Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: Scherf on February 07, 2015, 04:48:26 AM
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All 450-odd pages of it:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/230672358/ENGINEERING-ANALYSIS-OF-THE-RUSSIAN-T34-85-TANK
Even has a few sentences blanked out to enhance secrecy.
:noid
Is stronk tank. :old:
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I liked the part "There were many gaps in the armor, allowing bullets or shell fragments to enter". Gaps in the armor? Wow.
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I liked the part "There were many gaps in the armor, allowing bullets or shell fragments to enter". Gaps in the armor? Wow.
I may have seen this tank back when it was at the Aberdeen tank museum (since moved to Fort Lee, VA). I remember you could literally put your arm up inside the gap between the outer turret armor slab (on the left side of the turret, IIRC) and the inner shell (or whatever the technical term was). Wouldn't matter under most conditions, but could be a problem if a stranger got uncomfortably close.
Great source, thanks for posting it.
- oldman
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(http://www.peachmountain.com/narayan/images/2005_Saumur/T-34_85_01.jpg)
can you be more specific Oldman?
Nice Scherf.
There is also a report on a T-34 and a KV-1 out there that were given to the Americans during WW2.
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can you be more specific Oldman?
Regrettably, no. The visit would have been sometime around 1970. I have a mental image, but viewing photos of T-34 and KV-1 (Aberdeen had one of those, too) I can't tell where the gap was located.
- oldman
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I have a sweet picture of me in a 34/85 somewhere. Looked tight to me at the time.
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The problem with the T-34s armor was similar to the same problems the Germans had with the Panther, only in reverse. The Russians at first did not know how to make adequate armor, but with the help of Allies and experimentation (and additional metallic ores) improved greatly. It also made a huge difference, during some months of the war, as to which factory was making the tank. The examples the Americans received were very early for the -85 and were from a period where Stalin was pushing for numbers over quality. This led to situations where tanks were fielded without ammunition, radios, or even more than a single crewman. It also led to victory.
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Another report,
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/011426.pdf
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Another report,
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/011426.pdf
Thanks for that! I'm wondering if the gap I recall in the tank was because they'd taken a piece for testing (see pp. 2-3).
I also like the conclusion:
"Detailed attention to aesthetic appearances is costly, time consuming, and, throughout the history of man, is not known to have won a single war."
- oldman
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Thanks for that! I'm wondering if the gap I recall in the tank was because they'd taken a piece for testing (see pp. 2-3).
I also like the conclusion:
"Detailed attention to aesthetic appearances is costly, time consuming, and, throughout the history of man, is not known to have won a single war."
- oldman
That would appear to be the reason. The turret was cast with no extra armour added.
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That would appear to be the reason. The turret was cast with no extra armour added.
...and it looked burly and durable. But it probably couldn't take a single Panzer. A single 88 hit would of knocked out the tank back into next year.
But if the crews thought it looked like to take a few knocks, they would of thought it could've at least tangle with the best of them fearlessly. I wonder how many crews were killed with this delusion?
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Would not the temperature of the metal also have a effect on how strong or weak it was?
I imagine a tank in freezing would be more brittle while a tank baking in the summer/desert sun would be more..soft.
?
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...and it looked burly and durable. But it probably couldn't take a single Panzer. A single 88 hit would of knocked out the tank back into next year.
But if the crews thought it looked like to take a few knocks, they would of thought it could've at least tangle with the best of them fearlessly. I wonder how many crews were killed with this delusion?
How many tanks could survive an 88 hit?
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Would not the temperature of the metal also have a effect on how strong or weak it was?
I imagine a tank in freezing would be more brittle while a tank baking in the summer/desert sun would be more..soft.
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Depends on the quality of the metal and imperfections. And it has to be bloody cold for metal to start getting brittle. And it has to be like middle arctic/antarctic weather temperatures for it to be brittle for a long time.
However, zipperheads (military nickname for tankers) will become non-operative due to weather before you have to start worrying about the metal fatigue due to environmental temperatures. Either too cold or too hot to work.
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How many tanks could survive an 88 hit?
none. And the results were barely humane if you ever received a hit
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rks0ilj8-ks/VEl1CnU93XI/AAAAAAAAA30/9YQMcSd3Cds/s1600/knockedoutShermantank.jpg) - I cannot imagine what happend inside this Sherman.
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Download the audio tapes for "in their own words." One of the vets interviewed was a loggy who cleaned and repaired tanks to send back into action. Sobering.
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T-34 was an awesome tank in 1941 when they were first put into action near Moscow. The Germans had almost nothing that could defeat its armor at the time, and the 76.2 mm gun was more powerful than those on all German tanks in service. The M4 would have been equally impressive in 1941. We must not forget when analyzing their performance later in the war that the T-34 and M4 are the contemporaries of Spit V and P-40E. They were updated and up gunned later in the war, but they were no match for the newer tanks coming off the production lines in Germany in 1943-45. For that we must look to the Pershing, the Centurion and a whole lot of what-could-have-beens that never made it into production.
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Download the audio tapes for "in their own words." One of the vets interviewed was a loggy who cleaned and repaired tanks to send back into action. Sobering.
Early after D-Day most of the first generation M4's were having real troubles with survivor rates. Soon though, all of the M4s with wet-storage ammo bins and the larger 76mm gun began to be used in more realistic tactics. In tank school these men had been told they had the best tank, which was true but it is not designed for tank-vs-tank combat. There were many 76-mm M4s that crews survived as many as five tanks being knocked out. And of course, with proper tactics they did manage to knock out even Panther tanks. Even then it was not within their design to fight tank-vs-tank.
Aces High is nothing like WWII when it comes to the tactics, of course. While we have the tanks, we do not have towed artillery, Division level combat, or infantry. Finally, the restrictions of terrain that kept the Panther on low and level ground does not exist in Aces High. Even the M4 can traverse much steeper ground in AH than it could in actual fact. That's a game concession that we must live with since the terrain itself is not intended to be realistic.
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Would not the temperature of the metal also have a effect on how strong or weak it was?
Cold Temps and long storage times for steel actually was a factor for steel quality in Soviet production. So much steel was left laying about due to sloppy accountability and the stress on the Industry base and the moving of it that there was a lot of brittleness in armor plate to varying degrees. Most of all early on when their production capability was so stressed. They got better at everything as the war progressed but their tank steel quality was never on the German level anytime in the war.
Credit the soundness of the T34 design and the courage of its crews for its successes.
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The ambient air temperatures of a Russian winter are enough to be able to shatter a carbon steel plate if simply dropped on the ground.
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Download the audio tapes for "in their own words." One of the vets interviewed was a loggy who cleaned and repaired tanks to send back into action. Sobering.
I would like to listen to it but can you direct me specifically to where I can find this?
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Dunno. I had them on cd years back. Let me look around.