T-34

The Soviets ultimately built over 80,000 T-34s of all variants, allowing steadily greater numbers to be fielded despite the loss of tens of thousands in combat against the German Wehrmacht.

[13] In 1937, the Red Army had assigned engineer Mikhail Koshkin to lead a new team to design a replacement for the BT tanks at the Kharkiv Komintern Locomotive Plant (KhPZ).

[25] Koshkin died of pneumonia (exacerbated by the drive from Kharkiv to Moscow) at the end of that month, and the T-34's drivetrain developer, Alexander Morozov, was appointed Chief Designer.

[b] No bureaucrat would approve production of the new gun, but Gorky and KhPZ started producing it anyway; official permission came from the State Defense Committee only after troops praised the weapon's performance in combat against the Germans.

[47] The examinations, performed at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, revealed problems with overall armour build quality, especially of the plate joins and welds, as well as the use of soft steel combined with shallow surface tempering.

[59] A Waffenamt-Prüfwesen 1 report estimated[60] that with the T-34 angled 30 degrees sidewards and APCBC round, the Tiger I's 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56 would have to close in to 100 m (110 yd) to achieve a penetration in the T-34's glacis, and could penetrate the frontal turret of a T-34-85 at 1,400 m, the mantlet at 400 m, and the nose at 300 m[61] Ground trials by employees of NIBT Polygon in May 1943 reported that the 88 mm KwK 36 gun could pierce the T-34 frontal hull from 1,500 meters at 90 degrees and cause a disastrous burst effect inside the tank.

[62] Analysis of destroyed T-34 tanks in the Korean War found that the 76 and 90 mm armour-piercing rounds of the M41 Walker Bulldog and M46 Patton could penetrate the T-34 at most angles from 800 yd (730 m).

The abundance of gaps in the joints of the armour was seen as an undesirable feature of the tank due to the risk of injury from "entry of bullet splash and shell fragments".

[64] The 76.2 mm (3.00 in) F-34 gun, fitted on the vast majority of T-34s produced through to the beginning of 1944, was able to penetrate any early German tank's armour at normal combat ranges.

[68] As a result of the T-34's two-man turret, weak optics and poor vision devices, the Germans noted: T-34s operated in a disorganized fashion with little coordination or else tended to clump together like a hen with its chicks.

[69] Early in the war, the commander fought at a further disadvantage; the forward-opening hatch and the lack of a turret cupola forced him to observe the battlefield through a single vision slit and traversable periscope.

The motor is weak, very overloaded and sparks horribly, as a result of which the device regulating the speed of the rotation burns out, and the teeth of the cogwheels break into pieces.

During the marches and in order to allow the engines to cool down, it is absolutely necessary to make a stop every half hour for a minimum duration of between fifteen and twenty minutes.

[103] In another incident, a single Soviet T-34 was hit more than 30 times by a battalion-sized contingent of German 37mm and 50mm anti-tank guns, yet survived intact and drove back to its own lines a few hours later.

[110] The shortage of repair equipment and recovery vehicles led the early T-34 crews to enter combat carrying a spare transmission on the engine deck.

[113]As the invasion progressed, German infantry began receiving increasing numbers of the 7.5 cm Pak 40 anti-tank guns, which were capable of penetrating the T-34's armour at long range.

Larger numbers of the 88 mm Flak guns also arrived, which could easily defeat a T-34 at very long ranges, though their size and general unwieldiness meant that they were often difficult to move into position in the rough Soviet terrain.

[citation needed] In July 1943, the Germans launched Operation Citadel, in the region around Kursk, their last major offensive on the Eastern Front in the Second World War.

The Soviet high command's decision to focus on one cost-effective design, cutting costs and simplifying production wherever possible while only allowing relatively minor improvements, had proven to be an astute choice for the first two years of the war.

[115] After improved German Panzer IVs with the high-velocity 7.5cm (2.95 in) KwK 40 gun were encountered in combat in 1942, a project to design an entirely new Soviet tank was begun, with the goals of increasing armour protection while adding modern features like a torsion-bar suspension and a three-man turret.

[132] Red Army combined-arms forces achieved complete surprise and used a powerful, deep-penetrating attack in a classic double encirclement pattern, spearheaded by the T-34-85.

[149] On 3 May 1995, a VRS T-34-85 attacked an UNPROFOR outpost manned by the 21st Regiment of the Royal Engineers in Maglaj, Bosnia, injuring six British peacekeepers, with at least one of them sustaining a permanent disability.

