Soviet tank speed

[Pack Rat]

How did they do that? It's my understanding that they could get the good metals to make good armor alloys, which should cut down on weight, right? Were they making their own engines? Lend/lease?

[lnp4668]

The T34's slope armor contribute to its decrease weight. Also the wide track allows more distribution of that weight over the round.

[sven]

Originally posted by Pack Rat:
How did they do that? It's my understanding that they could get the good metals to make good armor alloys, which should cut down on weight, right? Were they making their own engines? Lend/lease?

another big part of it was the fact that the T-34 was probably the most 'balanced' tank of ww2 in terms of armor, armament, and horsepower. I'll ask the curator here at the ordnance museum... believe me he'll know.




[ May 20, 2001: Message edited by: sven ]

[AmmoSgt]

one interesting thing about the Russians , and again i don't have the references any more .. and perhaps a bit of Trivia that Sven can ask about .. is that the Russians had a triple Based explosive as a shell filler where everybody else was using a double based expolsive .. it , If i remember correctly , cause a couple of sinificant effect most notably a larger TNT eqivalent weight effect .. doing both more damage and early on causing German Arty Spotters to misread the caliber of the guns firing on them ..often mistaking 76mm Hows for 122's ect

[Igor]

The T-34 did have some admirable qualities; wide treads, good suspension, etc, etc, etc. However, much of it's advantage in speed is simply because it was much smaller than anything a German or an American would have designed.

They did this by having an inadequate crew (the first version of a T-34 with a loader was the T-34/85), making the compartment so small that only very short men could crew them, cutting down on working space, and reducing the separation between the crew compartment and the engine compartment. Thus the Soviets produced a well armored tank that weighed less than 27 tons with a power plant that could develop 500 HP (on a very good day). Naturally it was fast. It just was very hard to fight.

[ May 20, 2001: Message edited by: Igor ]

[ May 20, 2001: Message edited by: Igor ]

[sven]

They managed okay.

regards,
sven

Originally posted by Igor:
The T-34 did have some admirable qualities; wide treads, good suspension, etc, etc, etc. However, much of it's advantage in speed is simply because it was much smaller than anything a German or an American would have designed. By having an inadequate crew (the first version of a T-34 with a loader was the T-34/85), making the compartment so small that only very short men could crew them, cutting down on working space, and reducing the separation between the crew compartment and the engine compartment; the Soviets produced a well armored tank that weighed less than 27 tons with a power plant that could develop 500 HP (on a very good day). Naturally it was fast. It just was very hard to fight.