World of Tanks History Section: Star Over Kharkov
An enormous breach formed in the Soviet-German front after the encirclement and defeat of Paulus' 6th Army at Stalingrad. Another breach formed soon after, as a result of the Voronezh-Kastornaya...
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The Amazing Strv 103
The Strv 103, also called the S-Tank, is Sweden's trademark tank. A lack of turret, fixed gun with an autoloader, active suspension, three driver positions (one per crewman), these are only some of its...
View ArticleKirov Factory Prototypes, March 1941
"Report on the progress of experimental tank armament work from February 20th to March 20th, 1941Object 220 KV-4 100 mmThe experimental prototype is awaiting the arrival of the V-5 engine from the...
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Shooting Backwards
One of the advantages of a tank over a self propelled gun is the ability to fire in a 360 degree arc. While firing forward is the typical use case, firing backwards can have some unexpected challenges....
View ArticleFour Years of Blogging
Hello, everyone! It's been another year (technically two, since I forgot to do anything last year, oops). My blog continues to ramp up its readership, with 2,161,945 page views (compared to 879,901...
View ArticleTank Costs, 1943
"To the Deputy Chair of the Council of People's Commissars, comrade MalyshevI present to you a report on the cost of KV-1S, KV-8S, T-34, and T-70 tanks, their armament and optics.TypeCost w/o armament...
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New KV-2 Turret
On May 6th, 1940, the deputy chief of Kirov factory's SKB-4 design bureau proposed a modernized turret for the KV-2 tank.This new turret was 2000 kg lighter than the old one due to reducing the height...
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02SS Aerosan: A Tank in the Snow
The history of the aerosan in Russia and then the USSR is old and varied. The first mass produced aerosans were built in 1912, were actively used in WWI and then the Russian Civil War. Development of...
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Pz.Sfl.IVb: Halfway to the Hummel
German wartime SPGs are well known. However, it took some time to develop the "selbstfahrlafette" concept of a large open casemate, like the one used on the Hummel. Initially, the idea was to built...
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American Ergonomics
Ergonomics in tanks is an important factor, one that I touched on previously in some detail. It turns out that despite certain prevalent stereotypes, the ergonomics of various tank schools are more...
View ArticlePzI Trials
"ConclusionsAfter concluding trials of tank #1, it's possible to make the following conclusions:The tank has the following mobility characteristics:Maximum speed on a paved highway in packed snow:...
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D-10 CIA Intel
The following are penetration and ballistics tables for the D-10 gun mounted in a T-54 tank recovered by the CIA from a Soviet manual. CIA-RDP80T00246A028600430001-7
View ArticleSU-85 Light
"Installation of an 85 mm D-5 gun in a light SPGThe Gorky Automotive Factory is building an experimental 85 mm SPG using T-70 tank and SU-76M SPG componentsTactical technical characteristics of the...
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CKD Export Tanks: An Offer You Can't Refuse
Czechoslovakian tank manufacturing caught up to world standards in the mid-1930s. The P-II, CKD's first light tank and the first mass produced domestically designed tank, was close to the world's...
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Under Pressure
HEAT is a much more complicated armour penetration mechanism than traditional kinetic penetrators, and thus leads to more interesting experiments. For example, in this one, the objective of the test...
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Under Pressure, Part 2
In Part 1, we saw what happens to a tank crew when it's hit with a HEAT shell, whether that shell penetrates or not. However, getting hit with a kinetic penetrator has consequences too! Let's take a...
View ArticleS-51
"Installation of a 203 mm mod. 1931 howitzer (B-4) on a KV-1S chassis (factory index S-51)Produced by NKV TsAKB by order of the GAU Artkom.The self propelled S-51 howitzer consists of the oscillating...
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Turtle Tank
Continuing the theme of sketchy intel on the Soviets the CIA got from the Germans, a phantom tank appears on the Volkhov Front, completely unknown to the Soviets, but apparently common enough in German...
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Sweden's Autoloaders
Sweden's tank industry was in crisis in the second half of the 1940s. On one hand, the middle of this decade was a time when Swedish self propelled artillery thrived. That is when the Swedish army...
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Light Tank M3A1: Basket into Battle
History knows many instances when an attempt to improve a design led to, if not a worse one, then at least an equivalent. The American M3A1 light tank is one such example. Even though its modernization...
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