T54-55 in NVA service

[iannima]

And now a thread for the predecessor of the T72 in NVA service

My sources indicate that the NVA never had the T62 or the T64. Over the years T54s and 55s produced often in Poland or Czeckoslovakia would be upgraded/refurbished in the massive Panzerreparaturwerk (Armour repair workshop) in Neubrandenburg. I have been driven past it and it still remains a massive compound with still an entertaining (for me :angel:) mural painting of an NVA soldier.

Again distinctions are often subtle...

[iannima]

This is one of my favourite pictures, obviously of an exercise under NBC conditions.

I scanned this photograph from one of the many photobooks celebrating the NVA during the DDR.

The armoured personnel carrier on the left is a BTR152, which basically is an armoured version of the ZIL157 and had very traditional layout in many ways similar to the half-tracks of WW2. By the end of the 1960s, because of its inability to swim, and generally being obsolete, it had been relegated to supporting rear guard tasks, like communications etc.

What is entertaining to notice here are the DEEP :shocked: ruts made by the tanks in the soft sandy soil which is often to be found in Eastern Germany. I bet that the bottom of the hull was often dragged over the surface... Obviously those would be a nightmare for the wheeled vehicles with a narrower track width, and in fact it seems that a dual carriageway is being developed, with another BTR 152 in the background trying to escape the main alleyway to the safety of a side lane :laugh:

[iannima]

The terrain of Western Germany, which would have been the battle field of a war fought with conventional forces, is crossed very frequently by canals and rivers running from South to North (roughly), i.e. potentially blocking the advance of the invading (defensively :rotfl:) Warsaw Pact forces. The ability to overcome water obstacles quickly was therefore essential for all vehicles, in order to maintain the momentum of the advance. For the tanks that meant wading with snorkels and it is in this respect that the original T54 had to be modified at several stages.

Here we have (probably T55s) emerging from one such exercise:

[iannima]

For smaller streams they obviously just forded them without much preparation:

[iannima]

Whereas bigger rivers with stronger currents required the services of the Engineers who would put together these pontoon bridges. I have read somewhere that the idea was copied by NATO forces too.

I don't quite know why the wheel-arches are cut that way :sweat:

Edited May 1, 2010 by iannima

[iannima]

Although I suspect that it was done to accommodate the mine rolling contraption:

[schliesser92]

Whereas bigger rivers with stronger currents required the services of the Engineers who would put together these pontoon bridges. I have read somewhere that the idea was copied by NATO forces too.I don't quite know why the wheel-arches are cut that way :sweat:

 

Some treasures there. Remember, that at the time the NVA had older equipment than most of their fraternal socialist neighbours, simply because the Russians didn't quite trust the Germans. (and who could blame them?). The bridging equipment is known as a Ribbon Bridge these days, and has indeed been copied by NATO.

[iannima]

Heavy armoured vehicles obviously require a lot of maintenance, both in barracks:

and in the field.

in both cases the soldiers wear the black overalls that were used for maintenance jobs only. With some exceptions sparsely documented only in later years, the NVA did not use special black uniforms for the tankers, as their Soviet friends (and fascist ancestors :evil:) did. In particular the wearing of dress shoulder boards piped in pink over the black overalls, is frowned upon in the living history community to which I belong, as a sign of despicable fascist tendencies :angry that CANNOT :nono: be condoned, as only subdued shoulder boards are historically accurate, and the NVA was NOT :nono: the Wehrmacht with the unmentionable symbol :evil: removed...

[steveo578]

iannima

and the NVA was NOT :nono: the Wehrmacht with the unmentionable symbol :evil: removed...

 

 

Not wanting to upset anyone but being ancient I can remember Czech "asylum seekers" in 1968-69 were pretty angry about NVA soldiers with their style of uniform and simplified helmet still reminded the older people of Wehrmacht.

 

Steve

[iannima]

Not wanting to upset anyone but being ancient I can remember Czech "asylum seekers" in 1968-69 were pretty angry about NVA soldiers with their style of uniform and simplified helmet still reminded the older people of Wehrmacht. Steve

The traditionally German style of the NVA uniforms was a deliberate attempt at presenting itself as the army of the "true" Germany at a time when the West German Bundeswehr had adopted American styled uniforms. In doing so, the DDR leadership had been explicitly encouraged by the Soviet who knew that the Russian style uniforms of the predecessor of the NVA, the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, just reminded people of the invading Red Army and of the repression of the 17th of June 1953 uprising. It was a way of desperately trying to present themselves as not just a Soviet puppet state. All the more a desperate attempt given that that was -by and large- the truth...

