Wednesday 30 May 2018

T-34 Improvements

"May 20th, 1940
#730034s

To the People's Commissar of Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union, Timoshenko

I present to you the conclusions of the trials commission for the T-34 tank, approved for service in the Red Army by decree #443ss issued by the Committee of Defense of the SNK on December 19th, 1939.

Regarding points raised in personal thoughts (pp. 83-85) of Military Engineer 2nd Class comrade Sorkin and comrade Morozov from factory #183, I report that:
  1. Widening the turret by 160 mm without touching the hull and turret ring that was proposed by factory #183 is approved. I disagree with increasing the height of the turret, as this will present a larger target to the enemy, and there is no need of this since the depression angle of -5 degrees forward and to the sides is already achieved.
  2. I do not agree with unifying the components with existing tanks, as this will increase the weight.
  3. There are no disagreements about the main clutch. The factory admits that no cause for deformation of the disks has been found. Disk deformation is a serious defect.
  4. I approved the second type of idler, with the internal tension adjustment mechanism, as the more robust and better protected option.
  5. I insist that the radio be moved to the front of the tank in order to free up the commander for combat. The hull gunner/radio operator sits in the hull.
  6. I insist on changing the observation device design to use metallic periscopes and a vision block.
  7. I approved the all-round vision device for 1940 as it was presented on blueprints.
Factory #183 will produce a pilot batch (10 units) of T-34 tanks based on prototype blueprints. I gave permission to the Mariupol factory (armour) and factory #183 to produce 10 more T-34 tanks based on prototype blueprints to better prepare for mass production.

Attachment: as mentioned on 85 pages

Red Army ABTU Chief, Army Commander 2nd Class, Pavlov
Red Army ABTU Military Commissar, Divisional Commissar, Kulikov"

No comments:

Post a Comment