The history of this tank, which may well be considered the grandfather of the T-34, for me personally began a long time ago. Even as a boy, in the magazine "Science and Life" in the small pictures at the bottom of the page, executed in black and white graphics, I saw two tanks that struck me - T-24 and TG. Then I met the same "selection" in the magazine "Young Technician", but there was nothing about these tanks in either magazine. Then a drawing of the T-24 with a short text appeared in the book "Knights of Armor" by N. Ermolovich. And in 1980 I made my first tank - a model of the first Soviet tank “Freedom Fighter Comrade. Lenin ", which won the toy competition of the USSR Ministry of Legislation. This was followed by the following series: T-27, T-26, BT-5, T-35, IS-2, which also became the winner of the 1982 competition. But … I wanted to make a model of a previously unknown tank for the competition, which few people knew about and which, nevertheless, would play a certain role in the history of the development of the domestic BTT. And wherever I did not turn in search of his drawings, even to the famous Lenin - the library to them. Lenin in Moscow, where, by the way, I found the drawings of the T-27 tankette … in the list of DSP ("Soviet secret"), and they never gave them to me … in 1988!
T-24 from the magazine Model Designer No. 9 for 1989.
But then, when I wrote to NAMI that, they say, I am this and such and I need drawings of little-known tanks of the USSR, from where (this was already 1989) a weighty envelope came with … blue T-24, T- 37 and T-27 with a cannon! True, the last two cars were given in fragments, the drawings were assembled "from pine forest", but on the T-24 the blueprint was just in perfect condition, with all the signatures, performance characteristics and dimensions. And it was just huge, on a scale of 1:10, almost half a room! That is, it was all so unnecessary there that they were happy to sell it all to at least someone, and not just burn it in the backyard.
That's how I became the owner of this rare blue and … since here I was already a member of the British Association of Modelers MAFVA, I decided to write an article about this tank in their magazine and wrote. With great difficulty, I found a person who made drawings for me on the basis of this blueprint on a scale of 1: 35 and a little material (and they had a small magazine "Tanchette" itself), who went there and was immediately published. The second material, already large in size, went to the "Modelist-Constructor" magazine. And they didn't believe me there! “The drawings are considered lost! Where did you get them from? " I am writing - from blue, they say, and blue from US. "Send it to us for examination!" He sent it, and in the end it was there in the editorial office and was covered, but a big article about the T-12 / T-24 tanks appeared in "Model-Constructor" No. 9 for 1989, along with a very beautiful colored tab. The article authored by Romadin, Baryatinsky and Shpakovsky began with the words that, undoubtedly, the proposed material for everyone interested in armored vehicles would be a real sensation, since no one had previously written about the T-12 / T-24 tanks, and even in such detail. And although my colleagues wrote a lot in it, especially about the T-12, I was very glad that there would not have been my blueprint, there was not even this article! And so, some time after 1991, even the combined model of the T-24 was released to the delight of the BTT modellers-collectors.
And since there is hardly any special sense to repeat and write about what has already been written, it seems to me that something else will be more interesting, namely, to consider this tank through the prism of our today's knowledge, to see the opportunities, missed chances and prospects of this vehicle.
T-24 in "war paint". Impressive, isn't it ?!
So, the tank appeared in the USSR at a turning point, namely in the 1930th year. This year was a turning point in all respects, primarily because … another world crisis of capitalism began in the West. And the crisis is the discontent of the working people, the revolutionary situation and the world revolution, which then all the newspapers wrote about, but which for some reason did not go on and did not go on. But if it had started “there” and “their” proletariat would have asked us, wouldn't the carts rush to the West? Of course, they would have rushed, but only with tanks then there would have been a problem: they simply were not there. That is, there were, of course, MS-1, and a lot, but it was not at all what was required. They would not have reached the Atlantic Ocean. As A. Gaidar wrote in his story "The Commandant of the Snow Fortress" (though not about tanks, but about a tractor, but in general it is very similar) - "the petrol tank is small and the drive gears are large."
T-24 on sea trials without weapons.
But the most interesting thing is not that the tank "arrived in time" for the crisis of 1929, but the fact that the development of it in the USSR began in 1927, when there was not even a smell of crises in the West, but complete "prosperity" reigned there. And, nevertheless, we have begun work on a technically complex "maneuverable tank" with multi-tiered weapons. Again, it is interesting that this design had both many advantages and many disadvantages. The advantage was the ability to fire in several directions at once, which was later proved on the American M3 "Li" tanks. And the disadvantage is the same as that of the "Lee": a large height of the tank, and also difficulties with the rotation of the upper and lower turrets - turning the lower one knocked down aiming at the upper one. The tank was to be produced by the Kharkov steam locomotive plant.
