Few tankers of the countries participating in the Second World War could repeat these words of the commander of the T-34 tank, Lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Bodnar, regarding their combat vehicles. The Soviet T-34 tank became a legend primarily because those people who sat at the levers and the sighting devices of its cannon and machine guns believed in it.
In the memoirs of tankers, one can trace the thought expressed by the famous Russian military theorist A. A. Svechin: "If the importance of material resources in a war is very relative, then faith in them is of great importance." Svechin was an infantry officer in the Great War of 1914-1918, saw the debut on the battlefield of heavy artillery, airplanes and armored vehicles, and he knew what he was talking about. If soldiers and officers have faith in the equipment entrusted to them, then they will act bolder and more decisively, paving their way to victory. On the contrary, distrust, the willingness to give up mentally or a really weak sample of weapons will lead to defeat. Of course, we are not talking about blind faith based on propaganda or speculation. Confidence in people was inspired by the design features, which strikingly distinguished the T-34 from a number of combat vehicles of that time: the inclined arrangement of armor plates and the V-2 diesel engine.
The principle of increasing the effectiveness of the tank's protection due to the inclined arrangement of the armor sheets was understandable to anyone who studied geometry at school. “The T-34 had thinner armor than the Panthers and Tigers. Total thickness approx. 45 mm. But since it was located at an angle, the leg was about 90 mm, which made it difficult to break through,”recalls the tank commander, Lieutenant Alexander Sergeevich Burtsev. The use of geometric constructions in the defense system instead of the brute force of a simple increase in the thickness of the armor plates gave in the eyes of the crews of the thirty-fours an indisputable advantage to their tank over the enemy. “The arrangement of the armor plates for the Germans was worse, mostly vertically. This is, of course, a big minus. Our tanks had them at an angle,”recalls the battalion commander, Captain Vasily Pavlovich Bryukhov.
Of course, all these theses had not only theoretical but also practical substantiation. German anti-tank and tank guns with a caliber of up to 50 mm in most cases did not penetrate the upper frontal part of the T-34 tank. Moreover, even the sub-caliber shells of the 50-mm PAK-38 anti-tank gun and the 50-mm T-III tank gun with a barrel length of 60 calibers, which, according to trigonometric calculations, should have pierced the T-34's forehead, in reality ricocheted from the sloped armor of high hardness without causing any damage to the tank. A statistical study of the combat damage of T-34 tanks carried out in September-October 1942 by the NII-48 *, which were being repaired at repair bases No. 1 and 2 in Moscow, showed that out of 109 hits in the upper frontal part of the tank, 89% were safe, and dangerous the defeat fell on guns with a caliber of 75 mm and above. Of course, with the advent of the Germans a large number of 75-mm anti-tank and tank guns, the situation became more complicated. The 75-mm shells were normalized (deployed at right angles to the armor upon impact), piercing the sloped frontal armor of the T-34 hull already at a distance of 1200 m. The 88-mm anti-aircraft cannon shells and cumulative ammunition were just as insensitive to the slope of the armor. However, the share of 50-mm guns in the Wehrmacht until the battle at the Kursk Bulge was significant, and the belief in the sloped armor of the "thirty-four" was largely justified. Any noticeable advantages over the T-34 armor were noted by tankmen only in the armor protection of British tanks, “… if the blank penetrated the turret, then the commander of the British tank and the gunner could remain alive, since practically no fragments were formed, and in the T-34 the armor crumbled, and those in the tower had little chance of surviving,”recalls VP Bryukhov.
This was due to the exceptionally high nickel content in the armor of the British Matilda and Valentine tanks. If the Soviet 45-mm armor of high hardness contained 1, 0 - 1.5% nickel, then the armor of medium hardness of British tanks contained 3, 0 - 3.5% nickel, which provided a slightly higher viscosity of the latter. At the same time, no modifications were made to the protection of T-34 tanks by the crews in the units. Only before the Berlin operation, according to Lieutenant Colonel Anatoly Petrovich Schwebig, the former deputy brigade commander of the 12th Guards Tank Corps for the technical part, screens from metal bed nets were welded onto the tanks to protect them from faust cartridges. The well-known cases of shielding "thirty-fours" are the fruit of the creativity of repair shops and manufacturing plants. The same can be said for the painting of tanks. The tanks came from the factory painted green inside and out. When preparing the tank for winter, the task of the deputy commanders of tank units for the technical part included painting the tanks with whitewash. The exception was the winter of 1944/45, when the war was raging across Europe. None of the veterans remembers wearing camouflage on tanks.
An even more obvious and inspiring design detail for the T-34 was the diesel engine. Most of those who were trained as a driver, radio operator or even a commander of a T-34 tank in civilian life in one way or another faced with fuel, at least with gasoline. They knew very well from personal experience that gasoline is volatile, flammable and burns with a bright flame. The quite obvious experiments with gasoline were used by the engineers who created the T-34. “In the midst of the dispute, the designer Nikolai Kucherenko used not the most scientific, but a clear example of the advantages of the new fuel at the factory yard. He took a lighted torch and brought it to a bucket of gasoline - the bucket instantly engulfed the flame. Then the same torch was lowered into a bucket of diesel fuel - the flame was extinguished as in water … "* This experiment was projected on the effect of a shell hitting a tank that could set fire to fuel or even its vapors inside the car. Accordingly, the crew members of the T-34 treated enemy tanks to some extent with condescension. “They were with a gasoline engine. It's also a big drawback,”recalls senior sergeant-gunner Pyotr Ilyich Kirichenko. The same attitude was towards tanks supplied under Lend-Lease (“A lot of people died because a bullet hit him, and there was a petrol engine and nonsense armor,” recalls the tank commander, junior lieutenant Yuri Maksovich Polyanovsky), and Soviet tanks and an ACS equipped with a carburetor engine ("Once the SU-76 came to our battalion. They were with gasoline engines - a real lighter … They all burned out in the very first battles …" - VP Bryukhov recalls). The presence of a diesel engine in the engine compartment of the tank instilled in the crews the confidence that they had much less chances of accepting a terrible death from fire than the enemy, whose tanks were filled with hundreds of liters of volatile and flammable gasoline. The neighborhood with large volumes of fuel (the number of buckets of which the tankers had to estimate every time the tank was refueled) was concealed by the thought that it would be more difficult for anti-tank cannon shells to set it on fire, and in the event of a fire, the tankers would have enough time to jump out of the tank. However, in this case, the direct projection of the experiments with the bucket onto the tanks was not entirely justified. Moreover, statistically, tanks with diesel engines did not have advantages in fire safety in relation to cars with carburetor engines. According to statistics from October 1942, diesel T-34s burned even slightly more often than T-70 tanks fueled with aviation gasoline (23% versus 19%). The engineers of the NIIBT test site in Kubinka in 1943 came to a conclusion that is exactly the opposite of the everyday assessment of the possibilities of ignition of various types of fuel. “The use by the Germans on the new tank, released in 1942, of a carburetor engine, rather than a diesel engine, can be explained by: […] a very significant percentage of fires in combat conditions with diesel engines and their lack of significant advantages over carburetor engines in this respect, especially with the competent design of the latter and the availability of reliable automatic fire extinguishers. " Bringing the torch to a bucket of gasoline, the designer Kucherenko set fire to a vapor of volatile fuel. There were no vapors in the bucket over the diesel oil layer that were favorable for ignition by the torch. But this fact did not mean that diesel fuel would not ignite from a much more powerful means of ignition - a projectile hit. Therefore, the placement of fuel tanks in the fighting compartment of the T-34 tank did not at all increase the fire safety of the thirty-four in comparison with their peers, whose tanks were located in the rear of the hull and were hit much less frequently. VP Bryukhov confirms what has been said: “When does the tank catch fire? When a projectile hits the fuel tank. And it burns when there is a lot of fuel. And by the end of the fighting there is no fuel, and the tank hardly burns. " “The petrol engine is flammable on the one hand and quiet on the other. T-34, it not only roars, but also clicks its tracks,”recalls the tank commander, junior lieutenant Arsentiy Konstantinovich Rodkin. The power plant of the T-34 tank did not initially provide for the installation of mufflers on the exhaust pipes. They were brought out to the stern of the tank without any sound-absorbing devices, roaring with the exhaust of a 12-cylinder engine. In addition to the noise, the powerful engine of the tank raised dust with its exhaust, devoid of a muffler. “The T-34 raises a terrible dust because the exhaust pipes are directed downward,” recalls A. K. Rodkin.
