system remained the same, wheeled and tracked) .

For this purpose, a separate reinforced design bureau was formed at KhPZ, headed by A.Ya. Dikom, subordinate directly to the chief engineer of the plant. They seconded more than 40 military graduate students from VAMM and ABTU, and attracted plant designers headed by A.A. Morozov. Koshkin was not in this design bureau (apparently he himself refused to work with a wheeled-tracked vehicle, or was he removed?)

The rest of the story is dark. After this design bureau ceased to exist in November 1937, and a wave of arrests of “saboteurs and saboteurs” took place throughout the plant, right up to the director of the plant I.P. Bondarenko, chief engineer, chief metallurgist, head of the diesel department and other specialists, M.I. Koshkin, together with the new management of the plant, is organizing a new design bureau. With almost the same composition of designers. It would be nice to look through those criminal cases. But as a result of such a strange purge from “enemies of the people” at the plant, which received a government order for a new tank, work on the technical project of this BT-20 was disrupted for a month and a half.

The project was nevertheless approved by the ABTU and considered at a meeting of the Defense Committee on approximately March 30, 1938, in the minutes of which they wrote: “The proposal of Comrade Pavlov (the head of the ABTU and the future commander of the ZapOVO in June 41st) to recognize the creation of a tracked tank by the N183 plant appropriate with reinforced armor in the frontal part up to 30 mm. The tank turret should be adapted to accommodate a 76-mm gun...”

However, on May 13, 1938, the head of the ABTU, D. G. Pavlov, approved the updated performance characteristics of the same wheeled-tracked BT-20, albeit with thicker armor and increased angles of inclination of the hull and turret. The mass of the tank increased to 16.5 tons and it finally became “average”.

Koshkin, it seems, did not stop fighting for a tracked version of the medium tank all this time, and in August 1938 the USSR Defense Committee adopted a resolution “On the Tank Weapon System”, which stated that by July 1939 it was necessary to develop models of tanks with a gun and armor and mobility must fully meet the conditions future of war. And it was then, in September 1938, that KhPZ received the task of developing two new models. One wheeled-tracked A-20, and a tracked version of the A-20G. The frontal armor of these vehicles was still 20 mm. At the beginning of 1939, all three factory tank design bureaus were merged into one, and M.I. Koshkin became the chief designer. Within three (!) months, by May 1939, the first samples were ready. By August 23, 1939, the tanks had passed factory and field tests. The A-20G was called A-32, and its side armor was already 30 mm, and this was the very “amateur performance” of Koshkin’s team. The A-32 also differed from the A-20 in having a wider track, a hull width of 15 cm, and had one more road wheel, which meant it had a weight reserve. Moreover, due to the absence of mechanisms and drives on the tank for movement on wheels located along the sides, the weight of the A-32 differed from the weight of the A-20 by only a ton. The A-32 completed the required test run on tracks of 3121 km, and the A-20 2931 km (plus another 1308 km on wheels).

On September 23, 1939, these samples were shown at the Kubinka training ground. Voroshilov K.E. was present. - People's Commissar of Defense, Zhdanov, Mikoyan, Voznesensky, Pavlov D.G. - head of ABTU, and tank designers. New KV, SMK, T-100, and modernized BT-7M, T-26 were also tested and presented. Based on the test results, and due to the fact that the A-32 had a weight reserve and already had sides 30 mm thick, it was proposed to increase the frontal armor of the A-32 to 45 mm. The factory hastily began assembling new T-32s with reinforced armor. The track and body of these vehicles have become even wider. And on December 19, 1939, the Decree of the KO under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 443ss was already issued “On the adoption of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery tractors and their production in 1940” by the Red Army, in which the name T-34 appeared.

Already in January-February 1940, the first two T-34 vehicles were assembled and factory tests immediately began (one had the hatch of the mechanic’s forward-facing cabin above his head, and the other had the hatch in front of the mechanic). And a government show in the Kremlin for Stalin had already been scheduled for March 17 (!). However, due to frequent breakdowns of the same new diesel engines, the tanks did not have time to reach the required 3,000 km.

Then there was the story of transporting these tracked samples to Moscow under their own power in March 1940, with breakdowns and repairs along the way to one of the tanks. But on the morning of March 17, tanks stood on Ivanovskaya Square in the Kremlin. Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Beria and others approached them. The head of the ABTU, D.G. Pavlov, presented the cars to Stalin. After demonstration runs along the paving stones, the tanks stopped in the same place. The leader liked the tanks, and he gave the command to provide necessary help plant to eliminate the shortcomings of the tanks, which were persistently pointed out to him by the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense for Armaments G.I. Kulik and the head of ABTU D.G. Pavlov. At the same time, Pavlov very boldly told Stalin: “We will pay dearly for the production of insufficiently combat-ready vehicles.”

After the demonstration to Stalin, the tanks were fired at at the training ground from a 45-mm cannon (the main caliber of anti-tank artillery of those years in all European countries) from 100 meters and “the dummy remained intact,” the armor survived and the engine did not stall. This was on the 20th of March 1940. On March 31, there was a meeting with People's Commissar Voroshilov with Kulik, Pavlov, Likhachev (People's Commissar of Medium Engineering), Koshkin, and a protocol was signed on the production of the T-34 (with a hatch in the front plate in front of the driver) in series, in Kharkov and at STZ , for the production of 600 T-34s in 1940. It was decided to eliminate the shortcomings during production. But in the fall of the same 1940, two T-IIIs purchased in Germany were tested in Kubinka. And although, after comparative tests, the T-34 was superior to the German tank in armament (37 mm versus 76 mm for the T-34) and armor protection, but in terms of comfort, engine noise, smoothness, and even speed on gravel roads, it LOST!?!

