The T-34 was a tank built by the Soviet Union in 1940, a year before Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. The T-34 would prove its mettle in various battles, some of which including the battles of Stalingrad, Moscow, Kursk, and Berlin.
 The T-34 was made with several features that opposing Axis tanks would envy. According to the Ontario Regiment RCAC Museum, The T-34 had armor put on a slope, a strong engine, and wide tracks. Granted, it was less powerful than some of its adversaries such as the Tiger family of tanks, but Globalsecurity.org says that the T-34’s main strength was ease of production and ease of repair. This would be why the T-34 would be so feared. Unfortunately, not everything about the tank was good. The blueprint showed an extremely well rounded tank with all of the benefits above, but the actual product was undeniably worse. All participants in the war tempered the armor on their tanks, which would make the armor stronger without adding more weight, serving a similar purpose to sloping the armor. The Soviets would also heat treat the armor on their tanks, but they did it at a higher temperature than everyone else did. According to Globalsecurity.org, This would make the armor extremely hard, but also brittle. This meant that even if a shot did not penetrate through the armor, small metal fragments could come off and bounce around the inside of the tank, killing the crew regardless. Globalsecurity.org has said that most of these tanks did not have a radio and were forced to communicate by flag which would be difficult to see on a battlefield. This caused attacks to lack cohesion. Globalsecurity.org describes the T-34’s reliability as also not that decent either, ending up being extremely unreliable. During the counterattack after the battle of Stalingrad, three hundred twenty six out of the four hundred T-34s were destroyed. Sixty six of these were combat losses while the rest were mechanical failures. Most of these problems were on the T-34/76 and would be addressed in 1944 by the introduction of the T-34/85.  Globalsecurity.org states that after the war, the T-34 would be retired and replaced by the T-44 and T-54. These would replace the leaf spring suspension and 85mm gun on the T-34, which was considered obsolete. Daniel Meagher in an article for Slashgear, said that: despite the T-34 being over eighty years old, it still sees regular service in various armed forces. Most of these countries were part of the Soviet sphere of influence. The wave of time has passed over the old vehicle, but it still has that same firepower that defeated the Nazis even though modern tanks can handle it just fine. Even though the T-34 has been long retired from frontline combat, do not forget what it has done. |