For those who know German uniforms, the similarities are much more with the Imperial and Reichswehr uniforms than with the Wehrmacht. The colour in the first instance. The NVA colour is described as Steingrau and it is the same shade of greenish grey adopted by the Imperial army in 1910. The Wehrmacht one is instead Feldgrau which translates into a greyish shade of green. Put side by the side the difference is striking, much as there are many similarities in cut and style. Having collected NVA uniforms for so long, I now find the parallel with WH ones more misleading than anything else.

It is however true that precisely because of the Germanic style of the uniforms, the Soviet high command had second thoughts in 1968, and despite having mobilised various NVA divisions on the border with Czeckoslovakia, in the end, these units DID NOT take part in the repression of the Prague Spring. At the time various press stories said that they did, but it is now established beyond doubt, given the open access to DDR archives that in fact they did not.

The DDR helmet known as M56 is a direct derivation of the experimental M44 helmet which was NOT adopted by the WH (although there are various rumours that it was used in the last stages of the war by the Döberitz infantry school in the last defence). Apparently Hitler did not like it because it ruined the "iconic silhouette of the German soldier. The fact that it was apparently better at protecting the soldier's head was of no consequence to him... I cannot honestly see any real similarity between the M56 helmet and the WH one, other than they are both steel helmets. There are many helmets (e.g. Bulgarian one) that are closer to the to the WH one than the M56.

That the Czech refugees were justifiably upset about what had happened to their country is beyond dispute, but one must discriminate between the needs of sympathy for the oppressed and those of historical accuracy.

Perhaps it is difficult to convey without the direct experience of it. What we, NVA collectors/reenactors, find very annoying is the number of WH/SS reenactors who simply see the NVA as a cheaper version of the same thing, and presume that WW2 practices can be easily transferred and replicated, with countless appeals to "field modifications" that simply do not make sense in a peacetime army.

Edited May 1, 2010 by iannima

[MichelK]

Hi folks,

 

because of the special NVA T55 topic :cool2:

There is an former NVA T55 at the Overloon museum, the Netherlands

 

Could some one help me with ID of the device fitted to the front of the vehicle

It looks like some mine clearing device :???

 

MichelK

[iannima]

Having consulted my references (W. Spielberger et al. Die Kampfpanzer der NVA Motorbuchverlag 1996) I have found out that the mine clearing device on the tank posted earlier by me is a KMT-5. The one in the museum in Holland is described as KMT-6 and there is a similar photograph showing it in "Marschlage". I presume that it would be extended forward whilst in operation but have no photograph of this. Your initial guess is any case certainly confirmed.

[schliesser92]

Having consulted my references (W. Spielberger et al. Die Kampfpanzer der NVA Motorbuchverlag 1996) I have found out that the mine clearing device on the tank posted earlier by me is a KMT-5. The one in the museum in Holland is described as KMT-6 and there is a similar photograph showing it in "Marschlage". I presume that it would be extended forward whilst in operation but have no photograph of this. Your initial guess is any case certainly confirmed.

 

I trust these may be of assistence. The old monochrome photo is of a Polish vehicle. The drawing comes from a Czech manual,

 

 

Roger

[MichelK]

Hi folks

 

:tup:: for help with the ID

 

With this info I was able to find some more

Info and some more picture's of the KMT-6

http://www.t-72.de/html/kmt-6_minenraumgerat.html

 

Of the KMT-5

http://www.t-72.de/html/kmt-5_minenraumgerat.html

 

The site is in German only :embarrassed:

 

I also found some picture's of an KMT-6 mounted onto an tank

The only problem is, the device is mounted onto an T72 :rotfl:

 

Michel

[iannima]

Snippets of information that I have gathered from another book:

apparently the KMT-5 was VERY heavy and put a lot of strain on the transmission of the tank. Therefore it was not carried around all the time but fitted as and when, a procedure that apparently took some 50 minutes. Otherwise the entire contraption was ferried around by a lorry. May be this shows one such instance:

