Red Star – White Elephant?

Red Star – White Elephant? Were the IS-3 and T-10 Series Soviet Tanks the Monsters They Seemed in the 1950s? Not According to Russian Sources… by Chief Warrant Officer 2 (Retired) Stephen L. “Cookie” Sewell One of the eternal symbols of the In the land of the “new Socialist Cold War in the 1950s was the annual man,” how could this happen? As with Moscow “October Revolution” Parade, all things Soviet, in a word: politics. in which hundreds of tanks and ar- The same machinations that nearly mored vehicles would thunder across killed the T-34 before WWII were still Red Square every November. Western present after the war and, mixed with intelligence scanned for new weapons the volatile atmosphere of the Khru- to be introduced, and high on the list shchev era, made for some nasty in- for many years was the IS-3 “Joseph fighting within the Soviet military hier- Stalin” series of tanks, ending with the archy.1 But while the Kotin Bureau T-10M in the early 1960s. To many pushed the heavy tank philosophy, the • Light-medium “infantry escort” people, no other weapon personified Morozov Bureau fielded its T-54 tank, tanks, mounting a useful gun and the “Evil Empire” and its domination of the Kartsev Bureau refined that into the moving with the infantry to elimi- Eastern Europe than these monstrous T-55 and T-62, and the Morozov Bu- nate nodes of enemy resistance. tanks. As a point of fact, both the U.S. reau finished with the T-64, a true • Medium tanks, capable of dealing and the U.K. created and fielded their breakthrough in conceptual armor think- with enemy resistance and troops own heavy tanks specifically to combat ing, which spawned the T-72 and T-80. under cover. these monsters. • Very heavy tanks used for breaking But were they really the threat that Background: The Soviet Love through into the enemy’s rear areas. they seemed? One joy of an open soci- Affair with Heavy Tanks ety is open archives, which permit ac- The Soviets were far in advance of the To that end, they went from having cess to a different picture of reality than only one tank design bureau in 1929 to that once accepted as fact. The archival world in the 1930s in the area of armored vehicle design and conceptuali- four by 1937. However, there were view of these monsters today is that zation, and in many areas were superior really only two controlling minds: Zho- they were enormously clumsy and dis- sif Ya. Kotin controlled Factories No. appointing clunkers, armed with obso- to the Germans in planning for their employment on the battlefield. By the 100, 174, and 185 in Leningrad and lete guns and ineffective fire control late 1930s, the Soviets determined the Mikhail I. Koshkin Factory No. 183 in systems that were marginal at best. Khar’kov. Worst of all, more than 10,000 of these following tank types were required: Until the arrival of Koshkin, tank de- heavy tanks were built at enormous • Light scouting tanks, preferably am- cost. Only a small percentage of that signs were created in Leningrad and number ever found their way into units, phibious. sent to other factories, such as Factory and most lived out their lives rusting in • Light fast tanks, capable of rapidly No. 183, for production. This had been Siberian storage depots. exploiting a breakthrough. the case with the ill-starred T-24 medium and the overblown T-35 very heavy tank. Kotin placed his hopes in intimidating “flagship” tanks that could easily crush This KV-1 Model 1941, the enemy. His bureaus produced the has a cast turret and 25 metric ton T-28, a bulky three- main gun similar to turreted medium marred with thin ar- the F-34 gun of the T- mor. The 54 metric ton T-35 was even 34/76 tank. Mechani- worse, possessing the same level of cal failures took more armor protection, but now five turrets of a toll than the en- and a crew of 11 to 14; fortunately for emy, and many were abandoned due to lack the Soviets, only two regiments’ worth of repair time. (61) were built. Undeterred, in 1937 Kotin held a competition between his 26 ARMOR — July-August 2002 design bureaus in Factories No. 100 The developed version, the KV-1, en- mounted a modified version of the and No. 174. Each was to create a new tered production in 1940 at nearly the 122mm A-19 corps artillery piece as very heavy tank, mounting two 45mm same time as the T-34. Both used simi- the D-25T tank gun. While the IS-1 antitank guns and one 76mm cannon. lar guns, effective 76mm weapons ca- was found to be less effective than