T-34-85 soviet ww2 tank

Last crawled date: 1 year, 10 months ago

With the T-43 canceled, the Soviet command made the decision to retool the factories to produce an improved version of the T-34. Its turret ring was enlarged from 1,425 mm to 1,600 mm, allowing a larger turret to be fitted and thus the larger 85 mm gun. The prototype T-43's turret design was hurriedly adopted by Vyacheslav Kerichev at the Krasnoye Sormovo Factory to fit the T-34. This was a larger three-man turret, with radio (previously in the hull) and observation cupola in the roof. Now the tank commander needed only to command, leaving the operation of the gun to the gunner and the loader. The turret armour was much thicker, 90 mm, even if bigger and less sloped than the original T-34 turret.
(Source: Wikipedia.org)