For a tank enthusiast there are two vehicles here which change a visit to Kubinka from a visit
to one of the world’s premier tank musea, to what is almost a pilgrimage.
Now one of them is the Maus, and well, we had a look at that one before.
The other one is the IS-7 behind me.
Now the development of this started in the summer of 1945 in Leningrad,
under the leadership of a chap by the name of Nikolai Shashmurin.
It was given the project code, Object 260, and later IS-7 as we know it today.
It is one of the most advanced heavy tanks and is possibly the ultimate of the type.
Although it never saw service, it is still fascinating to see the development of the vehicle,
just from the technological perspective.
I have not actually looked into this vehicle yet.
I have not even as much looked into an open hatch.
So this is going to be a bit of a voyage of discovery for yourself and myself
and I’m very much interested in seeing what makes this thing tick.
So we’re going to do this of course, we’re going to tease you, we’re gonna do the outside first,
which you’ve seen photos of, but then, yes, inside the hatch we go.
The front of the tank is all about the armor.
This thing was designed to withstand anything on the World War II Battlefield up to
and including the 12,8 centimeter fired by the Jagdtiger, at least as far as from one kilometer.
As a result, the armor plate; upper slope 150mm angled at 65 degrees.
You maintain the same pike nose as you found on the IS-3.
Lower front slope, according to the reference materials I had in front of me; ten centimeters.
But, actually looking at it with a measuring device,
we came in at about eleven and a half to twelve depending on the thickness of the weld.
The mantlet, about 35 centimeters, and the front turret is about 240 to 250, angled at 50 to 60 degrees.
Basically, well protected.
Other features on the front, well of course you have the single piece driver’s hatch which swings up and to the right,
two headlights protected by brush guards, tow hooks and clevises combined in once piece.
No muss, no fuss mudguards. Simply hinge forward to reveal the track,
which was specially made for the IS-7.
The track is significant because it is the first Soviet track design to use rubber bushings with the single pins.
The pins are retained in place through the use of bolts.
Each pair of road wheels, there are seven per side,
which also support the return of the track, is mounted on a road wheel arm,
attached to torsion bar suspension.
The road wheel arms are limited in the amount of travel they have by a volute spring bump stop
and the torsion bars are equipped with hydraulic shock absorbers.
Inside the steel tired road wheels is rubber in a manner similar to the earlier IS’es or some of the German cats,
this keeps some of the vibrations down whilst maintaining some service life to the outside of the wheels.
However, of course, it also does mean that this is a noisy track
because you have metal wheels running on metal track.
Track tension, front of the tank. Similar to the IS-3
with the large hex-sided screw that you rotate clockwise, counter clockwise.
It’ll move the Idler wheel forwards or backwards.
No surprise there at all.
Presumably on the basis as there’s no point in half measures, the side armor on this thing is just stupid.
You have the same fifteen centimeters here on the upper side that you do on the front of the hull.
The lower side plate is all of 10 centimeters thick,
and what they did is they took a great big press and they actually bent the metal to start to come out
and it meets with the upper plate here at this intersection.
Now this means that if you block off with this sheet metal, you have additional stowage space.
Now, I say stowage, but it’s something you really don’t want to have to access too much,
because there’s no hinges here, and if I pull this off and eventually…lower it.
You can see how the entire thing has just fallen down.
So if you have anything metal in here like track jacks, or lots of tools,
you’re going to have two or three guys lifting this to fit this back in.
This particular compartment has a…canvas bag I guess, for the lack of a better term.
It is an inflatable fuel tank.
So if you remember, of course, on the older World War II tanks, you had,
let’s say the T-34 would have the 90 liters on the side.
Same general concept, except this is a collapsible bag and it just fits in the unused space here.
Further forward, I expect those aren’t fuel tanks actually is storage.
Let’s put that back up there momentarily.
If you were curious, the bolts underneath were already undone.
Another interesting feature, of course, you’re going to see are the external machine guns.
Now you think the Israelis love machineguns and put them on absolutely everything and as many as they can.
Ha ha! Not even close to the IS-7.
Patton would love this tank.
On each side of the hull there is a fixed forward firing SGS-43 aimed by the driver.
So in order to aim it, he’s got to turn the tank hull left or right, and for elevation and depression,
I guess he’s just got to play with the accelerator or the brake.
You can only imagine how much fun the crew were having inside the rest of the tank
as the driver is having the time of his life trying to spray on target somewhere…over there.
The guns are mounted in an armored housing.
Ammunition is stowed in a compartment here, feeds up inside a chute.
The spent belt links come out the side here, the spent shell casings come out of here.
Two external machine guns of course isn’t going to be enough,
they have if you look up two more SGS-43s one of each side of a turret facing to the rear.
As you climb up onto the back deck, the first thing you’ll see are the traditional Soviet Armored plugs for accessing the various liquids.
Coolant would come under here, and these two are oil for the engine and transmission.
Now the next thing you’ll see is the large travel lock for the 130 millimeter.
Further down on the angled back deck you have the mounting points for more external fuel drums, two exhaust ports.
But then you realize the thing you don’t see are access ports for the engine or transmission.
I mean we’re not even talking about the round access ports that you used to on IS or T-34.
There is no way of accessing these things.
You have huge bolts, and you need a crane to access the top deck.
A little inconvenient, but then, it’s a very prototype tank.
Maybe it was something that they’d add later on should it actually enter production.
Under the deck is an M-50T. It is a V-12 diesel, cranking out 1,050 horsepower, derived from a Marine engine.
The last thing to point out is, that after several minutes of looking,
neither the museum representative nor myself can locate the fuel filler cap.
There’s got to be one around here somewhere.
In the spirit of ‘MORE DAKKA’ the designers decided to put a couple more SGS-43s on the turret facing to the rear.
So, one on each side.
They’re a little bit offset because the ammunition housing is in these little boxes, and they’re offset a little bit to have room.
If you look at the armored boxes, the spent link is collected neatly into these little sheet metal boxes here,
but the shell casings are still free to fall out the ejection chute on the side.
There is basically no way of aiming these guns.
Best I can see is that the TC rotates his cupola to the rear,
looks backwards and tries to see where the tracer is going, and then yells ‘Turn left, Turn right’ to the gunner.
As near as I can tell, the only advantage to this system is that it makes you feel a bit better
that you are shooting at something, and it also keeps the ammunition suppliers in business.
Whatever the merits were to the IS-7, the external machineguns weren’t one of them.
Speaking of machine guns; a nice big one on the pedestal here.
It is a 14.5mm KPVT. It is on, as you can see, a very tall pedestal.
There were attempts made to try and figure out if the Commander could fire the 14.5mm
from within the turret, and the attempts failed.
So it’s now used by standing on the top deck, exposed to all and sundry and shooting the very large machine gun.
To stow it, there’s a large collar pin here, it’s already sort of half out.
Pull it all of the way out, the gun will flip over to one side, and you can put the pedestal into a travel lock here.
Forward of it, a large hatch for the two loaders, forward of that, ventilator housing,
and of course you’ve got the two hatches for the gunner and the commander, which both swing open.
Radio antenna mount on the right hand side.
Alright, so I’ve run out of things to talk about really on the outside of the vehicle.
So now, the bit you’ve all been waiting for, we get to go inside….in part two.
Inside the metal steel tired road wheeallleh.
And the Torsion bars apparently have hydraulic shop. Blyehhh.
Seven pahrs per side, Pay…pairs…
Apparently this entire panel will come off…it should come off…might come off.
Might not come off, I need that key again.
Another machine gun, very obvious, 14.5 milmimeter. Milmimmimimide…