Tucker-Jones Anthony - T-54/55

Polish-built T-55s on exercise.

IMAGES OF WAR

THE SOVIET ARMYS COLD WAR MAIN BATTLE TANK

RARE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM WARTIME ARCHIVES

Anthony Tucker-Jones

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

PEN & SWORD MILITARY

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Copyright Pen & Sword Books Limited 2017

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ISBN 978 1 47389 109 8

eISBN 978 1 47389 111 1

Mobi ISBN 978 1 47389 110 4

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T here can be no understating the significant role played by the T-54/55 tank in the Cold War and in the decade following it. While the Kalashnikov AK-47 became the peoples gun, the T-54/55 became the peoples tank. The T-54 and its variants was the most prolific tank ever produced and the very first dedicated Soviet main battle tank as opposed to light, medium or heavy it was the first all-rounder. It proved to be a very worthy successor to the famous T-34, which helped the Red Army gain victory during the Second World War.

The T-54/55 was easily the most successful tank of the Cold War and was involved in almost every single major conflict since the 1950s from Budapest to Baghdad. In fact, the T-54 series has seen more action than any other post-Second World War tank. Although it was rapidly outdated, the T-54/55 formed the backbone of the Warsaw Pacts tank forces and was widely exported around the world, seeing combat with numerous armies well into the early 2000s.

Remarkably, the T-54 was so popular that it even outlasted its successor the T-62. It remained in production for over thirty years, until 1981, by which time worldwide well over 70,000 had been built, easily outstripping the T-34 and making it the most ubiquitous tank of all time. In contrast only 20,000 T-62s had been built when production ended six years earlier in 1975. One of the reasons for this was that the T-62 cost up to three times as much to produce and the only real advantage it could offer was its heavier gun. All its other capabilities were broadly comparable.

While Moscow never released any official figures for T-54/55 production, it has been estimated that the Soviet Union alone built about 50,000. It was also manufactured in China, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania with approximately another 27,000 bringing total numbers to around 77,000. Some sources even put the total global figure as high as 100,000. This beats T-34 numbers hands down, even allowing for post-war T-34 construction by Czechoslovakia and Poland, amounting to about 60,000. This makes the T-54/55 the most widely-used tank in history a quite remarkable achievement.

Despite its incredible track record, the T-54/55 remains overshadowed by almost every other Cold War tank. Indeed, the Soviet T-62 and T-72 achieved far greater notoriety during the numerous regional conflicts of the Cold War and the subsequent wars after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A ll photographs are via the author. The publishers and the author are particularly indebted to Tim and Preston Isaac, the proprietors of the Cobbaton Combat Collection, for generously making their Czech-built T-54 available for a detailed photo shoot. The author is also grateful to Dan Reoch of D&B Militaria for supplying samples of inert former warsaw Pact T-54/55 tank rounds and training rounds.

Photos of preserved Chinese tanks in the Beijing Military Museum were taken by Max Smith. Graham Thompson also ably assisted with photos of the Polish-built version. Max Smith and Gerry van Tonder provided shots of the Czech armoured recovery version. Vasco Barbic kindly offered guidance on the Egyptian tanks. This book would be much poorer without their assistance and expertise. Any errors though are solely the authors

T owards the end of the Second World War the Soviets decided that rather than maintaining large fleets of dedicated light, medium and heavy tanks they needed a good all-rounder this resulted in the main battle tank (MBT) concept. A one size fits all solution.

Soviet tank designers began to look at developing a successor for the T-34/85 medium tank and the IS (loseph Stalin) heavy tank. Drawing on their experiences with the T-34/76, T-34/85, KV-85 and IS-1/2, in 1944 they came up with the T-44, which bore a striking resemblance to the late-war T-34/85 and was armed with the same 85mm gun.

It was essentially the same tank with a number of modifications. The main improvements to the rugged T-34/85 design were a similar-shaped turret but without the characteristic thick turret neck, plus a better-shaped hull. Other improvements included a transverse-mounted engine and transmission and torsion-bar suspension. The crew was reduced from five in the T-34/85 to four in the T-44.

One of the designers tasks was to lower the height of the T-34/85 that first went into service in the summer of 1944. Upgunning the T-34/76 had resulted in a much bigger turret, which increased the T-34s height from around 2.4m to over 2.7m. While the improvement from 76.2mm gun to 85mm gun was very welcome, it made the T-34/85s bulky turret a much better target. Similarly, the IS heavy tank was almost 3m high.

On the T-44 one way to achieve a lower silhouette was to eliminate the prominent collar at the turret base. The hull side armour, which on the T-34 was sloped, was vertical and thicker. This was to permit a wider turret ring because the turrets armour was more slanted than that on the T-34/85. Another way that the height was reduced was by installing the diesel engine transversely. Also the Christie spring suspension was replaced with a torsion-bar suspension. The result was that the T-44 had a height of just under 2.5m.

Improving on the T-34/85s main armament was unsuccessful. Attempts were made to upgun the T-44 with a 122mm tank gun but the turret was too small, although experiments with a 100mm gun were slightly more promising. However, only a few prototypes were ever built and the production T-44 retained the 85mm gun. The only way to get round this problem was to design a new tank with a larger turret.