IT-1 Tank Destroyer | SOVIET ANTI-TANK MISSILE VEHICLE

[Music] [Music] welcome back again appreciate you stopping by on today's video everyone so we are talking about tank destroyers again yes it's something that for some reason whenever I talk about my channel with tank destroyers every gets highly upset there's no such thing as tank destroyers post-1945 blah blah blah yes I understand everybody's definition of tank destroyers is very different but this is designated as a tank destroyer the vehicle we're talking about today which is the IT one which is basically Russian for East rabito a tank of or tank destroyer it's actually designated as a tank destroyer specifically an anti-tank guided missile tank destroyer placed upon a tank chassis which is kind of interesting you don't see that very often in either history or in modern day times and of course the tank destroyer is somewhat of a old technology nowadays really but it's perhaps best known as the series of Soviet tanks armed with the anti-tank missiles instead of a conventional gun and is essentially a t-62 with a dragon ATGM launching system installed inside of it it's designation is a bit of a throwback though to the IT series of the light tank destroyers designed mostly before and during the Second World War but there was nothing obsolete about this vehicle by the time it was actually conceived the Second World War is often considered to be the Golden Age of tanks but if the 1940s belonged to the gun it can be said that the 1950s and 60s were definitely marked by a certain fascination by all countries at that time by guided missiles when it came to aircraft this fascination actually eventually led some fighter jets that ditched a cannon altogether on the ground things stayed more conservative the first actual anti-tank guided missile was likely the German x7 developed at the end of the Second World War as its designation suggests it's an experimental design that was very likely never really fielded but the documents for was seized by the allies and early French SS 10a GM's from 1960 to 1970 if not an improved coffee was heavily inspired by the x7 naturally this didn't escape the attention of the Soviets who had troubles of their own while the t54 was quite sufficient to defeat any German World War two tank the post-war American m48 proved to be resistance to its armor-piercing ammunition and even sub caliber ammunition couldn't defeat them at over 1,000 metres that left the Soviets with 100 millimeter heat ammunition that could do the job fairly well but it had problems of its own specifically its lower accuracy at longer distances in this perspective the development of ATGMs was seen as an ideal solution to defeat Western tanks and a program was launched to develop the first anti-tank guided missiles the first real discussion about putting ATGMs in tanks in the soviet union took place between 1955 and 1956 there were several outputs from the discussion or more specifically instructions regarding the direction of the development the future ATGM vehicles was supposed to be fully tracked with protection equal to tanks with a launcher and its operator protected by the tanks armor the vehicle was supposed to be able to fire only when stopped the vehicles with missiles would be ready to be used by the end of the 1950's in other words the Soviets wanted a tank but with missiles as its main armament not a gun the demand for the internal launcher departed significantly from the way that the French were doing it with external launchers and presented a number of different challenges the development of the first missile systems took place between 1955 and 1959 and there were plenty of ideas to put atgms on pretty much everything from light amphibious tanks to heavy tanks multiple differ H GM's were designed as well however by 1960 only two types of infantry ATMs were accepted into service they were - Ralph Langer NATO designation 81 and 82 and with the first tank ATGM a program called Drakon expected in the mid 1960s the reasons for the delays were apart from the usual lack of funding which I always tend to measure on this chain is the relative inexperience of the Soviets at the time with this kind of system both on the development and production side one thing that made it worse for the Soviets was the interference of the leader of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev who loved H GM's and had a very unrealistic expectation something that would come to haunt the project later on unfortunately to make matters worse the Soviet heavy tank development program was completely canceled in theory supposed to free up some resources but a portion of the ATGM research went away with it as these programs were totally connected at least in Leningrad Kharkov decided to initially dump the program in favor of a new gun arm tank that eventually resulted in the t-64 with its own missile armed tank the object 431 never really going anywhere however needs heat a girl who saw an opportunity to use the missile tank program to get enough resources to develop another rather tank components such as suspensions would later be used to build the t-72 the dragon program however had the goal of creating a medium weight category armored vehicle launcher which is around 25 to 30 tons with a crew of three to four regarding the missile itself as part of what I just mentioned with the dragon program from 1957 there are a number of debates regarding how it should have actually been controlled the problem yes another one was that the missile tank requirements changed from a purely defensive measure to an actually offensive one and that meant the addition of the ability of firing on the move at least formally and sitting inside a rolling tank which if you haven't experienced it can be one hell of a bumpy ride and while trying to guide a missile manually that really wasn't physically possible another option was fully automatic guidance in theory the Soviets had plenty of experience there are operational AAA GM's in existence already but neither heat-seeking nor radar guidance were really working on the ground as a result the most practical solution at the time was a semi-automatic guidance where the gunner was tracking the target constantly and the missile reacted automatically in order to hit the marked target the development the missile fell to ok b16 design