“Potapov. There are 30 large KV tanks. All of them are without shells for 152 mm guns. I have T-26 and BT tanks, mostly of old brands, including two-turret ones. The enemy tanks were destroyed up to about a hundred …
Zhukov. The 152-mm KV cannons fire projectiles from 09 to 30, so order concrete-piercing shells from 09 to 30 to be issued immediately. and use them. You will beat the enemy tanks with might and main."
(G. K. Zhukov. Memories and reflections.)
Today on the pages of "VO" are published very interesting materials about the tanks of the Second World War, and with photographs not only from the outside, but also from the inside. However, even they are not always able to give an idea of what was inside the tanks themselves. But they are not only steel, but also copper, nickel, molybdenum and much more. And, of course, behind each tank is engineering experience, technological level and much more. So let's see how the requirements of the military and the experience of the First World War, as well as the technological and various other capabilities of European countries, influenced the development and creation of tanks of the "blitzkrieg" era, that is, the very beginning of the Second World War.
Here they are, the tanks of the "blitzkrieg era". All together and all in the same yard with one person Vyacheslav Verevochkin, who lived in the village of Bolshoy Oesh near Novosibirsk. Alas, people on planet Earth are mortal. Even the best and most talented ones.
Well, of course, we should start with the fact that during the First World War only England, France and Germany built and used tanks in battle. Italy and the United States also began to produce them, but they did not have time to test the machines of their own design in practice. Since 1921, Sweden has been included in the number of tank-producing states, since 1925 - Czechoslovakia, since 1927 - Japan, since 1930 - Poland and 8 years later - Hungary. Germany resumed production of tanks in 1934. Thus, in the 30s, tanks were produced by 11 countries, including the USSR. Moreover, it was in the USSR and especially in Germany, after the coming to power of Adolf Hitler, that this process was the fastest. Hitler understood that neither Britain nor France would agree to peacefully revise the decisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Therefore, preparations for a new war were immediately started in Germany. In the shortest possible time, the Germans created a fairly powerful military industry capable of producing almost all types of weapons for the BBC / Luftwaffe /, Navy / Kriegsmarine / and the Wehrmacht's ground forces. The reform of the army was carried out simultaneously in all directions, so that far from all the Germans were able to immediately achieve qualitative improvements. But if we talk about tanks, then here almost everything was done at the same time - testing, acceptance into service, elimination of deficiencies, development of instructions for use, exercises, organization of repair work, and so on. What took England and France two decades, and without much success, took Germany only 5 years - it was during this period that combat-ready tank forces were created using advanced tactics.
In the 1920s, interesting self-propelled guns were developed by the Pavezi firm in Italy. But it did not come to their serial production. For example, a tank destroyer with a 57 mm gun was built and tested.
A similar pace was demonstrated only by the USSR, which had very good reasons for this. In the late 1930s, the strategic doctrine of Germany was the blitzkrieg theory - "lightning war", according to which the main role in the war was assigned to tank forces and aviation, which were used in close cooperation with each other. The tank units were supposed to cut the enemy army into several isolated parts, which were then supposed to be destroyed by aviation, artillery and motorized infantry forces. The tanks had to capture all the important control centers of the enemy side as quickly as possible, preventing the emergence of serious resistance. Of course, everyone wants to win as soon as possible, and in a war all means are good for this. However, in this case, the matter was just that Germany simply did not have the forces and means to conduct long-term hostilities.
In 1928-1929. this German "Grosstraktor" of the "Rheinmetall" company was tested in the USSR at the Soviet-German object "Kama". As you can see, he did not present anything particularly revolutionary.
The state of the German economy made it possible to provide the army with the amount of weapons, ammunition and equipment for a period of no more than 6 months. So the blitzkrieg strategy was not only attractive but also dangerous. After all, it was enough just not to meet this deadline, so that the German economy would just start to fall apart, and what this would turn out to be for the army is not difficult to imagine. That is why many German military experts opposed the idea of the "lightning war" and considered it a gamble. And Hitler, in turn, infuriated their resistance. However, not all military personnel were opposed to the blitzkrieg doctrine. One of those who supported it and cultivated it in every possible way was Colonel Heinz Guderian, who is justly considered the "father" of the German Panzerwaffe - the tank forces of Nazi Germany. He started out rather modestly: he studied in Russia, gained experience in Sweden, took an active part in the training of German tankers, in a word, he literally built the tank forces of the new Germany out of nothing. Taking the post of Supreme Commander of the German Armed Forces, Hitler made Guderian the commander of the armored forces and awarded him the rank of general of the armored forces. Now he received new opportunities to implement his plans, which was not easy even now, since his ideas were not recognized even by his own chief von Brauchitsch, the chief of the German ground forces and many of his generals. However, Guderian had support from Hitler, who did not trust the old command cadres, and that was what decided the whole matter. However, the situation with equipping the Wehrmacht with new tanks still remained very difficult. It is known that even after the outbreak of World War II and the attack of Nazi Germany on Poland, its industry from September 1939 to April 1940 could produce only 50-60 tanks per month. And only from May-June 1940 it reached the monthly level of 100 cars.