Probably the KMT-6 was meant to save all this faffing... and I do have references showing it in use with the T72 too

[MichelK]

From what I could find in the German site, the KMT-5 weighted about 1000kg

Also it limited travelling speed to 10-15 km/h with the device in transport position

When the device was used the speed reduced to 6-8 km/h

(wrong topic, however make's you wonder how bad the US M1 Panther 2 device is :whistle:)

 

The KMT-6 weight was about 400kg, so it reduced the stress on the tank chassis when compared to the KMT-5

Also because of it's smaller size and weight travelling speed was still good

 

However it was not adviced to get it permanent fixed, because of the additional stress to the first 2 torsion bars

 

So the ones you will find at various museums permanent fixed to tanks, is actualy an bad thing

 

MichelK

[AlienFTM]

And now a thread for the predecessor of the T72 in NVA service

My sources indicate that the NVA never had the T62 or the T64. Over the years T54s and 55s produced often in Poland or Czeckoslovakia would be upgraded/refurbished in the massive Panzerreparaturwerk (Armour repair workshop) in Neubrandenburg. I have been driven past it and it still remains a massive compound with still an entertaining (for me :angel:) mural painting of an NVA soldier.

Again distinctions are often subtle...

 

I agree that the NVA never got T64, because T64 and T72 were parallel projects for different markets, the "Rolls Royce" T64 for the first echelon Russian field armies and the T72 for export. This is what 15/19H were taught as 3 Armd Div Recce Regt in BAOR in the late 70s and our role demanded that we got it right, because mis-identifying the one as the other and passing it up the chain of command could give Division ALL the wrong ideas about what enemy forces we were up against.

 

So when 3 Shock Army got brand new T64s for the tank regiments of their tank divisions, they cascaded the old T62s down to the tank battalions of their Motor Rifle Regiments. This in turn released T55s to cascade further down the line to the second echelon and foreign armies.

 

So I query whether the NVA never had T62. We were always led to expect to see T62s in the hands of, for example, the NVA, but it was immaterial because we knew that lined up on the other side of the halfway line were 3 Shock Army.

 

What passed me by for decades was that when Brezhnev took Afghanistan ("Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert" Pink Floyd), he took T72s and stories started coming out of one-armed ex-T72 gunners begging on the streets of Moscow because the T72 autoloader mistook limbs for APDS rounds.

 

My conclusion is that by the time Russia started producing T64s, they were struggling to afford any surplus, so that while 3 Shock Army had them, the expeditionary force that rolled on Kabul was equipped with the inferior T72.

 

Of course, we only had the intelligence that we had. It may have been wrong. But that's what the eyes on the ground were trained to look out for.

[iannima]

This for me is all second-hand if not third-hand information but here goes:

The T64-T72 is an odd case of COMPETITION between factories in a socialist command economy. A competition that was apparently renewed with their successors T80-T90. It is undeniably true that the T64 was the top Soviet tank when it was introduced, but in later years, the T72 was ALSO used by the Soviet themselves and not just intended for export. One of its main advantages was that it was apparently cheaper to produce in big numbers, and Soviet strategy relied heavily in massive numerical superiority. So the T72 probably bridged the gap, whilst the T64 had issues to be resolved which led to the T80.

The story that the breech of the T72 "ate" arms is described by all the veterans whose comments I have read, as apocryphal and with no factual basis. I think we must bear in mind that part and parcel of the cold war was spreading malicious rumours about the equipment of the opponents and overstating the quality of one's own.

The NVA -by an large- only received used Soviet tanks in its early days of the late 1950s. In practice this means the T34/76 and T34/85 of WW2 vintage. By the time the T55s came into service these were produced under license in Poland and Czeckosklovakia and it is largely from these that the NVA stock is drawn, according to all the German sources at my disposal. So there was not much of a chance of the T62s being handed down to the NVA. Much as a lot was made in propaganda terms, of the fraternal feelings between the NVA and the CA, veterans' recollections seem to indicate more a markedly separate existence, with no sharing of equipment.

