Alright the bit that you’ve all been waiting for!
We get to go inside IS-7.
And almost kill myself while doing it.
I’m really excited!
Now, I’ve been very self disciplined, this is the first time I’ve ever actually set my eyes on the inside of this tank.
Well, the commander seems to be well seated.
He’s got nothing to his front, so he’s not crowded, it’s not like a lot of vehicles where the gunner is to his front crowding his knees.
Although, my first observation is that there is no turret basket.
There is a floor, a platform.
So the feet are going to be okay, but unless they have been removed from the vehicle,
or maybe they were going to be added post – in the main production series,
there is no safety cage to prevent your legs from getting caught, basically by the turret monster.
If you are not familiar with the turret monster, the turret monster is a mythical creature that lives inside the tank
and as the turret is traversing it tends to grab things and keep them for himself.
Usually things that you need like a pen, or your compass, or whatever it is you need; the codes to your radio.
But it is not averse to picking parts of your body as well if it wants, but I digress.
To his front I can see there is ammunition storage it looks like for the 14.5 milimeter and further forward for one of the 7.62s.
Looks like a control box for the intercom.
Visibility out, he has a number of, let’s see, one two, three of these square vision prisms.
They are not as elongated, you don’t get as wide of a field of view as you would expect on most of these cupolas,
but really his primary form of external vision is going to go up through the hatch which rotates around easily enough.
So, the fact that these are fairly small I don’t think is a huge.
Looking behind him, it looks like he has ammunition directly to his rear so he can’t go back too far.
As long as he keeps his legs in place, he is comfortable.
Not really much else to say, so I’m going to go back and see what the loaders play with.
So I’ve now moved back to one of the two loaders seats and from a brief glimpse it looks like the two seats are pretty much identical.
I say “seat”, but I’m not actually seated on his seat, it has been dismantled and is sitting on the floor.
I’m currently sitting on a panier for what looks like a projectile charge.
The loader is going to be a little bit cramped, however, if he is seated, I’m fairly sure that it’s not going to be too much of an issue.
Extra ammunition is stored pretty much anywhere that it will fit it looks like.
You can see from the inside, the curvature of the armor plate that I was mentioning,
and there is ammunition racks on top of that curve facing outwards, shall we say, into the nooks.
There is an additional, it looks like, four rounds stored vertically around the Commander’s seat,
and there is additional storage around the front hull, which I can see from here.
Outside of that, of course he has the large hatch above him which he shares with the other loader.
On the right he has a dome light, and if you look forward there is the ventilator housing on top of the gun breech.
Now, looking that everyone is familiar with the concept that this is isn’t a standard human loader, and that is correct.
It looks like it is an assisted loading mechanism.
So you start off with six rounds in the carousel, seven if you’re clever with one in the tube.
You fire your round, BOOM, the semi automatic breech block opens, the shell casing comes out
and ricochets against this little curved piece down here out of the way.
You are now able to ram the next round in.
So first thing you’ll do is that you’ll move the projectile over.
It just drops right on to the conveyor, starts getting chained forward.
Then your next is going to be your large propellant case, again, gets thrown onto the ramp, thrown forwards,
at which point once the projectile and the propellant are both more or less into the breech area,
this will fold up out of the way, the top of this more or less parallel with the roof.
Now, you’ll see that the conveyor does not go all the way into the breech,
there is reference in the instructions printed for a rammer and ramming button which I actually can’t find.
If that goes down, it looks like, and again, I’m guessing here, the two loaders will have to get a ramming staff,
sort of a ‘T’ shaped ramming staff, both of them pulling forward and the projectile and charge go all the way into the breech,
at which point the breech block would come up and seal the chamber.
Finish the ramming process, stay clear, ‘Boom’ and do it again and that’s your six rounds, seven rounds fired.
And then you have to set about replenishing the carousel.
Again, I’m not sitting on the loader’s seat, I’m sitting on a pannier for a propellant charge.
I can only imagine if I was on the loader’s seat I would be even more cramped, and I’m looking around,
I’m trying to figure out how to extricate, especially projectiles, especially because 130mms are not going to be small,
from either the turret or the gunner’s seat, and the gunner is actually has get up to access the ones around the gunner’s seat.
Actually it’s a neat feature, there’s a cut out in the gunner’s seat and it spins around to get at whatever projectile that you’re looking for.
Anycase, bottom line, it seems unreasonable to expect the loader to grab rounds from around the vehicle
and shove them into the carousel in the middle of fighting.
So it looks like you do whatever engagement is going on, you fire your three to five rounds,
most likely, it seems unlikely you will need all seven, at which point there is a lull in the fighting
and you can then replenish your six ready rounds and you’re good for the next engagement.
Other features on the left side, he does have an elevation quadrant for indirect fire, it’s got a little spirit level on it,
and I also not that he also has the turret traverse travel lock.
Gunner’s seat next!
Alright [OK].
The gunner’s seat is a little bit cramped.
The big problem with it is that the elevation, the manual elevation control, is frankly in my way.
I’m not entirely sure that a shorter person would or would not be able to fit comfortably.
Primary controls are going to be familiar to modern tankers.
It looks like these are little palm switches to activate the system.
Elevation, as you would expect, is a tilt system, and traverse, again as you would expect rotates left or right.
Point of note, it is different between Soviet designs and most Western designs where traverse is done like a steering wheel.
Further to his left he as the manual drive for traversing left or right.