bureau and the AE Nudelman responsible for langa system and the guidance system development to kb1 under a a casa love the corporation didn't really work out so well oh the KB one was an experienced team having worked on many guided weapons mostly aircraft missiles but having other priorities it did not have the time to focus on the ground ATGM program ok b16 was another experienced bureau you might recognize the name Nudelman from a successful series of aircraft cannons responsible for the phalange ATGM as well but they wanted to reuse for langa solutions as much as possible and on top of that both bureaus didn't really work well with each other at all eventually in 1958 a third design bureau of c kb 14 and 2 the project which was subsequently passed to it from okb 16 this happened in 1959 and by that time ok these sixteen designed the general look of the missile which is why it never really often listed itself from the designer from 1959 onwards the bulk of the track and a TDM development was carried out by CKD 14 the result of this development was a semi automatically guided 3m7 Drakon missile the whole system was called the 2k4 dragon the maximum range of this missile was 3,300 meters although at night this was greatly reduced by the requirement for the operator to actually see the marked target even with his IR sights the maximum range at night was around 400 to 600 meters which was pretty useless at the time a major issue turned out for its minimum range of 300 meters at night and this created a very small window of engagement the missiles caliber was 180 millimeters and it weighed 54 kilograms 5.8 kilograms of which was the warhead itself it's flight speed was around two hundred and seventeen meters a second and it could penetrate some 250 millimetres of rolled homogeneous steel armor at 60 degrees fully automatic heat-seeking guidance was looked into as well but like before it turned out to be very unreliable so I guess let's finally get round to talking about the it1 and the platform itself the first version of this vehicle referred to as the object 150 from December 1957 was to be used as a modified version of the object 1 Oddie prototype tank the object 140 was designed as a competitor for the object 430 but did it not pass into production it's however worth noting that the design documents mentioned other platforms as well such as the object 167 and the object 170 the idea of the vehicle was to design a lighter version of the tank with only four road wheels thinner Armour approximately 20% less protection compared to the t-55 tank and no gun it was replaced by the dragon launcher that was installed on top of the turret a lever arm would lower itself towards the turret received the missile from an automatic feed mechanism inside ready itself a firing and then launched the missile in other words apart from the time directly before the launch the missiles were always stored inside the tank the missiles would be guided by a stabilized t2s sighting system and at de and Luna P systems at night the system would carry up to 15 missiles fully loaded the whole thing would waste on 32 tons it would be powered by a standard tank diesel engine all in all it was quite well protected as a tank destroyer with excellent frontal Armour that could use an NBC system which is very important at the time with the threat of nuclear war very real in the minds of its strategist and could be sealed from underwater crossings as a bonus the vehicle was lower than the t-55 giving it a bit more of an advantage in combat however this vehicle had a number of flaws the missiles were massive and very difficult to place and reload the missiles had a very complicated stabilization system reducing their reliability many launch elements were located at the top of the turret making them quite vulnerable to enemy fire three out of the 15 missiles carried were located outside of the automatic rack can only be reloaded when the turret was positioned in a specific way the loading process was fully mechanized in the case where the loader was somehow damaged the missile could not be loaded manually by the crew and basically put the vehicle completely out of action which is something you don't see in more modern-day Auto loaders for tanks of the Russian origin additionally each missile was stored in a rather heavy container that significantly increased the weight per missile in any case this early draft involves some raw estimates as the kb1 design Hiro didn't share the actual data required to complete the project until months later the first to object 150 mock-ups based on the t-55 chassis were ready by April 1959 and were transferred to kubinka in September but the missile system was still not quite ready yet for testing and planned 1959 tests were officially moved to 1963 yes it took almost 4 years to get all the kinks ironed out one of the biggest reasons for the delay of this project was the interference from Khrushchev what happened was roughly this in July 1960 Khrushchev came to the car passing the are proving grounds to take a look at the various miss our vehicles including the object 150 when the vehicle prototype was introduced the Soviet leader Khrushchev started demanding high-tech features nobody else wanted at the time such as missile wings opening a mid-flight and replacing the mechanized ammo rack with a drum like automatic loader while he wasn't completely unrealistic with his ideas some of these ideas required huge amounts of time and money to develop and would not appear for years to come because of the debate and consideration of these ideas it cost the Soviets even more time in developing the project as I mentioned before until 1961 various platforms were considered for the vehicle including the object 167 in 1961 the final platform was finally selected the t-62 tank which at the time replaced the t-55 production between 1962 and 1963 a series of tests of prototypes of this new iteration took place the biggest change was the new loading mechanism that was mostly hidden inside the vehicle and was working with a rate of 2 to 3 rounds per minute unlike before the loading arm launcher was for the most of the time hidden inside the vehicle and covered by an armored plate it only appeared outside the vehicle when it was readying itself to fire the vehicle was also compared to the object for three two