Tank Chats #68 T-34 | The Tank Museum

this tank chats going to be about the very famous Soviet tank the t-34 we're going to look at the t-34 76 this model and also a look at a t-34 85 now this tank it's quite hard to explain and talk about because it is surrounded by such a history and such a number of myths and it's become an iconic vehicle for Soviet Russia and that Great Patriotic War so we're going to try and take some of those issues apart as we look at it this particular t-34 76 is a very early one and we're very fortunate to have it here it was actually captured by the Finnish forces in the continuation war there's the Winter War of 39 40 later on later 41 the war begins again against the Soviet Union and the Finns capture a number of vehicles including this very early t-34 they put it into service themselves and this particular vehicle it's got modifications on it that the Finns did and it was actually still in service as a training vehicle into the 1950s with the Finnish military and the swastika on the side that by the way is a Finnish symbol that's been used by their military it's nothing to do with Nazism people often wonder why that's on there the fact they happen to be fighting on the German sides against Soviet Russia that's one of those coincidences but again so this particular vehicle it's on loan to the Tank Museum and we're very grateful for the Finns for lending it to us now we need to start back with what's the Red Army up to in terms of its use of Tanks the Red Army is first formed in 1918 and it takes a number of Czarist officers into its formation it looks at what the best way for the Red Army to fight a future war is going to be and it studies quite a number of different developments even studies like the Commonwealth use of combined arms at the Battle of Amiens it looks at a whole range of different issues and there is a massive debate within the Soviet millet tree hierarchy about how should we fight a war in the future now one of the people Mikhail Tukhachevsky is looking at the idea of using armoured forces for a type of warfare that at one point gets called the warfare of annihilation let's have the Red Army as a massive very sophisticated technologically advanced Force which will deliver a crushing blow on to any enemy there's another school of thought that argues along the lines of saying no let's use Russia's great country its depth let's go along the way of a of a sort of sense of attrition rather than annihilation and that traditionally that attritional warfare is how Russia's fought wars in the past now these debates go on 1929 Stalin comes to power he decides he's going to back Mikhail Tukhachevsky --zz ideas and he's going to took a chess keys actually even arguing to say let's industrialize the whole of soviet society to build not things like freezes or fridges for the homes let's do it to build tanks aeroplanes and make us his great military power now Stalin knows is about to start implementing the five-year plans he's going to back took a Chiefs key because he wants he likes that as an idea and he also needs the Red Army on his side is he's going to implement all these future plans now in 1930 then out go Red Army agents to buy from Britain the Vickers export tank and from America they buy a couple examples and a license for the Walter Christie tank there hasn't gone in printed production in America but has that famous Christie suspension on a very fast vehicle and in Russia these vehicles the Vickers export tank is developed into the t26 tank and it is started to be built in huge numbers in Russia and with the Christie tank it becomes the BT series of tanks again these are going to be fast quick moving vehicles that are going to be the equivalent of cavalry tanks t-26 much more the infantry tanks now those vehicles take time to build in the factories and Russia also has a problem of industrialization that's why these five-year plans how do we actually push through an industrialization process so again from America the Soviets bring in Alfred Karn who's an American designer of factories and he ends up building huge numbers of factories and to help the Russians build this new tank flea the famous Stalingrad tractor factory is actually one of Alfred Khan's creations now that process of building these vehicles some of them are not built to a great standard the Russians have a lot of trouble with their metallurgy so some of the early tracks are fairly weak and by 1937 they're already looking at what might be the replacement vehicle certainly for the BT series of vehicles now this is when the designer of the t-34 mikhail koshkin comes into the picture he's working at the car called locomotive or Comintern locomotive Factory it's called basically they're building tanks there and he set the task of can he build a replacement for the BT tank and his first model that he comes out with is something called the a 20 it's got sloped armor it's got a 45 millimeter gun it's gonna have potentially a diesel engine in the back and it's also one of these ones they call it eight by six it's actually got six of the road wheels are powered by the engine as were the BT series and that dates back to the fact that early track technology was a bit unreliable