KV1 restoration complete rebuild

On YouTube they have a video about a rare kv1 found and restored. It was a early production 1940 model with the rare L11 gun said only 141 KVs were built with the L11 gun. They decided to restore it but the tank had obviously gotten stuck in the bog and after failing to get it out the crew destroyed it detonating the ammo and blowing the tank apart. The only portion intact was the turret. They dug up all the parts they could find and moved into a warehouse to restore it they used a isu hull for restoration and explained that the isu was narrower and that the running gear was set differently so they had to strip off the running gear and reset all the mounts. The lower glacius was the same but the upper needed to be cut and reset they were unable to get the right angle, the front of the original KV was still intact they cut off the front if the ISU and cut down the KV and welded it together. Then they had to reconstruct the rear as the two are different when done they had a great looking early model kv1. They did a lot of fabricating to complete the tank it's great they were able to rescue and restore a rare piece of history they were saying at the time there were only 12 KVs left. I think that number should be higher now as there's been a number of KVs salvaged from swamps and rivers. They found one in a river and pulled it out totally intact and full stored. Then there was two near an old collapsed bridge they lifted out with a huge crane., one was intact and looked ok, the other was heavily damaged but looked repairable. I know at least one out of the three was fully restored can't remember what happened to the others. And that t34 from a lake fully intact and restored. Funny they say people knew it was there for years and said bubbles would still come up now and then I'd think it would have flooded completely in short time to hear that bubbles came up for decades is strange to hear, lol, like haunted.

The Russians have been doing a lot of tank recues and restorations lately not sure why but must be money motivated something like that or just trying to have the largest collection of any country the Russians love to be one up on every body. Like the Tu counter rotating prop planes everyone else gave up on them saying too expensive and lots of mechanical issues but the Russians still built theirs and in large numbers as to say hey look what we did. Like when we were building our SST they had to as well and bigger. Terrible that they tried to show theirs was better and dublicate a turn the concord performed but the wings couldn't take the stress and failed. They still built a number of the planes and had them in service for a short time. The planes were grounded then scrapped I'm sure that was more money down the drain leading to their financial collapse and then we helped them out gave them millions to keep their economy from complete collapse and were they gracious? I don't think they been very gracious towards us as of late in fact a bit belligerent. I know we helped them to insure that nukes didn't end up on the black market for countries like Iraq or Iran that might use them against us or Israel. Or in terrorist hands. Like military commanders of bases that were cut off and left to care for themselves ended up selling arms even tanks to raise money for their men, that one air base offering rides in a fighter jet for like twenty grand usd. When asked why he was doing it said they weren't getting any money or supplies from the government and he had to try to at least try to take care of his men. That's pretty bad when a country is so broke they abandon the people they relied on to protect it. Anyway I think their pissed that they had to bow down and take our help to stay alive. Probably would have been total riots people taking out the government and civil war. Would have been worse than the war of the Reds and whites.

 

I bet they have quite a few Tiger Is.

 

The Surviving Panzers website is the last word in Historical Tanks, and there are quite a few KV-1 knocking about (mostly in Russia and former USSR, obvously)

http://the.shadock.free.fr/Surviving_KV_series.pdf

The one 3rd from bottom sounds like the one Prospero is talking about

 

Rats rats my old Apple pad a first generation is getting more and more incompatible and won't upgrade past 9.3.5 and I get a message saying I need 10.0.5 but won't upgrade keeps saying I have the latest iso, oh well just have to try to get my kindle fixed or get a new one, one day.

 

Yet another reason why I abhor Apple. Very little backwards compatability, forcing you to replace a perfectly good system, just to increase their profit margin.

My parents hit the same wall with their IPHONE 3s. Phones work fine, but cannot be updated with new apps. Not to mention the 3G networks all going dark this year.

