Tank overhaul is pretty kewl, in one they completely overhaul a elephant. Prop up the hill and strip off the tracks and running gear. The tank was captured abandoned when a armor piercing shell hit the drive casing to the left sprocket and damaged the drive. Pull the engine do a complete rebuild, pull the drive case apart weld pieces to fill the hole machine new drive parts. A beautiful and through job. Then there's a kv1 build. They have parts for a kv but short the lower hull. They use an IS hull saying that it was similar but a few inches narrower. Anyway they do a fantastic build. Don't remember why they didn't have the lower hull for the kv. There are many kvs still all over Russia waiting to be recovered and restored. Russia over last few years has been salvaging lots of WWII tanks a number of tanks from rivers and lakes and recently a M4A2 from a swamp. Yeah we didn't give them much.
Sometimes the Soviets were quick.... SU-152 - Wikipedia . In December 1942 three different designs of "pillbox killer" vehicles were introduced by various engineer groups from the major Soviet artillery and tank factories. All of these designs used the ML-20 gun as a primary armament, with the KV-1S heavy tank chassis. After some discussion, the project of Josef Kotin was chosen for further mass production. The entire project was designated "KV-14" and assembly of the first prototype (called "Object 236") began on December 31, 1942. It was completed after 25 days. Plant trials of "Object 236" began on January 25, 1943. After a number of successful plant tests the more stringent state tests began. "Object 236" succeeded again. On February 14, 1943 the State Defense Committee accepted it for Red Army service and immediately launched it into mass production at the Chelyabinskiy Kirovskiy Zavod (Chelyabinsk Kirov Plant, ChKZ).
They had three designs of which one won. Do not know even does the Soviets know but it was finally named Su152.