GABTU D.G. Pavlova presented a report on comparative tests to Deputy People's Commissar for Armaments, Marshal G.I. Kulik. That report approved and suspended the production and acceptance of the T-34 until “all the shortcomings” were eliminated (how honest and principled our generals were then!). K.E. intervened. Voroshilov: “Continue to make cars, hand them over to the army. Factory mileage should be limited to 1000 km...” (that same “stupid horseman”). At the same time, everyone knew that the war would not happen today or tomorrow. Months were spent. Pavlov was a member of the country’s military council, but he was a very “principled officer.” Maybe for this “courage and integrity” Stalin agreed with the appointment of the hero of the Soviet Union D.G. Pavlov to the “main” district—ZapOVO? But the way Pavlov boldly and principledly commanded in this district, surrendering Minsk on the fifth day, has already become a fact of history. At the same time, Pavlov himself was a professional tank driver, fought with tanks in Spain, and received a Hero of the Soviet Union award for this war. About his proposal to create tracked tank with anti-ballistic armor with the installation of a 76 mm cannon on this tank (the caliber of the guns of heavy tanks of those years!) was even recorded in the minutes of the meeting of the CO under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR in March 1938, two years earlier. That is, Pavlov should have understood better than others what kind of tank was in front of him. And it was this man who did everything in his power to disrupt the acceptance of this tank for service.

But in fact, M.I. Koshkin is not the father of the T-34. Rather, he is his “stepfather” or “cousin” father. Koshkin began his career as a tank designer at the Kirov plant, in the design bureau of medium and heavy tanks. In this design bureau he worked on “medium” tanks T-28, T-29 with bulletproof armor. The T-29 already differed from the T-28 in the type of chassis, rollers and experimental torsion bar suspension instead of spring suspension. Then this type of suspension (torsion bars) was used on heavy tanks “KV” and “IS”. Then Koshkin was transferred to Kharkov, to the design bureau of light tanks, and apparently with the prospect of starting work on the design of “medium” ones, but on the basis of the light “BT”. He had to fulfill the army's order, making the light wheeled-tracked tank BT-20 (A-20), to ensure that at least on its basis he could make a tracked version of this vehicle - the A-20G, and bring it to that same T-34 . Born from blueprints for a light tank, the T-34 had problems with “crowding” in the tank and other shortcomings. Also from the light BT, Koshkin got the chassis (on some T-34s they even installed rollers from the BT tank, although they were already of the required design) and spring suspension. Almost in parallel with the “creation and modernization” of the T-34, Koshkin also designed another medium tank, the T-34M, which had other chassis rollers, similar to the rollers from heavy KVs, with a torsion bar suspension rather than a spring one (an example of the “universalization” of tank production , which the Germans later used with might and main in the production of their tanks during the War), a more spacious hexagonal turret with a commander’s cupola (it was later installed on the T-34 in ’42). This tank was even approved by the Defense Committee in January 1941. In May 1941, fifty of these turrets were already manufactured at the Mariupol Metallurgical Plant, the first armored hulls, rollers, and torsion bar suspension were manufactured (the “suspension from BT” remained on the T-34). But they never made an engine for it. But the outbreak of the war put an end to this model. Although the Koshkinskoye Design Bureau was intensively developing a new, “native” T-34M tank, a “better” one, the outbreak of the War required the expansion of the machines already put on the assembly line, those that exist. And then throughout the war there was constant modification and improvement of the T-34. Its modernization was carried out at every plant where the T-34 was assembled, constantly striving to reduce the cost of the tank. But still, the emphasis was placed, first of all, on increasing the number of tanks produced and throwing them into battle, especially in the fall and winter of 1941. “Comfort” was dealt with later.

In 1942, the “Koshkinites” again tried to offer the army a new medium tank to replace the T-34 (which had a bunch of “disadvantages”), the T-43, with a chassis already similar to the T-34 chassis, but with a different hull and a larger turret, with the prospect of installing guns more large caliber. But Stalin simply banned work on this tank, giving the command all efforts to improve the existing T-34. Baryatinsky is surprised by this decision. Like, if A.A. Morozov, who became chief designer after Koshkin, "named" the new tank "Joseph Stalin", like Kotin and Dukhov, who created the new tank "IS" to replace the "KV", then Stalin would probably have given permission for the production of the T-43. It was as if Stalin was a red-haired maiden, thrilled by such flattery. At the same time, Baryatinsky himself cites the results of the tests and the conclusions of the commissions on the medium T-43 with the same 76 mm gun, and variants of the medium T-34 with thicker armor and a 76 mm gun longer length. It still turned out that when meeting with the heavy “Panthers” and “Tigers”, which appeared already in 1942, this did not give anything. To fight the German “menagerie” on equal terms, a completely new heavy tank of a similar class and preferably with more a powerful weapon. And on the already existing and used T-34, it was easier and cheaper to install a new turret from the T-43 with an 85 mm cannon to fight the Pz-IV main tank and other armored vehicles. Therefore, Stalin agreed to replace the heavy KVs with similar, but more powerful ISs, but did not allow the replacement of medium T-34s with medium T-43s, since this did not give anything in principle, but led to unnecessary costs. This is the path the Germans had to take. They spent time and money on developing completely new “supertanks” (which Hitler strongly opposed before the War and what he did during the war), without being able to endlessly modernize their already existing Pz-III, Pz-IV. And the story of using “universal” rollers for tanks continued, but only after the War. After the T-34 there were T-44, T-54, T-55, which had one type of single-row roller. The design bureaus of heavy tanks with double-row rollers in the Urals created the T-62. The design bureau in Kharkov, where the “Koshkinites” returned after the War, led by Morozov, created the T-64 also with two rows of rollers, as they wanted back in 1941, on the T-34M.