if you could run your vehicle on wheels on the roads till you need the tracks that would be better now the problem with that it means extra technology lots of extra come complexity to the design and build of the vehicle and that idea is fairly rack he dropped in this 820 prototype 20 millimeters of frontal armor nicely sloped but again we're looking at 1937 here 1938 with late Kazan 1939 with counting goal lots of lessons are learned from these battles and what comes back is a use of the t26 and the BT tanks such as issues such as the world's not being very good the enemy anti-tank guns even though they weren't that powerful could penetrate the armor so koshkin has a rethink and he goes back to Stalin and the red army and said look shouldn't we build something more powerful thicker armor protection all-round a better tank and perhaps even a universal tank in other words this could be a tank that takes over from the BT series and also the t26 series of Tanks let's combine them into one new type of model now he goes away the first prototype of his new model it goes through another development it's got thicker Armour on it t 40 it's got a bit of a thicker Armour on there in the first place they start looking at a bigger gun they improve on that newer model and ultimately that becomes really the prototype of what becomes the t-34 now cocking calls it the t-34 because he dates back to 1934 is the time his first thinking of some of the ideas and the theories that go into that t-34 tank so what's he come up with he comes up with a tank that has an seventy six point two millimeter gunner on it's about a three inch gun and that's big for tanks at the time he comes up with he's already got the idea of the sloped armor slope tom has been around for a while but the level of protection now is quite considerably more that he puts on this first model t-34 and another issue just like the American Sherman during the production run of t-34 the levels of armor protection go up they almost doubled during its production run he gets this v12 diesel engine v2k engine that goes in the back of this vehicle diesel engine aluminium block the designer of that engine ends up in 1938 guy killed kalpen ends up being shot in one of Russia's or Stalin's purges it's got a transmission system that is at the beginning fairly rough and ready but again through the process of manufacture starts improving and this first prototype is sent out on the road for a 2000 kilometer road trip they go from Kharkov they visit Moscow they show the vehicle off to the Kremlin to Stalin and it's taken around the houses and again obviously in that sort of early driving sudden transmission teething troubles come out further changes are being made now there's an onus now on the development of this tank because already even though there's been doubters about do we want to go this big heavy it's about a 28 ton vehicle do we want that amount of firepower you've got the people building the kV 1 kV 2 tanks they're looking at as if to say hang on a second this has a rival for us we don't like the idea there's people in the Red Army are saying no it would be much more sensible for the Soviet economy to perfect and keep on building the BT and the t26 tear it series of vehicles but what's happening is the Winter War 39 to 40 shows again as did Cal King goal and late Kazan battles at the end of the 30s the weakness of those designs and of course in May of 1940 with the German invasion of France blitzkrieg we see then or the Russian see the use of new armor and the way that the Germans are using vehicles like the pans r3 and the pans are for so now all of a sudden that t-34 there's an emphasis behind it and by September of 1940 the very first production vehicles are now starting to come out koshkin the designer he dies of pneumonia in September when they first vehicles are being issued and his role as a developer of the t-34 is then taken over by the chap who's been building the transmission so he ends up looking after the development of the t-34 through into the t-34 85 now that t-34 tank the early models again like so many tanks they have a number of failures I've already mentioned metallurgy that consistently becomes a problem for the Russians transmissions there's photographs of some of the early t-34 is driving around with a spare transmission literally bolted to the rear of the vehicle because there was so many failures so you took a spare one with you they have a number of problems there with that vehicle and there's only about 900 them are in service by the summer of 1941 when of course here comes Operation Barbarossa and the in Germans invade the Soviet Union there's about 500 kv-1 tanks ready at about that time the vast majority of this enormous Soviet tank fleet at the time is still bTW tanks or the t26 series of Tanks in huge tens of thousands of numbers now the Red Army that meets that German invasion in the summer of 1941 has gone through in the late 1930s a series of purges from Stalin he's got rid of at least 35,000 officers it's getting new equipment that's starting to come into service it is expanded massively and rapidly with this threat of a German war on the horizon originally it was being built up much more along the