So here we are, inside the ISU-152 and it’s relatively roomy.
Although, in fairness, the loader probably needs it.
The main reason is over my shoulder.
21 rounds of separate loading 152mm ammunition could be carried, either AP or HE.
Now this is not a small round, it weighs 40 kilos, that’s somewhere around a tad over 80 pounds.
Now imagine trying to lift this up, down and around onto the loading tray.
Short loaders would be doing this standing.
Obviously, there’s no chance that I could be standing and doing this.
The rounds are stored two deep.
So you’re using a lot of leverage in very awkward situations.
The rate of fire was only two, maybe three rounds a minute if you had a good loader.
And it may seem very slow, but this is why.
It is not easy to get the round from here to here.
Fortunately however, as an Assault Gun, rate of fire is not really important.
You can take your time.
The fortification or whatever it is you want to remove is not going anywhere.
A little bit further to the left, the AP rounds would be stored back here.
Now, they’re called AP, but realistically
if you hit any tank with a 152mm HE round it is having a very bad day.
Armour Piercing is really better suited for bunkers, concrete fortifications,
things you want to go a little bit inside before it goes ‘Boom’.
Stored a little bit higher up would be hand grenades.
Otherwise the other features that the Loader has;
he has tray to his front which flips forwards for loading
and he would have a ramming staff on the back wall.
Just underneath me a little to the left,
you can see the little porthole we saw on the outside for loading the 152mm ammunition.
So it will come in here and then has to be hoisted into the racks.
A little bit further forward of that you can see on the floor,
the two torsion bars for one set of road wheels going cross-wise.
As you can see one torsion bar is a bit further forward than the other.
This is why, when you look at a vehicle from the side with torsion bar suspension,
the wheels are not symmetrical.
One whole set of wheels is further forward.
Forward of that you’re going to see the escape hatch,
which is underneath the gunner’s seat.
The gunner’s seat is missing from this particular vehicle
and forward of the escape hatch is the master power switch.
Now the gunner’s seat would ordinarily be on a long metal rod which extends out to here.
It would fold up towards the gun breech to allow room for people
to move backwards and forwards.
Not on this vehicle, but that’s okay
because it means that it’s a lot easier for us to show you what’s here anyway.
Elevation and Traverse are simple mechanical cranks.
There is a lot of play in this gun.
Exactly why I am able to do this, I’m not sure if it’s deliberate or not.
I would have thought it to be fairly unacceptable,
but it cranks relatively easy for a large gun.
The elevation handle also has the electrical firing trigger.
As you can see it’s a very simple arc; a racked arc.
For direct fire you could find a CT-10 Telescope.
That would have an effective range of 3,500 metres.
When firing indirect, to a range of about 7,000 metres,
you would use a Hertz panoramic sight which would fit in this mounting here.
Now it’s not ordinarily stowed in here, because in order to use it,
it actually sticks out of the turret roof.
You open up the driver’s hatch, actually I call it the driver’s hatch,
officially it’s the front left hatch.
With the sight extended out through the hatch, you would release the hatch ring,
spin it around, so that your sight is not obstructed by the hatch cover,
and that is how you conduct your indirect fire.
It does beg a question because the driver’s seat is located directly beneath the panoramic sight housing
and also the elevation and traverse controls.
So in order to ingress and egress quickly, does the gun have to be traversed to the right?
Possible concern for the driver if he has to get out in a hurry.
If it wasn’t for the fact that he has a large fuel tank right next to him as well.
Having the fuel tank right in the front left of the crew compartment
was not the most popular feature of this vehicle.
However, if you have big pieces of hot metal punching through the front of your 90mm sloped armour,
you’re probably having a bad day anyway.
So the only reasonable way I can think of to get into the driver’s position,
I’ve had to traverse the cannon all the way to the left.
That of course means that the breech comes to the right with the elevation and traverse gear.
They’ve put a nice convenient handle hear which I suspect I’m supposed to hold on to and slide forward.
Actually this isn’t so bad at all.
Now if you remember from the Object 704,
I found the driver’s position to be absolutely miserable,
but I suspect also that it is because you also had a much more angular armour plate.