 

I was able to find the site and view it in my new cell phone but I didn't see a model of the early L11 type. I'm impressed that they went thru so much trouble rebuilding it having to do a complete rebuild of the Isuzu hull to make it into a accurate kv1. I use to think they just slimed down the hull and that everything was basically the same. The running gear components are pretty muck the same but the mounts are set different si they pulled off the gear and reset the mounts. The narrator goes on to say not only was it a early and rare tank but only the first 141 KVs were built with the L11gun. The same with the t34 only the first like 400 had the L11, apparently they had two mounts one really rounded and the other more flat became the standard mount with the F34 gun.
Looked similar to the one in the pic of the KV. I'm reworking my t34 and a KVmount I think if I just invert it and round off the squarish mount I'll have the effect I want. There's pics of t34 L11 tanks on flat cars heading to the front I got a bunch of dml German rail equipment I should think they should be close enough to a soviet flat car anyway a scene with a bunch of flat cars loaded with tanks should look pretty good. I remember doing work on camp Pendleton and decided not to go out bayside gate and drove over an over pass to the other side near Oceanside and camp Pendleton harbor camp Pendletons harbor is cut off by a huge rock break and fenced off I drove around looked the place over and found another gate so I drove out that one instead of going back over the train tracks go right by there and on some spur lines were bunches of flatcars with Abram tanks on them. Most were in what looked like European 1 camo. Thought that was odd as most pics of them at the time I'd seen were in desert camp. But I have a bunch of pre finished miniatures in olive drab, a forest camo for the US the European one camp and desert so there's a few. A buddy in the marines who was in maintenance told me they repainted a lot of stuff at the base workshops they would spray them first with a solution that would desolate the old paint and then hose ot off scrub it down pressure wash and use air guns to repaint. Said he use to use the work shops to fix up and paint cars and charge a thousand bucks. He was in charge of one of the workshops so he would go in after hours or the weekend. Said even the general called him to have him fix up his sons car, lol, took it to the metal shop told them it was the generals ride and he wanted the wheels flared out,lol. He was a funny guy said he wished he'd hadn't left, he'd already reenlisted twice but he'd gotten married and his wife told him he wasn't reenlisting. Said he missed it he never had to worry about money got to eat at the base mess. Worked at the work shops and never had to buy gas as he had a key to the workshop pumps. Said he actually enjoyed his life but he was married and they had a baby on the way so when is time was up he didn't sign up again. The stories he'd tell me the stupid stuff they did in the marines at Tustin air station. Like some guy was stealing people lunches so he made brownies with exlax and put them in the fridge the brownies disappear and one of his guys tells him he needs to go to sickbay. Then there was the time a bunch of his guys were taking capacitors charge them the running wires and hiding them in the urinals. Guys would take a piss the Pete would connect the charge and zap. Said you'd hear guys scream and find them on th floor shaking. I'm was like so that's how the government wastes valuable electronic parts and time. Said he had to put a stop to it as the guys kept getting bigger and bigger capacitors. Lol, amazing no one ever had a heart attack a cap can discharge a really good charge.

 

Prospero, that's because Marines are like little kids, mischievous but mean well. That's not just allegorical it's supported by fact. The Marines are significantly younger than the other services, 65% of Marines are younger than 25 years old. They also have a much higher proportion of E-3/non-rates/LCpl and below than the other services at 40%, double the other services. They're also overwhelmingly male, 93%. They also have the lowest officer to enlisted ratio of the services, NCO's do the majority of the supervision and most of your corporals and sergeants are within that 25 yo demographic. That is good for the type of aggressive, offensive oriented, military doctrine they have, high testosterone, low sense of your own mortality, small unit cohesiveness. Think frat boys, same demographic. That also allows them to have the PT culture they have; you can punish a young body more than an older one. So, you have a bunch of late adolescence, immediately post-adolescent, testosterone pumped males with little adult supervision, and they can come up with some stupid sh*t. It used to amaze me the stupid stuff we could come up with, even more amazing no one actually got killed in the process. That's why Marines often say USMC actually stands for Uncle Sam's Misguided Children.


Doesn't this remind you of a litter of sleeping puppies? Well, Devil-Pups.

