Best Cold War Tank

Oh boy....

Tante Ju said:

IT IS A WW2 British tank after all!

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And the 1947 T-54 differed how much from the T-44???

Yes the Israelis had identified a number of problems with the 20-24 year old Centurion design by 1967. That does not mean the the issues were resolved in time for the 1967 war. The contract for the new engines and transmissions was placed in April of 1967, however the first re-powered tanks were not completed until May 1970 which leaves ALL the Centurions used in the 67 war with the old engines, transmissions, etc. Hardly superpimped. and a total red herring as far as combat performance in the '67 war goes.

It also means the Israeli tanks of 1967 were not that different than British or NATO tanks of the early 60s.

The later re-powered and upgraded Centurions were intended both increase serviceability and to counter newer Arab tanks than the T-54/55 series. Egypt and Syria started getting T-62s in 1971. The T-62 was revealed to the public in 1965. It was only a matter of time before Soviet client states got better tanks than the T-54/55.

Tante Ju said:

Gutting out an old-fashioned and sub-optimal tank chassis and trying to fit it with the latest stuff is not progress, its a makeshift weapon. The Isrealis had to do with what had at hand, with what they could buy abroad. They did the same with Shermans with some rather desperate modifications etc.

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The British retro fitted quite a number of their tanks over the years, in many cases several times. So did many other countries beside Israel.

So did the Soviet Union and client states when it came to things like fire control (like laser range finders).

Tante Ju said:

But makes sense if you are on not-to-friendly terms with the USSR and can hardly except spares and ammunition. Not that Isreali Shot Cal had much common with their British Centurion brother...

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Spare parts weren't that big a problem for the Israels. They captured about twice the number of tanks that they converted. Buying parts and ammo on the international market shouldn't have been that hard either. The T-54/55 having been used by over 30 nations besides Russia. Buy enough ammo and any one of a number of companies would have tooled up for it. After over 20 years the Russian 100mm ammo was hardly secret stuff.

Tante Ju said:

Define 'vast majority of tanks' in a 100 000 tank production run. Anyway, 'tis what google gave for T-54 armor scheme. Still beat anyone in 1947 though.

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How about 99,000 It sure did beat any one in 1947, except the tank didn't work with that level of armor. Tank was overweight and nose heavy leading to breaking of the front suspension components and poorer than desired mobility (power to weight).

Tante Ju said:

Matching the protection of 20 year old Soviet tank in your newest tank model, with doesn't sound very good to me.

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lets just check the math on this one. 1947 + 20 years is 1967. M-60 went into production in 1960 and the M60A1 went into production in Oct 1962, not quite 20 years.

And to be fair can we paint the Soviets with the same brush? T-62 goes into Production in 1961 with the SAME 100mm front plate the vast majority of T-54/55 tanks had for the last 14 years.

buffnut453 said:

Here's Matt now:

Here's Matt if we keep up the petty squabbling and name-calling:

Time to play mo' nicerer methinks!

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That time was a long time ago.

buffnut453 said:

Here's Matt now:

Here's Matt if we keep up the petty squabbling and name-calling:

Time to play mo' nicerer methinks!

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No..............It should be:

"Here's the Mods if we keep up the petty squabbling and name-calling: "

Hmmm, so if you take a design and improve upon it, its not the same but something new...or is it? Well I guess Tante Ju would know about that since thats all the Germans did with their designs. I guess a PzKpfw. VI Tiger I is better than a PzKpfw. Tiger II.

Gutting out an old-fashioned and sub-optimal tank chassis and trying to fit it with the latest stuff is not progress, its a makeshift weapon. . . .

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I hope he comes back to explain to me what the 'ell a StuG III is and how lousy it is.

Tante Ju said:

I am pretty sure about the APDS wasn't a copy, since the Germans did not bother developing one for AT works - not much need with all those long 7.5/8.8 guns around. The only different thing was the discarding sabot and that wasn't so new anyway, AFAIK they used it for arty shells.

