A Russian in the Desert

[Kuno]

I knew that I was dving in the wrong area, when I saw the silhouette of a tank. Luckily it was a 'hard target' of a shooting range and more luckily, the soldiers had a day off :sweat:

 

Thought that the pics could be of interest here:

[fadedsun]

Looks like it's in perfect restorable condition.

 

Chuckle chuckle

 

Missing the side armor/hull? Had to be one big hit.

[Tony B]

So Kunos of with a large trailer later in the week then? :cool2:

[Stone]

Looks like it's in perfect restorable condition.

 

Chuckle chuckle

We've seen worse brought back as good as new...

 

Was it a T34? Bit before my time but the oldies are the goodies

 

Stone

[fadedsun]

That's fixable however.

[AlienFTM]

We've seen worse brought back as good as new...

 

Was it a T34? Bit before my time but the oldies are the goodies

 

Stone

 

Yes, it's a T34/85 with a 3-man turret and an 85mm gun, upgraded from the 2-man 76mm turret on the original T34 (hence T34/76).

 

Russian main battle tank in the last year or two of the war, followed by the little-known, short-lived T44 of which there are very few photos) which seems to have been basically a T34/85 turret on what became the seminal T54 hull. Although all Soviet MBTs owe a lot to T34, it was T54 which first featured the inverted frying pan turret and the archetypal Russian medium tank hull.

 

(Note that the designation T54/55 is not comparable with that of T34/85: the T54 was quickly upgunned and upgraded to become T55 and for ease of designation, T54 and T55 were lumped together as T54/55.)

 

I also STR that this 85mm turret found it's way onto the KV heavy chassis to create the KV85.

 

The KV series were superseded by the JS (Josef Stalin - hence also IS in some languages) series by the end of the war. Once the face-off of JS3 and Conqueror & M26 Pershing heavy tanks had passed, the Soviets reverted to a single series of MBTs of the Txx series.

 

Note that the Soviets never destroyed a tank until the arms reduction talks toward the end of the Cold War. As a tank was superseded, it was replaced in the tank regiments and cascaded down to the tank battalion of the infantry regiments, then down ever further until it was exported to the Third World.

 

In UNFICYP, as a recce regiment we had a standing challenge to spot the T34 belonging to the Turks in the Northern sector.

[Kuno]

Great explanation - thanks a lot!

[AlienFTM]

If you are interested, there is one little anomaly hidden among that lot, the T64.

 

T55 was replaced by T62, which was still just in service when I served in Recce. By the end of the 1970s, T62 had been replaced by not one but two tanks: T64 and T72.

 

These two were remarkably similar apart from how they were fitted out. The T72 might have been described as an austere version (OTOH I think it was one of the Leopards included an Austere Version - AV - for export without some of the things the Bundeswehr held precious).

 

The big physical difference between T64 and T72 was that the latter retained the medium tank suspension configuration that goes right back to the T34, while the T64 had a heavy tank suspension (small wheels and return rollers) akin to the KV series and the JS series.

 

There was an operational difference too. T64 was intended for use by the Russians, while T72 was intended for export. Thus in Recce, an important task was to be able to tell whether the tanks to our front were the Russian 3 Shock Army or an East German outfit.

 

Some things have always intrigued me about this.

 

1. The Russians went into Afghanistan in 1979 with T72s. Is this because they had no reserve T64s for their GSFG forces?

 

2. The T64 seems to have all but disappeared from the history books. You never hear people speak of them (they are a couple of generations obsolete now anyway). Did the Russians realise how expensive the T64 was and sacrifice it to the arms reduction treaties while retaining the cheaper T72s and standardising on one tank across WarPac? I suppose if I wasn't pretending to be working I could Google it.

 

Actually wiki provides some interesting hindsight (what I have written is from memory after 30 years).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-64