 

My dad joined the marines when he was still young I think he was 18. Said he was two weeks away from graduation and during a physical training exercise they were running off the field to get their shirts they left on the bleachers and two guys tripped in front of my dad he couldn't avoid them and tripped and broke his arm. He wasn't able to complete the training and was told once he got out of his cast he had to repeat the whole course again. Because of his prior experience his Sgt. Made him a squad leader. Later when his class that graduated without him he said got shipped out to Korea, the war was stopped by treaty but no peace treaty actually signed and there was still a lot of border incursions. One incident a group of North Koreans crossed over and ambushed an American patrol killing the small patrol of three to four men. The commander of the unit they were s part of had enough took his men across the dmz located the suspected enemy and wiped them out. They say the border instances escalated from squad incursions to at one point we had one and a half regiments involved that they never reported they say they pretty much kept it a secret and just report that men were killed from sniper fire across the dmz. I sometimes don't like that the government hides combat losses they kept the Korean incidents quiet because they were afraid if it became common knowledge it would spark a full fledged committment by either side and the war would be back on. Anyway I sometimes wonder if my dad could have gotten caught up in that if he had graduated on time. Was reading this thing about the Korean War and the military had actually considered dropping the bomb on the North Korean capital but the soviets had a bomb too and they feared if they dropped a bomb the soviets would retaliate with a bomb of their own so they decided not too. I think the crazy thing about the Cold War was they had what they called tactical nukes that could be fired from artillery guns 105 to the 203s I'm sure if we had them the soviets did as well if not in the smaller artillery in som large mortar or short range rocket. If the Warsaw Pact had ever really attacked I'm sure things would have gotten really messy. Now the Warsaw Pact by itself had more tanks than naoto but they were mostly t54/55s and naoto had mostly 105 and 120 long range guns they might have wiped out most of them at long range like the Israelis did during the 73 war. The soviets have always boasted their tanks were superior but the Arab wars and desert storm proved to most analysts that their were not a lot of soviet tank design did not take in battle field survival I should think that their newer tanks like the m84 t90 and newer have changed that as their tanks are starting to look more like ours with larger turrets with bustle ammo storage like ours with explosive release doors and such. I think it was a bit stupid of chobram selling the Russians their armor technology and saying it wasn't classified now that was a stupid thing too the US
And UK should have classified it to just say they thought it was a given was pretty stupid. I'm sure the Russians would have figured it out at some point but I'm sure the information helped the create the new rpg that is able to punch thru our tanks. Early rpgs were instructive they crews saying they would get hit by several but no effect but now a 300 dollar anti tank rocket can take out a 10/12 million dollar tank they are working on that new defense system for armor were a computer control sensor tracks and then fires a explosive charge or another system using a laser to destroy in commons rockets and antitank missiles and a plasma shield still experimental but they say they are making progress. War in the near future is going to be really crazy with energy weapons and shields. Getting closer to Star Trek. Have a great day and rest of the year

 