How could the best tank in the world get into such a dire situation? Oh, if only we knew everything … And then, after all, much of what we have in the archives of the Ministry of Defense is closed to researchers until 2045!
That is why the order of the Fuehrer to occupy Czechoslovakia and annex it to the Reich as a protectorate was greeted by Guderian with great approval. Thanks to this, his entire tank-producing industry and all Czech tanks, which were not too different in their combat qualities from the then German ones, were at his disposal. And yet, even after that, Germany continued to produce significantly fewer tanks than the USSR, where factories were producing 200 tanks a month back in 1932! Nevertheless, the Wehrmacht soon entered the P.z II tanks, which had a 20-mm automatic cannon and a coaxial machine gun in the turret. The presence of such a gun significantly increased the combat capabilities of this tank, but Guderian understood that such weapons were clearly insufficient to fight against Soviet, French and Polish tanks, which had guns of 37, 45 and 76 mm caliber. Therefore, he made every effort to quickly expand the production of such machines as the Pz.lll and Pz. IV. The first had an air-cooled cannon and machine gun. The second, considered a support tank, had two machine guns and a 75-mm short-barreled gun. Therefore, despite its solid caliber, the Pz. IV had a low muzzle velocity of 385 m / s and was primarily intended to destroy infantry targets, not enemy tanks.
BT-7 by "armored master Verevochkin". Such was the hobby of this wonderful man - to make life-size "models" of tanks!
The release of these machines is developing slowly and, for example, in 1938 did not exceed only a few dozen units. That is why Guderian was so pleased with the occupation of Czechoslovakia: after all, the Czech tanks LT-35 and LT-38, which received the German designations Pz. 35 / t / and Pz. 38 / t /, were likewise armed with 37-mm guns, two machine guns and had the same armor thickness. The Germans put their radio station on them and increased the crew from three to four people, after which these machines began to meet their own requirements in almost all respects. "Almost" only meant that, for example, the Germans considered it necessary, even on light Pz. IIIs, to have a crew of five, and each of the crew members had their own escape hatch. As a result, the main modifications of the Pz. III had three hatches in the turret and two escape hatches along the sides of the hull between the tracks, and the Pz. IV, which also had a crew of 5 people, respectively, two hatches in the roof of the hull, above the heads of the driver and the gunner - a radio operator, and three in the tower, like the Pz. III. At the same time, Czech tanks had only one hatch in the hull roof and one on the commander's cupola. It turned out that four tankers had to leave the tank in turn, which was a serious problem if it was hit. The fact is that the tanker who was the first to leave the tank could be wounded or even killed right at the moment when he got out of the hatch, and in this case, the one who followed him had to make every effort to escape and all this is superfluous seconds in a burning tank, and that, of course, was deadly. Another serious drawback of Czech tanks (as, indeed, of most tanks of that time) was the fastening of armor plates with rivets. With strong impacts of shells on the armor, the heads of the rivets often broke off and, by inertia, flew inside the tank, where they caused injuries and even death of the crew members, although the tank's armor itself remained intact. True, at first the Germans put up with this, since in terms of their armament these tanks were not inferior even to the Pz. III, not to mention the Pz. I and Pz. II, and their 37-mm gun had rather high armor penetration rates.
The T-34 is just very similar. And behind him is also visible "Ferdinand".
T-34 at the gate of the workshop in which it was made.