First, the T-12 was made (and it is interesting that it should have been equipped with coaxial 6, 5-mm Fedorov machine guns chambered for the Japanese cartridge). The tank was tested, then it was modernized, and this is how the T-24 tank turned out. Now let's see what foreign tank of 1927, 1928, 1929 can be compared to? There are no such! Its peer "Vickers Medium" had an engine in front, exorbitant height, one 47-mm cannon and one machine gun in the turret, two on the sides, armor of 16-8 mm and a speed of 24 km / h.
Medium tank T-24: 1 - guide wheel, 2 - track tensioning mechanism. 3 - suspension bogie, 4 - drive wheel, 5 - muffler, 6 - fenders, 7 - main tower hatch, 8 - small tower hatch, 9 - armored flaps for fuel and oil tank necks, 10 - engine compartment covers, 11 - three-leaf hatch of the driver, 12 - towing eye.
The T-24, which became the first Soviet medium tank launched into mass production, had a 45 mm cannon and two DT machine guns in the turret, and two more machine guns in the upper turret and in the frontal hull. The thickness of the main armor was 20 mm. The speed is only two kilometers less than that of the "Englishman".
Assembled polystyrene model of the T-24 tank in 1:35 scale by Hobby Boss. Our cars are respected abroad, huh? And even such!
The crew of the T-24 was thought out very rationally: the commander, gunner, driver and two machine gunners. The armor was also rational - it had an inclined arrangement of armor plates on the front of the hull. The undercarriage rollers had rubber tires, and vertical spiral springs protected by armored casings served as elastic suspension elements. The tank had a traditional detachable "tail", but in this case it did not spoil it. The 8-cylinder aircraft engine M-6 had a power of 300 hp, which was quite enough for an 18, 5-ton tank, since its specific power was 16 hp. per ton of weight. But during the first tests in the summer of 1930, the tank was let down by a badly designed cooling system, which even caused the engine to catch fire.
The gun's ammunition consisted of 89 rounds, including armor-piercing, fragmentation shells and even … buckshot. But although the tank itself was ready by 1930, the T-24 guns were received only in 1932, and before that they were driven only with machine-gun armament.
Tank during sea trials.
The first 15 serial T-24s were made in the second half of 1930 at the Kharkov steam locomotive plant, and the armored hulls of tanks for them were produced at the Izhora plant. Then 10 more T-24s were made, after which the model of this tank was discontinued. These tanks never took part in battles, but were used exclusively as training tanks. Also, a very interesting technical solution was the unification of the chassis of this tank with the Comintern artillery tractor, which made it possible to significantly speed up the motorization of the Red Army and facilitate the development of the vehicle in the army. That is, in all respects it was a tank ahead of its time in 1927-29, corresponding to its time until the mid-30s and obsolete immediately after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. However, all this time there was no equal to him neither in England, nor in France, nor even more so in Germany and Poland. That is, the level of design talent among its creators was not only satisfactory, no, it was very high! What was bad then? And bad, or rather, bad was the technological basis of the then production! That is, the embodiment of ideas in metal. Well, how to understand this when the tank is already in the metal, and the cannon for it is still being developed? Again, when the Americans needed the M3, they made it from start to finish in just nine months and put it into production right away. And here, with a high level of engineering design, there were dozens of technological "punctures": the engine was burning, the tracks flew off, the clutches worked poorly. The equipment with which the tank was produced was useless. That is, many parts were adjusted in size using a file. Naturally, the cost of such a "handmade" tank was very high. Unfortunately, 80 years have passed, but the low level of technological support is still not completely eliminated today. Well, in the past, he was almost the norm. Let us recall the termination of acceptance of the T-34 due to technological defects and even cracks in the armor, the yaks' wings falling off, a huge number of defects in the first radar stations, remote fuses, as evidenced by the materials of the party archives. Come up with - whatever you want! To make in metal with the same quality (everything that was done at the end of the month, do not buy!) Is almost an impossible task - this is the scourge, moreover, of many years, of the Soviet industry.
Assembled and painted T-24 model.
Well, if we hypothetically look at the T-24, then we will have a tank, the development of which - a more powerful engine, thicker armor, a more powerful cannon, could define the appearance of Soviet tank building for decades through a sequential transition from one modification to another, more perfect! And, perhaps, the T-34 would have appeared then on its basis much earlier. That is, it is a tank … yes, it was ahead of its time, but due to the technological backwardness of the production of that time, it never said its weighty word in battle and remained, in fact, an experimental vehicle.
Tank T-24, used as a target for artillery.