the In 1938, each bureau presented their pable of destroying any tank in the T-34/85, the IS-2 with the 122mm was design to Stalin. In the infamous meet- world at that time. But the KV-1 was a devastating weapon. By the time that ing, he laughingly dismissed the de- clunky, using a 1920’s U.S. tractor production ended in 1945, 107 IS-1 signs as “Department store tanks, with transmission and an overstressed en- tanks and 4,392 IS-2 tanks had been a gun for every occasion.” He broke off gine, and while it had thick armored built and served with combat units. a turret from one model and suggested protection, it had poor visibility and they try it that way. crew ergonomics, making it nearly im- Enter the IS-3 The two bureaus then produced nearly possible to use effectively in combat. While the IS-2 proved itself capable Approximately 2,300 KV-1-series tanks identical tank designs: the T-100 from were built between 1940-1942. of dealing with most battlefield threats the Factory No. 100 team, and the the Germans presented, the old Russian SMK from Factory No. 174 (for Sergey Once the war broke out, the KV-1 was adage of “better is the enemy of good M. Kirov, the man for whom the fac- soon revealed to be a deathtrap. Fear of enough” came into play. A group of tory was named). Both were long, angering Kotin prevented many com- Soviet engineers extensively studied boxy, and carried two turrets in two manders from telling him how bad the how and why tanks were knocked out tiers, a lower turret with a 45mm gun tank really was. Finally, after many in combat, and came to the conclusion and a machine gun and an upper turret senior leaders complained about its that most “kills” came in the front 60- with a short-barreled 76mm gun and failings, Kotin ordered the problems degree arc of the vehicle. If this area another machine gun. Neither made it fixed. Nikolay Shashmurin, a skilled could be made impenetrable to enemy past the prototype stage; however, both engineer, redesigned the tank, cutting shells, the tank would most likely sur- were used during the Finnish War of five tons and adding a new transmis- vive anything encountered in combat. 1939-1940. sion. While still not perfect, it was now Work was authorized in the late sum- functional, and the final production run mer of 1944 on a new tank, dubbed The only prewar Kotin tank that made of KV tanks (around 2,400) was built “Kirovets-1.” it into service, with help from its name- sake and Kotin’s father-in-law, Kliment as the KV-1S (for speedy) heavy tank. In 1941, the three tank bureaus from A small number were built as KV-85 Voroshilov, was the single-turreted KV tanks, which mounted the turret of the Leningrad were evacuated to the Chel- heavy tank. It was a more conventional yabinsk Tractor Factory. There, they design weighing 47 metric tons and IS-85 on a KV-1S chassis. amalgamated to form Chelyabinsk “Ki- carrying three 7.62mm machine guns As a reward for fixing the KV, Shash- rov” Factory No. 185 or “Tankograd.” and a 76mm cannon. In fact, it was murin earned the privilege of designing In late 1944, after Leningrad had been ordered off the drawing board; this its successor. His team created two new liberated, the old Factory No. 100 de- point was later glossed over by sending heavy tanks, the IS-1 (for Iosef Stalin) sign bureau returned to the city. Thus, the prototypes to the Karelian Isthmus and IS-2. The IS-1 or IS-85 mounted when Kotin decided to work on a new for testing at the end of the Finnish the 85mm D-5T gun, which also heavy tank, he set up a competition War. equipped the T-34; the IS-2 or IS-122 between the old Factory No. 100 group, ARMOR — July-August 2002 27 led by Kotin himself and his Soviet operational stan- chief assistant A. S. Yermo- dards for reliability. layev, and the design bureau Consequently, the Soviets at Factory No. 185, led by N. L. Dukhov and M. F. Balzhi. found themselves in the embarrassing situation of Both bureaus took different tanks rolling off the produc- approaches to the new vehi- tion line in Chelyabinsk cle. Kotin’s team used a tur- onto trains to go to the fac- ret similar to that of the IS-2 tory in Leningrad for cor- but on a radical chassis that rection of their defects. used three heavy welded Even in 1946 a committee armor plates at the front to was formed to fix the prob- form its bow and glacis sec- Above, a column of IS-2s on the Berlin Highway in the spring of lems of what had become tion.

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