Concord - Armor at War 7011 - Soviet Tanks in Combat 1941-1945. The T-28, T-34, T-34-85 and T-44 Medium Tanks.pdf - Concord - MiliFan

1941-1945

THE T-28, T-34, T-34-85 AND T-44 MEDIUM TANKS

Text by Steven J. Zaloga, Jim Kinnear

Andrey Aksenov & Aleksandr Koshchavtsev

Color Plates by Steven J. Zaloga

SOVIET TANKS IN COMBAT

by CONCORD PUBLICATIONS CO.

603-609 Castle Peak Road

Kong Nam Industrial Building

10/F, Bl.Tsuen Wan

New Territories, Hong Kong

this publication may be reproduced,

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Concord Publications Co.

We welcome authors who can help

expand our range of books. If you

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please feel free to contract us.

We are always on the look-out for new,

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If you have photos or slides or

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Full photo credits will be given upon

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ISBN 962-361-615-5

printed in Hong Kong

Soviet Medium Tanks in Combat

The subject of this book is Soviet

medium tanks in combat in World War 2

covering the T-28, T-34. T-34-85, and T-44.

This will be followed by a companion book

on Soviet heavy tanks of World War 2

including the T-35. KV and IS-2. This book

has attempted to draw together a diverse

selection of photographs to illustrate the

evolution of the Soviet tank force during

the Second World War, or as it is known in

Russia, the Great Patriotic War. The core of

this book consists of over 100 new

photographs, never before published,

located in archives in Russia and central

Europe. Photo research in Russia was

conducted by Andrey Aksenov and

Aleksandr Koshchavtsev, in Poland by

Janusz. Magnuski, and in Czechoslovakia

by Ivan Bajtos and Jiri Hornat.

their medium and heavy tanks be capable

of defeating opposing tanks. But the

Soviets also recognized that tank-vs.-tank

combat is not that common, and that a tank

had to be armed with a gun firing a useful

high explosive round to deal with anti-tank

guns, enemy infantry and other more

typical adversaries. This attitude stands in

contrast to several armies (notably the

British) which often built designs stressing

one firepower capability to the exclusion of

the other. Anticipating foreign

improvements, the new Soviet tanks leap-

frogged forward in armament, going from a

45mm gun to a 76mm gun. Once again, this

made both tanks the better armed than any

contemporary tanks.

Finally, the wartime experiences

convinced the Soviets of the vulnerability

of gasoline engines on tanks, leading them.

to adopt a new diesel engine. This engine,

the V-2. has been the standard powerplant

of Soviet medium tanks since then, having

been used (in improved form) through the

1990s on the T-72 and currently on the T-90

lank.

Besides the T-34 and KV. the Red

Army intended to replace the T-26 infantry

tank with the new T-50. It had severe

engineering and cost problems, and so was

nol available when war broke oul. This

twist of fate had enormous implications for

Soviet tank programs in World War 2. The

T-34 cavalry tank was pressed into both

cavalry and infantry tank roles becoming

the standard medium tank by default, much

to the benefit of the Soviet armored force.

The new T-34 and KV tanks were

available in substantial numbers in June

1941 with some 508 KV and 967 T-34 in

service. The best German tanks were the

PzKpfw III. armed with a 37mm gun. and

the PzKpfw IV. armed with a short 75mm

gun with poor anti-armor performance.

There were 1.449 PzKpfw III and 517

PzKpfw IV available in June 1941. They

were inferior to the new Soviet tanks in

armor, firepower and mobility. The

revolutionary configuration of the T-34

tank established it as the technological

pace-setter of World War II lank design.

The locus of tank technology shifted from

its traditional centers in England and

France, eastward toward Germany and the

Soviet Union. Germany soon responded to

the challenge of matching the T-34 and this

technological arms race between Germany

and the Soviet Union set the pace for

worldwide tank development throughout

World War 2.

In spite of substantial numerical

superiority, and important qualitative

superiority, the Soviet tank force was

decisively defeated by the smaller and

more modestly equipped German tank

force in the summer of 1941. The roots of

this defeat are connected mainly in the Red

Army's lack of preparedness for war,

exacerbated by the corrosive influences of

the purges of the officer ranks in the late

1930s. From a technological standpoint,

the defeat highlighted shortcomings in

Soviet tank design philosophy. The T-34

tank design stressed the "Big 3": armor.

firepower and mobility, to the exclusion of

other key tank-fighling features. Crew

layout was poor: the turret crew was only

two which meant that the commander

could not execute his command functions

and had to double as gunner. The

commander was not provided with

adequate vision devices, and the hatch

design made it impossible for the lank

commander to ride with his head outside

the tank as was the German practice to gain

situational awareness. Soviet tank

commanders, already hampered by

inadequate training, were overwhelmed

with the simple mechanics of operating the

tank. They were unable to exploit terrain or

determine the location and status of friend

and foe around them.