But when, after a meeting with the Soviet T-34 and KV, their ineffectiveness became clear, it turned out that they were not subject to any rearmament with more powerful guns. They had no reserves, which is why the Germans later used only the Pz.38 (t) chassis, and the turrets remaining from these tanks went into service with bunkers. However, for the Germans, any tank in the conditions of the complete impoverishment of their country caused by the payment of reparations under the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty was of the greatest value. Painfully many materials, including very scarce ones, were required in order to manufacture even such a generally uncomplicated tank like the Pz. III. It is not surprising, therefore, that the production of tanks for a future war in Germany grew rather slowly, and the number of tanks produced was relatively small. So, Pz. I was produced in the amount of 1493 vehicles / plus 70 tanks of experimental modifications. There were only 115 Pz. IIs in May 1937, but by September 1939 there were 1,200 of them. By September 1939, there were only 98 Pz. IIIs. After the annexation of Czechoslovakia, the Germans got almost 300 Pz.35 (t) units, but only 20 Pz.38 (t). True, 59 tanks of this type took part in the Polish campaign itself. But still, it is quite obvious that on the eve of World War II, the Hitlerite army had only 3,000 tanks, of which 300 were medium, and all the rest were light vehicles, including 1,400 Pz. I with purely machine-gun armament. Meanwhile, in secret negotiations with British and French military missions in August 1939, our country promised to send against Germany only in the European part of the USSR 9-10 thousand tanks of all types, including light, medium and heavy tanks with 45-76 caliber guns. -mm! Here, however, it should be clarified that this superiority was mainly quantitative, and about any qualitative superiority over the German Pz. III and Pz. IV in this case was out of the question.
As for the United States, there … the army tried by all means to surpass the tank of the private trader Christie, that is, to create exactly the same wheeled-tracked tank with machine-gun (first of all, machine-gun!) Armament, but nothing came of it. Rather, these pearls were obtained, as in this figure.
Cavalry wheeled and tracked tank T7.
The fact is that the bulk of Soviet tanks, which had 45-mm guns, were armed with a 20K cannon of the 1932 model, which was an alteration of the German 37-mm anti-tank gun of the Rheinmetall company, which was adopted in the USSR in 1931 and also consisted of in service with the German army under the brand name 3, 7-cm RAC 35/36. By the way, the set of 45 mm caliber for our gun was not accidental, but was justified by two important circumstances. Firstly, the unsatisfactory fragmentation effect of the 37-mm projectile, and secondly, the presence in warehouses of a large number of armor-piercing shells from the 47-mm Hotchkiss naval guns that were on the ships of the Russian fleet at the beginning of the twentieth century. To this end, the old leading belts were grinded on them and the caliber of the projectile became 45 mm. Thus, both our tank and anti-tank 45-mm cannons of the pre-war period received two types of shells: light armor-piercing weighing 1, 41 kg and 2, 15 kg fragmentation.
And this "thirty-four" with a hexagonal turret of the 1943 model is still on the move!
It is interesting that an armor-piercing chemical projectile weighing 1, 43 kg, containing 16 g of a poisonous substance, was created for the same gun. Such a projectile was supposed to explode behind the armor and release poisonous gas to destroy the crew, and the internal damage from it in the tank itself should have been minimal, therefore, such a tank would be easier to put into operation. The tabular data on the armor penetration of 45-mm guns for that time were quite sufficient, but the whole thing was spoiled by the fact that the head part of the shells from the Hotchkiss cannons was of a short-range shape, and the quality of their manufacture was unsatisfactory.
German tank crews are photographed against the background of the KV-2. For them, the dimensions of this tank were simply prohibitive. I wonder what they thought then about "these backward Russians" who managed to create such a tank? And not one !!!
In this respect, our domestic "magpie" was outperformed by the German 37-mm tank and anti-tank guns and did not pose a real danger to the Pz. III / IV with their 30mm frontal armor at a distance of over 400 m! Meanwhile, the armor-piercing projectile of the 37-mm cannon of the Czech Pz.35 (t) tank at an angle of 60 degrees at a distance of 500 m penetrated 31 mm of armor, and the guns of the Pz.38 (t) tank - 35 mm. A particularly effective weapon of the German tank gun KWK L / 46, 5 was the PzGR.40 arr. 1940 sabot projectile, the initial speed of which was 1020 m / s, which at a distance of 500 m allowed it to penetrate an armor plate 34 mm thick.
BA-6 and Czech Pz. 38 (t) by V. Verevochkin. This is how they look on the same scale!
This was quite enough to defeat most of the tanks of the USSR, but Heinz Guderian insisted on arming the Pz. III tanks with an even more powerful 50-mm long-barreled gun, which should have provided them with complete superiority over any vehicles of potential enemies up to a distance of 2000 m. However, even he failed to persuade the German Army Armaments Directorate of this, where, referring to the accepted standards of infantry anti-tank guns, they continued to insist on maintaining the 37-mm single caliber, which facilitated the production of supplying troops with ammunition. As for the Pz. IV, its 75-mm KWK 37 gun with a barrel length of only 24 caliber, even if it was distinguished by good shells - a high-explosive fragmentation grenade and a blunt-headed armor-piercing projectile with a ballistic tip, but the armor penetration of the latter was only 41 mm at a distance of 460 m at an angle of meeting with the armor of 30 degrees.
V. Verevochkin (left) and his grandson (right), and director Karen Shakhnazarov in the center.