The designers of the T-34 tank gave their brainchild two features that set it apart from the combat vehicles of allies and opponents. These features of the tank added confidence to the crew in their weapons. People went into battle with pride for the equipment entrusted to them. This was much more important than the actual effect of the slope of the armor or the real fire hazard of a diesel tank.
Tanks appeared as a means of protecting crews of machine guns and guns from enemy fire. The balance between tank protection and anti-tank artillery capabilities is rather shaky, artillery is constantly being improved, and the newest tank cannot feel safe on the battlefield. The powerful anti-aircraft and hull guns make this balance even more precarious. Therefore, sooner or later a situation arises when a shell hitting a tank penetrates the armor and turns the steel box into hell.
Good tanks solved this problem even after death, having received one or several hits, opening the way to salvation for people inside themselves. Unusual for tanks in other countries, the driver's hatch in the upper frontal part of the T-34 hull turned out to be quite convenient in practice for leaving the vehicle in critical situations. The driver-mechanic Sergeant Semyon Lvovich Aria recalls: “The hatch was smooth, with rounded edges, and it was not difficult to get in and out of it. Moreover, when you got up from the driver's seat, you were already leaning out almost waist-deep. "Another advantage of the driver's hatch of the T-34 tank was the ability to fix it in several intermediate relatively "open" and "closed" positions. The hatch mechanism was quite simple. To facilitate opening, the heavy cast hatch (60 mm thick) was supported by a spring, the rod of which was a toothed rack. By moving the stopper from a tooth to a rack tooth, it was possible to rigidly fix the hatch without fear of breaking it on bumps in the road or battlefield. The driver-mechanics used this mechanism willingly and preferred to keep the hatch ajar. “When possible, it is always better with an open hatch,” recalls V. P. Bryukhov. His words are confirmed by the company commander Senior Lieutenant Arkady Vasilyevich Maryevsky: "The mechanic's hatch is always open on the palm, firstly, everything is visible, and secondly, the air flow when the upper hatch is open ventilates the fighting compartment." Thus, a good overview was provided and the ability to quickly leave the car when a shell hit it. In general, the mechanic was, according to the tankers, in the most advantageous position. “The mechanic had the greatest chance of surviving. He sat low, there was sloping armor in front of him,”recalls the platoon commander, Lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Bodnar; according to PI Kirichenko: “The lower part of the building, as a rule, is hidden behind the folds of the terrain, it is difficult to get into it. And this one rises above the ground. Mostly they got into it. And more people died who were sitting in the tower than those who were below. " It should be noted here that we are talking about hits that are dangerous for the tank. Statistically, in the initial period of the war, most of the hits fell on the hull of the tank. According to the NII-48 report mentioned above, the hull accounted for 81% of the hits, and the turret 19%. However, more than half of the total number of hits were safe (blind): 89% of hits on the upper frontal part, 66% of hits on the lower frontal part and about 40% of hits on the side did not lead to through holes. Moreover, of the hits on the side, 42% of their total fell on the engine and transmission compartments, the defeat of which was safe for the crew. The tower, on the other hand, was relatively easy to break through. The less durable cast armor of the turret weakly resisted even 37-mm automatic anti-aircraft cannon shells. The situation was worsened by the fact that the T-34's turret was hit by heavy guns with a high line of fire, for example, 88-mm anti-aircraft guns, as well as hits from long-barreled 75-mm and 50-mm guns of German tanks. The terrain screen, which the tankman was talking about, in the European theater of operations was about one meter. Half of this meter falls on the ground clearance, the rest covers about a third of the height of the T-34 tank hull. Most of the upper frontal part of the case is no longer covered by the terrain screen.
If the driver's hatch is unanimously assessed by veterans as comfortable, then tankers are equally unanimous in their negative assessment of the turret hatch of early T-34 tanks with an oval turret, nicknamed the "pie" for its characteristic shape. VP Bryukhov says about him: “The big hatch is bad. It is very heavy, and it is difficult to open it. If it gets stuck, then that's it, no one will jump out. " The tank commander, Lieutenant Nikolai Evdokimovich Glukhov, echoes him: “The large hatch is very inconvenient. Very heavy". Combining hatches for two side by side crew members, a gunner and a loader, was uncharacteristic for world tank building. Its appearance on the T-34 was caused not by tactical, but by technological considerations associated with the installation of a powerful gun in the tank. The turret of the predecessor of the T-34 on the conveyor of the Kharkov plant - the BT-7 tank - was equipped with two hatches, one for each of the crew members located in the turret. For its characteristic appearance with open hatches, the BT-7 was nicknamed by the Germans "Mickey Mouse". "Thirty-fours" inherited a lot from BT, but instead of a 45-mm cannon, the tank received a 76-mm gun, and the design of the tanks in the fighting compartment of the corps was changed. The need to dismantle the tanks and the massive cradle of the 76-mm gun during repairs forced the designers to combine the two turret hatches into one. The body of the T-34 gun with recoil devices was removed through a bolt-on lid in the turret aft niche, and the cradle with a toothed vertical guidance sector was retrieved through the turret hatch. Through the same hatch, the fuel tanks were also taken out, fixed in the fenders of the T-34 tank hull. All these difficulties were caused by the side walls of the turret sloped to the cannon mask. The cradle of the T-34 gun was wider and higher than the embrasure in the frontal part of the turret and could only be pulled back. The Germans removed the guns of their tanks along with his mask (in width almost equal to the width of the tower) forward. It must be said here that the designers of the T-34 paid much attention to the possibility of repairing the tank by the crew. Even … ports for firing personal weapons on the sides and stern of the tower were adapted for this task. The port plugs were removed, and a small assembly crane was installed in the holes in the 45-mm armor to dismantle the engine or transmission. The Germans had devices on the tower for mounting such a "pocket" crane - "pilze" - appeared only in the final period of the war.