mediums hang armed with the 150 millimeter molot smoothbore gun the object 432 would become the t-64 and the results were fairly interesting the object 150 could kill enemy tanks at longer ranges 3.5 kilometers compared to three kilometers at a distance of 2 to 3 kilometers the object 1 50 could kill two to three more times as tanks as the object for three two on average the ammunition carried allowed it to kill ten more tanks compared to the objects for three twos six tanks in 1964 two or more of less the finalized object 150 vehicles were tested and fared pretty good leading to an order of ten vehicles and 300 missiles to be delivered in 1965 in order to subject them to even more trials several more floors were uncovered and fixed and finally on September 3rd 1968 the vehicle was accepted in service under the designation of the it1 finally Russia had its missile anti tank destroyer the production version the it1 weighed 35 tons and had the same armors that of the t-62 medium tank it had the same engine to go as fast as 50 kilometers an hour it could carry 15 9m seven improved Drakon missiles the 3m7 was renamed to the nine m7 due to the change in the military normal culture system twelve of these missiles were mechanized in a magazine that could be launched while the vehicle was going as fast as 20 kilometers an hour the missiles had to be somewhat pre-programmed and pre-installed into the vehicle ready for firing which took time and calibration it's worth noting that the vehicle speed had relatively low impact though on the missiles accuracy now believe it or not the vehicle actually worked very well for its time but unfortunately just like most Soviet tanks and programs of its time it had one major problem delays like many solid vehicles before it and after it it became the victim of major delays on the program it simply came too late as by 1968 the concept of a dedicated tank destroyer was completely obsolete the it1 could not fit into standard tank formations as it could not participate in close combat due to its minimum range of 300 meters and if used at long distances its thick Armour was actually pointless and the missile carrier role could be performed by a more lightly armored BMPs furthermore the Soviets came to the conclusion that rather than a supporting dedicated missile carriers like the it1 it was far more efficient to support gun launched a TDM missiles fitting standard tanks with it as a results of these considerations it was decided to produce the it1 in very limited numbers only between 1966 and 1970 220 vehicles were built along with these several thousand Drakon missiles these vehicles were split into two dedicated tank destroyed battalions one located in Belarus and the other one in the Carpathian Military District the vehicle was generally very reliable but due to its limited production it suffered from a lack of spare parts an issue that turned quite serious starting from 1970 onwards and eventually resulted in its complete removal from active service between 1972 and 1973 the vehicle was never exported and never fire a shot in anger after being phased out some IT ones were converted to the BT s 4v tractors and others had their armament removed and served as training vehicles as for the Drakon missile itself its development was an important lesson for the Soviets a lesson that would be applied in future ATGM developments so it's safe to say this vehicle was left on the drawing board for far too long too much improvements were required lots of oming and our rule should we do this should we do that people were sticking their nose in when they didn't need to be teams that were developing it just weren't getting along and it was just kind of doomed from the start with all these things taken into consideration if the vehicle was actually capitalizes on a little bit more and was focused on a bit more it could have had a successful future but as mentioned the tank destroyer in this formation in this consideration just isn't applicable for the modern battlefield there's no requirement to have just a tank that launches missiles when you have cheaper faster more nimble vehicles that can carry more and quicker accurate missiles than that of a main battle tank so there you have it folks a doomed from the start somewhat tank destroyer for the Soviet Army back in the day a really cool concept though I absolutely love the way that missile is pulled out of the turret like that big fat chunky high-explosive anti-tank missile to take out you know what at the time was fairly lightly armoured vehicles of NATO doctrine but I just was kind of sad to know that it was just never gonna be a thing they kind of just got rid of it and it just makes sense it's just not a vehicle that makes much practical sends back in those days it was just too late to the party I guess so I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about the it1 today make sure that if you did enjoy you leave me a like so we can get that YouTube's algorithm juices flowing I really appreciate everyone supporting the channel recently leaving comments and likes and sharing it around on your own social media it really does mean a lot if you want to support my channel furthermore and please go check out my patreon page if you wish to donate your support on there and thank you to everyone who's been doing so it really does mean a lot to me you can check out also my other social media links below in the link description box I've got Instagram Facebook all the other usual stuff I do really appreciate you all being here today and again if you want to be notified of any upcoming videos in the future make sure you hit the little bell button by the subscribe button so you can be notified of when it's coming okay folks stay safe in all this crazy times and I hope see on the next video all the best bye bye [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Matsimus

Views: 965,684

Rating: 4.918045 out of 5

Keywords: IT-1, missile, tank destroyer, Soviet, cold war, missile tank, T-62, soviet, anti tank, anti-tank, ATGM, 3M7 Drakon missile, Drakon missile, Soviet Union, tank, tanks, Истребитель танков–1, IT-1 tank, autoloader, SACLOS, Armoured fighting vehicle, matsimus, russian, russia, T-55, anti tank missile, tank missile

Id: FyHA7TN1WbQ

Length: 19min 22sec (1162 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020