About tanks with love. Today we will visit our virtual museum of armored vehicles again and admire its wonders. And, of course, let's think about what strange creatures people are. Either they feel sorry for the money for the necessities, for what the lives of other people directly depend on, then they seem to go crazy and throw a lot of money on something that is of no particular use to them. People usually never spared money to show off money … But, on the other hand, after all, what resourcefulness of mind they sometimes showed! Let's just say that in relation to armored vehicles, only one principle often worked very well: there would be wheels (or tracks), and we will certainly build something armored on this and with a machine gun!
And as soon as they got to the station full of Czech legionaries, they did not shoot at them, but immediately surrendered. Well, the Czechs did not even take him off the platform, and they fired at the Penza Council of Deputies from a tower gun, and then again on the platform they sent him to Serdobsk, where their part was surrounded and where a Soviet armored train approached. There, this BA dispersed everyone with a few shots, forced the enemy armored train to retreat, and … eventually led the encircled people to Penza. The amazing thing about its design is that for some reason they did not put at least one machine gun on it to shoot straight ahead. Still, it was not very convenient to fire forward from sponsored machine guns.
But two tanks were made. One, steel, heavy, on the move, albeit without suspension, which made it shake terribly. And the other - with polyurethane tracks, which, when moving, did not touch the ground, but pulled it by a cable tied to a truck. By the way, the tank turned out to be very stylish and quite believable. Three cannons, one of which is in the tower, is a great move. That is why only the British themselves during the First World War did not think of it ?!
Yes, but where can I get the blueprints? I wrote to the Swedish Ministry of Defense, and they not only sent me the drawings, they also connected with their society of BTT modelers, and they also sent a magazine where it was written about him. It is a pity that at that time there was no google translator and all the text in the article about it had to be taken from Heigl. I always look at this car with bewilderment. Well, who invented it? By the way, the spare wheels rotate under the side armor shields. This is in order to better overcome obstacles …
It had a reservation of 22-32 mm, and the forehead of the tower (it was cast) was 45-mm. Armament - 37-mm cannon and three machine guns, with a maximum speed of 89 km / h on the highway. Specific power - 14 HP per ton of weight is a very good indicator for a wheeled and such a heavy BA (weight 13, 92 tons). After the war, to whom only the British did not float it, so these BAs served until the 80s of the last century.
"Deacon" is something in general. It was built on the chassis of the AES "Matador" truck and was used in North Africa. Thin bulletproof armor, 57 mm cannon, which had a limited radius of fire from behind the driver's cabin. And how to fight on it? And it's very simple: they covered it with a mock-up of a body with an awning and let it ride on the roads of Tunisia and Egypt, they say, the truck got lost in the sands. Naturally, seeing such an enviable prey, the Italians and Germans did not shoot at him, but … they caught up with their own BA or tank and offered to stop. And the car immediately stopped, the driver got out of the cab, after which the props fell from it all and a point-blank shot sounded. At close range, the 57-mm shell of the British anti-tank gun that was on the Deacon pierced the armor of any enemy tank. Well, if help came to him, the Deacon would turn around and run away at full speed.
The tank received 63 mm main and 38 mm overhead armor, that is, more than one hundred millimeters, and even at an angle. Well, it didn't make sense to shoot him at the tower even from the "Royal Tiger". The armor on it had a thickness of 152 mm and another 177 mm was the thickness of the cannon mask, which covered almost all of its frontal projection. The tank was armed with either a 105-mm howitzer to destroy obstacles, or a 76-mm cannon, which, although bad, still hit German tanks.
He named the car "Tank cruiser". According to the designer, his task was to "escort the advance detachments of the victorious Red Army on the march to the enemy capitals: Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Bucharest and further to the West - to liberate the peoples oppressed by fascism." But other engineer-colonels and engineer-generals did not approve of his project. I wonder if the science fiction writer A. Kazantsev knew about this project when he wrote his novel "The Burning Island" or he invented a "land cruiser" acting in it, crushing entire hills and groves under him?..
And here came the tanks of our Indian friends, who somehow did not say so for a very long time: "Hindi rusi bhai gang" ("Indians and Russians are children of the same breath"), "gangs" - yes, but they are often only weapons buy in completely different places. For example, Vijayanta. In fact, it is an English tank of the Vickers company, it was produced at the factories of Great Britain in 1965-1967 and in India from 1966 to 1983. More than 1400 units were manufactured in total. They came to an agreement in 1961 and failed to prevent us from this “deal of the century”. In 1962, the Indo-Chinese border war broke out in Tibet. The USSR then did not support the PRC, took a position of neutrality, contrary to the hopes of Mao Zedong for Soviet aid, but also refused to help capitalist India against socialist China. But the United Kingdom and the United States helped her and began supplying weapons to India. Later, however, we started selling T-55 and T-72M tanks to India, but it was at that time that our positions in Hindustan were seriously weakened.
In an interview in January 2020, Army Commander Manoj Mukund Naravane said that the "second series" tank finally meets all the requirements, and its commissioning is scheduled for 2026-2027.
P. S. The administration of the site and personally the author would like to express their sincere gratitude to A. Sheps, the author of the illustrations of the "Panopticon", for the drawings of the BTT provided by him.