One should not think that, when installing the large hatch, the designers of the T-34 did not take into account the needs of the crew at all. In the USSR, before the war, it was believed that a large hatch would facilitate the evacuation of wounded crew members from a tank. However, combat experience, complaints of tankers about the heavy turret hatch forced the team of A. A. Morozov to switch to two turret hatches during the next modernization of the tank. The hexagonal tower, nicknamed the "nut", again received "Mickey Mouse ears" - two round hatches. Such towers were installed on T-34 tanks produced in the Urals (ChTZ in Chelyabinsk, UZTM in Sverdlovsk and UVZ in Nizhny Tagil) since the fall of 1942. The Krasnoye Sormovo plant in Gorky continued to produce tanks with a “pie” until the spring of 1943. The task of extracting tanks on tanks with a "nut" was solved with the help of a removable armored bulkhead between the commander's and gunner's hatches. The gun began to be removed according to the method proposed in order to simplify the production of the cast tower back in 1942 at the plant number 112 "Krasnoe Sormovo" - the rear part of the tower was lifted with hoists from the shoulder strap, and the gun was pushed into the gap formed between the hull and the tower.
The tankers, in order not to get into the situation "I was looking for the latch with my hands without skin," preferred not to lock the hatch, securing it with … a trouser belt. A. V. Bodnar recalls: “When I went into the attack, the hatch was closed, but not with the latch. I hooked one end of the trouser belt to the latch of the hatch, and the other - a couple of times wrapped around the hook that held the ammunition on the tower, so that if something - hit your head, the belt will come off and you will jump out. The same techniques were used by the commanders of the T-34 tanks with the commander's cupola. “On the commander's cupola there was a double-leaf hatch, which was locked with two latches on springs. Even a healthy person could hardly open them, but a wounded one would definitely not be able to. We removed these springs, leaving the latches. In general, we tried to keep the hatch open - it’s easier to jump out,”recalls A. S. Burtsev. Note that not a single design bureau, either before or after the war, used the achievements of the soldier's ingenuity in one form or another. Tanks were still equipped with hatch latches in the turret and hull, which crews preferred to keep open in battle.
The day-to-day service of the thirty-four crew abounded in situations when the same load fell on the crew members and each of them performed simple, but monotonous operations, not much different from the actions of a neighbor, such as opening a trench or refueling a tank with fuel and shells. However, the battle and the march were immediately distinguished from those under construction in front of the tank on the command "To the car!" people in overalls of two crew members, who had the main responsibility for the tank. The first was the commander of the vehicle, who, in addition to controlling the battle on the early T-34s, acted as the gunner of the gun: “If you are the commander of a T-34-76 tank, then you yourself shoot, you command the radio yourself, you do everything yourself” (V. P. Bryukhov). The second person in the crew, on whom the lion's share of the responsibility for the tank, and therefore for the lives of his comrades in battle, fell, was the driver. The commanders of tanks and tank subunits rated the driver very highly in battle. “… An experienced driver-mechanic is half the success,” recalls N. Ye. Glukhov. There were no exceptions to this rule. “The driver-mechanic Grigory Ivanovich Kryukov was 10 years older than me. Before the war he worked as a driver and had already managed to fight near Leningrad. Was injured. He felt the tank perfectly. I believe that only thanks to him we survived in the first battles,”recalls the tank commander, Lieutenant Georgy Nikolaevich Krivov.
The special position of the driver-mechanic in the "thirty-four" was due to the relatively complex control, requiring experience and physical strength. To the greatest extent, this applied to the T-34 tanks of the first half of the war, on which there was a four-speed gearbox, which required the gears to move relative to each other with the engagement of the required pair of gears of the drive and driven shafts. Changing speeds in such a box was very difficult and required great physical strength. A. V. Maryevsky recalls: "You cannot turn on the gearshift lever with one hand, you had to help yourself with your knee." To facilitate gear shifting, gearboxes have been developed that are constantly in mesh. The change in the gear ratio was no longer carried out by moving the gears, but by moving the small cam couplings sitting on the shafts. They moved along the shaft on splines and coupled with it the required pair of gears that were already in engagement from the moment the gearbox was assembled. For example, the pre-war Soviet motorcycles L-300 and AM-600, as well as the M-72 motorcycle produced since 1941, a licensed copy of the German BMW R71, had a gearbox of this type. The next step in the direction of improving the transmission was the introduction of synchronizers into the gearbox. These are devices that equalize the speeds of the cam clutches and gears with which they meshed when a particular gear was engaged. Shortly before engaging a low or high gear, the clutch entered into a friction clutch with a gear. So it gradually began to rotate at the same speed with the selected gear, and when the gear was switched on, the clutch between them was carried out silently and without impacts. An example of a gearbox with synchronizers is the Maybach-type gearbox of the German T-III and T-IV tanks. Even more advanced were the so-called planetary gearboxes of Czech-made tanks and Matilda tanks. It is not surprising that Marshal S. K. Timoshenko, People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, on November 6, 1940, based on the results of tests of the first T-34s, sent a letter to the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars, which, to prepare for serial production the planetary transmission for the T-34 and KV. This will increase the average speed of the tanks and facilitate control. " They did not manage to do anything of this before the war, and in the first years of the war, the T-34 fought with the least perfect gearbox that existed at that time. "Thirty-fours" with a four-speed gearbox required very good training of driver mechanics. “If the driver is not trained, then instead of the first gear he can stick the fourth, because it is also back, or instead of the second - the third, which will lead to a breakdown of the gearbox. It is necessary to bring the switching skill to automatism so that he can switch with his eyes closed,”recalls A. V. Bodnar. In addition to the difficulties in shifting gears, the four-speed gearbox was characterized as weak and unreliable, often failing. The teeth of the gears that collided when shifting broke, and even breaks in the crankcase were noted. The engineers of the NIIBT test site in Kubinka, in a lengthy 1942 report on joint tests of domestic, captured and lend-leased equipment, gave the T-34 gearbox of the early series simply a pejorative assessment: fully satisfy the requirements for modern combat vehicles, yielding to gearboxes of both allied tanks and enemy tanks, and are at least several years behind the development of tank building technology. " As a result of these and other reports on the shortcomings of the "thirty-four", the State Defense Committee issued a decree of June 5, 1942 "On improving the quality of T-34 tanks." As part of the implementation of this decree, by the beginning of 1943, the design department of plant No. 183 (the Kharkov plant evacuated to the Urals) developed a five-speed gearbox with constant gearing, which the tankers who fought on the T-34 spoke about with such respect. The constant engagement of the gears and the introduction of another gear greatly facilitated the control of the tank, and the radio operator no longer had to pick up and pull the lever together with the driver to change gear.
