Get Inside the Tanks
Richard "The Challenger" Cutland
The T-54/T-55
In military hardware, there are some objects that become icons.
They achieve fame and recognition for their impact on the battlefield...
...and the sheer length of their operational service.
This is one of them...
...the AK47, designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov.
60 years after its creation it is still in use by regular...
...and irregular forces across the globe.
And if you had to name one tank worthy of the title...
...‘Kalashnikov-on-tracks’, it would surely be this...
...the T-54/T-55 series.
With its origins in World War II...
...and from the same design team as the legendary T-34...
...the T54/55 still soldiers on today around the Third World.
Just about every aspect has been modified or upgraded...
...and while it couldn’t hope to hold its own against a modern Main Battle Tank...
...it is still a real threat in many of today’s lower-level conflicts.
We’re here at The Muckleburgh Collection to take a close look at this machine...
...to understand why it was the most-produced and one of the longest-serving tanks.
DNA of a winner
The T-54 story starts with its designer...
...Alexander Morozov.
He was part of the T-34 design team headed by Mikhail Koshkin...
...working on the transmission...
...but when Koshkin died suddenly in September 1940...
...Morozov took over.
All efforts then were concentrated on getting the T-34 into service...
...and over time, upgrading it.
But Germany’s Panther had come as a shock at the battle of Kursk...
...leading to the upgunning of the T-34 to 85mm...
...and a natural question: "What next?"
T-44 to T-54
Morozov and his team faced the constant problem of tank design...
...the trade-offs between armour, mobility and firepower.
How to make a more effective medium tank than the T-34...
...without increasing size and weight.
Morozov solved this in a very ingenious and effective way...
...by re-organising the interior layout.
He got rid of the hull machine gunner, creating more storage for the ammunition.
He turned the engine crosswise...
...and placed the transmission behind it at the rear of the hull...
...driving the rear sprockets.
This freed up space for the fighting compartment and storage.
On top of this, he used torsion bar suspension...
...which took up less space that the Christie suspension of the T-34.
The first result of this thinking was the T-43 and then the T-44.
The T-44 had significantly thicker armour than the T-34...
...but with a better ride and better cross-country performance.
But it needed more than the 85mm gun...
...which the T-34 already had.
So development focused on increasing the size of the gun...
...and of course, designing a turret ring that could take it.
A 100mm gun was tried, and even a 122mm.
T-44 with 122mm gun
T-44 with 122mm gun next to German Panther
T-44 122mm gun, T-44 85mm gun, T-34/76
The decision was finally taken to go ahead with the 100mm calibre...
...and two prototypes with the designation T-44-100 were built...
...one with the 100mm D10 gun the other with the LB1 gun.
The D10 had already proved itself in the SU-100 tank destroyer.
So with a redesigned turret, a new V54 engine and new steering...
...the tank went into production in 1945 as the T-54.
But even redesigned, the turret was still a problem...
...with poor ammunition storage and dangerous shot traps.
So it was changed yet again...
...this time to a turret similar to that of the IS-3 heavy tank...
...with a hemispherical shape and no awkward shot traps at the sides.
Chinese Type 59, based on Soviet T-54A at The Tank Museum, Bovington
T-54 to T-55
Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, the T-54 was upgraded in all areas.
By the mid-1950s, more had to be done...
...to protect the tank from nuclear and biological attack.
To achieve this, a major upgrade was produced in 1958...
...called the T-55.
It incorporated the detailed improvements made to date...
...and also had a more powerful V55 engine...
...and over time – for later variants, yet more improvements...
...stabilisers for the gun…
...better ammunition… improved fire control and sighting…
...and, later on, extra protection in the form of reactive armour.
Let’s take a closer look at this example...
...a Czech-built T-55.
Looking at this next to a T-34 shows just how clever Morozov was.
The hull is a little wider than the T-34-85...
...but about the same length.
More importantly, the height is less, presenting a lower profile to enemy fire.
But despite this, it has thicker armour and mounts a bigger gun.
Gun & Armour
Its armour is pretty good...
...with 200mm on the turret front…
...125-150mm on the turret's sides...
...and 120mm on the hull front...
...and also 80mm on the hull's sides.
But just as important...
...the shallow slope of the front glacis and the smooth rounded turret...
...not only give the tank a very low silhouette...
...but increase the effective thickness of the armour...
...and help to deflect incoming shells.
The gun is the 100mm D10T...
...with a rifled barrel.
Note the fume extractor near the muzzle.
This had a rate of fire between 4 and 7 rounds per minute...
...with a maximum effective range of 2500 metres.
Running Gear
From the side, the first thing to spot is the uneven spacing of the roadwheels...
...with the large gap between the first and second wheels.
This is unique to the T-54/55.
Suspension, as mentioned earlier, is torsion bar...
...with a separate torsion bar for each wheel running across the tank.
The tracks are wider than those of the T-34-85...
...580mm instead of 500mm...
...which means that the ground pressure is actually less than its predecessors...
...even though the tank’s weight is about 4 tonnes more.
As I said before, the drive sprockets are now at the rear.
Under here is the really clever bit.
The engine is mounted crosswise.
We are so used to this nowadays in cars that it may seem a bit ordinary...
...but at the time, it represented a real innovation.
This is the V55 580hp diesel engine...
...which was capable of pushing the T-55 along at 50km/h on the road...
...and 30km/h cross-country...
...add to this the mounting of the transmission behind the engine...
and everything from the engine forward is free space.
Inside
Inside the turret, the low profile and sloped sides allow the crew some space...
...but the headroom if very tight.
This was accepted by the Soviet army...
...who had a height limit on tank crewmen.
The Commander sat here, roughly where I am, at the moment...
...at the rear of the turret on the left.
He had his own sight...
...and just behind me you can see the radio controls.
In front of him, was the gunner...
...he had a hand control for traverse and elevation...
...with the firing button on top.
You could also see that he had two gun sights...
...one optical, and the other infra-red.
The loader, to the right of the gun, may look like he had a lot of room...
...but remember that there were 100mm shells stored here...
...each round a metre long.
Up front, the driver had conventional controls...
...two steering levers, tillers...
...as we tankies call them...
...with the gear change on his right.
In Service
The first combat outing for the T-54 was in 1956...
...during the Hungarian Uprising.
After that, it was deployed throughout the Warsaw Pact nations...
...and was produced under licence in various countries.
In the final count, over 100,000 of all types and derivatives were built...
...making it the most-produced tank ever.
Such was the quality of its design and the reliability of its performance...
...that it still crops up to this day nearly 70 years later...
...in low-intensity conflicts throughout the Third World.