lines of traditional le Reaver was going to be there Poland then all of a sudden Stalin has got his Molotov Ribbentrop pact he's done a pact with histor Hitler some say that's to bite him more time some say was just naivety he's got an extra year or so but that Russian army is described as a stumbling Colossus it is not in a very fit state to fight the war that it's coming its way even though it's got some of these new vehicles coming into service now this tank the t-34 76 again we hear great stories about it in terms of when the Germans first encounter it they're absolutely amazed at the thickness of its armor the power of its gun but tactically it's used very poorly by the Red Army what tends to happen as some of this is too due to the design and the crew ergonomics of it but these guys who are driving these vehicles have had very little experience on the vehicle command control and the leadership is frankly abysmal at the time in the Red Army and so even though there's some outstanding examples of t-34s doing heroic actions holding up enormous German forces statistically really most of them about half of them are breaking down before they even get into action and that problem is as I mentioned some of it as well as to do with the design so for example when we look at this vehicle the early model t-34s with that turret that's a two-man turret now I'm not that big a bloke but I couldn't even fit my shoulders into that turret across the rear there so how two guys are supposed to be in there the commander and also the gunner is supposed to fit in that very tight space you know that is a cramped area there the other issue the commander doesn't have a Coppola so his actual vision from inside that vehicle he's got one periscope and again the Germans report on the fact that quite often they could get three aimed accurate rounds off for every one that the Soviets are firing and only platoon commanders vehicles have a radio so these vehicles in a platoon are signalling to each other either with flags and as you can imagine under fire the last thing you want to be doing is opening up your hatch and starting to do flag signals so again some of these early accounts the Germans are reporting on these tanks almost following each other around not being very tactically aware not using the very thick armor that they've got comparatively at the time and they're impressive firepower to great effect now the early model L 11 gun the 76.2 mm - gun a design viewer the gravy design Bureau it in in Russia is ends up coming up with a better design they call it the f34 gun and they are not given official permission to start producing this gun but they go ahead anyway and it's only because of the good reports on this newer gun with its better penetration that comes back from the frontline that that starts being added to the 1941 model of the t-34 so again it's part of this story that as the t-34 goes through its development it goes through a number of changes now that gun firing an armor-piercing composite rigid round in other words a slug of something like tungsten within a wider 76.2 millimeter sheath that round could go through ninety millimeters of armor plate at about five hundred meters and you have to think in the summer of 41 if you're looking at the panzer three and the panzer 4 most of those tanks maximum you've got about 60 millimeters of armor so that's a very effective tank killing gun early in the campaign we've mentioned about reliability that diesel engine in the rear why tracks tracks of course the Russians know about Russian winters and of course it's not that many metaled road surface roads in Russia so the idea of the wide tractors spread the weight and that engine gives this vehicle a power that can speed it up to about 33 miles an hour so that's a good turn of speed for about what turns out to be a 28 short ton tank so it's a still a fairly weighty tank there now the German invasion in the summer of 1941 causes something that again almost adds this magic to the t-34 story they've got to move some of the factories that are now making the t-34 out the way of the advancing German military and they take them back behind the Ural Mountains and that means not only taking the machinery taking bits of equipment that means taking the engineers or people that are manufacturing men and women are should be drawn back to reestablish their factories and keep this production going and in that process one of the things the Russians find is they say look we're not going to do anything to that vehicle unless even though they know it's got weaknesses unless it speeds production or it lessens cost because we need those vehicles now the Russians in 1941 can you believe this is a figure they lose twenty thousand tanks in that German advance they have a lot of tanks that they need to build and they need to build quickly so with that movement of the factories start this process of things on the t-34 that were considered superfluous start getting removed and you get to the point that there's a certain point where some factories are sending out these t-34 tanks without even a driver's seat in if you want to see you fold up your greatcoat and sit on it and so some of those vehicles are different from different