Another element of the T-34 transmission, which made the combat vehicle dependent on the training of the driver, was the main clutch, which connected the gearbox to the engine. This is how A. V. Bodnar describes the situation, after being wounded who trained driver-mechanics on the T-34: starts to move. The last third of the pedal must be released slowly so as not to tear, because if it tears, the car will slip and the friction clutch will warp. " The main part of the main dry friction clutch of the T-34 tank was a package of 8 driving and 10 driven discs (later, as part of improving the tank's transmission, it received 11 driving and 11 driven discs), pressed against each other by springs. Incorrect shutdown of the clutch with the friction of the discs against each other, their heating and warping could lead to the failure of the tank. Such a breakdown was called "burn the clutch", although formally there were no flammable objects in it. Leading other countries in the implementation in practice of solutions such as a 76-mm long-barreled cannon and an inclined arrangement of armor, the T-34 tank still lagged noticeably behind Germany and other countries in the design of the transmission and steering mechanisms. On German tanks, which were the same age as the T-34, the main clutch was equipped with discs running in oil. This made it possible to more efficiently remove heat from the rubbing discs and greatly facilitated turning on and off the clutch. The situation was somewhat improved by a servo mechanism, which was equipped with the main clutch shut-off pedal based on the experience of the combat use of the T-34 in the initial period of the war. The design of the mechanism, despite the servo prefix that inspires some degree of reverence, was quite simple. The clutch pedal was held by a spring, which, in the process of pressing the pedal, passed the dead center and changed the direction of the force. When the tanker just pressed the pedal, the spring resisted pressing. At a certain moment, on the contrary, she began to help and pulled the pedal towards herself, ensuring the required speed of the wings. Before the introduction of these simple, but necessary elements, the work of the second in the hierarchy of the crew of the tanker was very difficult. “The driver-mechanic lost two or three kilograms in weight during the long march. He was all exhausted. It was, of course, very difficult,”recalls PI Kirichenko. If on the march the driver's mistakes could lead to a delay on the way due to repairs of one duration or another, in extreme cases to the abandonment of the tank by the crew, then in battle the failure of the T-34 transmission due to driver errors could lead to fatal consequences. On the contrary, the skill of the driver and vigorous maneuvering could ensure the survival of the crew under heavy fire.
The development of the design of the T-34 tank during the war went primarily in the direction of improving the transmission. In the above-cited report of the engineers of the NIIBT test site in Kubinka in 1942, there were the following words: “Recently, due to the strengthening of anti-tank equipment, maneuverability is at least no less a guarantee of vehicle invulnerability than powerful armor. The combination of good armor on the vehicle and the speed of its maneuver is the main means of protecting a modern combat vehicle from anti-tank artillery fire. " The advantage in armor protection, lost by the final period of the war, was compensated by the improvement of the thirty-four's driving performance. The tank began to move faster both on the march and on the battlefield, it was better to maneuver. To the two features that the tankers believed in (the slope of the armor and the diesel engine), a third was added - speed. A. K. Rodkin, who fought on a T-34-85 tank at the end of the war, put it this way: "The tankers had this saying:" Armor is bullshit, but our tanks are fast. " We had an advantage in speed. The Germans had petrol tanks, but their speed was not very high."
The first task of the 76, 2-mm F-34 tank gun was "the destruction of tanks and other motorized means of the enemy" *. Veteran tankers unanimously call German tanks the main and most serious enemy. In the initial period of the war, the crews of the T-34 confidently went to a duel with any German tanks, rightly believing that a powerful cannon and reliable armor protection would ensure success in battle. The appearance on the battlefield of "Tigers" and "Panthers" changed the situation to the opposite. Now German tanks received a "long arm" that allows them to fight without worrying about camouflage. “Taking advantage of the fact that we have 76-mm cannons, which can take their armor head-on only from 500 meters, they stood in an open place,” recalls the platoon commander, Lieutenant Nikolai Yakovlevich Zheleznoe. Even sub-caliber shells for the 76-mm cannon did not give advantages in a duel of this kind, since they pierced only 90 mm of homogeneous armor at a distance of 500 meters, while the frontal armor of the T-VIH "Tiger" had a thickness of 102 mm. The transition to the 85-mm cannon immediately changed the situation, allowing Soviet tankers to fight new German tanks at distances over a kilometer. “Well, when the T-34-85 appeared, it was already possible to go one-on-one here,” recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov. The powerful 85-mm gun allowed the T-34 crews to fight their old acquaintances T-IV at a distance of 1200-1300 m. An example of such a battle on the Sandomierz bridgehead in the summer of 1944 can be found in the memoirs of N. Ya. Zheleznov. The first T-34 tanks with the 85 mm D-5T cannon left the assembly line at the Krasnoye Sormovo plant number 112 in January 1944. The start of mass production of the T-34-85 already with the 85-mm ZIS-S-53 cannon was laid in March 1944, when tanks of a new type were built on the flagship of the Soviet tank building during the war, factory number 183 in Nizhny Tagil. Despite a certain haste in re-equipping the tank with an 85-mm gun, the 85-mm gun that entered the mass production was considered reliable by the crews and did not cause any complaints. The vertical guidance of the thirty-four gun was carried out manually, and an electric drive was introduced to rotate the turret from the very beginning of the tank's production. However, tankers in battle preferred to rotate the turret manually. “Hands lie with a cross on the mechanisms for turning the turret and aiming the gun. The tower could be turned by an electric motor, but in battle you forget about it. You twist it with the handle,”recalls G. N. Krivov. This is easy to explain. On the T-34-85, which G. N. Krivov, the handle for turning the tower manually simultaneously served as a lever for the electric drive. To switch from manual to electric drive, it was necessary to turn the turret rotation handle vertically and move it back and forth, forcing the engine to rotate the turret in the desired direction. In the heat of battle, this was forgotten, and the handle was used only for manual rotation. In addition, as VP Bryukhov recalls: “You have to know how to use the electric turn, otherwise you will jerk off, and then you have to turn it over”.