This meant that Soviet tank crews

were hindered in carrying out cooperative

battlefield tactics, making them vulnerable

to the better coordinated German tank

units. The Soviets did not fully appreciate

the revolutionary implications of radio

technology on the command and control of

tank units and few tanks had radios. This

was in part due. to a Soviel mistrust of radio

communications stemming from the

disastrous results of poor Russian radio

security in the 1905 war with Japan and the

1914 battles with Germany. These early

failures discouraged proper tactical radio

doctrine in the army in the 1930s, which

was further exacerbated by the

backwardness of the Russian electronics

industry. The radio shortcomings had a

synergistic effect with the poor command

and control features of the tank, leading to

abysmal tank tactics. Soviet tank units

were very vulnerable to the more

experienced German tank and anti-tank

units. Total Soviet tank losses from June to

December 1941 were 20.500: German

losses from 22 June 1941 through the end

of February 1942 were only 3,402, a 6:1

exchange ratio. While the causes of the

high Soviet losses were more clearly

attributable to strategic and tactical

failures, technical design flaws aggravated

these problems.

Operation Babarossa

At the outbreak of the Great Patriotic

War in June 1941, the Red Army possessed

the world's largest tank force. In fact, the

Red Army tank forces was larger than (he

rest of the world tank forces combined,

numbering some 23,106 tanks. By

comparison, the German tank force in June

1941 had 5,262 tanks of which 3,671 were

committed to the invasion of the USSR on

22 June 1941. The bulk of the Soviet tank

force was made up of two older types: the

T-26 infantry tank and the BT fast cavalry

tank. There were small numbers of older

medium and heavy tanks including the

archaic T-28 medium tank (600) and T-35

heavy tank (40). The most technically

significant element of the 1941 lank force

were two new designs, the T-34 medium

tank and the KV heavy tank.

The T-34 was intended to replace the

BT cavalry tank, and was based on Soviet

experiments in tank warfare in Spain in

1937-38, and in fighting against the

Japanese in 1938-39. These tank battles.

although small scale by later World War 2

fighting, had important technological

lessons for the Soviet tank designers. It

made clear that the existing levels of armor

protection, little changed since World War

I. were completely inadequate when faced

with contemporary tank and anti-tank guns.

This prompted the Soviets to adopt "shell

proof armor'" on the T-34 and KV, so that

when production started in 1940. they were

unquestionably the best armored tanks in

the world. Secondly, the fighting convinced

the Soviets of the soundness of equipping

their tanks with a good dual-purpose gun of

superior performance to the opposition.

The Soviets considered it essential that

Battle for the Factories

In the summer of 1941, Soviet leaders

faced the critical decision of whether to

leave the tank factories in place and risk

losing them to the advancing German

forces, or halt lank production in spite of

(he heavy battlefield losses and move them

to the safety of the Urals. Stalin gambled

and ordered the factories moved.

sacrificing short term production. It was a

bold, and ultimately successful decision.

However, it had dramatic effects on tank

design, since it forced the Soviets to freeze

any further qualitative improvements for

more than 18 months.

The main Soviet design bureau for the

T-34 tank was located in Kharkov. Ukraine

as part of the Kharkov Locomotive Plant

(KhPZ Zavod No. 183). At the time, the

locomotive plant was the only

manufacturer of the T-34, though efforts

were already underway before the war to

establish a second plant at Stalingrad (now

Volgograd) at the site of the Stalingrad

Tractor Plant. The T-34 design bureau.

headed by Aleksandr Morozov, was

ordered to evacuate Kharkov along with

the staff and equipment of the locomotive

plant. It was reestablished in Nizhni Tagil

at the site of the Urals Railcar Plant

(Uralvagonzavod No. 183). This plant has

since become the largest of all Soviet (and

Russian) tank plants. The first T-34 tank

from the new production plant was not

ready until 20 December 1941. To

compensate for the temporary loss of the

Kharkov plant, in July 1941 the Krasnoye

Sormovo Plant No. 112 in Gorki was

ordered to begin preparing to manufacture

the T-34; the first were delivered to the

Moscow front in November 1941.

With the Red Army barely surviving in

the winter of 1941-42, every effort was

made to increase tank production. Efforts

to technically improve the T-34 were

frozen. The Morozov design bureau, now

called the GKB-T-34 (Main T-34 Design

Bureau) had already developed an

improved T-34, called T-34M, which

circumvented many of the problems

mentioned before by increasing the turret

size, adding a commander's vision cupola

and improving the suspension by

transitioning from the Christie style of

springs to a torsion bar system. Instead of

continuing the technology race, the tank

designers were told to freeze their designs

and concentrate on making the tanks easier

and cheaper to manufacture. For example,

the original 1941 version of the F-34

76.2mm tank gun had 861 parts; the 1942

production version had only 614.