factories because of what's available to man at that time but they're also the Russians are realizing there's a lot of things that can go into a tank that if it's just is it really necessarily number one or can we simplify it and the great story of the t-34 is during its production it ends up doubling the thickness of its armor it doubles its penetration ability of its firepower and it has the cost of making one of these tanks so they start with for about two hundred ninety thousand rubles they get it down to about one hundred and sixty thousand roubles and they get to the point that they're producing 1200 of these t-34s in about 1942 a month I mean that's a staggering figure to be able to coming out with and that's that key in the background what we've got to remember with the t-34 is the numbers that can be produced it has excellent elements to it as a tank it has a bismal crew ergonomics the poor driver in here is visibility the amount of muscle power he needs to change gear all these things are not good about that vehicle but when you can produce them in many numbers that is bound to have an effect on the battlefield now its superiority in firepower and armor protection starts waning fairly quick quickly in 1942 the original German 37 millimeter anti-tank gun not that effective on a t-34 there's this account of one of the gun crews they fire about 25 rounds the only effective round from that 37 millimeter manages to jam the turret but then the Germans are starting to get 5 centimeter towed anti-tank guns and then seven point five centimeters coming into service and of course from 1942 the Panzer 4 is then having that long barreled high-velocity 75 millimeter gun fitted so all of a sudden these t-34s are not as an impressive bit of kit on the battlefield and again in terms of losses many of these vehicles we always think here tank museum tank on tank warfare actually its anti-tank guns are doing a huge amount of the damage now for the t-34 so success though it is it is also the tank that gets knocked out the most in World War 2 44,000 t-34 losses in the combat now some of those tanks are taken back to the factories rebuilt reissued and that's another one of the issues because as I've mentioned already all the different factories are building two slightly different build standards slightly different design parts and of course when we're adding up numbers there's the other issue which is these factories are also they're doing new build but also taking in damaged vehicles and they're added to the mix and then they go out again so you'll see it's almost hard to find two 234 tanks with exactly the same design build because there's so many little alterations and changes and improvements simple things as well like in that trying to make it simpler get rid of the rubber on the tires things like the F 34 gun starts off with over 800 component parts they cut that down to 600 component parts so again that idea of simplifying the process now by the summer of 1943 it is ready apparent to the Red Army that not only with the Panzer 4 with the long barrel gun but then certainly at the Battle of curse starting to meet the Panther that the t-34 is suffering so they start a program for a replacement vehicle and that's what we'll have a look at next the realization that they're going to have to build a new tank leads the Russians to come up with a design that's called the t43 now the problem with the t-thought 43 they've got some good ideas let's keep about 70% of its construction from parts that are already being built from the t-34 the problem though is that when it comes out it ends up being less mobile than the t-34 and even though it's got a new turret with a new 85 millimeter gun on it it's not considered a success and therefore they go back to the drawing board and have another look at the t-34 and what that develops into is they realize actually we can enlarge the turret ring on the t-34 from originally it's 56 inches they take it up to 63 inches and they take this new three-man turret that's been designed for the t43 adapt it and put it on an enlarged t-34 hull and that becomes the t-34 / 85 the 85 millimeter gun equipped tank now that process leads to the tanks going into service in about February of 1944 and when we look at the t-34 85 we're actually looking at a very different beast yes it's a t-34 evolved but at the same time it's adding things for the crew that makes this a much better tank to be able to fight from for example the commander now in the top has his own Coppola and so he can look out all around rather than that one original periscope he was given the turret now has a turret basket the original t-34 had no basket at all ammunition stored on the floor under rubber mats you open the box took out the ammunition pass it up now with this vehicle yes ammunition still stored on the floor but it's now got a turret basket which means the crew can turn together within the vehicle as well other changes that go on we've now got a three-man turret so three men the commander now doesn't just have to command and man the gun he can just be his what his real role is looking out for targets commanding the whole vehicle that's important we get a increase in the ratio of radios