This one with the straight front armour,
I have a little bit more room and it’s actually not bad.
I’m reasonably comfortable, I can see the driver’s housing to my front.
I can reach the gear stick easily enough and throttle.
My only concern is that the seat back is a little bit leaning a bit to the rear,
may interfere with here.
Perhaps there is actually a locking system,
which locks it up a little bit further and I just haven’t found it.
Now there are three forms of visibility for the driver.
All out of the one, same port, but they’re different levels of protection.
The simplest, is if it’s a nice warm sunny day,
you don’t mind about the window or mind about the cold,
the window housing is up and the triplex sight is down.
Now, if you wanted a windshield or if you’re worried about some fragmentation,
small arms or whatever if you’re really pushed,
what you can do is lift up the triplex housing,
and that gives you a reasonable range of visibility.
It’s really not bad.
Now there’s one additional level, if you were really worried about incoming fire,
something you want some serious weight of metal to stop,
what you can then do is open up these two latches here.
This will allow the armoured housing to drop down.
Now the catch with the armoured housing is that it’s at such an angle
to give you more protection, that I can see maybe two metres to my front.
You are absolutely reliant upon the Commander or somebody else telling you where you’re going,
because quite literally we’re looking at a slit that is maybe this big, aiming down at an angle.
It’s all but useless. Let’s get this out of the way.
Okay, other controls in here.
The pedals are easy enough to figure out, there is two of them.
The one on the left is the clutch, as you can imagine.
It’s a little bit annoying because the instrument panel is in the way of my leg.
Perhaps if I was a shorter individual it wouldn’t be so much of an issue,
but I suspect it would still be a bit of a nuisance.
It’s either the heaviest clutch pedal I’ve ever seen,
or it’s got the shortest travel I’ve ever seen.
I can get the thing to go maybe two centimetres.
But, if that’s enough that’s enough.
Steering levers , on the left as well.
So now I have the steering lever
and now I’m trying to put my foot on the clutch
and not get it caught on the instrument panel.
So I’m not actually sure I could drive this vehicle myself,
but it is by no means the worst of the Soviet Vehicles I’ve been in.
So I would wager the average Soviet crewman wouldn’t have too much difficulty in driving the vehicle.
Now there are some other nice features of it.
For example, gone is the simple clutch and brake steering system.
This now has a planetary steering system.
The advantage to this is that it still puts power to both sides when turning.
So there are multiple stages again.
So as you bring it back to the first stage, you’re increasing the torque by about 1.35.
You pull it back even further and now you start applying brake.
Of course, two tillers, pull back on both and there’s your brake.
Accelerator is on the right hand side.
There is an auto-governing system.
So what this does is, it increases the fuel flow depending on the load.
So if you keep your pedal at a set level, you keep the gear in the same gear,
then as the vehicle is going over rough terrain,
the governor will adjust the fuel load into it,
so that you continue to traverse on the same speed.
Very clever idea, very easy on the driver that way.
The gears themselves for the transmission,
there are four forward speeds and one reverse.
You add to that a transfer case,
with high and low range, gives you eight forward, two reverse.
That gives you a good amount of flexibility over all sorts of terrain.
The gear pattern however, is a bit weird.
So the gear stick is to the front right.
First you pull straight back for first.
You go front and left for second, left and back for third,
and then centre and front gets you back to fourth
and then reverse is forward and to the right.
The high-low selector is the lever to the left.
Further to the back you’re going to have your hand throttle for idling or starting purposes.
There is a cool down period.
The manual points out that if the temperature is over 70 degrees in the coolant,
don’t switch off the engine.
Let it idle, let it cool down for a couple of minutes
and then kill the master power and that should shut down your engine.
Okay so this would be my driving position.
Acceptable except for the instrument panel chopping off my left leg.
Again, may just be my height, or perhaps you can just move the instrument panel.
Easily solved.
Now if I move the controls back out of the way,
I have a quick tour around to see what’s in here.
Of course, to our left I mentioned it already,
the fuel tank. Internal fuel tank system is about 500 litres.
