Also a little something on T 34´s.

Arguably the Soviet Unions T-34 had the greatest design for a tank ever developed. It balanced the qualities of armor protection, mobility and firepower. The T-34 was very reliable, simple to build, and produced in large quantities of 35.000 vehicles. The T-34 was based on the concept of Christies "fast tank" of the 1930s. T-34s designwork started in 1934, to replace the old T-28. Meanwhile the production of the BT-tank had begun, the chief engineer of the Kirov Works in Leningrad - Mikhail Koszkin -, tried to fit a T-28 with a Christie-type suspension. The test resulted in the T-29. This was only faster than the T-28, but it did not offer better fireaccuracy, and the type was abandoned. A design team at Komintern Factory in Kharkov, led by an engineer called Tsiganov, gave the birth of the T-34. They thought that it was better to produce a heavier version of the BT, that trying to put is characteristics on other design like the T-28. The latest BT-tank at the time was the BT-7M. One of those was given a sloped armor hull instead of the original slab-sided structure. This resulted in a BT-IS (Ispitatelinig), which showed very promising, and in 1936 a special design team led by Koszkin and A.Morozov (designer) was up at Kharkov. Morozov had designed the T-46-5, a fast medium tank, which was not taken up. In 1937 blueprints of the A-20 (later T-30) was made, which was an improved BT-IS.This still had the wheel/track-option and BTs 45mm gun, but it had the T-34s shape and design. Koszkin was given the task to develop the T-30 further on. He then developed the T-32, which didn«t use the wheel/track-option, but was now fitted with a short 76mm gun (76L/30.5). The T-32 had proved very good in trials and a small production was ordered. But after battle experience in the Spanish Civil War, showed that it needed more armour protection. The improvements led to the T-33 and T-34. The T-33 used the wheel/track system, meanwhile the T-34 didn«t. After many trials, the T-34 were accepted by the War Council, and mass-production was ordered. The T-34 was known for its excellentely shaped hull and turret and the 76m gun of a relative long barrel-length and its high muzzle-velocity made it to a feared devil. The T-34s use of a diesel-engine reduced the risk for fire when hit, and gave the T-34 larger operation range. The Christie-suspension permitted high speed in rough terrain, meanwhile its wide tracks made it able to cross mud and snow easier and faster.The first T-34/76A was delivered to the Red Army in June 1940. When Operation Barbarossa was launched on June 22nd 1941, the production of the T-34 had not reached far enough to employ sufficient numbers to the Red Army. Approxiamately 2.800 T-34/76 was manufactured in 1941. At this time at least half of the total tank strength (21.000) was deployed in a infantry-support role, and BTs and T-26s comprised 75 percent of all tanks. Due to the speed of production (A T-34 could be built in just 40 hours), some of its components producers were not fast enough to keep the time-schedule. A shortage of the new V-12 diesel engines led to that some of the early T-34s had the older M-17 gasoline-engine (same as the BT and T-28 tanks used). A hastaly laid demand for more transmissions produced some serious problems; some early T-34s were very unreliable, and spare parts to repair the transmission were added to the side hull. New tank plants were built at Kharkov, Kirov. Stalingrad, Mariupol, Voroshilovgrad, Chita, Novo-Sibirsk, Chelyabinsk and Nizhni-Tagil. Later, another two plants were built at Gorki and Saratov. Apart from the incredible losses of tanks in the 1941 campaigns (USSR lost 6.000 tanks only at the two battles at Minsk and Smolensk), the russians lost all their western industrial regions with its raw materials. The training of the crews was almost not anything, when drivers and mechanics sometimes only had 1* - 2 hours of training before they was sent to operational units. When Germany more and more penetrated into Russia, it became necessary to move or evacuate all factorys all the way to the Urals and Siberia. After the evacuation, the T-34 was built by Ural Tank Building Establishment (Uralmashzavod), which was a combination of the Komintern Factory from Kharkov and the Nizhni-Tagil Tank Plant. Uralmashzavod did now produce the T-34 under the command of J.E.Maksarov, with A.Morozov as the Chiefengineer. In July 1942 the factory recieved the first blueprints of the T-34, and the first production model from Uralmashzavod was called "Comrade Stalin". The T-34 came as a sad surprise to the Germans when they encountered them in quantity in July 1941. (Even if the T-34 engaged the Germans for the first time on June 22nd at Gorki). When the Germans engaged them they noticed that all their tanks had suddenly become obsolete and undergunned, for they were not a match to the T-34 either in speed, hitting power or protection. This immediately led to the Germans speeding up the developement of the heavy Tiger tank and the designwork of a tank with a similar design as the T-34, later to be known as the PzKpfw. V Panther, which owed its appearance and features directly to the T-34.

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