German Field Marshal von Kleist called it
the “best tank of World War two.” Panzer leader General Heinz Guderian, upon
first encountering the Red Army's T-34, said that the tank enjoyed “vast superiority”
over German tanks. The Soviets wove legendary tales around its
incredible performance on the battlefields of Eastern Europe- but what made the T-34
the best tank of World War II exactly? Design on the T-34 began late in 1930, when
the Red Army was mostly equipped with T-26 or Bystrokhodny light tanks, which were fast
and agile units but were seriously lacking in protection and firepower. Both tanks had seen action during the Spanish
civil war, when Soviet forces backed up Spanish communists, and during the Soviet Union's
undeclared border war with Japan. During the 1938 to 1939 border skirmish with
Japan, the Red Army's tanks were roundly defeated by the low-powered, but still superior Japanese
Type 95 tanks. Infantrymen also scored many kills on Soviet
tanks by assaulting them with Molotov cocktails, which turned the tank into a giant fireball
when flaming gasoline dripped through chinks in the poorly welded armor and into the tank's
engine compartment. Clearly, the Soviet Union needed a replacement
tank for its ground forces, and it needed one as soon as possible. Though Hitler had declared a non-aggression
pact with the Soviet Union, its poor performance against both Japan and then later against
Finland in the Winter War sent a strong signal that the Red Army was weak, and there was
nothing Stalin feared more than Hitler turning his forces loose on him. The first prototypes of the T-34 entered production
in 1939, and featured a coil-spring Christie suspension similar to the previous BT series
of tanks, allowing them to achieve higher speeds than other tanks in service around
the world. The new track design also gave the entire
tank an incredibly low ground pressure of .64 kg/cm2, or just slightly higher than the
pressure the average human footprint exerts on the ground. This meant that the T-34 would be much more
maneuverable and less likely to get bogged down by snow and thick mud- two environments
that were intimately familiar to people living on Russia's western steppes. The gasoline engine, so vulnerable to going
up in flames from molotov attack, was replaced with a diesel engine, giving it enough horsepower
to push the T-34 along at speeds of up to 35 mph (56 kph). This made the T-34 ten miles an hour faster
than the German Panzer III or Panzer IV. It also featured a revolutionary sloped armor
design that was 45mm thick. The sixty degree slope on the armor effectively
meant that any incoming round had to penetrate an extra 5mm of armor, increasing armor protection
without adding excess weight. The slope however also helped ensure that
most incoming projectiles on a horizontal trajectory would bounce harmlessly off the
armor. The main gun was a major upgrade over previous
Soviet designs, and featured a 76mm cannon with a muzzle velocity of around 2,000 ft/s
(600 m/s), allowing the T-34 to score kills on any other tank in the world at even long
ranges. With so much fanfare around the production
of the T-34, designer Mikhail Koshkin completed two prototypes in January of 1940 and decided
to subject the tanks to an extremely grueling trial by fire. He drove both tanks from Ukraine to Moscow,
or about 745 miles (1200 km), and then to the border with Finland, on to Kiev, and lastly
back to the factory in Chharkov. The incredible endurance test proved that
the tanks were built to last and structurally sound, and only minor modifications were required
to the suspension and drivetrain before the tank went into full-scale production. However, Koshkin ended up contracting pneumonia
during the journey and would die, replaced as head of the T-34 program by his deputy,
Alexander Morozov. With a spectacular endurance trial under its
belt, full-scale production of the T-34 began in september of 1941 at the Chharkov Komintern
Locomotive plant, with concurrent production beginning six months later at the Stalingrad
Tractor Factory. The tank would see four different versions,
all equipped with the mighty 76mm gun, and the first version of the T-34 was formally
recognized by the Red Army as the Model 1940. Unfortunately though Soviet engineering was
quickly catching up with the rest of the world, its manufacturing still lacked the raw skill
and expertise needed to build modern tanks. Instead of the much more powerful and safer
V 12 diesel engine, many early T-34s were instead fitted with MT-17 gasoline engines
due to difficulty in the manufacturing process of the V 12s. The initial L-11 76mm gun was also quickly
found to have very poor penetration capability against armored targets, and was hastily replaced
with the F-34 76mm gun. With an improved muzzle velocity of 2130 ft/s
(650 m/s), the new cannon proved more than effective at punching through German armor,
and the new model of T-34 was designated as the Model 1941- seeing as it began to enter
service in the summer of 1941. On June 22nd, 1941, Hitler launched Operation
Barbarossa, his planned killing stroke to defeat the communist government of the Soviet
Union. With more than three million soldiers, 150
divisions, and 3,000 tanks making up three army groups, the German advanced created an
initial front more than 1,800 miles long. Initially the Germans scored victory after
victory, pushing the Soviet forces ever further back. However a few months after the start of the
offensive, the Red Army began to receive the T-34 in force and the Germans were shocked
at the mighty new tanks leading Soviet counter-attacks. German Panzer IIIs found that their 50mm gun
was all but useless against the sloped frontal armor of the T-34, as was the 50mm Pak 38
