Tractors and Prime Movers

A maneuver war requires a large fleet of motorized vehicles, including artillery tractors. This lesson was learned back during the First World War. It is no wonder that the Red Army cared about mechanization so much. Soviet industry carried out their orders. A whole series of specialized tractors were designed in the 1930s. Many of them were built in great numbers and some were even the most numerous in their class.

Voroshilovets, the best Soviet artillery tractor. The Voroshilovets could tow heavy guns even faster than the rating of their chassis.

It so happened that production of artillery tractors ceased after the start of the Great Patriotic War. Some claim that the USSR should have built more tractors instead of tanks. This article will tell the story of why this was a bad idea and compare the results of Soviet mechanization with that of the Germans.

Buggy Americans

"To Deputy Chief of the Engineering Department of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade, comrade Ryavchenko

I report preliminary data regarding defects of American tanks based on use in training.

1. Both types of tanks have no range markings on their sights. It is necessary to order new ones urgently.

Video: Lend Lease Tier List Part 1

Lend Lease reviews can be a thorny topic. Did the Red Army like any foreign tanks at all? Watch my latest video and find out. 

Porche’s X-shaped engine

German tank development followed a very predictable course. This included engine development. After experiments in the 1920s and early 1930s, German tanks settled on the Maybach V-shaped series. These gasoline engines that worked at high RPM (about 3000) were characteristic for German tanks. They were used until the end of the war, although some began to think about an alternative as early as 1941-42. Ferdinand Porsche was among those who had his own idea about what a tank engine needs to look like.

Simmering-Graz-Pauker is best known as a producer of train cars and locomotives.

The first attempt to build a diesel engine was undertaken by Daimler-Benz in 1940. The MB 809 and later MB 507 were unlucky. Work on diesel engines was not abandoned. Porsche K.G. picked up the relay, working closely with Austrian companies. The new team created a brand new engine known as the Simmering-Graz-Pauker Sla 16. This was an X-shaped air cooled diesel engine which opened a whole new direction in development of tank engines. However, Germany did not have time to make use of the fruit of this labour.

The predecessor of the SLa.16 was initially developed for the Typ 205, shown here in its configuration as of October 1942.

Video: Was the Tiger tank overengineered?

The term "overengineered" is used a lot when talking about German tanks, but what does it mean and is it really applicable? Check out my latest video where look at the T-34, Sherman, and Tiger tank designs through the eyes of an engineer.

2024 in Review

With 2024 coming to an end, it's time to look back on my achievements in military history over the course of the past year. 

2024 was a major year for books. Thanks to several release dates coinciding, I had quite a number of titles come out this year.

The first was Achtung Tiger: How The Allies Defeated Germany’s Heavy Tank. This book represents the culmination of over ten years of research that started not long before Tank Archives did. Some of that work went into a number of Tiger-related articles on this website, but most of what I uncovered lay dormant until the publication of this book. As traditional with titles written by the Military History Group, I sat down for a discussion with The Chieftain, which you can watch on Youtube. The book itself was also quite well received by the Panzermuseum Munster.

Armour vs Time

The battle of the sword and shield raged since time immemorial. The sword got an edge once, which led to the end of the era of knights clad in armour. However, history repeats itself, and the idea of armoured cars began to appear even before the First World War. The result of this was the tank, which over time became a fixture of the battlefield. Naturally, anti-tank weapons were created as soon as tanks became known. The battle of the sword and shield continued.

An example of changing requirements for tank armour. The FCM 2C had the thickest armour of any tank built during the First World War, but penetration trials conducted by the Germans in 1940 showed that this armour was weak by WW2 standards.

Armour powerful enough to resist cannon shells became a staple of all tanks only during the Second World War. It became clear in the fall of 1939 that bulletproof armour was not enough. At the same time, the idea of armour against shells appeared long before. Protection of tanks against something bigger than a bullet was obvious, but the nature of that something changed over time too, This is what we will talk about today.

Video: Historically Accurate Panzer '46 - Heavy Tank M26 Pershing

The Americans were the first to get their next generation tank to the battlefield in 1945. How did it fare and what upgrades did they test out that could have been applied to the design had the war gone on for a little longer? Find out in my latest video.

Tank Archives on the big screen

My reenacting group sometimes acts as extras in war movies, but we also decided to make our own! The audio is in Russian, but English subtitles are available.

Track Bashing

 Changing tracks on T-34 and T-34-85 tanks at the Museum of National Military History

As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a light tank. Many operations that seem quite simple are actually very difficult to perform on a machine weighing several dozen tons. Many vehicles from the Great Patriotic War era were anything but light, and servicing them requires a lot of effort.

Changing tracks is a routine but difficult procedure.

The vehicles at the Museum of National Military History are not empty boxes, but rather fully functional military vehicles. This includes the museum's T-34 tanks. Both of them are used in various events. This involves swapping out the tracks from the stock ones to special parade tracks and back. This article will cover the details of this process.