In all fairness, the T-34 was unreliable, not as quick as on paper, and had subpar optics and situational awareness until the T-34-85.
The problem is western propagandists keep looking at the tank as it exists in a vacuum, and not how it fits in Soviet doctrine, where the ease of mass production coupled with it having above average armour, decent mobility, and a good HE shell made it excellent within that context.
It was such a successful design it directly inspired the modern MBT through the T-44 and T-54/55, because while it was unexceptional in any particular role, it could do all of them good enough
You see the same thing going on in Ukraine, where western media makes fun of the T series tanks and saying that their Abrams and Leopards and Challengers are so much better. Turns out, that doesn't mean shit when the primary purpose of an MBT is (still) to lob HE at clumps of infantry, and their 70 ton behemoths can't cross bridges or go through mud, and get disabled by drones just like any other tank.
Meanwhile you can say the T-72B and subsequent modernizations are worse in raw specs, but they fulfill their job as mobile fire support for mechanized infantry just fine.
The T-34 was no less reliable than the average tank at the time. In fact, I'd argue that compared to the overengineered German tanks, it was a beast.
Compared to German tanks with their overloaded transmissions and interleaved road wheels the T-34 is a Toyota Hilux. I should clarify unreliable by modern perceptions of reliability. Even in the cases where the T-34 was hastily churned out under pressure where consistency suffered, e.g. Stalingrad, the ease of repair and abundant spare parts made it far better than Nazi wunderwaffe big cats.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Yep, most countries during WW2 that had enough industry to produce tanks figured out a fairly decent medium tank that you could churn out quickly and cheaply was better than a handful of really expensive good on paper heavy tanks except the Nazis. The Sherman and Cromwell for example. Meanwhile the one chance Germany had of making an actually practical tank after the panzer IV was the panther, but Hitler was such an incompetent micromanager he insisted on giving it enough armour to rival heavy tanks, nullifying the mobility benefits of a medium, making the transmission constantly break, and causing the price and production time to increase.
Did anyone ever read that book Incredible Cross-Sections? It made the T-34 sound like a death trap.
I remember reading a account from a Soviet Tanker who preferred Shermans (from lend lease) because the main barrel ammunition they were supplied with didn't explode when it caught fire. But like next line was, hey they tell us the chemical engineers are reversing engineering that for the next batch for the T34s. Like even when there were flaws they were fixing them and improving.
Dmitry Loza
I actually did some research on this a while ago, apparently soviet ammo used a more powerful explosive and that was why they detonated so frequently. So there was a trade off.
Oh, I mean the explosives, not the powder used to fire it at a target.
Makes for bigger boom at the same weight. So more dead fascists.
I sincerely hope to one day get to tell a lib who quotes him that he was a monarchist who hated liberalism and democracy.
It would be funny if one turned up on Hexbear though
I once had a random dude in the elevator quote him to me. I didn't know him, he just went ahead with some weird quote, I look at him weird and he's like "that's Solzhenitsyn" "uh... okay."
I hope he cringes about being a weirdo to this day, bc I found it extremely silly in a bad way
The funny thing about sloped armor is that as a concept it wasn't strange to the germans, after all, their battleships used turtleback citadels which relied on sloped armor to bounce off shells coming from a short distance (unreliable against plunging fire). But they decided to ditch this concept for tanks
HANS, MAKE ZE PANZER A BIG FUNNI BOX JA?
The Nazis knew about sloped tank armour and would have used it if they could have, it was the need to mass produce them with the methods they had available at a reasonable price that forced the boxiness.
The mind blowing for me was to understand that in 1941 T-34 and IS were “better” tanks that anything what nazis could wield, and Red Army still was going from one disaster to another and in 1944 the Panthers and to degree Tigers were “better” but wehrmacht got their asses handed to them.
of tanks.
