Anatoly Mozharovsky,
Colonel, General Troops Academy, Armed Forces of Russia

T

his summer marked the 60th anniversary of the battle at the Kursk Bulge, which is considered the largest tank fighting encounter of World War II. On July 12, 1943, over 1,500 Russian and German combat vehicles amassed in the small field near the Prokhorovka village. Just in the first day of the battle Germany lost 350 tanks and, following these combats till the very end of the war it could not restore its armored might.
The battle at the Kursk Bugle fully demonstrated the fighting capabilities of tank T-34.
This tank can be called one of the outstanding phenomena in the history of the world’s military technology. Its emergence on battlefields in the summer of 1941 caused shock at the German Command, since the strategy of blitzkrieg, above all, was based on the superiority of Wehrmacht in armored vehicles. After the first combats with participation of T-34s German generals conceded that Russians managed to make tanks, which were considerably more advanced than the Reich’s best ones. "The best tank in the world". That is how T-34 was described by Field Marshal Ewald Johann Kleist, the commander of Wehrmacht’s First tank army.
The Soviet tank-building was started on the basis of power engineering, metallurgy and machine-building industries developed in the years of Russia’s pre-war industrialization. There were several large automotive and tractor plants built, including the Chelyabinsk one, which some time later became the major producer of tank engines. The engineering and technical experience gained during the production of high-speed but poorly protected and insufficiently armed wheel-track tanks of the BT series was applied while developing a new generation of combat vehicles.
Designer Mikhail Koshkin wished to create a medium-sized tank with strong armor, powerful weapon and relatively simple to make so as to arrange its series mass production. Together with his colleagues Alexander Morozov and Nikolai Kucherenko he began implementing the T-34 project but in two years Koshkin died from pneumonia. However, his pioneering ideas were already realized in a new combat vehicle. In March 1940 the first two pilot vehicles made a trial run in severe winter conditions covering the distance of over 2,000 km between Kharkov, Moscow, Minsk and Kiev returning to Kharkov again.
The new tank weighed 26.5 tons. Its crew consisted of 4 persons. The tank’s power-plant was a12-cylinder diesel engine, which was constructed by engineers Vickman and Chupakhin, was started up with the help of the electric power system, although, as a back-up, it was also equipped with a starting mechanism that used compressed air. For shooting purposes the tank had a 76.2 mm-caliber cannon coupled with a machine-gun. Subsequently, T-34 was armed with a 85mm long-barreled cannon. Its shell was capable of breaking through a 69 mm-thick armor from the distance of 500 m. A 54 mm-thick armor was pierced from the distance of 1.6 km and that was sufficiently enough to fight with tanks of those years. Just for a comparison: Germany’s T-III was armed with a 50mm short-barreled cannon, which had a relatively low armor-piercing capability.
The fighting potential of tanks is determined by three basic characteristics: the fire power, armor protection and maneuverability. T-34 surpassed all tanks of those times by each of these characteristics. Its maneuverability was especially impressive. The most important indicator of effectiveness was the tank’s engine power density (the ratio between its power and weight) that amounted to 18 hp/t, its maximum speed reached 55 km an hour. Just for a comparison: Germany’s medium-sized tank T-III had the engine’s power density equaling 14 hp/t, the engine’s power density of Britain’s tank Mathilda amounted to 7.2 hp/t and the one of American Sherman was about 14 hp/t.
The thickness of T-34’s armor was 65 mm at turret and amounted to 45 mm at its body. But, among other things, the most remarkable feature of its armor protection was that the frame’s steel sheets were much tilted. In particular, the front armor was installed at an angle of 60 degrees. The ballistic testing proved how successful this decision of Koshkin’s design bureau was. A 100mm-thick armored sheet installed at an angle of 60 degrees possessed the same resistance to shells as a 300mm-thick vertical armored plate had.
Military experts of all countries considered the German T-III tank "a queen" of tank battles. Easy victories in France and other countries of Europe made German tank-builders self-confident. Before the war with the USSR neither they nor specialists from other countries had a clear idea of how far Russians moved forward in designing and producing tanks. In the years of the war itself British experts thoroughly examined T-34 and came to the following conclusion:
"If one takes into account that only recently has Russia created its heavy industry and that a considerable part of its industrial regions have been occupied by the enemy, the development and production of such high-quality tanks in such a large quantity represent the engineering and technical achievement of the highest class".
The largest role in mass production of T-34s belonged to metallurgists. Steel mills developed new types of high-strength steel for tank armor and new technologies of processing them were introduced. For the first time in the world practice the Magnitogorsky and Kuznetsk integrated metallurgical mills started to make armor steel in super-sized 180-ton open-hearth furnaces. And that took place just in a month after the war began! Before that the similar steel was made in special 10-ton furnaces. They also managed to accomplish another most complicated task: to mould a steel turret.
The first combat encounters of German tank units with new Russian tanks took place in July 1941. During that time there were just a few T-34s with the Soviet troops. But in 1942 Russia’s industry already produced more than 5,000 tanks. And all in all during the war over 40,000 T-34 tanks of different modifications participated in combat operations. They helped overcome Hitler’s army that before that seemingly could not be defeated.