About tanks with love. Today we again go to our tank freak show, but the purpose of our "trip" will be just one tank. But what a! Our T-34 is a tank that everyone has probably heard of, and without mention of which one book about the Second World War, neither in our country nor in the West, can do. "Their T-34 was the best in the world!" This was not said by anyone, but by a German general. And this is probably the most serious praise for the tank.
I learned about this tank a long time ago. In Soviet times, his images and sections were in the magazine "Young Technician", and "Modelist-Constructor", and "Science and Life", and even … in the magazine "Murzilka". It was told about him in the book by O. Drozhzhin "Land Cruisers" (1942), and in the book by A. Beskurnikov "Strike and Defense" (1974), and in the book by N. Ermolovich "Knights of Armor" (1976.), and I. Shmelev's "Tanks in Battle" (1984), and, of course, in his "History of a Tank (1916-1996)" (1996). And these are only the most, so to speak, popular publications. And there were, after all, special monographs (perfectly published) by a number of other, very competent authors, such as M. Kolomiets, author of the book “T-34. The first complete encyclopedia”(2013).
In a word, there are so many books about the T-34, including even its participation in the Korean War and the conflict in Croatia, that it is time to write a full-fledged historiographic review about them, but it is unlikely that anyone will need it today.
For modelers, the T-34 models are produced by the most famous model firms, including Tamiya, Revell and our Zvezda, of course. And on a very different scale. From 1: 100 to 1:10 and 1: 6! That is, there is a lot of information on this tank, and the most diverse.
But among all this undoubted wealth there is a place for our collection.
The Germans, who captured many T-34 tanks, also used them and also strengthened their armor by shielding
However, in the end, a simpler scheme of additional booking of the tank won by welding additional plates of armor onto the frontal armor of the hull. It is known that the thickness of the armor on the frontal projection was 45 mm. Thus, having welded on a sheet with a thickness of only 10 mm, we get a total thickness of 55 mm, and if 15, then in the end there will be all 60 (booking an experimental T-46-5 tank). Well, the 20-mm plate gave a total of 75 mm, that is, the armor of the T-34, according to this indicator, correlated with the armor of the KV tank. However, the factories did not always have armor plates of the required thickness, and then the “sandwich” armor was invented: 10 + 5 + 5 + 45 - that was 75 mm. Even armor plates with a thickness of 35 mm were installed, that is, such a tank received 80-mm frontal armor! True, such a reservation increased weight, pressure on the front rollers and suspension springs, but, nevertheless, they put up with it. And the lifespan of our tanks on the battlefield was so short that the suspension did not have time to wear out!
But in this figure, we see four projections of the T-34, which are not quite ordinary in appearance. It seems to be a tank of the 1941 model, but some not like that. And this is, so to speak, a tank of the "IF" ("If only …") brand, representing the author's imagination on the topic of improving the original sample. Many tankers complained that the hatch on the front armor plate was a bad solution. Often the tank was hit by shells through the hatch, especially of a large caliber. One of the possible solutions to this problem could be the use of a solid armor plate without a cutout for the hatch, but only with two narrow slots (the tradition of those years!) For observation and with three periscopes on the roof of the hull. But the hatches could well have been placed on the sides of the hull, as the British did on many of their tanks, in particular, on the Valentine tank.
But the T-34IF tank with a modified slope of the frontal armor and an increased width of the hull with a reverse slope of the side armor plates of the hull, covered with another layer of thinner armor with hatches for inventory in the area of the fenders. Such a scheme would make it possible to move the turret a little back and place hatches, the driver and the radio operator on the roof of the hull on the left and right. Which, in principle, was then done on the T-44 tank, although its side armor plates did not tilt.
In this figure, the width of the tank's hull is left the same, but the slope of the front armor plate of the hull has been changed. Accordingly, this would make it possible to mark both hatches on the roof of the hull, that is, to provide each crew member with their own hatch. Since the slope of the armor would be reduced in this case, this disadvantage could be compensated for by increasing the thickness of the armor plate to 52 mm. This was the slope of the frontal armor that was on the American Sherman tanks (51/56 °). That is, the Americans considered such armor for their medium tank to be quite sufficient. It would have protected our tank just as well, but the convenience of the driver and gunner on it would have increased in a very noticeable way.
Here it should be borne in mind that the analysis of damage to the frontal armor showed that its slope leads to a ricochet of shells only if the caliber of the projectile is not greater than the thickness of the armor, that is, for German guns these are 37 and 50 mm calibers maximum. But with an increase in caliber, the probability of a projectile ricochet from an inclined sheet decreases very quickly. For shells of 88 mm caliber, the sloped armor of the T-34 hull had practically no effect on its armor resistance. On the other hand, an armor plate located at an angle of 60 ° to the vertical is practically equal to an armor plate of double thickness: 1 / cos (60 °) = 2, which makes it possible to rationally cover the internal volume with the armor and reduce the total weight of the armor on the tank. That is, the less the armor is tilted, the better, in principle, but the tilt of 52 ° with a thickness of 52 mm can be considered almost optimal. And besides, hatches from above!
It is known that during the war years, two modifications of the T-34/85 tank were produced: with the 85-mm D-5T cannon (early version) and the same caliber ZIS-S-53 cannon, which was considered more convenient to use and technologically advanced in production. … But since the D-5T was ready earlier, they began to put it on the tanks first.
The use of cumulative ammunition by the Germans at the end of the war again led to the need to equip tanks with spaced armor. Here is one of the projects of such additional booking. But, as always, the projects were in one place, and the tanks were in another, so our tankers had to "armour" their tanks with bed nets and gratings from the garden fences. There are photos in which such tanks can be seen, but in our freak show, their drawings, unfortunately, are absent.