Been reading more about soviet tanks and they had a series of tanks KV and t34 that they were putting the 100 anti tank gun on they tried putting it in a standard t34 85 turret but the turret and tank couldn't take the repeated recoil shock they had to beef up the turret and reenorce the hull and widen the turret ring. That same turret was used on the t44. Says after all that work they decided not to build them as they didn't need them they had the 85 in full mass production and they were winning the war and they t44 less than two thousand built and arrived too late for combat the articles said.
The KV the multitude of turrets the rolled armor and welded the cast turret, the 85 and 100 gun turret, a multi cast turret to increase production smaller casts were produced faster so the cast a turret in parts the front and back keyed to the side pieces and welded. Then the upgraded turrets with added armor the s turret made to reduce weight. I've been reworking a number of my KV turrets to reflect the many different ones I like the cast one I'm working on looking good. I always thought the KV 85 turret was the one used on the IS series as an article I read said so but recently found an article saying the 85 turret was used as a basis for the IS turret but it was different the iS turret was lower a bit wider and a tad longer they were similar but these is a lot of differences I started a 85 turret not sure how much I'll need to do to correct it. I really hate it when I find sources that conflict but glad to learn more. There's a lot of soviet tanks that they don't have in my collection. Like the SU 85 and 100 they have just about every German tank destroyer and those SU were considered some of the best tank killers but they only have the SU 122 howiter tank they have some resin stuff but not as good as the mainstream Takara, f toys, or pit road tanks. Figure it should be a fairly easy conversion the only change is the gun mount and if I get one it's similar on both. Then the ISU 122 and 152 high velocity guns t should be able to steal a gun from one of my IS 2s and make a long 152 barrel. There's not a lot of soviet light tanks as they made a lot they really were into trying to build the ultimate light tank. They should have compiled the m24s we gave them. I was reading the vehicles we gave them we surely gave them a lot of armored cars m8 m2/3/5 half tracks and scout cars. A bunch of light tanks the m5 m24 we even delivered one m26 for evaluation. The a out of equipment is rather large but the soviets said we hardly supplied them with equipment , ok so what we gave them wasn't even a tenth of what they made and fielded but they needed it or they wouldn't have asked for it. I know they say they turn our Sherman's into tractors after the war that would seem rather wasteful as a Sherman probably uses a lot more fuel than a small tractor and the soviets had built thousands of them as well during the war they had at least eight different models of military tractors for artillery. Many were from standard tractors that were militarized. They had one that really reminded me of the German rso tractor, that they later put a low armored driver box and mounted the Pak 40 on the flat bed. Funny they had m3 spgs with 57 guns while though commanders in the eto requested such I read we never really built any and if they did exist they were field conversions. Any way I it amazing the thing the soviets were trying to build back then, lol, the behemoth some stickers I read say just on paper a few say an attempt to build a few prototypes was started I'm not sure if their real or not but I've stared to build one taking three KV models to do it, lol. Still it will be a crazy vehicle to sit on the shelf with my other tanks
Wish I had been able to get more of these new kits that have the separate road wheels an tracks and some even have the gun mounts able to elevate. The 1/144 scale market has cooled for awhile they were pumping out new stuff like crazy and really cheap like 3/5 bucks for new kits I would buy like six to a dozen at those prices. But now their like five to even ten times the price now.

 

The Soviets wanted to mount the 100 mm gun on the T-44 but the turret ring was too small. Hence the production of the T-44 was very limited. However, it did conttribute to Soviet tank evolution (lowering of the hull) which became evident in the T-54 series that mounted the 100 mm AT gun.

We didn't upgrade our Patton's 90mm gun until the M-47 and that was after the British complained that we were falling behind in gun development.

 

Yeah there was some fierce arguments over going from the 105 to the 120 the army loved the 105 but nato wanted to get ammunition types compatible so we had to go to the 120 like the army loved their 45 and had to go to the 9mm. I think the whole gun competition thing was a farce. The sig was superior in most categories but the Barretta won, but the gun used at the comps was not the gun we got. Not only did we get a cheaper gun,and I don't mean cost, but a buddy of mine who was in the armory and had to refurbish guns said they had to go thru all their 9mm because they were showing cracks in the frames after a short time in service and they had to rebuild a bunch with new frames. Said the last time they had to rebuild their 45s he went thru the parts and found enough good parts in the reject piles to build two good guns. His best prize was one that the serial indicated it was wwii issue and the frame and slide serial numbers matched, said that was rare because the guns are rebuilt every so many years and the parts get matched up with other guns or parts like frames or slides replaced. Anyway he was really happy to get it. Said he hated the barretta, said the 45s lasted lots longer and had a better feel. Anyway I just thought it was a rip that we chose a gun that we didn't really get and I bet the senator of the state that Barrett USA is in was the one who got the thing white washed thru. Like if your going to cheat why even waste the time and money on a competition but I guess it makes it look legitimate. Like when they did the f20 f16 fly off and they said that the f20 out flew the f16 but the air force chose it anyway. Because they had funded the f16 from the beginning and never wanted a point defense fighter that was just a bunch of bull because they were not suppose to just make up there own contract deals but they had and to cover it up they had to do the whole bid out and comp but they had already made a deal on the f16 to develope it into a multi role fighter and Northrop got burned. As an apology then they got the b2 contract but then they cut the number of bombers down big time. The military does a lot of shady deals. Like when the Ohio class subs were being built the builder use sub grade steel on the hull skin the navy caught it and had them strip it off and replace it but at their expense , oh no,it was paid for with US tax dollars, hell if I was part of that committee I would have thrown someone in jail for defraud and cancelled any new contracts with those guys and gave the new contracts to another builder like hell we still,have more than one ship builder. And when the Sgt. York program went all south they found the primary contractor was billing hours to the project from other contracts to hid over spending and thus the DCAA was born, lol, I got to build or help build their office in la mirada, we did all the power outlets we ran a lot of dedicated circuits like every office had at least two circuits as computers and printers and other appliances used a lot more power then, and we ran all the phone and Internet cables I personally ran about ten ten thousand foot spools of cable. Wow that was a lot of cables took me three days to get all the cables ran. DCAA, defense contractors audit agency. Created to over watch contractors and make sure hours are billed correctly and to the right projects.