The only inconvenience that caused the introduction of the 85-mm cannon was the need to carefully monitor so that the long barrel did not touch the ground on bumps in the road or battlefield. “The T-34-85 has a barrel length of four meters or more. In the slightest ditch, the tank can peck and grab the ground with its barrel. If you shoot after that, the trunk opens with petals in different directions, like a flower,”recalls A. K. Rodkin. The full barrel length of the 85-mm tank gun of the 1944 model was more than four meters, 4645 mm. The appearance of the 85-mm gun and new shots to it also led to the fact that the tank stopped exploding with the breakdown of the turret, “… they (shells - A. I.) do not detonate, but explode in turn. On the T-34-76, if one shell explodes, then the entire ammunition rack detonates,”says A. K. Rodkin. This to some extent increased the chances of the T-34's crew members for survival, and the picture, sometimes flickering in the frames of 1941-1943, disappeared from the photographs and newsreels of the war - a T-34 with a turret lying next to the tank or inverted after falling back onto the tank. …
If German tanks were the most dangerous enemy of the T-34s, then the T-34s themselves were an effective means of destroying not only armored vehicles, but also the enemy's guns and manpower, interfering with the advance of their infantry. Most of the tankers, whose memories are given in the book, have, at best, several units of enemy armored vehicles to their credit, but at the same time the number of enemy infantrymen shot from a cannon and machine gun is estimated at tens and hundreds of people. The ammunition load of the T-34 tanks consisted mainly of high-explosive fragmentation shells. Regular ammunition load "thirty-four" with a "nut" turret in 1942-1944. consisted of 100 shots, B including 75 high-explosive fragmentation and 25 armor-piercing (of which 4 subcaliber ones since 1943). The standard ammunition load of the T-34-85 tank included 36 high-explosive fragmentation rounds, 14 armor-piercing and 5 subcaliber rounds. The balance between armor-piercing and high-explosive fragmentation projectiles largely reflects the conditions in which the T-34 fought during the attack. Under heavy artillery fire, tankers in most cases had little time for aimed fire and fired on the move and short stops, counting on suppressing the enemy with a mass of shots or hitting the target with several shells. G. N. Krivov recalls: “Experienced guys who have already been in battles tell us:“Never stop. Hit on the move. Heaven and earth, where the projectile is flying - hit, press. " You asked how many shells I fired in the first battle? Half of the ammunition. Beat, beat …"
As is often the case, practice suggested techniques that were not provided for by any statutes and methodological manuals. A typical example is the use of the clanking of a closing bolt as an internal alarm in a tank. VP Bryukhov says: “When the crew is well-coordinated, the mechanic is strong, he hears himself which projectile is driven, the click of the bolt wedge, which is also heavy, more than two poods …” The guns installed on the T-34 tank were equipped with semi-automatic opening shutter. This system worked as follows. When fired, the gun rolled back, after absorbing the recoil energy, the recoil pad returned the body of the gun to its original position. Just before returning, the shutter mechanism lever ran onto the copier on the gun carriage, and the wedge went down, the ejector legs associated with it knocked out an empty shell case from the breech. The loader sent the next projectile, knocking down with its mass the bolt wedge held on the legs of the ejector. A heavy part, under the influence of powerful springs, sharply returning to its original position, produced a rather sharp sound that overlapped the roar of the engine, the clanking of the chassis and the sounds of battle. Hearing the clang of the closing bolt, the driver, without waiting for the command "Short!" The location of the ammunition in the tank did not cause any inconvenience to the loaders. The shells could be taken both from the stowage in the turret and from the "suitcases" on the floor of the fighting compartment.
The target that did not always appear in the crosshair of the sight was worthy of a shot from a gun. The commander of the T-34-76 or the gunner of the T-34-85 fired at the German infantrymen who were running or found themselves in the open space from a machine gun paired with a cannon. The course machine gun installed in the hull could only be effectively used in close combat, when a tank immobilized for one reason or another was surrounded by enemy infantry with grenades and Molotov cocktails. “This is a melee weapon when the tank was hit and it stopped. The Germans come up, and you can mow them, be healthy,”- recalls VP Bryukhov. On the move, it was almost impossible to shoot from a course machine gun, since the telescopic sight of the machine gun gave negligible opportunities for observation and aiming. “Actually, I didn't have any scope. I have such a hole there, you can't see a damn thing in it,”recalls PI Kirichenko. Perhaps the most effective course machine gun was used when removed from a ball mount and used for firing from a bipod outside the tank. “And it began. They pulled out a frontal machine gun - they came at us from the rear. The tower was deployed. The submachine gunner is with me. We put a machine gun on the parapet, we are firing,”recalls Nikolai Nikolaevich Kuzmichev. In fact, the tank received a machine gun, which could be used by the crew as the most effective personal weapon.
The installation of the radio on the T-34-85 tank in the tower next to the tank commander was supposed to finally turn the radio operator into the most useless member of the tank's crew, the "passenger". The ammunition load of the machine guns of the T-34-85 tank has more than halved compared to the earlier production tanks, to 31 discs. However, the realities of the final period of the war, when the German infantry had faust cartridges, on the contrary, increased the usefulness of the gunner of the course machine gun. “By the end of the war, he became needed, protecting from the“faustics”, clearing the way. So what, what is hard to see, sometimes the mechanic would tell him. If you want to see, you will see,”recalls A. K. Rodkin.
In such a situation, the space freed up after moving the radio into the tower was used to accommodate the ammunition. Most (27 out of 31) disks for the DT machine gun in the T-34-85 were placed in the control compartment, next to the shooter, who became the main consumer of machine gun cartridges.
In general, the appearance of the faust cartridges increased the role of the thirty-four small arms. Even shooting at the "faustniki" from a pistol with an open hatch began to be practiced. The regular personal weapons of the crews were TT pistols, revolvers, captured pistols and one PPSh submachine gun, for which a place was provided for stowing equipment in the tank. The submachine gun was used by crews when leaving the tank and in battle in the city, when the angle of elevation of the cannon and machine guns was not enough.
As the German anti-tank artillery strengthened, visibility became an increasingly important component of a tank's survivability. The difficulties that the commander and driver of the T-34 tank experienced in their combat work were largely associated with the meager capabilities of monitoring the battlefield. The first "thirty-fours" had mirrored periscopes at the driver and in the turret of the tank. Such a device was a box with mirrors installed at an angle at the top and bottom, and the mirrors were not glass (they could crack from the impact of shells), but made of polished steel. The image quality in such a periscope is not hard to imagine. The same mirrors were in the periscopes on the sides of the tower, which were one of the main means of observing the battlefield for the tank commander. In the letter from SK Timoshenko, cited above, dated November 6, 1940, there are the following words: "The observation devices of the driver and radio operator should be replaced with more modern ones." The first year of the war, the tankers fought with mirrors, later instead of mirrors they installed prismatic observation devices, i.e. the entire height of the periscope was a solid glass prism. At the same time, the limited visibility, despite the improvement in the characteristics of the periscopes themselves, often forced the driver-mechanics of the T-34 to drive with open hatches. “The triplexes on the driver's hatch were completely ugly. They were made of hideous yellow or green plexiglass, which gave a completely distorted, wavy picture. It was impossible to disassemble anything through such a triplex, especially in a jumping tank. Therefore, the war was fought with hatches ajar on the palm,”recalls S. L. Aria. AV Marievsky also agrees with him, who also points out that the driver's triplexes were easily splashed with mud.
Specialists of NII-48 in the fall of 1942, based on the results of the analysis of defeats of armor protection, made the following conclusion: “A significant percentage of dangerous defeats of T-34 tanks on side parts, and not on frontal ones, can be explained either by the poor acquaintance of tank teams with the tactical characteristics of their armor protection, or poor visibility of them, due to which the crew cannot detect the firing point in time and turn the tank into a position that is least dangerous for penetrating its armor. It is necessary to improve the familiarity of tank crews with the tactical characteristics of the armoring of their vehicles and provide a better overview of them."
