T-54/55 Totally Explained

Everything about T-54 55 totally explained

The T-54 and T-55 tank series were main battle tanks designed by the Soviet Union. The first prototype T-54 appeared in 1946 shortly after the end of the Second World War. It was the successor to the T-44 and a direct descendant of the T-34, considered by many to have been the "finest all around tank of the war". The tank entered full production in 1947 and became a mainstay of Red Army armored units, the Warsaw Pact countries and many other armies as well. T-54s and T-55s were involved in many of the world's armed conflicts.
   The T-55 was a new version incorporating many incremental improvements, as well as rudimentary blast and fallout protection for the nuclear battlefield, which began production in 1958. It has been described as the "most popular tank in history" and is the most widely used of all time. In 1962 it was joined by the T-62; they were both eventually replaced as front-line Soviet tanks by the T-64 and the T-72. They were exported to as many as 50 other countries and were continuously upgraded and produced until 1979. The series eventually became the most produced tank in history. Estimated production numbers for the series range from 86,000 to 100,000, and the series is still in use worldwide, having received sophisticated retrofitting.
   T-54 and T-55 tanks never directly faced their NATO Cold War adversaries in Europe, however, their first appearance in the west in 1960 spurred the United States to develop the M60.
   The older T-54 can be distinguished from the T-55 by a dome-shaped ventilator on the front-right of the turret and a driver-operated SGMT 7.62 mm machine gun mounted to fire through a tiny hole in the centre of the hull's front. Early T-54s lacked a gun fume extractor, had an undercut at the turret's rear, and a distinctive "pig-snout" gun mantlet.

Production history

T-44

When first produced, the Soviet T-34 medium tank of 1940 had the best balance of firepower, protection and mobility of any tank in the world. Its development continued throughout the Second World War and it continued to perform well, but the production rates the war demanded prevented its designers from incorporating the latest technologies.
In 1943, the Morozov Design Bureau resurrected the pre-war T-34M development project and created the T-44 medium tank. Thanks to a space-efficient torsion-bar suspension, a novel transverse engine mount, and the removal of the hull machine-gunner's crew position, the T-44 performed at least as well as the T-34, but with substantially better armour. However, a larger gun was desired which would fire heavier high-explosive rounds and defeat thicker armour. The T-44's turret, a development of the T-34-85 turret, was still incapable of mounting more powerful armament than its predecessor's 85 mm tank gun, a considerably weaker gun than the 88 mm and long 75 mm guns on newer German tanks, because these guns were very-high velocity weapons and had respectively 71 and 70-caliber length, compared to around 50 of the Soviet gun. This latter was more similar to the 88 L56 of Tiger I, but the normal ammunition used was simpler. In fact, its penetration power (around 100mm at 1000m) wasn't so different than the 76mm American tank gun (usually rated around 100-120mm RHAe at 900m), and the main difference was the weight of the high-explosive shell, around 9 kg compared to 6 kg of the 75-76.2mm calibers. Only about 1,823 T-44s were ever built, while Morozov proceeded with further development.

T-54

Before this point was reached, Morozov had already decided to proceed with a new generation of main battle tanks. Having moved back to Ukraine from the Urals (the design bureau and factory had been evacuated from Kharkov (Kharkiv, Ukraine) to Nizhny Tagil during the German advance in 1942), he began development which would lead to the T-64. The Kartsev design bureau at UVZ took over responsibility for the T-54, starting with the T-54A, which added single-plane gun stabilization and night-driving equipment.
   The T-54B started production in 1957, with a new D-10T2S gun and 2-plane stabilizer. Active infrared "night-fighting" equipment for the gunner and driver were installed on new tanks and retrofitted to older ones, starting in 1959. In addition, modern APFSDS ammunition was developed, dramatically enhancing the penetrative performance of the gun to keep it competitive with NATO armor developments.
   A series of experiments on the T-44 hull led to the T-54 tank. It mounted the same 100 mm D-10 tank gun used in the World War II SU-100 tank destroyer (modified for the tank's fighting compartment as the D-10T, but with identical performance). The gun was housed in a new turret with bigger turret ring and very well-protected mantlet, incorporating 200 mm of front-facing armour. Steering was made easier by the new V-54 engine's two-stage reduction gearbox. The T-54 replaced the T-44 in production from 1949 at Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) in Nizhny Tagil, and from 1948 at Kharkov Diesel Factory No. 75 (KhPZ).
   Though based on design and prototype work begun in 1943, the T-54 had superior armor protection to many late-war German tanks. Its 100 mm L53 gun produced less effective armor penetration than the 88 mm L71 gun on the Tiger II but was superior to the 88 mm L56 gun on the Tiger I, and comparable to the 75 mm L70 gun of the Panther medium tank. Due to its revolutionary design, this performance was achieved in a tank weighing four-fifths that of the Panther, two-thirds that of the Tiger I, and only just more than half that of the Tiger II. The T-54's light weight, powerful engine, and robust suspension gave it excellent cross-country mobility.

