Continuing the history of the formation of the T-64 tank, it should be noted that this path was thorny with unexpected turns. At the end of 1961, a technical project for object 432 was developed and defended, and in September 1962, the first prototypes of the tank were manufactured. In October 1962, the tank was demonstrated to the leaders of the state in Kubinka. Compared to other tanks, it was seriously different, and, despite the ambiguous reaction from the military, its further development was approved.
Outwardly, the tank looked very impressive, like an exquisitely dressed woman with a pleasant appearance. I was told how, when considering the first versions of the tank, Morozov drew a line on the drawing with his own hand and cut off the protruding ends of the first fuel tanks on the fenders. With the words that everything in the tank should be beautiful.
At the Malyshev plant, a pilot batch of tanks was manufactured for presentation to state tests. The car was fundamentally new in almost everything and in the process of factory tests a large number of defects and defects of the engine and its systems, the loading mechanism and the chassis were revealed. For this reason, a number of tactical and technical requirements were not met.
After working out and fine-tuning the design and eliminating the comments, the tank was nevertheless submitted for state tests in 1963. However, these measures turned out to be insufficient, the TTT was not performed and the tank did not go through the full test cycle and was not adopted for service.
Despite this, a decision was made to launch it in serial production in 1964 according to the documentation of the chief designer. The tanks were sent to the troops for accelerated operation, defects were identified and eliminated. The design was being finalized and in October 1966 it was submitted for repeated state tests. He successfully passed them and was put into service in December 1966.
It should be noted right away that the serial production of the tank began against the will of the military, and this naturally did not make them supporters of this vehicle. In addition, the military opposed the introduction of a fundamentally new machine into the army, since this required serious changes in the technical and organizational support of the tank forces.
In 1964, the T-64 tank underwent a deep modernization. A 125 mm cannon was installed in it and many of the tank's systems were modified. It successfully passed military trials and was put into service in May 1968 as the T-64A tank.
It was a new generation tank and was very different from all the previous ones.
It turned out to be too new for its time, and any innovation requires effort and time for fine-tuning. The advantages and disadvantages of the T-64 have already been analyzed and described in detail. But I would like to dwell on some of them.
Your personal impressions of the tank. I was trained on T-55 tanks and once, in practice at a tank repair plant, I managed to get into the then classified T-64. I was struck by two things - the gunner's sight and the loading mechanism.
The TPD -2 -49 sight seemed perfect, how much it differed from the simple sight on the "fifty-fifth" and impressed with its "non-tank" design and characteristics. Then I did not yet know that after years I would have to lead the development of the most complex sighting systems of a promising tank.
Also struck by the rammer MZ. Everything worked so quickly that I could not figure out how a rigid rod is made from two flexible chains. Much later, I came across Morozov's invention, which so simply solved a difficult problem.
The most problematic on the tank were three units - the engine, the loading mechanism and the chassis. If you look at the T-64, T-72 and T-80, then they are precisely at these nodes and differ from each other. Everything else they have is practically the same - layout, gun, weapons, sights, electronics. It is difficult for a non-specialist to distinguish between them.
The T-64 engine caused the most problems and the work on its refinement lasted a very long time. It was created from scratch, there was neither technology nor experience in developing such engines. In the process of fine-tuning it, a lot of problems arose and for their solution it was necessary to involve specialists in metals, ceramics, oils. Conduct research on the dynamics of the piston group and sometimes look for the necessary solutions by trial and error.
The chief designer of the engine, Charomsky, developed it and obtained acceptable results on prototypes of the engine. In the process of work, the power is 580 hp. turned out to be insufficient and a new 700 hp 5TDF engine had to be developed. Given the existing problems, this created new ones, and many had the impression that it was impossible to bring it about.
In addition, Charomsky did not want to deal with fine-tuning the engine, in 1959 he retired and returned to Moscow. Instead, he became the chief designer Golinets, a passionate lover of women, this was no longer the chief designer and a completely different level. Under his leadership, work on the engine has seriously slowed down.
When the T-72 was adopted in 1973, an enraged Morozov, returning from Moscow, blamed Golinets for the failures, and very quickly he was removed from office for "moral decay".
Despite all these problems, the engine was nevertheless improved, and during the development of the "Boxer" tank, a modification of this engine with a capacity of 1200hp was already used. The problems were resolved, but time was running out and the tank could not get on its feet.
There were also completely unexpected problems. As I was told, at the beginning of the military operation of the tank, one unit was stationed in a coniferous forest and after a while the tanks began to fail. It turned out that coniferous needles clog the ejection cooling system with all the ensuing consequences. It was necessary to urgently finalize the structure and introduce nets on the roof of the MTO, and return all the tanks from the army to the factory and refine it.
Why did the T-72 have a new automatic loader? The choice of the MZ option was determined by the ammunition. At the beginning of development, it was unitary. As a result, they achieved and made it separate with a partially combustible sleeve and a pallet. We were looking for a variant of its placement in a mechanized laying for a long time. At one of the meetings, someone suggested placing it like a bent arm at the elbow. This is how the cabin-type MZ appeared.