The task of providing a better view was solved in several stages. Polished steel mirrors were also removed from the commander's and loader's observation devices. The periscopes on the cheekbones of the T-34 turret were replaced by slits with glass blocks to protect against shrapnel. This happened during the transition to the "nut" tower in the fall of 1942. New devices allowed the crew to organize all-round observation of the situation: “The driver is watching forward and to the left. You, commander, try to observe around. And the radio operator and the loader are more on the right”(VP Bryukhov). On the T-34-85, MK-4 observation devices were installed at the gunner and loader. Simultaneous observation of several directions made it possible to timely notice the danger and adequately respond to it with fire or maneuver.
The problem of providing a good view for the tank commander was solved the longest. The clause on the introduction of the commander's cupola on the T-34, which was present in the letter to S. K. Timoshenko in 1940, was completed almost two years after the start of the war. After long experiments with attempts to squeeze the freed tank commander into the “nut” turret, turrets on the T-34 began to be installed only in the summer of 1943. The commander retained the function of the gunner, but now he could raise his head from the sight eyepiece and look around. The main advantage of the turret was the possibility of a circular view. “The commander's cupola revolved around, the commander saw everything and, without firing, could control the fire of his tank and maintain communication with others,” recalls A. V. Bodnar. To be precise, it was not the turret itself that rotated, but its roof with a periscope observation device. Prior to that, in 1941-1942, the tank commander, in addition to a "mirror" on the side of the turret, had a periscope, formally called a periscope sight. By rotating his vernier, the commander could provide himself with a view of the battlefield, but very limited. “In the spring of 1942, there was a command panorama on KB and on thirty-fours. I could rotate it and see everything around, but still it is a very small sector,”recalls A. V. Bodnar. The commander of the T-34-85 tank with the ZIS-S-53 cannon, freed from the gunner's duties, received, in addition to the commander's cupola with slots around the perimeter, his own prismatic periscope rotating in the hatch - MK-4, which made it possible to look even backwards. But among tankers there is also such an opinion: “I did not use the commander's cupola. I always kept the hatch open. Because those who closed them burned down. We didn’t have time to jump out,”recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov.
Without exception, all interviewed tankers admire the sights of German tank guns. As an example, we will cite the memoirs of VP Bryukhov: “We have always noted the high-quality Zeiss optics of sights. And until the end of the war, it was of high quality. We didn't have such optics. The sights themselves were more convenient than ours. We have a reticle in the form of a triangle, and there are risks from it to the right and left. They had these divisions, corrections for the wind, for range, something else. " It must be said here that in terms of information, there was no fundamental difference between the Soviet and German telescopic sights of the gun. The gunner could see the aiming mark and on both sides of it "fences" of corrections for the angular velocity. In the Soviet and German sights there was a correction for the range, only it was introduced in various ways. In the German sight, the gunner rotated the pointer, placing it opposite the radially located distance scale. Each type of projectile had its own sector. Soviet tank builders went through this stage in the 1930s; the sight of the three-turret T-28 tank had a similar design. In "thirty-four" the distance was set by the sight thread moving along the vertically located range scales. So functionally the Soviet and German sights did not differ. The difference was in the quality of the optics itself, especially deteriorated in 1942 in connection with the evacuation of the Izyum optical glass plant. The real drawbacks of telescopic sights of the early "thirty-fours" can be attributed to their alignment with the bore of the gun. Aiming the gun vertically, the tanker was forced to rise or fall in his place, keeping his eyes at the eyepiece of the sight moving with the gun. Later, on the T-34-85, a "breaking" sight, characteristic of German tanks, was introduced, the eyepiece of which was fixed, and the lens followed the gun barrel due to a hinge on the same axis with the cannon trunnions.
Deficiencies in the design of observation devices adversely affected the habitability of the tank. The need to keep the driver's hatch open forced the latter to sit at the levers, “taking, moreover, on his chest a stream of chilling wind sucked in by the fan turbine roaring behind him” (S. L. Aria). In this case, a "turbine" is a fan on the engine shaft that sucks in air from the crew compartment through a flimsy engine baffle.
A typical complaint to Soviet-made military equipment from both foreign and domestic specialists was the Spartan situation inside the vehicle. “As a disadvantage, one can single out the complete lack of comfort for the crew. I climbed into American and British tanks. There the crew was in more comfortable conditions: the inside of the tanks were painted with light paint, the seats were semi-soft with armrests. There was nothing of this on the T-34,”recalls S. L. Aria.
There were really no armrests on the crew seats in the T-34-76 and T-34-85 turrets. They were only in the seats of the driver and the gunner-radio operator. However, the armrests themselves on the crew seats were a detail characteristic mainly of American technology. Neither British nor German tanks (with the exception of the "Tiger") had no armrests in the turret.
But there were also real design flaws. One of the problems faced by the tank builders of the 1940s was the penetration of gunpowder gases from guns of ever increasing power into the tank. After the shot, the bolt opened, threw out the sleeve, and gases from the barrel of the gun and the discarded sleeve went into the fighting compartment of the machine. "… you shout:" armor-piercing! "," Fragmentation! " You look, and he (the loader - A. I.) is lying on the ammunition rack. I was burned with powder gases and lost consciousness. When a tough fight, rarely did anyone endure it. All the same, you get drunk, "recalls V. P. Bryukhov.
Electric exhaust fans were used to remove powder gases and ventilate the fighting compartment. The first T-34s inherited one fan in the front of the turret from the BT tank. In a turret with a 45-mm gun, it looked appropriate, since it was located almost above the breech of the gun. In the T-34 turret, the fan was not above the breech, smoking after the shot, but above the gun barrel. Its effectiveness in this regard was questionable. But in 1942, at the peak of the shortage of components, the tank lost even that - T-34s left factories with empty turrets, there were simply no fans.
During the modernization of the tank with the installation of the "nut" tower, the fan moved to the rear of the tower, closer to the area where the powder gases accumulated. The T-34-85 tank had already received two fans in the rear of the turret; the larger caliber of the gun required intensive ventilation of the fighting compartment. But during the tense battle, the fans did not help. Partially the problem of protecting the crew from powder gases was solved by blowing the barrel with compressed air ("Panther"), but it was impossible to blow through the sleeve that spreads suffocating smoke. According to the memoirs of G. N. Krivov, experienced tankers advised to immediately throw the cartridge case through the loader's hatch. The problem was radically solved only after the war, when an ejector was introduced into the design of the guns, which "pumped out" gases from the barrel of the gun after the shot, even before the shutter was opened by automatic controls.
