German Field Marshal von Kleist called it the “best tank of World War two.”
Panzer leader General Heinz Guderian, upon first encountering the Red Army's T-34, said
that the tank enjoyed “vast superiority” over German tanks.
The Soviets wove legendary tales around its incredible performance on the battlefields
of Eastern Europe- but what made the T-34 the best tank of World War II exactly?
Design on the T-34 began late in 1930, when the Red Army was mostly equipped with T-26
or Bystrokhodny light tanks, which were fast and agile units but were seriously lacking
in protection and firepower.
Both tanks had seen action during the Spanish civil war, when Soviet forces backed up Spanish
communists, and during the Soviet Union's undeclared border war with Japan.
During the 1938 to 1939 border skirmish with Japan, the Red Army's tanks were roundly defeated
by the low-powered, but still superior Japanese Type 95 tanks.
Infantrymen also scored many kills on Soviet tanks by assaulting them with Molotov cocktails,
which turned the tank into a giant fireball when flaming gasoline dripped through chinks
in the poorly welded armor and into the tank's engine compartment.
Clearly, the Soviet Union needed a replacement tank for its ground forces, and it needed
one as soon as possible.
Though Hitler had declared a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, its poor performance
against both Japan and then later against Finland in the Winter War sent a strong signal
that the Red Army was weak, and there was nothing Stalin feared more than Hitler turning
his forces loose on him.
The first prototypes of the T-34 entered production in 1939, and featured a coil-spring Christie
suspension similar to the previous BT series of tanks, allowing them to achieve higher
speeds than other tanks in service around the world.
The new track design also gave the entire tank an incredibly low ground pressure of
.64 kg/cm2, or just slightly higher than the pressure the average human footprint exerts
on the ground.
This meant that the T-34 would be much more maneuverable and less likely to get bogged
down by snow and thick mud- two environments that were intimately familiar to people living
on Russia's western steppes.
The gasoline engine, so vulnerable to going up in flames from molotov attack, was replaced
with a diesel engine, giving it enough horsepower to push the T-34 along at speeds of up to
35 mph (56 kph).
This made the T-34 ten miles an hour faster than the German Panzer III or Panzer IV.
It also featured a revolutionary sloped armor design that was 45mm thick.
The sixty degree slope on the armor effectively meant that any incoming round had to penetrate
an extra 5mm of armor, increasing armor protection without adding excess weight.
The slope however also helped ensure that most incoming projectiles on a horizontal
trajectory would bounce harmlessly off the armor.
The main gun was a major upgrade over previous Soviet designs, and featured a 76mm cannon
with a muzzle velocity of around 2,000 ft/s (600 m/s), allowing the T-34 to score kills
on any other tank in the world at even long ranges.
With so much fanfare around the production of the T-34, designer Mikhail Koshkin completed
two prototypes in January of 1940 and decided to subject the tanks to an extremely grueling
trial by fire.
He drove both tanks from Ukraine to Moscow, or about 745 miles (1200 km), and then to
the border with Finland, on to Kiev, and lastly back to the factory in Chharkov.
The incredible endurance test proved that the tanks were built to last and structurally
sound, and only minor modifications were required to the suspension and drivetrain before the
tank went into full-scale production.
However, Koshkin ended up contracting pneumonia during the journey and would die, replaced
as head of the T-34 program by his deputy, Alexander Morozov.
With a spectacular endurance trial under its belt, full-scale production of the T-34 began
in september of 1941 at the Chharkov Komintern Locomotive plant, with concurrent production
beginning six months later at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory.
The tank would see four different versions, all equipped with the mighty 76mm gun, and
the first version of the T-34 was formally recognized by the Red Army as the Model 1940.
Unfortunately though Soviet engineering was quickly catching up with the rest of the world,
its manufacturing still lacked the raw skill and expertise needed to build modern tanks.
Instead of the much more powerful and safer V 12 diesel engine, many early T-34s were
instead fitted with MT-17 gasoline engines due to difficulty in the manufacturing process
of the V 12s.
The initial L-11 76mm gun was also quickly found to have very poor penetration capability
against armored targets, and was hastily replaced with the F-34 76mm gun.
With an improved muzzle velocity of 2130 ft/s (650 m/s), the new cannon proved more than
effective at punching through German armor, and the new model of T-34 was designated as
the Model 1941- seeing as it began to enter service in the summer of 1941.
On June 22nd, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, his planned killing stroke to
defeat the communist government of the Soviet Union.
With more than three million soldiers, 150 divisions, and 3,000 tanks making up three
army groups, the German advanced created an initial front more than 1,800 miles long.
Initially the Germans scored victory after victory, pushing the Soviet forces ever further
back.
However a few months after the start of the offensive, the Red Army began to receive the
T-34 in force and the Germans were shocked at the mighty new tanks leading Soviet counter-attacks.