Optics, he would have a primary sight here which he would put his forhead to.
That would obviously be used for the main gun and co-axials. Plural.
He also has two more of these small little periscopes similar to the Commander’s side.
Now what he doesn’t have right now is a general vision optic.
I suspect that one would have gone here.
Perhaps was a feature designed later for not prototype vehicles.
At that point they would actually put it in.
I only hope so because, otherwise the gunner is basically blind.
His situational awareness/target acquisition is going to be seriously limited.
His toys are to his right.
The big gun is the 130mm S-70.
It is basically a conversion off of a Naval gun.
It fired an AP round about 33 kilos at about 900 meters per second, and of course HE at 130mm is pretty useful as well.
Rate of fire is stated to be six to eight rounds a minute.
I firmly believe that, for a minute.
However, once those initial rounds are gone,
it is going to take you a lot longer to simply reload the carousel than it will take you to fire them.
The 14.5 in here, it does look like it has been dismantled and sort of haphazardly put in here to look the part.
If there was sort of a cradle or a mounting system, it is not on this tank.
Similarly, the other two coaxials, both 7.62mm SGS-43s, they are not mounted on this vehicle either.
When firing, of course, the electrical triggers are used by the index finger.
The gun does reset to a reload position, as you would expect because of the conveyor belt system.
I’m not entirely sure how that would work with manual elevation, I can only assume that you would have to physically crank it into place,
or the loaders would put in a little bit of extra duty and putting the projectile and the shell into position.
The hatch rotates around on the pivot here, and you can actually see the cog system for actually raising
and lowering it to actually seal it into position.
More electronics on his left.
I have no clue.
Knobs, switches, I’m sure they’re useful.
Unfortunately, if you want to know what they do, you’re going to have to ask somebody else, because I don’t know.
Well that’s it for the inside of the turret. Next stop is the driver’s hole.
So we’ve moved forward to the driver’s hole and I might actually be able to drive this one.
It’s a little bit difficult to be absolutely sure because the clutch pedal on the left is in serious need of calibration.
But, if it’s down more or less where the accelerator would be, I think I could reasonably control the vehicle.
The seat of course is in the full bottom position.
My big complaint about the seat is, frankly, that the cushion is about this thin and you may as well not have it.
I can imagine it a little uncomfortable for long periods of time unless you bring your own pillow in.
Not a big concern.
For visibility he has three periscopes, one in each side of the hull roof, and of course you have the central one in the swinging hatch.
Moving at the left, or starting at the left and working around; ammunition stowage for the 130mm.
There is a rack for the batteries.
Obviously the batteries are not here, but you can see the cables for where they batter would go.
Instrument panel! Simple instrument panel, no great surprises.
Although the speedometer on the far right there, is that strange sort of ball system I have only ever saw on the BT.
Master power; direct front between the legs.
It looks like a nice starter button, right in the middle, and of course you can’t forget the horn.
As you continue moving to your right; compressed air cylinders for the reserve air starting system.
So, if it’s really cold, or whatever, and you can’t get the engine to start, pull the valve, engine starts.
Eight speed selector.
Earlier vehicles had the six, this particular IS-7 has the eight speed.
You simply start at ‘One’ and work your way up.
The right hand side handle, the reverse is to the front, and forwards is that you pull it back.
I’m sure it makes sense.
Lots of fire extinguishers to the right, the big piston for the driver’s hood, and a hand throttle for the accelerator.
Not much else in here.
There are a couple of storage compartments for small stuff, bulbs, first aid kit and, what-have-you,
and it looks like coaxial ammunition can be back here.
The vehicle carried about two and a half thousand rounds of 7.62, and a total of about 400 of 14.5.
Steering, of course, done by the tillers.
They also perform as the brake as evidenced, A, by the lack of a brake pedal, and B, you also have the locking plunger at the top,
which you would use in conjunction with the notches on the bottom to serve as a parking brake.
The steering system is geared, but you cannot neutral steer in this vehicle.
Sorry. But at least it’s easier to drive than a clutch/brake.
The gearbox and engine together, were good enough that this sixty-plus ton vehicle would go along at a reasonable 60 kilometers an hour,
not a bad clip.
So, all in all, not too bad.
Vision is reasonable, you’ve got the three ports, two on the hull roof and one of course in the hatch itself.
It’s got a fair bit of room.
I’ll give this one a passing grade.
Well that was a fairly informative look, and I know I learned a couple of things crawling around inside it.
The vehicle of course never did enter service.
They built six prototypes and then there was a very small pre-production batch built, and then they cancelled the whole thing.
And if you look at the vehicle critically, you can kind of see why.
OK, let’s dispense of the machine gun silliness.
I mean this thing could stand to lose five of them
and I’m sure by the time it would have entered series production someone with a bit of cop-on would have dispensed with them.
What you would have had left would have been an excellent breakthrough vehicle.
It was fast enough for the assault, easily heavily armored enough, and with the burst fire capability, quite devastating.
The catch though, was that this was an expensive heavy vehicle and that’s all that it was good at.
T-10 was perhaps a little bit better suited for the longer battles
and longer warfare that you might expect, and of course, it was also a little bit cheaper.
Certainly easier to transport.
So combine all of those features together.
Maybe they were right to go with the T-10 series, and I suspect they probably were.
So overall, fascinating technological achievement and it’s a good thing they preserved it for us today.
So, that said, as ever, hope you enjoyed it, and we’ll see you on the next one.