The T-34 tank was in many ways a revolutionary design, and like any transitional model, it combined novelties and forced, soon outdated, solutions. One of these solutions was the introduction of a radio operator into the crew. The main function of the tanker sitting at the ineffective course machine gun was to service the tank radio station. On early "thirty-fours" the radio station was installed on the right side of the control compartment, next to the gunner-radio operator. The need to keep a person in the crew engaged in setting up and maintaining the performance of the radio was a consequence of the imperfection of communication technology in the first half of the war. The point was not that it was necessary to work with a key: the Soviet tank radio stations on the T-34 did not have a telegraph operating mode, they could not transmit dashes and dots in Morse code. The radio operator was introduced because the main consumer of information from neighboring vehicles and from higher levels of control, the tank commander, was simply not able to maintain the radio. “The station was unreliable. The radio operator is a specialist, and the commander is not such a great specialist. In addition, when hit on the armor, a wave was lost, the lamps were out of order,”recalls VP Bryukhov. It should be added that the commander of the T-34 with a 76-mm cannon combined the functions of a tank commander and gunner, and was too heavily loaded to deal with even a simple and convenient radio station. The allocation of a separate person to work with a walkie-talkie was typical for other countries participating in the Second World War. For example, on the French Somua S-35 tank, the commander performed the functions of a gunner, loader and tank commander, but there was a radio operator, even freed from machine gun maintenance.
In the initial period of the war, "thirty-fours" were equipped with 71-TK-Z radio stations, and even then not all machines. The last fact should not be embarrassing, such a situation was common in the Wehrmacht, the radio frequency of which is usually greatly exaggerated. In reality, the commanders of the subunits from the platoon and above had transceivers. According to the February 1941 state, in a light tank company, Fu.5 transceivers were installed on three T-II and five PG-III, and on two T-II and twelve T-IIIs, only Fu.2 receivers were installed. In a company of medium tanks, transceivers had five T-IVs and three T-IIs, and two T-IIs and nine T-IVs had only receivers. On the T-1, Fu.5 transceivers were not installed at all, with the exception of the special command kIT-Bef. Wg.l. In the Red Army, there was essentially a similar concept of "radium" and "linear" tanks. Line crews; tanks had to act, observing the commander's maneuvers, or receive orders from flags. The place for the radio station on the "linear" tanks was filled with disks for the DT machine gun shops, 77 disks with a capacity of 63 rounds each instead of 46 on the "radio" one. On June 1, 1941, the Red Army had 671 "line" T-34 tanks and 221 "radio" ones.
But the main problem of the communication facilities of the T-34 tanks in 1941-1942. it was not so much their quantity as the quality of the 71-TK-Z stations themselves. Tankers assessed its capabilities as very moderate. “On the move, she took about 6 kilometers” (PI Kirichenko). The same opinion is expressed by other tankers. “Radio station 71-TK-Z, as I remember now, is a complex, unstable radio station. She very often broke down, and it was very difficult to put her in order,”recalls A. V. Bodnar. At the same time, the radio station to some extent compensated for the information vacuum, since it made it possible to listen to reports broadcast from Moscow, the famous "From the Soviet Information Bureau …" in the voice of Levitan. A serious deterioration in the situation was observed during the evacuation of radio equipment factories, when from August 1941 the production of tank radio stations was practically stopped until mid-1942.
As the evacuated enterprises returned to service by the middle of the war, there was a tendency towards 100% radioification of tank forces. The crews of the T-34 tanks received a new radio station, developed on the basis of the aircraft RSI-4, - 9R, and later its modernized versions, 9RS and 9RM. It was much more stable in operation due to the use of quartz frequency generators in it. The radio station was of English origin and was produced for a long time using components supplied under Lend-Lease. On the T-34-85, the radio station migrated from the control compartment to the fighting compartment, to the left wall of the tower, where the commander, freed from the gunner's duties, now began to maintain it. Nevertheless, the concepts of "linear" and "radio" tank remained.
In addition to communicating with the outside world, each tank had intercom equipment. The reliability of the intercom of the early T-34s was low, the main means of signaling between the commander and the driver were boots mounted on the shoulders. “The intercom worked disgustingly. Therefore, communication was carried out with my feet, that is, I had the boots of the tank commander on my shoulders, he pressed on my left or right shoulder, respectively, I turned the tank left or right,”recalls S. L. Aria. The commander and the loader could talk, although more often the communication took place with gestures: "He stuck his fist under the loader's nose, and he already knows that it is necessary to load with armor-piercing, and the splayed palm - with fragmentation." The intercom TPU-3bis installed on the later T-34 series worked much better. “The internal tank intercom was mediocre on the T-34-76. There I had to command my boots and hands, but on the T-34-85 it was already excellent,”recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov. Therefore, the commander began to give the driver-mechanic orders by voice over the intercom - the T-34-85 commander no longer had the technical ability to put his boots on his shoulders - the gunner separated him from the control compartment.
Speaking about the communication facilities of the T-34 tank, the following should also be noted. From films to books and back travels the story of the call by the commander of a German tank of our tanker to a duel in broken Russian. This is completely untrue. Since 1937, all Wehrmacht tanks used the 27 - 32 MHz range, which did not intersect with the radio range of Soviet tank radio stations - 3, 75 - 6, 0 MHz. Only the command tanks were equipped with a second shortwave radio station. It had a range of 1-3 MHz, again incompatible with the range of our tank radio stations.
The commander of a German tank battalion, as a rule, had something to do other than challenges to a duel. In addition, tanks of obsolete types were often commanders, and in the initial period of the war - without weapons at all, with mock-ups of guns in a fixed turret.
The engine and its systems practically did not cause any complaints from the crews, in contrast to the transmission. “I'll tell you frankly, the T-34 is the most reliable tank. Sometimes, he stopped, something like that is not in order. The oil struck. Hose is loose. For this, a thorough inspection of the tanks was always carried out before the march,”recalls A. S. Burtsev. A massive fan mounted in one block with the main clutch required caution in engine control. The driver's mistakes could lead to the destruction of the fan and the failure of the tank. Also, some difficulties were caused by the initial period of operation of the resulting tank, getting used to the characteristics of a particular instance of the T-34 tank. “Each vehicle, each tank, each tank gun, each engine had its own unique characteristics. They cannot be recognized in advance, they can only be identified in the course of everyday use. At the front, we ended up in unfamiliar cars. The commander does not know what kind of battle his cannon has. The mechanic does not know what his diesel can and cannot. Of course, at the factories, the guns of the tanks were shot at and a 50-kilometer run was carried out, but this was completely insufficient. Of course, we tried to get to know our machines better before the battle, and for this we used every opportunity, recalls N. Ya. Zheleznov.
Tankers faced significant technical difficulties when doing the engine and gearbox docking with the power plant during the repair of the tank in the field. It was. In addition to replacing or repairing the gearbox itself and the engine, the gearbox had to be removed from the tank when dismantling the side clutches. After returning to the site or replacing the engine and gearbox, it was required to install in the tank relative to each other with high accuracy. According to the repair manual for the T-34 tank, the accuracy of the installation was supposed to be 0.8 mm. For the installation of the units, which were moved with the help of 0.75 ton hoists, this precision required an investment of time and effort.