T-55

In 1958, The T-54 was redesigned for the nuclear battlefield as the T-55, with a thicker turret casting, more powerful engine, and very basic NBC protection (protecting against the deadly blast overpressure of a nuclear explosion, but not against radiation or fallout). The roof-top antiaircraft machine gun was dropped, because it was deemed worthless against high-performance jets. It was reintroduced in the 1970s to deal with helicopters although Polish tankers said that it was useless even for that since even from the range of 400 m the accuracy was fairly poor. The T-55 also had the T-54B's improved two-plane gun stabilization and added night-fighting equipment.
   The T-55 was also significantly superior to the IS-2 Heavy Tank in all respects, included the rate of fire of the gun (at least four compared to less than three rounds per minute). Despite somewhat thinner frontal turret armor (200 mm rather than 250 mm), it also compared favorably with the IS-3, thanks to its improved antitank gun and better mobility. Heavy tanks soon fell from favor, with only 350 IS-3s produced and future Soviet heavy tank designs remaining prototypes. The old model of highly mobile medium tanks and heavily armored heavy tanks was replaced with a new paradigm: the "main battle tank". Parallel developments in the West would produce similar results.
   During the 1950s, the T-55 remained a significantly smaller and lighter tank than its NATO contemporaries—the U.S. M48 Patton and the British Centurion—but with comparable or better firepower, protection, and reliability.
   Another prototype upgrade package was produced by Teledyne Continental Motors (now General Dynamics Land Systems) for the Egyptian Army and was known as the Ramses II..

Service history

Soviet Union to Russian Federation

The T-54/55 and the T-62 were the two most common tanks in Soviet inventory—in the mid-1970s the two types together comprised approximately 85% of the Soviet Army's tanks.
T-54 tanks served in the 1956 invasion of Hungary, and a few were knocked out by Molotov cocktails and Hungarian antitank guns.
By the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the T-54A and T-55's gun was starting to lose its competitive effectiveness over to the 105 mm Royal Ordnance L7 gun mounted in Israeli Centurion Mk V and M60A1 tanks. Israel captured many T-55s from Syria and Egypt in 1967, and kept some of them in service. They were upgraded with a 105 mm NATO-standard L7 or M68 main gun replacing the old Soviet 100 mm D-10, and a General Motors diesel replacing the original Soviet diesel engine. The Israelis designated these Tiran-5 medium tanks, and they were used by reserve units until the early 1990s. Most of them were then sold to assorted Third World countries, some of them in Latin America, and the rest were heavily modified, converted into heavy armoured personnel carriers designated the IDF Achzarit.

Other conflicts

During the Vietnam War, the T-54 was employed by North Vietnam, notably in the 1972 Easter Offensive and the 1975 Ho Chi Minh Offensive. After being driven back by overwhelming American air power in the first campaign the Vietnam People's Army recovered to decisively defeat the ARVN and its armored forces (largely composed of American M48s and M41s) in part due to improved training in combined arms tactics. T-54 tanks were also used during the Cambodian civil war During the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, India operated T-55s in Chaamb against Pakistan's M48 Patton, M24 Chaffee, and Chinese Type 59 tanks. The Indians benefited from infrared night vision and better AP rounds, but according to one account the "honours were roughly even".
   During the Ugandan-Tanzanian War of 1978-79, Libya sent an expeditionary force to aid Uganda dictator Idi Amin which included a few dozen T-54/55 tanks. Some of these tanks saw action against Tanzanian forces.
   Polish T-55L tanks were also deployed during Martial law in Poland to intimidate the population and suppress overt displays against the Communist government.
   The T-55 was the most numerous tank of the Yugoslavian Army (JNA). It was the mainstay of armored combat units during the Yugoslav Wars, where it proved vulnerable to infantry equipped with anti-tank rockets, and to misemployment in urban areas and unfriendly terrain. But there were too many of them in service for them to be replaced. During the battle of Vukovar, where the JNA grouped most of its tank force, many were destroyed, almost exclusively by infantry-carried anti-tank weapons. The T-55 tank remains the most common tank in the armies of the Yugoslavian successor states. T-55s were also used in combat against insurgents in Kosovo.
   China sold thousands of Type 69 tanks to both Iran and Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. Some saw action in the 1991 Gulf War and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
   The T-55 has also been used by Ethiopia in the current conflict with the Islamic Courts in Somalia.