By adopting this option, the emergency evacuation of the driver was limited. The problem was solved by making a hole in the cockpit. But this was only possible when the gun was positioned "on the course." There was also a problem with the trap of the pallet, when it flew out of the gun at high speed, there were cases of non-catching of the pallet and the sensor fixing it in the trap was constantly breaking, which led to the stopping of the loading process. This problem was also eventually resolved.
Under these far-fetched pretexts, the military did not perceive the Ministry of Health. On the T-72, they acted primitively simply, threw out six shots and put the shells and shells on top of each other in the conveyor. They did not make a trap at all. The pallet was simply thrown out. And this despite the fact that according to TTT, the tank should not depressurize in battle. At that time, the demand for conducting a battle in conditions of the use of nuclear weapons was seriously put forward.
The military turned a blind eye to reducing the ammunition load from 28 to 22 and depressurizing the tank when firing. The main thing was to prove that the Ministry of Health was not good.
Problems with the chassis. Over the years, there has been a lot of debate about which chassis is better and which is worse. I can tell right away that the main criterion when choosing the type of suspension on the T-64 was its weight. Do not forget that, according to TTT, the tank's weight should not exceed 34 tons and from the very beginning there were problems with the engine, its power was insufficient. Therefore, Morozov, knowing what a cross-country ability is for a tank, chose this suspension option and defended it all the time.
This type of chassis naturally had drawbacks, they were treated, but the weight requirement was strictly observed. There was a constant dilemma between performance and weight, since the adoption of a different suspension increased the weight of the tank by two tons. On the T-72 and T-80 they went for it, on the T-64 they left a lightweight chassis. Of course, in such restrictions on weight and dimensions, it was difficult to achieve the satisfaction of all requirements, but the main one believed that it was necessary to put up with this. Kostenko mentions in his book that Morozov in communication with him agreed that, most likely, he was wrong, but this is already the property of history.
So there were three types of chassis: Kharkov, Tagil and Leningrad. Many tests were carried out, according to their results, the Leningrad suspension turned out to be the most effective. The KMDB also took it as a basis in their subsequent modifications of tanks and in the development of the promising Boxer tank.
The solution to these problems took time, and 11 years passed from the moment the development of the tank began until it was put into service. During this time, both supporters and opponents of the development of the tank appeared. The reasons for this were technical, organizational and opportunistic. The tank was of a new generation and its development naturally required a lot of effort.
On the one hand, the military wanted to get a new tank with improved characteristics, on the other hand, they were alarmed by the complexity of the tank and the changes in the structure of tank forces and the training of tankers inevitable during its implementation. This was overlaid with technical problems and they delayed the adoption of the tank into service.
In addition, they were unhappy with the launch of the T-64 tank into mass production without completing state tests in 1964 and believed that this tank was being imposed on them. The commander of the tank forces, Marshal Poluboyarov and then Marshal Babadzhanyan, the heads of the GBTU and the Kubinka training ground, over time began to lean towards the version of a simpler tank, which they imagined the T-72.
The leadership of the defense industry saw what a colossal amount of work to be done when organizing the production of this tank. Constant problems with the organization of production, especially the new engine, also did not arouse much enthusiasm among them. Only the iron will of the "Stalinist People's Commissar" Ustinov, who relied on the T-64 as a single tank for the army, forced everyone to implement the assigned tasks.
There were also opportunistic reasons. The launch of a single tank into serial production obliged UVZ and ZKZ to conduct their developments on this base. Naturally, they did not experience any pleasure from this, and through their lobbyists among the military, industry leaders and the government, they tried to prevent this and promoted their tank projects.
In August 1967, a decree was issued by the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers on equipping the army with new T-64 tanks and developing capacities for their production. The release of this tank was to be carried out at three factories - in Kharkov, Nizhny Tagil and Leningrad. Given the limited capacity for the production of 5TDF engines, its installation in peacetime was envisaged at all factories, and during a special period UVZ was supposed to produce a "backup" version of the T-64 tank based on the existing V-2 engine.
The KMDB developed this version of the tank (object 439). In 1967, prototypes of the tank were manufactured and tested and tests were successfully carried out. The technical documentation for this tank was transferred to UVZ for the organization of serial production.
In parallel, at the LKZ, from the beginning of the 60s, work was carried out to install a gas turbine engine on the T-64 tank (the T-64T tank). Samples of such a tank were made and tested. In October 1968, it was decided to create a T-64 tank with a gas turbine engine (object 219). This work was of little interest to anyone, since there was no acceptable turbine.
Regardless of the decisions taken at UVZ and LKZ, based on the T-64 tank, work was carried out to create their own versions of a promising tank. At this stage, with the serious support of the military, the UVZ project (object 172) began to be lobbied, which later became the T-72 tank. As Kostenko wrote in his book, the process of the formation of this tank was long, thorny and almost detective in nature. It was really a detective story - with forged government documents!
