A heavy, fast Tier X vehicle.
A tank universally feared and desired.
The oppressor of Random Battles and the best vehicle in the Soviet Tech Tree.
That's what the IS-7 was, a long time ago.
These days, the IS-7 is a little different,
but it can still surprise players.
Once there were two Tier X tanks in the game.
If you got car sickness when performing turns, you took the Maus
and slowly crushed everything in your path.
Everyone else wanted to get the IS-7.
New vehicles have appeared. They have better guns, and they are more manoeuvrable.
Some even have drums!
However, the IS-7 is still an interesting vehicle.
Why? It's not easy to answer that question.
Let's take a look at its characteristics.
Here's the most outstanding one!
Speed!
Yeah!
According to its stats on paper, the IS-7 can accelerate up to 60 km/h!
That's just 5 km/h less than the speed of the Bat.-Chât.
And rolling downhill, this tank does gain
quite a bit of speed.
However, it's not so great on flat ground.
In ideal conditions on the streets of Himmelsdorf, the IS-7 has a maximum speed of…
well, actually, it never reaches its maximum speed! Never!
At best, you can get it up to a speed of 45 km/h.
In fact, many characteristics of the IS-7 are quite average.
For example, it has only 2150 hit points.
That's something you can live with, but the IS-7's gun…
It lacks accuracy, its rate of fire is slow,
and its aim time is the slowest among all vehicles of the same tier.
So, if you don't want to drive yourself crazy, forget about shooting from long distances.
There is a ray of light in the gun characteristics. Its damage per shot is quite good-490.
Without it, the IS-7 would be better off ramming than shooting.
So, what's wrong with this tank?
Or, to be more exact, what's good about it?
Why is the IS-7 still popular?
The answer lies in its armor.
The armor of the IS-7 is not your normal armor.
The IS-7's turret is practically made of titanium and Superman's skin.
It has 270mm of armor in the front of the turret and a mantlet that is 350mm thick.
The hull pike nose will make the Tank Commander hoarse from constantly shouting, “Ricochet!”
The lower glacis plate is a weak spot. But if you manage to hide it,
the combination of the IS-7 and a low spot can do incredible things!
Here are 15 Waffenträgers.
And here is the IS-7.
How long can it stand against them?
20 seconds? A minute?
Place your bets! Let's find out!
75 hits to the front
and 42,000 of potential damage! And what's the result?
They've just scraped his paint!
The thickness of the turret armor is lower than the penetration value of the Waffenträger's shell!
How could it withstand those hits? Here's the secret!
It's all about the ancient magic of Egyptian priests
- geometry.
The armor of the IS-7's turret is sloped.
Although the actual thickness
of the armor is 270mm and less,
the so-called relative armor thickness is much higher.
The design of the hull is very interesting.
If the tank is directly facing the line of fire,
the armor plates of the pike nose are placed at acute angles.
That's why a shell will most likely ricochet.
And if it doesn't, it will still have to penetrate much more than the actual 150mm of armor.
But if you turn the pike nose to the side,
it will lose most of its magic power.
In this position, the armor can be penetrated.
And a hit to this area can blow up the ammo rack and tear off the turret.
The IS-7's turret is so good
that it flies off more beautifully than turrets of other tanks!
This is not the boring fall of the Maus's turret or of a strange French vehicle.
This is a show you can watch again and again.
So, about the armor.
The IS-7 has 150mm of armor on the sides.
Theoretically, that side armor should be easily penetrated by many vehicles.
In practice, it withstands hits quite well.
There were even rumours that the side plates were made of mithril.
But the truth is even more incredible.
It's hard to imagine, but the geometry of the sides is even more complex than that of the pike nose.
There's a line of armor angled at 45 degrees right under the turret.
It's hard to hit this line and hard to penetrate it, and shells often ricochet off of it.
And this is the most mysterious part of the side.
It's vertical and players are enticed to shoot there.
It has ruined thousands of hopes.
“Why didn't it penetrate it?” should be inscribed on the side.
What we see is not the real side armor.
It's a side skirt.
It's only 30mm thick.
There's spaced armor behind it,
so it's almost useless to try to penetrate the IS-7's side with HEAT shells.
A HEAT shell first explodes on the side skirt.
A penetrating jet forms. It penetrates the side skirt
and loses its armor penetration value for the first time.
This value is equal to the relative armor thickness in the place of hit.
Then the jet moves toward the main armor,
losing 5% of its armor penetration for every 100mm of empty space it has to pass through.
Finally, the weakened jet reaches the main armor.
If the IS-7's side were oriented at 90 degrees,
HEAT shells of high-tier vehicles
would still be able to penetrate it with their remaining armor penetration value.
But it's not oriented at 90 degrees.
It's angled so that it has 250mm of relative armor thickness.
And this is true only if the hit occurs under optimal circumstances.
If the shell hits the armor at an angle, the relative armor thickness becomes even greater.
This is an invincible obstacle for most shells:
HEAT, armor-piercing, APCR, it doesn't matter.
The IS-7 is excellent at sidescraping
if it manages to cover its nose.
In battles, this tank rarely causes a great amount of damage.
For many players, this means it's a bad vehicle.
But this is not quite true.
It's wrong to say that the T57 Heavy is better than the IS-7.
They are different vehicles with different roles.
This would be just like comparing a truck and a Porsche.
Do you think the Porsche is better?
Which comes out better in a head-on collision?
So, the IS-7 plays its role perfectly.
The IS-7 is designed to be in the front line.
It shouldn't hide in the bushes.
Even though it only reaches its maximum speed when rolling downhill,
40 km/h is quite enough to be the first to take key positions.
And its armor helps it to hold them until main forces arrive.
Yes, the AMX is faster, but it can't do what the IS-7 can.
The IS-7 is best used to break through or hold a sector.
This is a tank that has to play to its strengths.
It performs best at close or medium distances.
The gun is respectable at those ranges.
It's not a devastator, but it suits the IS-7 well.
It's accurate enough.
Great armor gives you time to reload and aim.
And if you are in a position to use sidescraping, damage per shot is what matters.
The IS-7 is quite good in that department!
The IS-7 is your vehicle if you really want to fight
at the front line and not be a support vehicle.
There's nothing wrong with shooting from the bushes at targets your allies are spotting.
But if you really want to feel how the armor of the enemy vehicles cracks, you need the IS-7.
It's fair enough that the path to a good tank be tough.
But this is not the case
with the IS-7.
The road to it is a transition from one awesome vehicle to another.
Many players drive in the IS-3 and KV just for pleasure.
So, put aside your doubts, and let's battle!
Bend enemy barrels and crush their front armor!
By the way,
this is the most beautiful heavy tank in the game!