As the DDR was the frontier with the Western world, the NVA was considered a front line army, and had theoretically better equipment, but it is also true that during the 1970s, and more so in the 1980s, the country could simply not afford the most modern equipment, and the Soviet had repeatedly managed to stifle local production in favour of their own. In any case the East German were never trusted to produce armour. A classical example of the bankruptcy of the DDR/NVA is the fact that only 24 BMP2s are known to have been in service with the NVA, as the country could simply not afford to buy more. Same goes for the T80.

[steveo578]

iannima

The T64-T72 is an odd case of competition between factories in a socialist command economy.

 

 

Competition in a command economy was not the same as it would be in the West, for example the competition between Helschel and Porsche, (tiger tanks) Krupp and Rheinmetall (earlier Panzers) in WW2 or Chrysler and General Dynamics (M1 Abrams) in modern times. It was a competition of intellect rather than two teams competing to produce a design to fill an army requirement with a winner taking the resultant contract.

 

In the mid 1950s the A.A. Morozov bureau moved to Kharkov and under N. Shomin designed the T64. The T72 was designed by V. Venediktov who had worked under the direction of L. Kartsev (who produced the T62) in the remnant of design bureau at the Ural tank plant at Nizhni Tagil, after the Morozov bureau left. So there was a level of old school new school competition. The two designs were radically different; the T64 was a Rolls-Royce as AlienTFM said. The T72 was a low technology, high volume machine which was necessary because T62 had problems and T54-55 series were regarded as obsolescent.

 

One of the less apparent differences between the T64 and T72 is the loading system, in the T64 the weapon loaded fired and returned the empty cartridge to the carousel. In the T72 the weapon loaded fired and ejected the cartridge stub out of a hatch between and aft of the two turret hatches - which is a design signature of the Ural team from the T62 through to the T90. Although it took some time to get it right in the T62.

 

Effectively this meant the T64 (and T80) would have a higher NBC integrity than the T62-T72 and T90 which would require an overpressure system, face masks or both to be NBC sealed.

 

You are probably correct about the story of the crew chewing auto loader being apocryphal, the story is that clothing caught by the mechanism slammed the crew into the breach structure, the positions of the crew make this unlikely –unless the turret crew were stupid enough to try communicating by touch i.e. hand on shoulder when the mechanism was loading –which previously was a common way of giving instruction in a tank.

 

Steve

Edited May 4, 2010 by steveo578

[iannima]

Just found:

a KMT-5 in use

[iannima]

And another one emerging from purifying ablutions :laugh:

[MichelK]

Hi folks,

 

for the people interrested in the NVA in general and the T55 and T72

 

There is an German site dedicated to the NVA, they also have an picture gallery of old NVA equipment, including various T55 versions

 

http://www.militaertechnik-der-nva.de/Galerie/Bildergalerie.html

 

The description of the purpose of the equipment is in German, however most of it are picture's only

Only thing is the picture's are rather small :embarrassed:

 

At the same site, this page

It is about reducing to scrap old NVA T55 tanks starting in 1992, total number of T55's to be scraped 1500 :eek:

According the description, they could scrap about 30 tanks a month

http://www.militaertechnik-der-nva.de/Aservatenkammer/VerschrottungT55/VerschrottungT55.html

 

Makes you wonder how many T55 tanks the NVA had, because an lot also went to shooting ranges and national museums

 

MichelK

[steveo578]

MichelK

It is about reducing to scrap old NVA T55 tanks starting in 1992, total number of T55's to be scraped 1500 :eek:

According the description, they could scrap about 30 tanks a month

 

 

So possibly still at it,

 

Certainly a very interesting site,-can't get my head around some of the photos -I don't see the relevence of Universal Carriers in East Germany although West German Border Guards used them, the gunless IS2 is probably one that was used a IS2 ARV, the training mount of a PPSh41 on the twin 14.5MGs is also interesting as is the TDT55 KT12a Belausus forestry tractor, Raupenschlepper clone.

 

steve

[iannima]

I don't see the relevence of Universal Carriers in East Germany

One of my sources describes it as the ONLY vehicle to have been used by BOTH West and East German armed forces, undoubtedly only in the early stages.

[steveo578]

I'm surprised - by border guards and Volkspolizei perhaps? W.German border guards used M39 and Universals for border patrols and eventually had modified Saladin A.Cs