not every tank gets one but most of them now start getting radios and that is fitted in the turret in the t-34 85 the original fit in the earlier t-34 turret was on the floor of the vehicle so again access issues for communications now this enlarged turret three-man crew that loader is now being added there as well as the gunner so again crew ergonomics better from the point of view of the workability of the vehicle much of the hull remains the same apart from the addition of further thicker armor so we're now up to about 90 millimeters of armor plate there because the guns bigger the amount of ammunition goes down early t-34s you get around 90 rounds of the 76 millimeter rare ammunition in there now with this bigger gun you're down to about 50 up to 55 rounds and there's normally about nine ready rounds stored inside the turret ready to be used the rest of them again on those floor boxes down further below now these vehicles go into production they are also starting views tactically if we go back to that earlier can't talk about when we were looking at how the Russians thought they were going to use their military this early phase of the war has been that war almost of attrition they're using their space they're using they're massing themselves the second phase of the war and this almost heralds it when it's coming in from the beginning of 40 forwards onwards you're now looking at that other Soviet theory that they wanted to fight with which is that war of annihilation using their operational art that kind of that that deep battle theory that they've been looking at in the 1930s to great effect with operations like banquet Ron and the advanced on Berlin stunningly successful use of heavy artillery tanks tank riders so on these vehicles you'll notice on the side of them metal bars are added so that again you've almost in ended up with motorized infantry that could be taken into action in the back of these vehicles and the use of air power of course those things coming to back back together mean that the effect that the Soviet Red Army has in 1944-45 is is gone leaps and bounds forward from just trying to do their earlier war tactics of delaying and trying to hold up that massive German advance and as I say vehicles like this are really key to that now the t-34 it's produced in massive numbers as I mentioned earlier about 80,000 we think all told and its continued introduction after the war ends by the end of the war about 55 percent of the Soviet tank forces made up of variants of the t-34 vehicle it stopped production it actually goes back into production in both Poland and Czechoslovakia in the early 1950s and of course there's so many of these vehicles a bit like the American Sherman which is got a lot of comparisons with it ends up being either sold on gifted to Soviet satellite countries used all around the world the list of countries where the t-34 is fought is enormous and those battles it's involved on there's another whole story the use of the t-34 after world war ii still in service with some armies right into the 21st century now the issue about the t-34 overall as well one of the other things when we look at this tank is what we're looking at now is less about whatever I say about facts figures misinformation that's come out over many decades because again from the Soviet area some of this information was big tup in a way about its success other information didn't come out the archives till much later on and it's still appearing so trying to form a view of this particular tank is very hard to come up with an accurate one no doubt I've been saying a number of mistakes and what I've been talking to you about in this talk but the issue really is what this tanks malaises this is the tank for the Russian that symbolizes their victory in world war two it is not the tank that wins world war two for the Russians it's actually the spirit and the stoicism of the Russian people that does that but because just like in Britain the Spitfire becomes that iconic item this is for the Russians one of those items that is now moved beyond just the facts and figures it becomes a symbol and an icon of that victory and you can see that recently because about 40 t-34 85 tanks have been gifted by the government allows they've transported them back on railway flats going all the way through Russia people have been turning up at stations to almost pay homage to these vehicles as they go past and those vehicles are going to be used again in parades in celebration commemorations into the future that's what this item actually means to the Russian people if you enjoyed that video please support the Tank Museum by subscribing to their YouTube channel and also support them on patreon

Channel: The Tank Museum

Views: 1,548,043

Rating: 4.9145188 out of 5

Keywords: t-34, t34, t 34, russian tank, soviet tank, ww2, ww2 tank, great patriotic war, david willey, david willey tank chat, tank chat, bovington, tank museum, the tank museum, tank museum tank chats, t-34/85, t-34/76, t-34 tank chat, t-34 tank, t34 tank chat, t34 tank

Id: 8dUAs40ymag

Length: 30min 17sec (1817 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/nickbot]

Love these longer chats. Such good content.

[u/Gumderwear]

Great!