Modern Warfare

Tanks and Armoured Vehicles

Anthony Tucker-Jones

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781473862746
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

The T-54, T-62 and T-72 main battle tanks along with the personnel carriers, assault guns, self-propelled guns and anti-tank missiles that are illustrated in this photographic history represent the high point in the design and manufacture of armoured vehicles by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Although the superpowers never came to blows, the 'Cold War' was far from cold, as numerous 'hot' proxy wars were fought in Africa and the Middle East, and these conflicts employed the Soviet weaponry that is shown in action in the colour and black-and-white photographs selected for this book.Between the 1950s and 1980s Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries produced thousands of tanks and armoured vehicles ready for the Third World War. They embarked on a technological arms race with the NATO allies in an attempt to counter each new piece of equipment as it appeared in service. Much of this Soviet weaponry has achieved almost iconic status and, despite its age, remains in service with armies, guerrilla forces and terrorist organizations around the world today. It is also of enduring interest to collectors, re-enactors and modellers who are fascinated by the military equipment of the late twentieth century.

Chapter One

T-54/55 Main Battle Tank

On 23 October 1956, elements of two motor rifle divisions from the Soviet garrison in Hungary entered Budapest to forestall Hungarian attempts to throw off Moscow’s domination. Two further divisions moved across the Hungarian-Romanian border to support them. These forces were equipped with the T-34 tank, victor of the Second World War. Their crews came in for a nasty surprise as the T-34s proved vulnerable to Molotov cocktails on the streets of Budapest and, in the face of unexpectedly strong resistance, the Soviet troops were forced to withdraw.

However, Moscow was not deterred in the least. On 4 November 1956 a fresh phase of fighting started when more Soviet troops were committed with the much newer T-54 MBT. The latter was not so easy to disable and the Hungarians were overwhelmed in ten days. The West, distracted by the Suez Crisis, failed to notice the baptism of fire of the Soviet Army’s brand new tank, which was to become an icon of the Cold War.

From the Horn of Africa to Southeast Asia, the ubiquitous T-54/55 and T-62 tanks have been central to numerous regional conflicts fought since the Second World War. For many years they formed the armoured backbone of the Warsaw Pact armies allied to Moscow, and were also dispatched around the world to numerous Soviet client states. The T-54/55 has seen service with well over eighty countries while the T-62 ended up in service with around twenty. No other tanks have ever enjoyed such global success.

T-54/55s were delivered to countries such as Afghanistan, Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iraq, Libya, Mozambique, Syria, Vietnam and Yemen, all of which were involved in numerous bloody wars. In particular, Afghanistan and Iraq became graveyards for thousands of abandoned and rusting T-54s and T-62s. The Israelis ended up with so many captured from the Arab armies that they put them into service themselves.

The Soviet Union’s strategic reserves and production capabilities were such that they could swiftly re-supply its allies at very short notice. This proved vital during the Arab-Israeli Wars when the Arabs tended to lose vast numbers of tanks to superior Israeli tactics and gunnery. On a number of occasions Moscow was able to stave off their defeat by conducting a massive re-supply operation.

During the Cold War a considerable proportion of Moscow’s tank fleet consisted of the T-54/T-55 MBT. Around 50,000 were built between 1954 and 1981 and many were issued to Soviet motor rifle divisions.

T-55s of the Ugandan Army on parade during the 1970s. At this time the Ugandans also fielded limited numbers of T-34 and PT-76 tanks.

T-54/55 tanks captured by the Israelis during the Arab-Israeli wars. Many of these were refurbished and put into service with the Israeli army.

Afghan Mujahideen with a captured T-54. Both the Soviet and Afghan armies used this tank type during the Soviet-Afghan War.

An Israeli-supplied upgraded T-55 known as the Tiran-5 abandoned by the South Lebanese Army.

Ethiopian T-55s outside the presidential palace in Addis Ababa following the fall of the government in 1991. Ethiopia was blighted by civil war throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Although the T-54 went into production in the late 1940s, it was dubbed the T-54. It is readily identifiable from the subsequent improved T-55 by the frying pan-like ventilator dome on the left-hand side of the turret – clearly visible on these Cambodian Army T-54s.