So the story with the T-34 is just an example of the foresight of its creators, who laid a huge foundation for future modernizations, without significant costs, at the main base of the tank. And also, an example of the wisdom and economic calculation of the head of the country, choosing between the good and the “best” (which is sometimes the enemy of the good). And it did not allow designers to be “distracted” by promising, but at that moment ruinous for the country, samples. This is what Stalin spoke to designer A.A. Morozov: “You have created a good car (T-43). But currently our army already has good tank T-34. Now the task is to improve its combat qualities and increase production. Until the plant and design bureau fulfill these requirements of the active army, it is necessary to prohibit the diversion of designers to new developments.” Then you will make your own wonderful tank. And now the front needs the T-34.

Similar decisions were made after the war, with the copying of the next American “flying fortress” B-29. When Tupolev announced that he had a ready-made design for his two-fin long-range bomber, the “dropout seminarian” ordered to simply copy the already flying B-29. This gave time gain in the race for survival with America. And then we’ll somehow sort out “copyrights” and our new planes. So the TU-4 appeared quite quickly, and Tupolev’s designers began designing jet machines. Or the story of how Korolev, at a reception with Stalin, tried to dream about flying to Mars. But the “close-minded Leader” did not appreciate the dreams of the Great Designer and forbade him to even think about astronautics and spaceships!

When various authors try to use such examples to show, to put it mildly, the “shortsightedness” of the tyrant who stifled the flight of thought of our designers of new equipment (tanks, planes, missiles), it would not hurt them to simultaneously give comments about the economic state in which it was at that moment a country. And what would happen to the country if, instead of working on a rocket with a “bomb,” Korolev would be busy with a flight to Mars. Would the Americans give our designers time for this “flight of thought”?

created on the basis of the experimental medium A-32 and put into service in December 1939. The design of this vehicle marks a qualitative leap in domestic and world tank building. For the first time, it organically combines projectile-proof armor, powerful weapons and a reliable chassis. Projectile protection is ensured not only by the use of thick rolled armor plates, but also by their rational inclination. In this case, the sheets were joined by manual welding, which was replaced by automatic welding during production. The tank was armed with a 76.2 mm L-11 cannon, which was soon replaced by the more powerful F-32 cannon, and then the F-34. Thus, in terms of armament, it corresponded to the KV-1 heavy tank.

High mobility was ensured by a powerful diesel engine and wide tracks. The high manufacturability of the design made it possible to establish its mass production using an insufficiently qualified workforce at seven different machine-building plants. During the Great Patriotic War Along with increasing the number of machines produced, the task of improving their design and simplifying manufacturing technology was solved. The original welded and cast turret designs, which were difficult to manufacture, were replaced by a simpler cast hex turret. Increasing engine life was achieved by creating highly efficient air cleaners, improving the lubrication system and introducing an all-mode regulator. The replacement of the main clutch with a more advanced one and the introduction of a five-speed gearbox instead of a four-speed one contributed to an increase in the average speed. More durable tracks and cast road wheels improve the reliability of the undercarriage. Thus, the reliability of the tank as a whole was increased while the labor intensity of manufacturing was reduced. In total, more than 52 thousand T-34 tanks were produced during the war, which took part in all battles.

History of the creation of the T-34 tank

On October 13, 1937, the Kharkov Locomotive Plant named after the Comintern (plant No. 183) was issued tactical and technical requirements for the design and manufacture of a new wheeled-tracked tank BT-20. To accomplish this task, by decision of the 8th Main Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Defense Industry, a special design bureau was created at the plant, subordinate directly to the chief engineer. It received the factory designation A-20. During its design, another tank was developed, almost identical to the A-20 in terms of weight and size characteristics. Its main difference was the absence of a wheel drive.

As a result, on May 4, 1938, at a meeting of the USSR Defense Committee, two projects were presented: the A-20 wheeled-tracked tank and the A-32 tracked tank. In August, both of them were considered at a meeting of the Main Military Council, were approved and were made in metal in the first half of the next year.

In terms of its technical data and appearance, the A-32 tank differed slightly from the A-20. It turned out to be 1 ton heavier (combat weight - 19 tons), had the same overall dimensions and shape of the hull and turret. The power plant was similar - the V-2 diesel. The main differences were the absence of a wheel drive, armor thickness (30 mm instead of 25 mm for the A-20), a 76 mm cannon (a 45 mm was initially installed on the first model), and the presence of five road wheels on one side in the chassis.