Of the entire complex of components and assemblies of the power plant, only the engine air filter had design flaws that required serious revision. The old type filter, installed on T-34 tanks in 1941-1942, poorly cleaned the air and interfered with the normal operation of the engine, which led to rapid wear of the V-2. “The old air filters were ineffective, took up a lot of space in the engine compartment, and had a large turbine. They often had to be cleaned, even when not walking on a dusty road. And “Cyclone” was very good,”recalls A. V. Bodnar. Filters "Cyclone" showed themselves excellently in 1944-1945, when Soviet tank crews fought hundreds of kilometers. “If the air cleaner was cleaned according to the regulations, the engine worked well. But during battles, it is not always possible to do everything right. If the air cleaner does not clean enough, the oil changes at the wrong time, the gimp is not washed out and allows dust to pass through, then the engine wears out quickly,”recalls A. K. Rodkin. "Cyclones" made it possible, even in the absence of time for maintenance, to undergo an entire operation until the engine failed.
The tankers are invariably positive about the duplicated engine starting system. In addition to the traditional electric starter, the tank had two 10-liter compressed air cylinders. The air start system made it possible to start the engine even if the electric starter failed, which often occurred in battle from the impact of shells.
Track chains were the most frequently repaired element of the T-34 tank. The trucks were a spare part with which the tank even went into battle. The caterpillars were sometimes torn on the march, broken by shell hits. “The caterpillars were torn, even without bullets, without shells. When soil gets between the rollers, the caterpillar, especially when turning, is stretched to such an extent that the fingers and the tracks themselves cannot withstand,”recalls A. V. Maryevsky. Repair and tensioning of the tracks were inevitable companions of the combat work of the machine. In this case, the caterpillars were a serious unmasking factor. “Thirty-four, it not only roars with a diesel engine, it also clicks with caterpillars. If the T-34 is approaching, then you will hear the clatter of the tracks, and then the engine. The fact is that the teeth of the working tracks must exactly fall between the rollers on the driving wheel, which, while rotating, captures them. And when the caterpillar stretched out, developed, became longer, the distance between the teeth increased, and the teeth hit the roller, causing a characteristic sound,”recalls A. K. Rodkin. The forced technical solutions of wartime, primarily rollers without rubber tires around the perimeter, contributed to the increase in the noise of the tank. “… Unfortunately, the Stalingrad T-34s came, which had road wheels without bandages. They rumbled terribly,”recalls A. V. Bodnar. These were the so-called rollers with internal shock absorption. The first rollers of this type, sometimes called "steam locomotive", began to produce the Stalingrad plant (STZ), and even before the really serious interruptions in the supply of rubber began. The early onset of cold weather in the fall of 1941 led to downtime on ice-bound rivers of barges with rollers, which were sent along the Volga from Stalingrad to the Yaroslavl Tire Plant. The technology provided for the manufacture of a bandage on special equipment already at the finished skating rink. Large batches of finished rollers from Yaroslavl got stuck on the way, which forced STZ engineers to look for a replacement for them, which was a solid cast roller with a small shock-absorbing ring inside it, closer to the hub. When the interruptions in the supply of rubber began, other factories took advantage of this experience, and from the winter of 1941-1942 until the fall of 1943, T-34 tanks rolled off the assembly lines, the undercarriage of which consisted entirely or mostly of rollers with internal depreciation. Since the fall of 1943, the problem of the lack of rubber has finally become a thing of the past, and the T-34-76 tanks have completely returned to rollers with rubber tires. All T-34-85 tanks were produced with rollers with rubber tires. This significantly reduced the noise of the tank, providing relative comfort for the crew and making it difficult for the enemy to detect the T-34s.
It is especially worth mentioning that during the war years, the role of the T-34 tank in the Red Army has changed. At the beginning of the war, "thirty-fours" with an imperfect transmission, unable to withstand long marches, but well armored, were ideal tanks for direct support of the infantry. During the war, the tank lost its armor advantage at the time of the outbreak of hostilities. By the fall of 1943 - early 1944, the T-34 tank was a relatively easy target for 75-mm tank and anti-tank guns; it was unambiguously fatal for it to be hit by shells from 88-mm Tigers guns, anti-aircraft guns and PAK-43 anti-tank guns.
But the elements that were not given due importance before the war or simply did not have time to bring to an acceptable level were steadily improved and even completely replaced. First of all, this is the power plant and transmission of the tank, from which they have achieved stable and trouble-free operation. At the same time, all these elements of the tank retained good maintainability and ease of use. All this allowed the T-34 to do things that were unrealistic for the T-34s of the first year of the war. “For example, from near Jelgava, moving through East Prussia, we covered more than 500 km in three days. The T-34 withstood such marches normally,”recalls A. K. Rodkin. For T-34 tanks in 1941, a 500-kilometer march would have been almost fatal. In June 1941, the 8th mechanized corps under the command of D. I. A. V. Bodnar, who fought in 1941-1942, assesses the T-34 in comparison with German tanks: “From the point of view of operation, German armored vehicles were more perfect, they were out of order less often. For the Germans, it cost nothing to go 200 km, on the thirty-four you will definitely lose something, something will break. The technological equipment of their machines was stronger, and the combat equipment was worse."
By the fall of 1943, the Thirty-fours became an ideal tank for independent mechanized formations designed for deep breakthroughs and detours. They became the main combat vehicle of tank armies - the main tools for offensive operations of colossal proportions. In these operations, the main type of action of the T-34 was marches with open hatches of driver mechanics, and often with lighted headlights. The tanks traveled hundreds of kilometers, intercepting the escape routes of the encircled German divisions and corps.
In fact, in 1944-1945 the situation of the "blitzkrieg" of 1941 was mirrored, when the Wehrmacht reached Moscow and Leningrad on tanks with not the best at that time characteristics of armor and weapons, but mechanically very reliable. In the same way, in the final period of the war, the T-34-85 covered hundreds of kilometers with deep sweeps and detours, and the Tigers and Panthers trying to stop them massively failed due to breakdowns and were thrown by their crews due to lack of fuel. The symmetry of the picture was broken, perhaps, only by the weapons. In contrast to the German tankers of the "blitzkrieg" period, the crews of the "thirty-fours" had an adequate means of dealing with enemy tanks superior in armor protection - an 85-mm cannon. Moreover, each commander of the T-34-85 tank received a reliable radio station, which was quite perfect for that time, which made it possible to play against German "cats" as a team.
The T-34s, which entered the battle in the early days of the war near the border, and the T-34s, which burst into the streets of Berlin in April 1945, although they had the same name, were significantly different both externally and internally. But both in the initial period of the war, and at its final stage, the tankers saw in the "thirty-four" a machine in which they could believe.
At first, these were the slope of the armor that reflected enemy shells, a diesel engine that was resistant to fire, and an all-crushing weapon. In the period of victories, it means high speed, reliability, stable communication and a cannon that allows itself to stand up for itself!
