T-34 tank not only inherited the excellent maneuverability of 67 tank, but also made a great leap in firepower and protection ability. Excellent performance also overwhelmed KV- 1 tank. Before the prototype of the T-34 tank was completed, the Soviet leadership decided to allow the Soviet Red Army to equip the T-34.
1940 1 At the end of the year, the first batch of tanks left Kharkov's factory production line and were named T-34/76Model 1940. At the beginning of February, two T-34s were tested in Kharkov-Moscow-Smolensk-Kiev-Kharkov, which left a deep impression on Stalin who was observing the test in Moscow's Red Square.
Koshkin died of pneumonia on September 26th of that year, and finally did not see the wonderful performance of T-34. His assistant, Morozov, took his place, and the production drawings of the T-34 tank were completed in June 1940, and then put into mass production.
T-34 tank has excellent bulletproof appearance, powerful firepower and good maneuverability, especially unparalleled reliability, and is easy to mass produce.
T-34/76A tank was completed in 1 15 in 940, and part of it was sent to Finland for actual combat test, but it failed to participate in the battle in time. By the German invasion on June 22nd, 194 1, the Soviet Union had completed 1225 T-34 tanks, which greatly exceeded the number of IV tanks in the same period. On the eve of the Moscow campaign, 1853 t-34s had been delivered to the troops.
T-34/76 entered the war for the first time in Grodno, Belarus on June 22nd, 194 1. After a series of battles, the Germans could not find a tank to compete with them. This is the "T-34 crisis", which led to the elimination of a large number of German tanks and forced them to introduce newer tanks to deal with this situation.
In response, German III modified a 50 mm barrel gun, while Tank IV modified a 75 mm barrel gun. At the same time, both of them have greatly strengthened their armor and can barely play T-34/76. At the same time, Panther Tank and Tiger ⅵ were developed, among which Panther Tank obviously imitated the design idea of T-34.
T-34/76 tanks mainly have three models: A, B and C. Various Soviet tanks including T-34/76 also have obvious defects, mainly because they are not all equipped with inter-vehicle radio communication equipment. Generally, only one command tank in several T-34s has radio equipment, and the communication between tanks depends on semaphores.
Compared with various types of tanks in Germany, they are basically equipped with radio stations, and their cooperative combat capabilities are quite different. Therefore, it is difficult for tanks to exert excellent performance when marching in formation, especially when encountering unexpected situations.
Therefore, it is not uncommon for a poor III tank to destroy multiple T-34s. Later, with the improvement of T-34/85 tank wireless communication equipment, this weakness gradually changed.
Starting from the autumn of 1943, the T-34 was named T-34/85 tank by installing 85mm artillery and strengthening armor. And in view of the weakness of Soviet tanks' poor cooperative combat ability, radio communication equipment was added, so an electromechanical engineer was added.
In the same year, 65438+65438 in February+65438 in May, T-34/85 was approved for mass production. In that year, 283 vehicles were produced, and in the following year, the number soared to 1 1000 vehicles, replacing T-34/76 as the main equipment of the Soviet mechanized forces in the later period.
T-34 tanks are balanced in armor, firepower and power. The body armor thickness of the T-34 is 45 mm, which is equivalent to the German III and IV tanks, but the bevel angle of the front armor is 32 degrees and the side armor is 49 degrees. The turret is a cast hexagon, with a front armor thickness of 60 mm and a side surface of 45 mm The oblique angle of the car body extends all the way to the turret, so the T-34 is almost a right triangle from the front.
Inclined armor has two advantages. First, the shell bounces off easily after hitting, and its power is greatly reduced. Secondly, according to the principle of triangle, after the horizontally fired shell hits the inclined armor, the thickness of the steel plate it needs to pass through is equivalent to the hypotenuse of the triangle. Therefore, the front armor of the T-34 tank with a thickness of 45 mm and an inclination angle of 32 degrees is equivalent to 90 mm, and the side armor with an inclination angle of 49 degrees is equivalent to 54 mm.
This frontal armor directly led to the inability of any artillery equipped with the German tanks of 194 1 to penetrate within 500 meters.