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Can we please stop re-writing history? Edgar Brandt was the first person to come up with the discarding sabot Idea but like may other things, it was thought of by several people at about the same time with out any real copying going on. Germans did help pioneer the use of cored AP shot even with all those long barrels. You only really need the really long barrels if you CANNOT use cored shot. The really long barrels suffer from barrel whip and short barrel life, you seldom get something for nothing. You can use discarding sabots for HE Artillery rounds (or AA) you get some really long range or short flight times. You also get a rather restricted payload as in a 105 gun firing an 88mm shell with a discarding sabot. I repeat, you seldom get something for nothing.

Tante Ju said:

In any case, as we have discussed, early APDS ammo had issues with accuracy, needed rare strategic resources and was less deadly than full caliber rounds. Given that the 100 mm gun could easily put very large rounds into any NATO tank in the 1950s, including the Centurion at ca 2 km and perhaps above, and they had a HEAT shell which was superior to any APDS round anyway as far as armor penetration goes, I am not sure why the Soviets would make any fuss about APDS rounds. Nobody had particularly good tank FC much above WW2 level until the 1970s I believe, yet you treat APDS rounds like a buzzword.

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Early APDS did have some problems, the worst of which was a batch of 17pdr ammo with faulty propellant, which was used for some of the field tests in Normandy. Widely quoted but hardly representative of most production batches.

Please look at the publish penetration figures for the 100mm gun and ammo. depending on projectile (who's APC ammo) it is good for 150-185mm penetration at 1000meters at 0 degrees impact. In other words just about useless against the front hull plates of of either an up-armored Centurion (late 50s?) or M-48/60 at a little below 1000 meters let alone 2000 meters. Centurions 152mm front turret armor is going to need a pretty fair hit too. Anybody can get taken out from the side.

Heat rounds need a fair amount of over penetration in order to actually kill the target. A round that offers 380mm of penetration is making a hole just a few mm across on the back the side of the armor and just a small jet going INTO the tank. Making holes in the armor does not kill a tank, killing the crew or wrecking what is behind the armor kills the tank. The British did not like HEAT rounds because of this and did not use them. I don't know how much over penetration you need.

On the other hand successful penetration of thick armor guarantees a fair amount of secondary projectile/s (material that used to occupy the space where the hole is) zipping about the interior at fairly high speed, even if the projectile is stuck in the armor

I am not sure how well the British stabilization system worked but it was fitted from 1950 or so on. British fitted ranging machine guns to their Centurions from the late 50s? Americans fitted optical range finders from the M-47 on. Better than WW II even if not up to 70's (so did Leopard Is and AMX 30) standard?

As a rough rule of thumb the practical range of an anti-tank gun is it's muzzle velocity + 10%. This is the range at which the projectile will never rise above or fall below a "tank sized" target if the gun is given the initial range setting. Size of the tank target can vary. blunt, stumpy shells that are light for their size fall a little short and things like APDS and APFSDS go a little long. 20pdr and 105 APDS are not going to go above or fall below the 'standard" tank target out to around 1400-1600 meters. Russian 100 mm gun is good for about 1000 meters.
If you are fighting at close range this doesn't matter. Speed of turret rotation may.
But at long range??

Answer to the question about the turret armor of the T-64 (the 1st tank with composite armor), posted at tank-net:

There are too many T-64's sub-variation so it is very hard to say.

As far as I know, the strongest T-64 turret in Soviet time is T-64BV, which is 580mm with K-1 (K-1 can give 30~50mm protection), the weakest one is T-64 which is no more than 400mm.

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K-1 being the early type of ERA, so it should not be in our time frmae. Still, the kinetic energy penetrator must pierece the equivalent of 400mm RHA - not an easy (impossible?) task for the cannons of the era.From here, post #1036.

added: ammo capabilities of 115mm tank gun, with penetration data (scroll down fro table, can be translated):

http://btvt.narod.ru/4/t62weapon.htm

When did HESH ammunition become widely available?

