The interwar period was a time of new technical solutions, and tanks were no exception. Even though tank development was allocated a limited budget, experiments never stopped. The budgets began to swell in the early 1930s, which coincided with a rapid growth of tank characteristics. Various improvements were implemented, including those that improved the crew's working conditions.
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| T-34 in Crimea, 1944. Factory #112 was the last to keep the turret with a single hatch in production. One of their tanks can be seen in the foreground. |
One of the characteristic features of Soviet tanks and armoured cars in the late 1930s was the conical turret that came to replace the earlier cylindrical shape. Some vehicles also received a single hatch for their two-man turret. The T-34 tank was the most famous vehicle with this solution. This idea was dropped only to resurface in post-war designs. Let us discuss why this hatch appeared in the first place and why it disappeared.