In terms of firepower, when the tank guns in European countries were still at the level of 40-50 mm caliber, the T-34 was equipped with a 76 mm L/30.5 cannon from the beginning, and it was replaced by a 76 mm F-34 L/42 cannon at 194 1. When F-34 cannon uses ordinary armor-piercing projectile, it can penetrate 69mm homogeneous steel plate at a distance of 500m and 6 1 mm steel plate at a distance of11,000 m.. None of the German tanks at that time could resist such fierce fire.
F-34 cannon can also launch high-explosive bombs and fragment bombs to attack soft targets, so it has the ability to support infantry attacks. A T-34 tank usually has 77 rounds of ammunition, including 19 rounds of armor-piercing ammunition, 53 rounds of high-explosive ammunition and 5 rounds of fragmentation ammunition. 1943, the modified T-34/85 ammunition capacity increased to 100 rounds.
In terms of power, Soviet designer Morozov specially developed the famous 12 cylinder 39-liter V2 diesel engine for the T-34, with a power of 500 HP, making the top speed of the T-34 reach 55 kilometers per hour.
Another advantage of V2 diesel engine is fuel saving. The fuel tank capacity of the T-34 tank is 60 liters, and a reserve fuel tank with a capacity of 39 liters is hung on each side of the car body, with a range of 540 kilometers.
In contrast, the range of the German IV tank is only 160 km, while the Tiger tank needs to refuel when it runs 100 km. But the disadvantage of diesel engine is that the exhaust gas is rolling and the fuel tank can't be hidden.
The T-34 tank, like the previous BT-7, uses the American patented Christie chassis. The bearing shaft of this chassis is equipped with giant damping springs, which can withstand severe ups and downs. The track width of T-34 is nearly 50 cm, while the track width of German tanks is usually only 30 cm.
The above advantages make the T-34 have super off-road maneuverability, which is the hardware foundation of the Soviet armored forces' deep attack tactics. T-34 tanks can ride freely on the ice sheet one meter deep in the ice and snow on the eastern front, and are called "the king in the snow" by the Germans.
1942, after the appearance of the tiger tank, the Soviet army found that none of the active tanks could pose a direct threat to the tiger tank under normal combat distance, so the modification plan of T-34 as the main battle tank was immediately put on the agenda.
The new model adopted the D-5T85mm L/53 tank gun modified from the M 1939 85mm anti-aircraft gun, which was later further improved into the Gith -S-53 main gun, and its firepower was greatly enhanced, thus posing a certain threat to the Tiger tank. T-34/85 also has some improvements in armor.
Another important improvement of T-34/85 is the adoption of a redesigned new turret (from aborted IS- 1 heavy tank), which greatly increases the turret space and adds a loader according to the experience gained in the battle, thus liberating the captain from the dual tasks of command and loading, and greatly improving the operational efficiency.
Due to the increase of turrets, the Germans often refer to T-34/85 as "Big Head T-34". T-34/85 was put into production in the second half of 1943, which is the largest output in the T-34 series and still serves in many countries and regions after the war.
The output of various T-34s in wartime exceeded 50,000, which was the highest tank type during the Soviet-German War. Far more than the sum of all tanks in Germany, it became the guarantee for the victory of the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War.
After World War II, Soviet T-34 tanks were not replaced by T-55 until 1950s. In addition, the T-34 is equipped with multinational forces. It fought in battlefields such as Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East, and even appeared in the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
T-34/76C is the later model of T-34/76 series. The design of turret has been improved, and the protection of the body and turret has been increased, so the weight of the body has increased a lot.
The biggest feature of T-34/76C is that the tilt angle of the front of the turret is 30 degrees. T-34/76C was the main force in the Battle of Kursk. In the battle, T-34/76B, KV- 1, T-70 fought against German III and IV tanks and the latest Tiger and Black Panther tanks.
However, this battle also shows that the performance of T-34/76 and KV- 1 is not as good as that of the new German tanks, and the need of the battlefield led to the emergence of T-34/85 and JS series.
T-34/85M 1944 was improved into Gith -S-53 main gun, which greatly strengthened firepower and improved armor. The new turret was redesigned to increase the turret space. The loader T-34/85 was put into production in the second half of 1943, which was the largest in the T-34 series.