Joint tests of both vehicles were carried out in July - August 1939 at a training ground in Kharkov and revealed the similarity of their tactical and technical characteristics, primarily dynamic ones. The maximum speed of combat vehicles on tracks was the same - 65 km/h; average speeds are also approximately equal, and the operational speeds of the A-20 tank on wheels and tracks did not differ significantly. Based on the test results, it was concluded that the A-32, which had a reserve for increasing mass, would be advisable to protect more powerful armor, correspondingly increasing the strength of individual parts. The new tank received the designation A-34.

In October - November 1939, tests were carried out on two A-32 vehicles, loaded with 6830 kg (up to the weight of the A-34). Based on these tests, on December 19, the A-34 was adopted by the Red Army under the designation T-34. (Read also the article "T-29 Medium Tank")
Officials of the People's Commissariat of Defense almost until the very beginning did not have a strong opinion about the T-34 tank, which had already been put into service. The management of plant No. 183 did not agree with the customer’s opinion and appealed this decision to the headquarters and the People’s Commissariat, proposing to continue production and provide the army with T-34 tanks with corrections and a warranty mileage reduced to 1000 km (from 3000). K.E. Voroshilov put an end to the dispute by agreeing with the opinion of the plant. However, the main drawback noted in the report of the NIBT Polygon specialists - the crowded conditions - was never corrected.

In its original form T-34 tank produced in 1940, it was distinguished by a very high quality of processing of armor surfaces. In wartime, they had to be sacrificed for the sake of mass production of a combat vehicle. The initial production plan for 1940 provided for the production of 150 serial T-34s, but already in June this number increased to 600. Moreover, production was supposed to be launched both at Plant No. 183 and at the Stalingrad Tractor Plant (STZ). The latter was supposed to produce 100 cars. However, this plan turned out to be far from reality: by September 15, 1940, only 3 production tanks were produced at KhPZ, and the Stalingrad T-34 tanks left the factory workshops only in 1941.

The first three production vehicles in November-December 1940 were subjected to intensive testing by shooting and running along the route Kharkov - Kubinka-Smolensk-Kyiv-Kharkov. The tests were carried out by officers of the NIBT Test Site. They identified so many design flaws that they doubted the combat effectiveness of the vehicles being tested. GABTU presented a negative report. In addition to the fact that the armor plates were installed at large angles of inclination, the thickness of the armor of the T-34 tank produced in 1940 was superior to most medium-sized vehicles of that time. One of the main shortcomings was the short-barreled L-11 cannon.

Initially, the tank was equipped with a 76-mm L-11 cannon with a barrel length of 30.5 calibers, and starting in February 1941, along with the L-11, a 76-mm F-34 cannon with a barrel length of 41 calibers was installed. However, the changes affected only the armor mask of the swinging part of the gun. By the end of the summer of 1941 were produced only with the F-34 cannon, which was produced at plant No. 92 in Gorky. After the start of the Great Patriotic War, by decree of the State Defense Committee No. 1, the Krasnoye Sormovo plant (plant No. 112 of the People's Commissariat of Sustainable Industry) was connected to the production of T-34 tanks. At the same time, the Sormovichi team was allowed to install aircraft parts brought from Kharkov on their tanks.

Thus, in the fall of 1941, STZ remained the only major manufacturer of T-34 tanks. At the same time, they tried to launch the production of the maximum possible number of components in Stalingrad. Armor rolled products came from the Red October plant, armored hulls were welded at the Stalingrad Shipyard (plant No. 264), guns were supplied by the Barrikady plant. In short, an almost complete production cycle was organized in the city. However, the situation was the same in Gorky and Nizhny Tagil. It should be noted that each manufacturer made some changes and additions to the design of the vehicle in accordance with its technological capabilities, so the T-34 tanks different factories had their own characteristic appearance.

In total, during this time, 35,312 T-34 tanks were manufactured, including 1,170 flamethrower tanks.

CHASSIS AND SUSPENSION.

The T-34 tank chassis, based on the Christie system, had five pairs of large rollers with a gap between the second and third pairs. The suspension of each roller was independent and suspended perpendicularly on a coil spring inside the housing. The drive sprocket was mounted at the rear, which reduced vulnerability. The same system was used on BT series machines. The drive sprockets rotated wide cast manganese steel tracks with central guide pins located on alternating tracks. Wide tracks gave a small specific pressure on the ground, not exceeding 0.7-0.75 kg/cm 2. For British, German and American tanks, the value of this parameter was 0.95-1.0 kg/cm 2. The fenders covered the upper part of the suspension system and protruded 25 cm in the front of the hull and 10 cm in the rear. The suspension allowed the T-34 tank to maintain high speed even when moving over very rough terrain, while the wide tracks of the tank weighing 28.3 tons made it possible to move through mud and deep snow.

HULL AND RESERVATION.

The hull, designed by Nikolai Kucherenko, hung over the tracks and had sloping sides. It was welded from rolled sheets of homogeneous steel. The thickness of the hull armor at the front was 45 mm, 40 mm at the rear and 20 mm at the top. The quality of the welding was very poor, but not so bad as to allow the welds to fail. The front armor plate, 45 mm thick, mounted at an angle of 60 degrees, had no openings, with the exception of the driver's hatch and the embrasure of the ball machine gun mount. There was a periscope in the driver's hatch. The sloped armor provided excellent protection from projectiles and was equivalent in protective properties to a 75 mm thick vertical armor plate. In fact, the T-34 tank was the most invulnerable in 1941. The roof of the rear part of the hull behind the turret was slightly raised, and the engine compartment louvers and exhaust pipes were placed on it. The upper rear plate and engine cover were secured with screws. If it was necessary to replace the engine or transmission, they could be removed.