Add to that the external system
and you get about 220-240 kilometres on a single tank.
The horn, I don’t know why it’s always the biggest button inside a Soviet tank,
but the horn is right there. Instrument cluster.
Top Centre: rev counter.
Lower left: coolant temperature.
Engine oil pressure.
Engine oil temperature.
To the right there is an ammeter.
The one item which is kind of obviously missing
from the driver’s station is the speedometer.
I’m not going mad.
There is no speedometer here.
Other controls, forward, down onto the right you can see the two air tanks,
for the reserve air starting system.
Excellent idea, especially in Soviet winters
when the electrical system just isn’t functioning well enough.
Controls to the right in the white box, in addition to the ammeter you’ve got the starter motor,
there is a fuel pump, and switches for your lights; internal and external.
Fuel pump low and right, your gear selector,
high-low range option. Hand throttle. That’s it.
The Breech Operator and the TC are both seated on the right-hand side of the vehicle
facing inwards on very simple cushions which are mounted on the sponson.
In fact, they’re not even mounted, they’re just a cushion.
Breech Operator has two main roles.
Firstly he’s going to move the propellant from the racks on the right hand side of the vehicle
onto the loading tray, where the loader will then use a rammer to load it into the cannon.
His secondary job of course, Breech Operator, is to open the Breech,
now of course some kill joy has welded this shut,
so we can’t go shooting around six inch rounds.
However, it is a screw tight breech.
Open, close, easy as.
Over his shoulder there would be a mounting point here for a fire extinguisher.
The submachine gun would be hung from the upper wall here
and over his right is another dome light.
To his right then, TC’s position.
Last Position of course is the Commander’s at the front-right of the vehicle,
also sort of on this bench cushion facing the inwards.
He has slightly better visibility than most.
He has seven periscopes in this rotating cupola in addition to the pretty common MK-4.
To his front you’re going to see an antenna mount.
This is for the 10R or 10RK Radio, which would be mounted more or less here.
Also, of course we also have the little pop-out plug for the submachine gun.
To the left, a little holster for his pistol.
Down, on the floor, forward, under the gun and to the right is the third internal fuel tank.
So we’ve got three in total.
Two forward in the crew compartment and one in the rear.
Another electrical box with fuses and I found the speedometer.
It’s down here on the right.
Only other thing you’re going to find in here, a first aid kit could be mounted about here
and directly behind him mounted in the rack, more propellant charges.
That’s it for the inside.
Now we’ll go back out and close.
ISU-152 was produced in two facilities up until 1946 or 1947 depending on who it is you ask.
Nearly two thousand of them were produced.
A short fall in 152mm Howitzers however,
meant that a number of vehicles were built as ISU-122s with the A19 122mm Howitzer.
It is given sometimes some flak because it has a small ammunition capacity; only 20 rounds.
Well frankly, if you can’t kill whatever it is you’re aiming at with 20 rounds per vehicle,
it probably wasn’t your day anyway.
The only other concern you would have is as a driver.
Even the camera man was remarking as he was trying to get out of the driver’s seat,
‘What do you do if the vehicle is on fire?’
Outside of that, you can’t really argue with the vehicle.
It was easy to maintain, easy to repair,
easy to drive, well-liked by its crews and easy to learn.
Plus, of course, you have a six inch gun.
What’s not to like?
That was the ISU-152 and we’ll see you on the next one.
Always check track tension.
Track tension is good.
Track tension is your friend.
If you don’t do track tension, you’ll lose your track and walk it off,
and that’s not your friend, because you’ll do it in mud
and your driver will hate you, and your loader will hate you.
Anyway…
And fairly simple cast construction, con...con…
conscrution…construction…
The track is 650mm wide, single pin and simble ca-
Oh…this is going to be one of those phrases isn’t it?
Argh! Sh-
There are many things on this tank trying to kill me.
Just to the front left of the Driver’s hatch, you’re going to see a small, little port for a…
a thing. It is a thing, yes.
The track links; 650 mili- *laughter*
this is going on the blooper reel.
Huummmmmm…