anti-tank gun used by support units. German tank commanders were soon finding that
their only hope of stopping the T-34 was to outmaneuver it- no easy feat given that the
T-34 was light on its feet and very capable within the muddy and snowy conditions of western
Russia, while heavy German panzers tended to bog down. Nonetheless, superior German training saw
Soviet forces outmaneuvered time and again, and the t-34 suffered heavy casualties, though
even with their inferior training and communications, T-34s managed to stop the German advance into
the Soviet Union. For all its strengths though, the T-34 had
some serious drawbacks as well. First was the poor Soviet workmanship, as
the T-34 was largely built by an inexperienced work force with very low expertise. The need to hurry tanks through the production
process saw many corners cut, and overall while the T-34 was one of the best designed
tanks of the second world war, it was often betrayed in reality by the poor workmanship
that went into its construction. Physical failures experienced by the tank
were often more the fault of the rushed labor that went into its construction and less a
fault with the core design itself. The T-34 also had a two-man, manually traversed
turret which required the commander to also act as a gunner. This would place a huge workload on the tank
commander which would take precious time away from his most vital task: actually commanding
the tank. For platoon leaders this made maintaining
command and control over an entire platoon, and not just his own tank, virtually impossible,
and was one of the leading causes for the poor performance of Soviet tank forces against
the Germans. The turret also lacked a basket, or raised
floor which moved along with the turret as the turret turned from side to side, which
meant that tank crews were constantly in danger of tripping over spent shells as the turret
moved. Visibility was also a major problem for T-34
tank commanders, as the tank lacked a cupola and periscopes standard amongst all other
allied tanks. This problem was rectified in the T-34 Model
1943, but until then tank commanders often entered into battle with the main hatch physically
open, ducking behind it as they struggled to make sense of the battlefield. Needless to say riding into battle with your
main hatch open was a very bad idea, but better than riding into battle blind. The armor of the T-34 was also extremely rigid,
and would fail to provide any 'give' when struck by a round. This meant that the force of the impacting
round may not penetrate the thick armor, but could still generate lethal steel splinters
on the inside of the tank which would kill or seriously injure crew members. The steep slope of the armor also made the
T-34 a very cramped machine, and when US Army engineers tested a T-34 in 1942 they were
amazed that the Soviets could fit four fully-equipped crewmen inside the tank. The cramped space however also meant that
the sides of the hull had to be lined with fuel cells which could be easily breached
if hit by armor-piercing rounds. One other major drawback of the T-34 was the
lack of a radio on each tank, with only the tanks of a platoon leader being equipped with
a radio. Communications between tanks was instead meant
to be done with flags, an absolutely flabbergasting proposition amidst the ferocity of tank combat. While German tanks were coordinating with
each other via radio, the Soviet tankers were expected to somehow wave flags at each other
in order to coordinate their movements- and this with the T-34's notoriously low visibility. As a result, despite the capabilities of the
T-34, Soviet tankers were routinely outfought by the Germans. The most serious vulnerability of the T-34
though was the very poor workmanship, with random tests of newly completed T-34s in 1942
showing that only 7% were free of major defects. In 1943 random T-34s were taken directly from
the production lines and subjected to a 300km reliability trial, with less than 8% of T-34s
being able to complete the trial without breaking down. Just on their way to combat Soviet tank brigades
were known to experience losses of 30% to 50% of their tanks in transit, without even
seeing enemy action, and the average T-34 lasted less than 124 miles (200 km) before
needing major repairs or overhauls. A T-34 could barely get through its first
full tank of diesel before needing repair. With all these vulnerabilities it can be hard
to truly consider the T-34 the best tank of World War II, but it's important to remember
that many of the T-34s defects were down to the poor workmanship of what was essentially
a hastily assembled labor force of unskilled peasants. The soviets were desperate, with their backs
up against the wall, and it showed in the many, many defects built into the T-34. Yet the core design on paper was always good,
and its tactical limitations and vulnerabilities were quickly addressed, with fixes implemented
into new models. However, one of the key qualities that makes
the T-34 the best tank of World War II was the ease with which it could be produced,
with the Soviets producing over 30,000 T-34s between 1941 and 1943, versus just over 5,000
German Panzer IVs. The T-34 was truly great because it may not
have been the best engineered design, but it was a very strong design that could be
built quickly and cheaply even with a very inexperienced and poor quality workforce,
which turned out to be a critical advantage over the German's Tiger and Panzer tanks. What do you think was really the best tank
of World War II? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments, and as always
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