{"id":28969,"date":"2014-12-01T00:02:05","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T05:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28969"},"modified":"2018-01-15T18:33:54","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T23:33:54","slug":"the-soviet-tank-that-won-the-war-in-the-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/12\/01\/the-soviet-tank-that-won-the-war-in-the-east\/","title":{"rendered":"The Soviet tank that won the war in the East"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Richard Huard<\/a> looks at the tank that took away the Panzer’s reputation for invincibility, the T-34:<\/p>\n

\"T-34\/85

T-34\/85 at mus\u00e9e des blind\u00e9s de Saumur<\/em> (via Wikipedia<\/em>)<\/p><\/div>\n

The T-34 had its problems \u2014 something we often forgotten when discussing a tank with a legendary reputation. The shortfalls included bad visibility for the crew and shoddy Soviet workmanship.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were good, but they were not miracle weapons and they had their faults,\u201d writes Philip Kaplan in Rolling Thunder: A Century of Tank Warfare<\/em>. \u201cBut the T-34, for all its faults, is now often referred to by tank experts and historians as possibly the best tank of the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

World War II German Field Marshall Ewald Von Kleist was more succinct. \u201cThe finest tank in the world,\u201d is how he described the T-34.<\/p>\n

The origins of the T-34 are simple enough. The Red Army sought a replacement for the BT-7 cavalry tank, which was fast-moving and lightly armored for use in maneuver warfare. It also had Christie suspension, one reason for the tank\u2019s increased speed.<\/p>\n

But during a 1938-to-1939 border war with Japan, the BT-7 fared poorly. Even with a low-powered gun, Japanese Type 95 tanks easily destroyed the BT-7s. Tank attack crews also assaulted the BT-7s with Molotov cocktails, reducing the Soviet tank to a flaming wreck when ignited gasoline dripped through chinks between poorly welded armor into the tank\u2019s engine compartment.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

By the end of the war, the Soviet Union had produced nearly 60,000 T-34 tanks \u2014 proving the point that quantity does have a quality all of its own.<\/p>\n

At first, the Germans were at a loss when it came to countering the threat the T-34 posed. The Germans\u2019 standard anti-tank guns, the 37-millimeter Kwk36 and the 50-millimeter Kwk 38, couldn\u2019t put a dent in the Soviet tank with a shot to its front.<\/p>\n

That left the Germans with a limited set of tactics. German tankers could attempt flank shots with their guns. The Wehrmacht could lay mines. Soldiers risked their lives in close assaults employing satchel charges and Molotov cocktails.<\/p>\n

In what could be called an act of desperation, the Germans even used modified 88-millimeter anti-aircraft guns to stop attacking T-34s with direct fire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Richard Huard looks at the tank that took away the Panzer’s reputation for invincibility, the T-34: The T-34 had its problems \u2014 something we often forgotten when discussing a tank with a legendary reputation. The shortfalls included bad visibility for the crew and shoddy Soviet workmanship. \u201cThey were good, but they were not miracle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1118,7,5,1119,15,230],"tags":[991,433],"class_list":["post-28969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-germany","category-history","category-military","category-russia","category-technology","category-ww2","tag-afvs","tag-sovietunion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7xf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28969"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28971,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28969\/revisions\/28971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}