44M Tas

The main armament would likely have been a Hungarian built heavily modified anti-tank version of the 80 mm Bofors AA gun.

To solve this problem, Hungary started to develop the Turán III and Zrínyi assault guns.

In April 1943 the Ministry of Defense (HM) charged the Manfred Weiss factory to design the vehicle.

However, because they were the only Hungarians who saw the modern German vehicles from up close in the given year, 3 HTI specialist officers took part in the designing procedures from the beginning.

The vehicle looked very similar to the German Panther but the designers used the steep slope angle of the Soviet T-34's frontal armor.

The new heavy tank was named Tas in honor of one of the Seven Chieftains of the Magyars (Hungarians), the HM accepted the plans, development and production started in May 1944.

Construction of the prototype vehicle progressed slowly because it was the first entirely domestic tank project of Hungary so it was still in its infancy.

The production hall where the Tas was made collapsed and the sample vehicle completely burned out.

Hungary tried to restart the project at Ganz factory but it did not have enough time to actually start the re-building of the prototype.

[2] The suspension of the Tas was a native design and it used 3 two wheel bogies with leaf springs and shock absorbers.

The Tas had sloped, angled corners of the upper front plate, but their thicknesses are unknown, although some estimate them to be 50 mm.

The turret had a somewhat octagonal shape with a large, wide and curved gun mantlet, like that of the Panther A/D, but a bit larger.

Due to this, it was estimated that the mass production of this gun could not start earlier than the summer of 1944, therefore a temporary armament for the Tas prototypes had to be chosen.

With the 75 mm cannon, the finished sample vehicle made of iron could be tested in the field and later could be easily modified to build in the 80 mm gun which was predicted to be ready by the time a serial vehicle made of armor plates would be finished.

Its muzzle velocity is 730 m/s and its rate of fire is 1000 rounds per minute, although according to a different source these values are 750 m/s and 950 rpm respectively.

[4] Reportedly, the unique sound of these Gebauer machine guns brought fear to the Soviet soldiers on the Eastern Front.

[6] During his research in the 1980s, Hungarian historian Pál Korbuly discovered sources mentioning the production of Tas chassis components in pairs.

He speculated that one vehicle was intended to be a tank destroyer version and created a sketch based on this hypothesis.