 

Yeah the soviets were really into making their tanks really low. When I was on camp Pendleton they have a bunch of t55s they brought back from desert storm I was amazed how low and squat they were I was like hell the driver must have to crawl or slide in and practically be lying in his position. These guys doing a show about the t55 were saying how tight it was in there and that they felt squeezed in. Kills me because they say when they did the t72 they made it even lower but they basically still followed the t55 layout that made the tank vulnerable to hits that blew the turrets off. Many countries have modernized their t72s to eleminate the problem changing the storage of the ammo.

 

They adopted wet stowage at last?

Normal Russian tanker was 5'6" or shorter. Big Texans can't fit in or stay in without major issues.

 

The chieftain is six feet I think they said and he would say how in certain tanks he would have issues in getting in and moving around

 

Yeah they said that the cramped quarters caused crew fatigue in a lot less time compared to American and other western tanks. One of the reasons the Russians went with an auto loader because they wanted to reduce the crew capacity to ease crew confinement but it only helped a little as they made the later tanks even more squatty. Like the Abrams is a lot lower than the m48/60 but they say it retains the same crew confinement even though it's much lower. Another big problem especially with the t54/55/62/72 was the ammo storage. Many countries have followed our example and built new turrets with bustle ammo storage and blow out panels like the Indian t55s with the arjun turrets looks huge on the small hull but appearently it works well and the newer PLA tanks with the newer turrets doing something similar having more swuarish turrets with bustle storage. The Chinese have been advancing quite a lot they have engineers sent here to learn from us and analyze what other countries are doing military wise and copy or even try to improve upon. I wonder what other techs they are working on that we may have started but then lacked the funding to continue. Right now they just have so much money they are spending millions into so many advanced techs. I'm sure if they ever do decide to actually invade Taiwan they have some stuff that might surprise everyone. We know they recently built several amphibious assault ships and they are building an amphibious assault craft that is fast on the water unlike our AAVs but a vehicle that can skim calm water at a fast pace things get different on the open sea and the China seas are rather rough one of the reasons the Chinese could never retake Japan hundreds of years ago when they built huge ships that carried hundreds of men a number of ships with thousands of men sent back in the days of the emperor were lost it happened so much they decided that Japan wasn't worth the expense they were losing many ships and it cost a lot of money to equip the and train soldiers and they lost all those men and their expensive equipment. I wonder if that's why that say Japanese waters are theirs because Japan centuries ago was one of their colonies that broke away.