ENGINE.

The engine was located in the rear of the hull and was a V-shaped four-stroke 12-cylinder liquid-cooled diesel engine, originally developed for the BT-7M tank. This version 3.8 liter engine was modernized for the T-34. At 1800 rpm it developed power of 493 hp. The power/weight ratio was 18.8 hp. per ton, which allowed the T-34 tank to reach a speed of 54 km/h on the highway and 25 km/h over rough terrain, depending on its nature, with an average fuel consumption of 1.84 l/km. When driving on the highway, this parameter improved significantly. The V-2 engine also made it possible to significantly increase the cruising range of the T-34 (up to 464 km) compared to tanks that had conventional gasoline internal combustion engines. The main fuel tank was located inside the hull, four cylindrical auxiliary tanks were on the sides and two smaller tanks were at the stern. The transmission was located in the rear of the hull and did not clutter up the fighting compartment and control compartment. At the beginning of the war, the transmission was unreliable, so some crews carried spare transmissions, tying them to the engine compartment with cables.

TOWER.

All models of the T-34 tank had a low turret. Although the low silhouette of the turret was useful in combat, it limited the deflection of the main and secondary armament barrels, especially on a reverse slope or when firing at short range. In addition, it was cramped inside the tower. From the control room one could immediately get into the tower. On later models, handrails for landing began to be welded to the turret and hull.

DRIVER AND CONTROLS.

The control area was separated from the engine compartment by a partition. The driver's workplace was located on the left side of the hull. It was equipped with a large hatch mounted on hinges. The hatch had a periscope for observation. The driver controlled the tank using a system with an onboard clutch and brake. The system was controlled by two control levers and a gear shift lever, as well as clutch pedals and a foot brake. The levers were connected to the transmission in the stern using metal rods running along the bottom of the gunk. To control the T-34 tank, it was necessary to exert more physical effort than to control Western-made vehicles, on which the transmission and gearbox were located next to each other. Driver mechanics of T-34 tanks often had to use a wooden hammer if the levers jammed. Four-speed gearbox at 100 latest tanks The T-34 model of 1943 was replaced by a five-speed one. As a result, it became easier to change gears and increase the speed of the tank. The floor contained the fuel injection, clutch and brake pedals. There was a pedal in the bottom (often called a “landing pedal”) that made it possible to stop the tank. There were also two compressed air cylinders for starting the engine at low temperatures.

SHOOTER-RADIOIST.

The radio operator's workplace was located on the right in front of the hull. The hatch for leaving the vehicle was located in the bottom directly in front of the radio operator. The gunner-radio operator's armament consisted of a 7.62-mm Degtyarev tank machine gun in a ball mount with a horizontal aiming angle of 24 degrees and vertical aiming from -6 to +12 degrees. Machine guns mounted on tanks of the 1942 model were equipped with an armored mask. Despite the fact that at the beginning of the war there were no radio stations on most T-34 tanks and, due to an acute shortage of personnel, the radio operator’s position was empty, the number of tanks equipped with radios was constantly growing. In 1941, commanders' vehicles tank companies were equipped with radio station 71-TK-Z. Efforts were made to equip platoon commanders' tanks with radios. During the first two years of the war, 71-TK-1 radios were also used. The situation improved when, at the end of 1942, mass application radio stations 9-R. Although the range of these radios was 24 km, when moving they were effective at a distance of 8 km.

The Germans, who paid increased attention to providing crews with stable radio communications, noted the low quality of tactical interaction between Soviet vehicles. Due to the lack of radio communications, the Russians had to rely on flag signals. There was even a special hole in the tower hatch for giving signals using flags. In practice, this was very inconvenient - the platoon commander was too busy controlling his own tank and shooting. Often he simply gave the command to other crews to follow him. The situation improved as radio production increased, and by the summer of 1943, 75-80 percent of all vehicles were equipped with them. Internal communication between crew members was carried out using the TUP system. Tank helmets were equipped with headphones and throat microphones.

TANK COMMANDER AND LOADER.

The main drawback of all T-34 tanks was the poor ergonomics of the turret. There were three people in the turrets of the German vehicles: a gunner, a loader, and a tank commander, who was responsible for observing the terrain, managing the crew, and coordinating actions with the rest of the unit’s tanks. A completely different situation took place in the cramped, two-person turrets of the T-34. The commander had the same tasks as the German, in addition, he had to fire the cannon. This in itself is a serious matter, which distracted the commander from fulfilling his command duties. Loading also took a long time. Despite this, the Soviet command conducted a short and unsuccessful experiment, placing the responsibility for loading the gun instead of firing on the tank commander. The crew members who were on duty in the turret sat on seats hanging from the turret shoulder strap. The commander sat to the left of the gun, and the loader, who was also supposed to fire from the machine gun coaxial with the gun, to the right.

The quality of the optical equipment of the T-34 tank was inferior to the quality of the equipment of German tanks. The main 2.5x telescopic sight TOD-6, which was installed on the first T-34 models, was later replaced by the TMFD sight. Tanks that went into battle straight from the assembly line of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant in the fall of 1942 often did not have sights at all. They could only fire directly. Aiming was carried out by the loader directly through the barrel. To observe the surrounding area, the commander and loader used a PT-6 periscope. Later, periscopes PT-4-7 and PT-5 began to be used. Due to war-related shortages, periscopes were often not installed for loaders. The periscope's field of view was very narrow, and it could not be increased by holes in the armor made at the level of the commander's and loader's shoulders. Under the observation holes there were embrasures for firing a pistol, another embrasure. On later T-34 models these embrasures were absent.