Operators, models and variants

The T-55 has been used worldwide by as many as 50 countries and quasi-armies. They have been subject to numerous improvements throughout their production history and afterwards and many are still in service today. In addition the tank has been modified in many different ways to serve other roles such as air defense and combat engineering vehicles among others.

Models

T-54

T-54-1 (Ob'yekt 137) or T-54 Model 1946 – Produced 1946–1948. With streamlined turret and wide gun mantlet, similar to T-44, new V-54 engine, unstabilized D-10T 100 mm main gun, and two SG-43 machine guns in bins on the fenders. Only a small number was build for trials that were a fiasco; as a result, the production of the T-54 series was halted until the implementation of modifications.
T-54-2 (Ob'yekt 137R) or T-54 Model 1949 – Produced 1949–1952. It incorporated a number of improvements to the turret as well a wider track. It had a new dome-shaped turret with flat sides inspired by the IS-3 heavy tank's, similar to later T-54's but with a distinctive overhang at the rear and hull machine gun replacing the fender bins. It also had a shorter bustle.ref name=SVR1/>- Produced from 1957 to 1958. With improved D-10T2S gun and STP-2 "Tsyklon" 2-plane stabilization. From 1959, infrared night-fighting equipment was added: L-2 "Luna" infrared searchlight and TPN-1-22-11 IR gunner's sight, OU-3 IR commander's searchlight. NATO code: T-54(M).

T-55

T-55 (Ob'yekt 155) - Produced 1958–1963

T-55K1 (Ob'yekt 155K1), T-55K2 (Ob'yekt 155K2), T-55K3 (Ob'yekt 155K3), T-55AK1 (Ob'yekt 155AK1), T-55AK2 (Ob'yekt 155AK2), T-55AK3 (Ob'yekt 155AK3), T-55MK1 (Ob'yekt 155MK1), T-55MK2 (Ob'yekt 155MK2), T-55MK3 (Ob'yekt 155MK3) - Command tanks, fitted with additional radio sets. Sub-versions are the K1 and K2 models with two R-123 (or R-123M) and used at company and battalion level respectively. They carry 5 tank rounds less than the standard tanks. The regiment commander's K3 is equipped with an R-130M, an R-123M, a 10-metre antenna mast and a generator AB-1-P/30 at the expense of 12 100mm rounds. Early models had the R-113 and R-112 sets instead of the R-123 and R-130, the upgraded M series is fitted with R-173 and R-143T2 sets respectively.

Ob'yekt 155ML - Prototype of the T-55 with launcher for three 9M14 "Malyutka" (NATO code: AT-3 Sagger) ATGM mounted on the turret rear. - T-55A fitted with Drozd ('thrush') active protection system (KAZ - kompleks aktivnoj zashchity). Soviet Naval Infantry saved money by installing "Drozd" on a small number of tanks instead of opting for appliqué armour, or acquiring newer T-72s. About 250 were kept in stores for secrecy, but later switched to simpler reactive armour. T-55AD is also fitted with the radio set R-173, sight TShSM-32PV, "Tsiklon-M1" stabilizer etc. of the T-55AM.

T-55AD-1 (Ob'yekt 155AD-1) - Version powered by the 691 hp (515 kW) engine V-46-5M which was derived from the T-72's 780 hp (582 kW) V-46-6.

T-55MV (Ob'yekt 155MV)/T-55AMV (Ob'yekt 155AMV) )

War in Somalia (2006-present) (by the Ethiopian Army)

Gallery

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