About the Conqueror heavy tank (66 metric tons), in the 'Encyclopedia of tanks AFV', edited by Christopher F. Foss:

...automatic device for ejecting spent cartridge cases through a hatch in the turret. [follows with description of the mechanism] A veteran Royal Tank Regiment officer remembered that 'All [ie. the ejection mechanism] broke down on every conceivable occasion'

Same book, about the M-103 (56,7 metric tons):

The M103 was a much-delayed failure.
With too much weight for it's power train, the Army's M103A1 was very unreliable.

The other ground-breaking tanks of the era (T-64, Chieftain) were not reliable when introduced, the engines being the main headache. It's not widely known whether the auto loader in T-64 worked as advertised, especially under battlefield conditions.

I read somewhere the T-64 autoloader sometimes snagged the gunners arm and loaded it ILO a shell.

Probably no truth to the rumor but I'm not volunteering to serve as a T-64 gunner.

The T-62 had it's share of mechanical dangers to the turret crew. The gun automatically changes to an elevation of 3 degrees 30 minutes after firing for loading, it can only be loaded at this angle. The turret cannot be traversed if the gun is being loaded. I am not sure if the gun automatically returns to it's point of aim after being loaded (breechblock closes). The auto eject system at times became misaligned and the case bounced of the edge of the hatch and around the interior of the turret at a pretty good speed.



Between the cases bouncing around the interior and the gun making some rather abrupt changes in elevation on it's own (seemingly) the loader seemed to have plenty of opportunity for injury.

davebender said:

I read somewhere the T-64 autoloader sometimes snagged the gunners arm and loaded it ILO a shell.

Probably no truth to the rumor but I'm not volunteering to serve as a T-64 gunner.

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Heard same. Look at video of most tank firings and gunners must grab dual safety levers to ensure their limbs are not in recoil danger areas, unlike this:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMTSaeo85TE

Yep, the automatic loading was a mixed blessing for the cold war Soviet tanks.

The armor layout of the T-64, 1st half of 1964:

http://s018.radikal.ru/i515/1206/b8/948ce4158703.jpg

added: manual for T-62, in English:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/27319696/Russian-T-62-Medium-Tank-Operators-Manual

The loading operation, T-62:



The manual gives only 4 rounds per minute RoF.

CIA assessment of the T-64B:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.foia.cia.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdocument_conversions%2F89801%2FDOC_0000498140.pdf&ei=2gJSUdfhEsTaswbKxID4Dw&usg=AFQjCNFPmRevclOtnBdTGSc71_NzSv3vkw&sig2=X9xoI0VFgqDxAEyCMu9zdQ&bvm=bv.44342787,d.Yms

Little old me - who isn't a big fan of the theoretical - would like to know: post Korea, what western forces have faced off in tank-to-tank combat beside the Israelis against Soviet armor ...? Indo-Pak wars ...? S African forces ...? Surely - by DesertStorm it was a whole new ball game with the Abrams ... IMHO

So - has Soviet cold war armor actually ever been on the winning side against western armor ...?

Not trying to be be smug here, but field results are all that matter in the end.

MM

The Israelis have soundly beaten the Arab forces even in 1948, when the Israelis have had no tanks. That points us that equipment does come after many things that make the armed forces. In the Indo-Pakistani wars, at the time the Indians were using considerable amount of Soviet tanks, ie. war of 1971, Indians have beaten the Pakistanis. Again, that should not be attributed to the tanks forces only, but the whole set of other 'ingredients', like air forces, artillery, training, numbers etc.
The Soviets have made the greatest advances vs. Germans in the time when Germany was fielding, on the paper, better tanks. Germans wrecked havoc USSR in the time when Soviets were fielding formidable KV and T-34 tanks, vs. short-barreled Pz-III and IV.

From the days of ww2, it was the force with better air force, that is better used, that stood chances to win the war, not the force with better tanks.

added: We have managed to snatch independence with just a handful of tanks, vs. the army awash with those.

the web site about T-64, in German, can be translated:

http://t-64.de/frame-start.htm

Thanks for the thorough response.

MM

Igor?

Yes, Master?

Doh...
MM just thanked the mysterious Igor for the explanation. Now who is Igor?

Sorry, my mistake.

No problems