Many German crew commanders preferred to fight with their heads out of the hatch. This provided them with a 360 degree view. If the T-34 commander tried to do this, the large forward-opening hatch would almost completely block his view. He would have to sit directly on the turret, not only risking coming under enemy fire, but also being hit by a very heavy hatch. The size of the hatch was such that, when opened, it also revealed the loader. T-34 tanks model 1943 had separate hatches for the commander and loader, but only on latest models surveillance devices were installed that provided a 360-degree view. The tower itself was originally made of rolled sheets with a cannon in a cast cradle. On the 1941 model, the cast cradle was replaced with a bolted corner cradle. In 1942, a cast turret with an armor thickness of 52 mm was adopted for service, although it was no different from a turret made of rolled sheets.

MAIN WEAPONS

The first T-34 tanks of the 1940 model were armed with a short 76.2 mm L-11 gun of the 1938 model with a barrel length of 30.5 calibers. In 1941, a very small number of T-34s were armed with the 57mm long-barreled high-power ZIS-4 cannon, designed to engage lightly armored targets at long ranges. The greater power of the gun compensated for the reduction in caliber. But the L-11 remained the standard gun for the T-34 model of 1940.

However, the engineers had a more successful gun, although there were bureaucratic difficulties in installing it. The OKB of Plant No. 92, headed by designer V. Grabin, developed a new 76.2 mm F-32 cannon. It was installed on new heavy KV tanks. When firing at armored targets, due to the longer barrel, the gun showed much better results compared to the L-11, which was equipped with the T-34 tanks of the 1940 model. By the end of 1940, an employee of the V. Grabin Design Bureau, P. Muravyov, adapted the F-32 cannon for installation on the T-34 and on its basis developed a new cannon (F-34 with a barrel length of 42 calibers), significantly superior to the L-11. On their own initiative, V. Grabin and the director of plant No. 92, A. Elyan, began production of the F-34 along with the L-11 and sent both guns to the Kharkov plant, which was engaged in the production of T-34 tanks.

Tanks of this model (T-34 model 1941) were mainly used as tanks for platoon and company commanders and after the start of the German invasion they performed very well in battles, thanks to their increased firepower. Stalin became aware of this from reports of war correspondents from the front line. Units fighting on the front line required more tanks equipped with the effective F-34 gun than the L-11, so in the summer of 1941 the State Defense Committee finally approved the F-34 gun as standard for the T-34 tank. The F-34 had a conventional semi-automatic breech. The commander could fire either manually or using a pedal; he was responsible for the horizontal rotation of the tower manually or using an electric drive. When fired from the F-34, these shells penetrated the armor of the German PzKpfw III and IV (the thickness of the frontal armor was 50 mm) from almost any distance.

F-34 gave T-34 such an advantage in range and destructive power that the Germans resisted the T-34 tank with great difficulty. PzKpfw IV with frontal armor 80 mm thick was adopted only in the spring of 1943. The Red Army continued to remain in a leading position - it was adopted armor-piercing projectile BR-350P. It penetrated 92 mm armor when fired from a distance of 500 m - approximately the same distance as firing in a tank battle. However, the appearance at the front in 1943 of new German vehicles, specially designed to combat the T-34, radically changed the situation. When firing from a normal distance, the F-34 could not penetrate the frontal armor of the Tigers and Panthers. During the Battle of Kursk in July 1943, T-34 tanks were forced to approach German tanks within direct fire range or maneuver in such a way as to reach their flank or rear. The problem was solved when the 85-mm gun was adopted at the end of 1943. Initially, the T-34's ammunition capacity was 77 rounds. On the T-34 model 1943 it was increased to 100 rounds. The standard ammunition consisted of 19 BR-350AAP rounds, 53 F-354 or OF-350XE rounds and 5 SH-350 rounds.

ADDITIONAL WEAPONS.

The first 115 T-34 tanks of the 1940 model were armed with a DT machine gun in the rear of the turret for rearward firing. The 1928 model machine gun had an effective firing range of 800 m and a rate of fire of 600 rounds per minute. To avoid jamming and overheating, the rate of fire was reduced to 125 rounds per minute. The machine gun had a retractable metal butt, a wooden pistol grip and a separate optical sight instead of the diopter mounted on the infantry machine gun. The disk-type magazine contained 60 cartridges, placed in two rows. In total, the ammunition load contained 35 discs, one half of which was stored in racks on the rear wall of the turret, and the other in the front part of the hull next to the radio operator’s position.

NEW HEXAGONAL TOWER.