[157] Cypriot National Guard forces equipped with some 35 T-34-85 tanks helped to support a coup by the Greek junta against President Archbishop Makarios on 15 July 1974.

[160] PLAN T-34s were never deployed during offensive operations against the South African military, being confined to the role of protecting strategic bases inside northern Angola.

In 2018, there were nine countries that maintained T-34s in the inventories of their national armed forces: Cuba, Yemen, the Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam.

The new tank had a turret design based on the T-34-85's, but featured a new hull with torsion-bar suspension and transversely mounted engine; it had a lower profile than the T-34-85 and was simpler to manufacture.

[176] In Russia, in both 2023 and 2024, a single T-34-85 appeared as the sole tank in the Victory Day Parade held in Red Square in Moscow, leading to ridicule from Western media.

[199][200] A T-34-85 tank monument in the East German city of Chemnitz (then known as Karl-Marx-Stadt) became the target of a 1980 bomb-attack that inflicted minor damage on the vehicle and blew out nearby windows.

[209] German military intelligence in World War II referred to the two main production families as T-34/76 and T-34/85, with subvariants receiving letter designations such as T-34/76A – this nomenclature has been widely used in the West, especially in popular literature.

The French Musée des Blindés at Saumur holds two T-34s, including one in full working condition that is displayed in action at its summer "Carrousel" live tank exhibition.

BT-7 , A-20, T-34 (model 1940), and T-34 (model 1941)
Medium tank A-32
Pre-production prototype A-34 with a complex single-piece hull front.
T-34 tanks headed to the front.
Polish T-34 Model 1942 in Poznań , Poland. The model 1942's hexagonal turret distinguishes it from earlier models.
Non-penetrating hits to the turret armour of an early variant T-34.
T-34 side view, displaying the F-34 gun, with an ISU-122 and T-54 in background
The T-34's 12-cylinder Model V-2-34 diesel engine at the Finnish Tank Museum in Parola
German training mockup of a T-34 built over a captured Polish TK-3 tankette
Burning T-34, Soviet Union, 1941
T-34 being used by the Wehrmacht
Soviet T-34 tanks during the Operation Little Saturn in December 1942
Soviet T-34 tanks await orders to move forward during the Zhitomir–Berdichev Offensive in January 1944
A T-34 Model 1942 (left), next to the T-43 .
Rear view of a T-34-85 from Factory 174. In the center is a circular transmission access hatch, flanked by exhaust pipes, MDSh smoke canisters on the hull rear, and extra fuel tanks on the hull sides.
Interior of a T-34-85 viewed from the driver's hatch, showing the ammunition boxes on which the loader had to stand in the absence of a turret basket. In the foreground is the driver's seat. Levers for radiator flaps can be seen on the firewall.
Captured T-34 Model 1943 tanks pressed into service with the Wehrmacht , January 1944
US Marines knocked out this North Korean T-34-85 in September 1950 while US and United Nations forces advanced on Seoul after their successful amphibious landings at Inchon during the Korean War . At least two penetrating hits can be seen on the tank's front.
Restored FAPLA T-34-85 at the South African National Museum of Military History , Johannesburg .
A Bosnian Serb Army T-34-85, with rubber matting added in an attempt to hide its thermal signature, near Doboj in early 1996.
Egyptian Army T-34-100 in the Yad la-Shiryon Museum, Israel. 2005.
Egyptian Army T-34-85 in the Egyptian Military museum .
T-34-85s of the People's Liberation Army on Tiananmen Square at the 1950 Chinese National Day parade.
T-34-85 tank in Museo Giron, Cuba
T-34 operators
Current
Former
T-34-85 of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina , 2014.
Chinese T-34 tanks during the Korean War in 1952
Romanian army T-34-85 next to a TACAM R-2 ( National Military Museum , Bucharest )
One of the best-known memorials of the Battle of the Dukla Pass of 1944, near Ladomirová and Svidník , on the Slovak side of the Dukla Pass . A Soviet T-34-85 (left) together with a German Panzer IV Ausf J (right).
A T-34-85 during the 2018 Moscow Victory Day Parade .
T-34-85 on display at Yad La-Shiryon , Israel
A T-34-57 in 1941
An early T-34 at the U.S. Army Armor & Cavalry Collection . This tank was captured by the Germans in Operation Barbarosa . It was sent to the U.S. after the war.