Monday 2 March 2015

T-34 Improvements

Andrei Ulanov posted an interesting note listing some requests by front line soldiers.

"The self propelled German gun penetrates a T-34 at a range of 2 kilometers. To combat it, a portion of the tanks (every tenth) must mount the 85 mm anti-tank gun (equal in power to the German gun). It is also necessary to add armour to the front of the hull and turret to increase it to a combined thickness of 250-300 mm, and increase the top of the hull and turret to 100 mm. 

A drawback of the T-34's design is the roof of the engine compartment, which allows setting the tank on fire with incendiary fluid. I suggest that air intake should be done from behind the armour, removing any openings from the top, which will significantly increase its resistance to incendiary bottles and small bombs.

The second drawback is the turret produced at the Stalingrad factory, which can have its cheek knocked out by an armour piercing shell. The Tagil factory turret has no such defect, and is significantly more robust.

The third drawback is weak protection of the fuel tanks. I suggest that in order to prevent fires, they should have armour screens to reduce the chance of fire. It would be better to place the tanks on the floor. In both cases, they should be protected by 100-150 mm of spaced armour. 98% of unrecoverable losses consist of burned up tanks."

Since the document is dated September 1942, the German SPG in question is not the Ferdinand, as one could have thought when faced with a request for a ridiculously armoured tank destroyer. I can only imagine T-34-85BMs with 300 mm of armour on the front, immune to bombs and anti-tank guns, hitting the battlefield in 1942. The Tiger would turn green from jealousy. 

9 comments:

  1. Could it be the dicker max ?

    Time scale seems to fit and we know it fought against soviet tanks.

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    1. Though, with only one seeing combat (plus possibly two Sturer Emils), would it be able to become sufficiently notorious to specifically counter it?

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    2. More likely Marders or an 88mm mounted on Sd.Kfz.
      The front line soldiers don't seem to be of Mensa material.

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    3. Well Grumpy they might have seen the effects of the dicker max and concluded that the germans are now starting a trend towards SPG's with bigger guns.
      Plus with the information that they would have gathered through spies this would not be out of the question.

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    4. It didn't even have to be a specific vehicle. A gun shot them from afar (so naturally it was 2 kilometers), penetrated (gotta be an 88) and then when they checked it wasn't there (self propelled, it drove away!).

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  2. T-34-85 with 300mm armour would be hilarious

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  3. Well that would be the most probable explanation.

    At least it got me thinking about what it could have been resulting in an hour or 2 of digging through ww2 websites.
    Time well spent i would say.

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  4. "immune to bombs"

    The 300mm front does not protect you when a bomb strikes the top of the hull or turret of 100mm and crush it into pieces. It would rather be illogical that such a strike could have been outlived. However it would make more sense that the overall roof was immune to lower caliber artillery fire, but rather implausible. Since the germans obviously falled in love with big toys for artillery fire, to emphasise their megalomania and virility. lol

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    1. Actually its rather exceptional that a bomb or artillery shell hits the roof of a tank. As accurate as Stukas may have been, they werent that good, as the plane itself was already several meters across, plus the general inaccuracy by pilot error. And indirect artillery fire also would need to be massive to land such a direct hit on a regular basis, but i cant imagine that happening too often either, as even artillery hits tend to be sevel meters apart

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