Deputy people's commissar defense and the chief of the Main artillery control G.I. Kulik did not like the T-34 tank, so he insisted on making various changes. As a result, production of T-34 tanks was interrupted in the early stages, and the Council People's Commissars ordered the development of a program to improve the T-34. The improved vehicle received the designation T-34M. The project was terminated. Morozov developed a new turret for the T-34M, taking into account the shortcomings identified during the combat use of early model vehicles. For example, German infantrymen from anti-tank teams climbed onto a combat vehicle from the rear and installed an anti-tank disc mine under the turret ledge. In addition, the ledge formed a trap, from which incoming shells bounced directly into the vulnerable turret ring. The new cast hexagonal turret developed by Morozov was first installed on the T-34 tank of the 1943 model. It was devoid of many shortcomings: it had no protrusion, was much simpler to manufacture and larger than the towers of earlier models. Consequently, there was slightly more space in the turret for the crew. However, the problem of a small and overworked crew was finally solved only with the appearance of the three-seat turret of the T-34/85 tank, production of which began in the winter of 1943.

						Engine	Speed
T-34 mod. 1941
T-34 mod. 1943
T-34-85 mod. 1945

Use of T-34 tanks.

T-34-76 tanks were in service with tank units of the Red Army throughout the Great Patriotic War and took part in almost all combat operations, including the storming of Berlin. In addition to the Red Army, the T-34 was in service with the Polish Army, the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and the Czechoslovak Corps, which fought against Nazi Germany. It is a reliably known fact that only the 8th Tank Division at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War was equipped with crews trained to operate on the T-34. As for the rest, all the "thirty-fours" received by June 22 were in storage, the tankers studied on the T-26. Naturally, this state of affairs could not but have a detrimental effect on the actions of the mechanized corps in the first weeks of the war. The first to enter into battle with the Nazis were the thirty-four troops of the 5th Tank Division of the 3rd Mechanized Corps, stationed in the Lithuanian city of Alytus. This was the only unit in the district that had a. However, not a single vehicle was in operation before the start of the war; all thirty-fours were put into storage in the park. Naturally, due to lack of experience, during the first battles, some of the T-34s were lost due to technical breakdowns and illiterate operation. In addition to T-34 tanks, the division had BT-7, T-26 and badly worn T-28. The division had well-trained crews, since it was based on personnel tank brigade Red Army. The division's shortcomings include poor reconnaissance organization and lack of communications and evacuation means.

As early as June 19, units of the division were withdrawn from the military camp and concentrated on the right bank of the Neman (the eastern outskirts of Alytus). Here the units began digging dugouts and trenches; the materiel was carefully camouflaged. On June 22 at 4:20 am, German aircraft bombed combat parks, barracks and the airfield. However, the losses of the 5th Panzer Division were small. After the raid, the division commander, Colonel Fedorov, gave the order to bring all vehicles into the operational space. The colonel's contact with army headquarters was lost, and no orders were received. In the afternoon, the 7th Panzer Division approached Alytus. At the same time, German aircraft attacked the location of units of the 5th Panzer Division.

On the approaches to the bridges, German tanks were met by an advance detachment. The preparation of the bridges across the Neman for an explosion was carried out by the 4th Engineer Regiment, but for unknown reasons, on the night of June 21-22, by order of representatives of the district headquarters, they were cleared. Therefore, it was not possible to blow up the bridges, and the German tanks crossed to the right bank of the Neman. Here they were met by units of the 9th and 10th tank regiments of the 5th tank division, hastily advanced to this area. Due to inconsistencies in actions and poor reconnaissance, units of tank regiments entered the battle area uncoordinated. The first to reach the bridges was the 2nd battalion of the 9th tank regiment, senior lieutenant Verzhbitsky (T-34-76 tanks), which attacked the crossing units of the 20th tank division. A little later, the attack of the 2nd battalion was supported by the 1st battalion - 24 T-28 tanks. Due to the fact that these vehicles were very worn out and had virtually no engine life, they were used for firing from a spot.

Thanks to the successful actions of the 9th Tank Regiment of the 5th Tank Division, the German movement across the north bridge was stopped. During this battle, the crew of the T-34-76 tank, Sergeant Makogon, knocked out 6 enemy tanks. However, their losses were also significant: out of 24 T-28s - 16, out of 44 T-34s - 27 (almost half due to technical breakdowns), out of 45 BT-7s - 30 were lost. At the same time, the vehicles of the 7th The Wehrmacht tank division managed to break through the southern bridge, which was covered by the 5th motorized rifle and 10th tank regiments. During the oncoming tank battle, it was not possible to stop the German offensive. The 5th Panzer Division suffered heavy losses, there was not enough fuel and ammunition, communication between the units was disrupted, and at night they began to retreat to Vilnius in disarray. The oncoming battle near Alytus on June 22, 1941 was the first tank clash of the Great Patriotic War. And the first test of the strength of the T-34 tank, which later became legendary.

Performance characteristics

	T-34 model 1940	T-34 model 1941 (cast tower)	T-34 model 1942 (cast tower)	T-34 model 1943	T-34-85 sample 1944
Crew
Dimensions (mm):
length
width
height
Armor (mm):
forehead of the tower
gun mask
turret side
rear of the tower
tower roof
forehead of the body
hull side
rear of the hull
body roof
bottom
Engine:	V-2-34 500 l. With.	V-2-34 500 hp	V-2-34 500 l. With.	V-2-34 500 l. With.	V-2-34 500 l. With
Speed ​​max, (km/h)
Ground pressure (kg/cm2)
Cruising range (km):
along the highway
on the ground
Fuel capacity (l):
in internal tanks
in additional tanks
A gun					85 mm ZiS S-53
Ammunition
Armor-piercing projectile

All variants of the T-34 tank

Since the T-34 tank was produced at different enterprises, there were differences between the manufactured models and samples. In August 1939, the Main Military Council adopted the T-34 as the main medium battle tank Red Army. The new project was completed during December 1939 and became known as the T-34 tank of the 1940 model. On December 19, 1939, drawings and models of the new T-34 were presented to the High Command, which recommended the new tank for production, despite the fact that a prototype had not yet been manufactured.