Production time of the T-34 was cut in half

and the cost was driven down from

269.500 rubles in 1941 to 193,000 in 1942.

While Soviet design stagnated due to

production pressures, the Germans took the

opposite approach and began an intensive

effort to field a superior new tank. In the

short term, the PzKpfw IV was rearmed

with a more effective long 75mm gun

making it capable of penetrating the T-34.

Work on the new Tiger I heavy assault lank

was accelerated, and it would appear on the

Eastern Front in January 1943. The Tiger

was a wild over-reaction to the tank panic

that had set in after the first encounters

with Soviet T-34 and KV tanks in the

summer of 1941. The new Soviet tanks

were impervious to most German tank and

anti-tank guns. The Germans set oui to

trump the Red Army by fielding an even

heavier and better armed tank. However.

the resulting Tiger was so expensive lhat it

could never be manufactured in quantity.

Only 1,354 were produced during the

entire war, equal to less than a month of T-

34 production. As a lower cost alternative

to the Tiger I. (he Germans developed the

Panther, ostensibly a medium tank, but in

fact nearly double the weight of the

original T-34. It would be manufactured in

larger numbers than the Tiger (5,976). but

still not enough to entirely replace the

outdated PzKpfw IV which remained the

most numerous German tank through the

war.

The

Technological

Imperative

Revived

The 1942 defeat at Stalingrad was the

high water mark of the German advance on

the Eastern Front. Although often called

the turning point of the war, Germany

retained the strategic initiative until six

months later at the battle of Kursk in the

summer of 1943. The most important

change in the Soviet lank force was in its

organization and training. From (he autumn

of 1941 until mid 1942, the Soviet tank

force was organized into small tank

brigades or regiments, since it had neither

the equipment nor skilled leadership to

handle tank divisions. The first of the new

lank corps, which were actually tank

divisions in Western terms, were very

roughly handled by the more experienced

Wehrmacht lank force in the bloody battles

around Kharkov in the summer of 1942.

However, the Red Army continued to learn

its lessons and by the early winter the

Soviet tank corps began to display

considerable more success, especially in

the Stalingrad counieroffensive. At the

operational level, the Soviet high command

was beginning to learn to employ the tank

corps to best effect. General Georgi

Zhukov and the many other senior Soviet

commanders had come to appreciate that

tank corps and their close relations, the

mechanized corps, were best employed as

exploitation forces in offensive operations

after the enemy's initial defenses had been

overcome. As a result, the Red Army

fielded two basic type of armored

formations during the war. About 60% of

the armor was committed in the tank and

mechanized corps intended for deep

operations. The remaining 40% were

organized into independent brigades,

regiments and battalions that were assigned

to ihe infantry to assist in breaking through

the defenses, or during defensive

operations in blunting German armored

attacks.

Technically, the Soviet tank force in

the summer of 1943 was not significantly

different from its condition in mid 1942.

By now. the Soviet factories were turning

out T-34s in increasing numbers, and it had

become the staple of the Red Army's tank

and mechanized corps. It was still armed

with the same 76mm gun as in 1942, and

protected by the same level of armor.

The KV-I had proven a

disappointment in 1942, having no

firepower advantage over the T-34. Nor

was its armor invulnerable to German anti-

tank weapons as ii had been in 1941. Its

weight caused tactical mobility problems

The Soviet concentration on

production paid off. The Soviet tank

inventory rose from 7,700 tanks in January

1942 to 20.600 tanks at the beginning of

1943, in spite of massive combat losses in

1942 due to the inept tactical use of the

new tank corps. German tank inventories

also rose during the same period from

4.896 in January 1942 to 5,648 in January

1943. But discounting obsolete types, the

combat-ready inventory actually fell

slightly, from 4,084 at the end of 1941 to

3,939 at the end of 1942. The year 1942

saw the German and Soviet armored forces

on their most equal. The Soviet numerical

advantage was slight, and its technological

edge was gradually worn away by German

technical improvements. The Germans

continued to display a great deal more

tactical finesse in the employment of

armored formations and anti-tank defense.

Soviet tank losses in 1942 were 15,000.

while German losses (on all fronts) were

2.648 or an exchange ratio of over 6:1,

nearly as bad as the 1941 disaster.

Concord - Armor at War 7011 - Soviet Tanks in Combat 1941-1945. The T-28, T-34, T-34-85 and T-44 Medium Tanks.pdf

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