 

My Cousin tried out for the Royal Marines, running down a hill he hit a stake from a previous exercise and fractured his ankle. He ended up in the Military Police

 

Oops, double post

 

That sounds bad glad he wasn't too badly hurt, they say the military has 100 to 200 training deaths a year. One exercise a m60 went off a bridge and the whole crew drowned. Then we just had that terrible accident off Catalina that they say the AAV7 should never have left the maintenance shops that it wasn't sea worthy to begin with so sad. The camp commander and commander of the amphibious units were replaced and the whole amphib units were order for full inspection and repairs if needed. Actually wondering when they are going to replace those as they are getting rather old. Hope it's something similar to the Chinese vehicle fast on the water but far more reliable. I had to lol, watching that demonstration video that thing driving into the water and racing off looked great until it started to plow and then just dived under hope the crew got out ok. Which I don't get need to read more on the Catalina incident as I thought these guys are supposed to have escape breathers in case the thing sinks. When I was doing the survey on Pendleton a guy told us the big cranes they had at the harbor where they practice was to pull them up from the bottom as they sink the all the time in practice and they have to be able to escape from a sinking craft. Anyway they had two huge cranes one on either side of the small bay that they used for practice. They say many sink when the crews open up as they get close to shore and the AAV is so low in the water that even moderate swells over wash the vehicle and flood it. Maybe they need to have a newer upgrade where the thing has a small tower that is higher to avert that. I know their working on a replacement hope it's lots better wonder if FMC is working on it it's actually amazing how many projects FMC has done since wwii. Like the m113 the vehicle before the Bradley and the m2 and m3 Bradley. The MRLS and support vehicles based on that chassis. I know their working on another support vehicle based on the Bradley chassis as well as new support vehicles. FMC seems to be our leading manufacturer on APCs and support.

 

I keep finding more stuff on soviet tank developement on the KV a multitude of new turrets and guns, 85/ 100/ 107/ 122 hv/152hv, the soviets also trying new guns a high velocity 107 and the 122 and a 152 what a huge monster gun and long. That might have giving those hunting tigers and the maus a good pounding. The strange configurations they took some turrets that looked like the old kv2s and pot some of those huge guns in even found a kv2 like turret that was casted. That must have been a massive casting really gave it a round bell look.

Got my kv1 cast turret looking good and my KV1S turret looking ok but my KV bolted armor I think I'm going to need to redo it's not looking right plus I forgot to put the vision and pistol ports and the armor was two piece I forgot to make the split for the two plates but I should be able to use most of the first turret so no waste there. Also started my KV2s two types plus a German reworked KV1
and a KV2. I like the German modified KV with the kwk40 and the command coupola. Looks interesting I don't know why it took the soviets so long to adopt the command coupola on their tanks was it just another thing they thought would slow production so they put it off for so long but finally adopted it when they saw all other countries were using them. It really amazes me how many tanks they Us and the U.K. Sent to Russia I'm sure they studied the tanks to see what features they could use or improve as the soviets were not beyond learning from us. Like they learned to build jets from the British copying the rolls Royce whittle engine lol, the Brits tried to sue the soviets lol, like they would ever pay the soviets countered their engine was not a copy it was better and they never paid a cent. I have to say it was better like us they realized if you could design a better compressor you could increase the power. I'm sure we shared our improvements with Britian. Our engines put out even better thrust. However the whittle engine had limitations we all knew it and everyone was trying to improve the German axial engines the standard turbine jet engine of today. The Germans are credited with the axial engine but others had designed one before the Germans but the Germans were the first to put it into mass production. If they had gotten a British engine they might have been able to mass produce a cheaper more reliable jet. I'm actually surprised they didn't as whittle was working on that engine concept even before the war you'd think some one in Germany would have heard about his work. The Germans had lots of problem with their engine as they were running short of high heat resistant metals that slowed production, plus they say the slave workers didn't always do the best work and lots of manufacturing flaws occurred. Anyway the Germans were clever and probably would have seen the sdvantages of the whittle engine for the time period it didn't need the special me tails the axial engine needed and it was cheaper abpndeasier to build and the engines lasted a lot longer I read that the engines on the 262 sometimes lasted only one flight and had to be replaced after only hours of service. That's pretty bad no wonder so many were captured on the ground many with out engines.

 

The training needs to push hard or it isn't worthwhile. But that rather heartless statement hides a big loss...

I recently read that the Western Allies lost more soldiers training for D-Day than they actually did on the day itself. Because it was spread out over a long time and many units it wasn't/isn't obvious, but it does highlight the dangers of military training