DIESEL ENGINES.

The first production samples of T-34 tanks were equipped with V-2 diesel engines, but due to their shortage, the old M-17 gasoline engine began to be installed on the tanks. The T-34 tank experienced such problems with the transmission that the tanks often went into battle with spare transmission parts bolted to the power compartment cover with steel cables. T-34 Model 1940 had a turret made of rolled armor plate and a short-barreled 76.2-mm L-11 gun, Model 1938. The gun was installed in a cast cradle, which was welded to the casing. The T-34 model of 1940 became the standard model for all variants of the tank. They had interchangeable elements, including the engine, weapons, transmission and periscopes. The designers' main concern was simplicity of design. The tank had a welded hull made of rolled steel sheets. The designers used a Christie suspension with five large twin steel rollers on each side and a large gap between the second and third pairs. The drive wheel, located on the stern side for safety reasons, was a gear drum used on BT series tanks. It drove cast manganese steel tracks with central guide pins located on alternating tracks. First T-34 models had a turret with a noticeable protrusion and a massive hatch occupying the entire rear of the turret. The T-34 tank of the 1940 model was equipped with one periscope located in the front left. At the end of 1941, a small number of tanks were produced equipped with a long-barreled 57 mm ZIS-4 cannon, designed to engage lightly armored targets at greater distances than the 76.2 mm L-11 cannon.

T-34 MODEL 1941.

The second model of the T-34 appeared in 1941. Essentially, it was a command tank of the 1940 model with a turret made of rolled armor plate, equipped with a more powerful 76.2-mm L/41.5 cannon of the 1940 model. The turret retained the same bulky hatch, but some versions of the tank had two observation devices. The hull design remained the same, but a box for property was now installed on the right fender. The most notable feature of the T-34 tanks of the 1941 model was the replacement of the cast cradle with a corner one, which was secured with bolts. In 1942, tanks with a cast turret and new, wider tracks appeared. Some tanks were equipped with flamethrowers (ATO-41) and armored gas tanks mounted on the stern.

T-34 MODEL 1942.

In 1942, a cast turret (as opposed to a rolled sheet turret) became standard. The new turret weighed 4.4 tons with a ring diameter of 1.38 m. The tank had various improvements made taking into account the experience of combat use. The tank commander and gunner now each had a separate hatch. In addition, a new hull-mounted 7.62 mm DT machine gun was installed, which was more effective in close combat. At the beginning of 1942, designers developed a new model of the T-34 - the T-34M. It had a chassis similar to that of the KV heavy tank (but with smaller diameter rollers), and was completely new uniform hulls and towers. However, this tank was not accepted for production. The only element of its design that was used for the next model, the T-34/76 model of 1943, was the hexagonal turret. As mentioned above, the T-34 tank of 1943 was designed taking into account information from the battlefield, which stated that one of the shortcomings of the T-34 was the turret protrusion overhanging the rear of the hull. This made the tank vulnerable to German anti-tank infantry who would climb onto the tank and place flat mines under the turret ledge. A new cast hexagonal turret without a projection appeared on the T-34 of the 1943 model. The new model had other innovations, including increased fuel capacity and weldable armor plate components.

TANK T-34/76E.

Subsequent models of the T-34/76 are better known in the West by their British classification.

Models E and G were produced in 1943. The hull and turret of the T-34/76 remained the same, but the tank received new, more efficient air purification and lubrication systems. The hull design was improved by using an automated welding technique for higher quality materials, which produced higher quality joints. Model E clearly demonstrated the success of Soviet industry. It became clear that each new T-34 model would be stronger and better armed.

TANK-34/76F.

Model F had a different appearance from other T-34 models, in particular the commander's panorama. The main differences were, however, inside the tank the T-34/76F received an improved and more efficient chassis. The old four-speed gearbox has been replaced with a five-speed one. It became easier to change gears, the speed of the tank increased. Improved air filters were used. The mechanical part of the T-34/76F was significantly different from the earlier T-34 models. However, a small number of tanks of this model were produced, as the situation began to change dramatically. In 1943, it became obvious that the 76.2 mm gun installed on the T-34 tank did not meet the requirements of the time. The model received many improvements, including more powerful armor, but the weapons remained insufficient. The appearance of German tanks equipped with long-barreled 75-mm and 88-mm cannons with high muzzle velocity finally confirmed that the T-34 should receive more powerful weapons. The result was the appearance of the T-34/85 tank.

TANK T-34/85-1.

Developed in 1943, the T-34/85 was a rearmed T-34 tank with an 85 mm cannon. The tank had a new turret, originally developed for the KV-85 tank with a ring diameter of 1.56 m. The enlarged turret provided space for one more crew member, and the tank commander was able to concentrate on performing his immediate duties, without being distracted by gunfire. . The first T-34/85-1 were sent to the elite guards tank units. The new guns quickly proved their usefulness. They were developed on the basis of the pre-war 85 mm anti-aircraft gun M1939, had an effective firing range of 1000 m and, it was claimed, could penetrate frontal armor tanks "Tiger" and "Panther".