Originally the T-54 and the T-62 were designed to overwhelm the forces of NATO on the central plain of Germany if the Warsaw Pact armies ever stormed through the Fulda Gap. As a result they were squat, offering the lowest profile possible, the reasoning being they would have to close with NATO’s ground forces as swiftly as possible. In contrast, NATO’s tanks were designed to keep the enemy at arm’s-length, so presented a much higher silhouette to give the tank gunners greater visibility and range. The T-54 and T-62’s low silhouette and therefore much reduced gun depression/elevation was to prove a distinct disadvantage when fighting amongst the sand dunes of the Middle East during the Arab-Israeli Wars.

In the closing years of the Second World War the Soviet Union designed a new medium tank called the T-44 that sought to improve upon the highly battle-proven T-34/76 and T-34/85 which carried the Red Army to Berlin. The T-44 only appeared in very limited numbers between 1945 and 1949, seeing service at the end of the Second World War and then during the Hungarian Uprising in 1956.

It was followed by the T-54, the first prototype appearing in 1946 with production commencing the following year in Kharkov. It had a very distinctive mushroomshaped turret that drew on that of the Joseph Stalin heavy tank, which provided excellent shot-deflection surfaces. The all-welded T-54 hull consisted of three compartments, driver’s at the front, fighting compartment in the middle and engine/transmission in the rear.

The round turret was a one-piece casting with the top comprising two D-shaped pieces of armour welded together down the middle. The commander sat on the left of the turret with the gunner on the same side but in a more forward position. The commander’s cupola could be traversed through 360 degrees, with a single-piece hatch that opened forward with a single periscope on each side. A TPK-1 sight with a single periscope either side was mounted in the forward part of the top of the cupola. The loader sat on the right of the turret and had a periscope and a single hatch that opened to the rear.

An early photograph of the T-54-2 on manoeuvres. It went into production in 1949 and was followed by the T-54A and T-54B. At the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse Moscow was believed to still have almost 20,000 T-54/55s in its inventory. Many have since been scrapped or sold off.

A Soviet AFV crewman in the standard tanker’s padded helmet – the gold CA (for Soviet Army) identifies that he is not a tanker, otherwise he would have a tank symbol.

The driver sat at the front of the tank to the left and had a single-piece hatch that swung to the left. There were two periscopes forward of this hatch, one of which could be replaced by an infra-red periscope which was used in conjunction with the infra-red searchlight mounted on the right side of the glacis plate. To the right of the driver was an ammunition stowage space, batteries and a small fuel tank.

The T-54 engine was mounted in the rear of the hull and the tank used an electrical start-up system with a compressed-air system as a back-up in cold weather. In contrast the subsequent T-55 used a compressed-air engine starter system, with an electrical back-up. This was because, unlike the T-54, the T-55 had an AK-150 air compressor to refill the air-pressure cylinders.

The T-55 appeared in 1958 and was essentially the T-54 with a new turret without the distinctive rooftop ventilator dome. It also had a new stabiliser, the ammunition load increased to forty-three rounds (up from thirty-four), new running gear and a more powerful V-55 diesel engine that gave slightly greater horsepower, though the speed of 50km/h remained the same. The T-54/T-55 series had a torsion-bar suspension that consisted of five road wheels with a very distinctive gap between the first and second road wheel. The drive sprocket was at the rear and the idler at the front. Neither the T-54 nor the T-55 had track return rollers.

Similar to the T-34 tank, the T-54/55’s all-steel tracks had steel pins that were not held at the outer edge and therefore travelled towards the hull. A raised piece of metal welded to the hull just forward of the sprocket drove the track pins back in every time they passed.

A number of bridgelayers employed the T-55 chassis, including the Soviet MTU-20, the Czechoslovak MT-55 seen here and the jointly-developed East German and Polish BLG-60. Such equipment formed an integral part of Soviet armoured div...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface: Modern Warfare Series
• Introduction: The Cold War
• Chapter One: T-54/55 Main Battle Tank
• Chapter Two: T-62 & T-64 Main Battle Tanks
• Chapter Three: T-72 & T-80 Main Battle Tanks
• Chapter Four: PT-76 Amphibious Light Tank
• Chapter Five: BTR Wheeled Armoured Personnel Carriers
• Chapter Six: BMP Infantry Fighting Vehicle & MT-LB Armoured Personnel Carrier
• Chapter Seven: ASU Airborne Assault Vehicle & BMD Airborne Combat Vehicle
• Chapter Eight: BRDM Amphibious Scout Car
• Chapter Nine: Self-Propelled Artillery
• Chapter Ten: Anti-Tank Missiles
• Chapter Eleven: Anti-Tank Helicopters
• Chapter Twelve: Soviet Equipment in Combat
• Epilogue: Money Not Tanks
• Suggested Further Reading