Saturday, October 3, 2015

More T-34 reliability problems…

In WWII Myths - T-34 Best Tank of the war I made a correction. I had written that:

Still there are examples of T-34’s breaking down during assaults even late in the war (17). For instance the 5th Guards Tank army in 1943 lost as much as 15% of its tanks during its march to Prokhorovka. In August ’43 the 1st Tank army lost 50% of its tanks due to malfunction. As late as the second half of 1944 tank units tried to replace engines with more than 30 hours of operation before a major attack.’
It seems the 15% figure was not correct. The 5th Guards Tank army actually lost 31.5% of its tanks during its march to Prokhorovka. Superior Soviet engineering FTW!

2 comments:

  1. WW2 tanks and aircraft were more or less disposable and it won't surprise me at all if even western Allies had quite a high percentage of operational losses with tanks, even with much more reliable M4 Shermans. In August 1944 the biggest problems for both Soviet and US/British tank forces were surely not exhausted Germans but technical issues after 200-300 miles of penetration. Those T-34's not destroyed by Germans in June-July were likely rather useless for further action. Red Army needed brand new ones.

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    1. That's true but the T-34 reliability problems are not just a result of difficult combat operations. They were due to problems with design, construction and usage. Check:

      http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.gr/2012/07/wwii-myths-t-34-best-tank-of-war.html

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