German Panzer IIIs found that their 50mm gun was all but useless against the sloped frontal
armor of the T-34, as was the 50mm Pak 38 anti-tank gun used by support units.
German tank commanders were soon finding that their only hope of stopping the T-34 was to
outmaneuver it- no easy feat given that the T-34 was light on its feet and very capable
within the muddy and snowy conditions of western Russia, while heavy German panzers tended
to bog down.
Nonetheless, superior German training saw Soviet forces outmaneuvered time and again,
and the t-34 suffered heavy casualties, though even with their inferior training and communications,
T-34s managed to stop the German advance into the Soviet Union.
For all its strengths though, the T-34 had some serious drawbacks as well.
First was the poor Soviet workmanship, as the T-34 was largely built by an inexperienced
work force with very low expertise.
The need to hurry tanks through the production process saw many corners cut, and overall
while the T-34 was one of the best designed tanks of the second world war, it was often
betrayed in reality by the poor workmanship that went into its construction.
Physical failures experienced by the tank were often more the fault of the rushed labor
that went into its construction and less a fault with the core design itself.
The T-34 also had a two-man, manually traversed turret which required the commander to also
act as a gunner.
This would place a huge workload on the tank commander which would take precious time away
from his most vital task: actually commanding the tank.
For platoon leaders this made maintaining command and control over an entire platoon,
and not just his own tank, virtually impossible, and was one of the leading causes for the
poor performance of Soviet tank forces against the Germans.
The turret also lacked a basket, or raised floor which moved along with the turret as
the turret turned from side to side, which meant that tank crews were constantly in danger
of tripping over spent shells as the turret moved.
Visibility was also a major problem for T-34 tank commanders, as the tank lacked a cupola
and periscopes standard amongst all other allied tanks.
This problem was rectified in the T-34 Model 1943, but until then tank commanders often
entered into battle with the main hatch physically open, ducking behind it as they struggled
to make sense of the battlefield.
Needless to say riding into battle with your main hatch open was a very bad idea, but better
than riding into battle blind.
The armor of the T-34 was also extremely rigid, and would fail to provide any 'give' when
struck by a round.
This meant that the force of the impacting round may not penetrate the thick armor, but
could still generate lethal steel splinters on the inside of the tank which would kill
or seriously injure crew members.
The steep slope of the armor also made the T-34 a very cramped machine, and when US Army
engineers tested a T-34 in 1942 they were amazed that the Soviets could fit four fully-equipped
crewmen inside the tank.
The cramped space however also meant that the sides of the hull had to be lined with
fuel cells which could be easily breached if hit by armor-piercing rounds.
One other major drawback of the T-34 was the lack of a radio on each tank, with only the
tanks of a platoon leader being equipped with a radio.
Communications between tanks was instead meant to be done with flags, an absolutely flabbergasting
proposition amidst the ferocity of tank combat.
While German tanks were coordinating with each other via radio, the Soviet tankers were
expected to somehow wave flags at each other in order to coordinate their movements- and
this with the T-34's notoriously low visibility.
As a result, despite the capabilities of the T-34, Soviet tankers were routinely outfought
by the Germans.
The most serious vulnerability of the T-34 though was the very poor workmanship, with
random tests of newly completed T-34s in 1942 showing that only 7% were free of major defects.
In 1943 random T-34s were taken directly from the production lines and subjected to a 300km
reliability trial, with less than 8% of T-34s being able to complete the trial without breaking
down.
Just on their way to combat Soviet tank brigades were known to experience losses of 30% to
50% of their tanks in transit, without even seeing enemy action, and the average T-34
lasted less than 124 miles (200 km) before needing major repairs or overhauls.
A T-34 could barely get through its first full tank of diesel before needing repair.
With all these vulnerabilities it can be hard to truly consider the T-34 the best tank of
World War II, but it's important to remember that many of the T-34s defects were down to
the poor workmanship of what was essentially a hastily assembled labor force of unskilled
peasants.
The soviets were desperate, with their backs up against the wall, and it showed in the
many, many defects built into the T-34.
Yet the core design on paper was always good, and its tactical limitations and vulnerabilities
were quickly addressed, with fixes implemented into new models.
However, one of the key qualities that makes the T-34 the best tank of World War II was
the ease with which it could be produced, with the Soviets producing over 30,000 T-34s
between 1941 and 1943, versus just over 5,000 German Panzer IVs.
The T-34 was truly great because it may not have been the best engineered design, but
it was a very strong design that could be built quickly and cheaply even with a very
inexperienced and poor quality workforce, which turned out to be a critical advantage
over the German's Tiger and Panzer tanks.
What do you think was really the best tank of World War II?
Why or why not?
Let us know in the comments, and as always if you enjoyed this video don't' forget to
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