Saturday 9 August 2014

ST-II

"The heavy ST-I tank is a powerful combat vehicle, equipped with a rapid-firing high caliber gun and sufficient armour. This design is an improvement to the previous tank, mostly in the areas of increased accuracy and rate of fire, and has the following novel features:
  1. Installation of two guns of identical (medium or high) caliber, and two machineguns (or low caliber cannons). These four guns give the tank unprecedented firepower, increasing its combat value.
  2. Two guns provide very high rates of fire when serviced by two loaders, using a special rapid-fire ammo rack (shells and propellant are loaded pointing in the direction of the guns in the turret bustle).
  3. The tank can strike a moving target immediately, due to the ability to fire a second shell immediately as the first one lands near the target. This allows for faster ranging in.
  4. If one gun is out of action (misfire, semi-automatic mechanism fault, failure to extract, breakdown, loader error, etc), the second gun continues firing, and the tank remains in action.
  5. The coefficient of armour, engine power, and weight compared to the gun doubles. Accuracy when firing at moving targets or on the move increases, as aiming is done by one person with the ability to follow up a shot almost instantly. 
The tank surpasses two tanks of identical firepower, as it would not be possible to attain such a high rate of fire and accuracy. All other mechanisms of the ST-II are equivalent to the ST-I.

Engineer Ganin
Engineer Chasovnikov
June 11th, 1945"
CAMD RF 38-11350-396

2 comments:

  1. Wouldn't the Soviets have had to fit on a new turret to the vehicle to be able to fit two entire guns into the vehicle? Would this have significantly increased the weight of the vehicle?

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  2. Not significantly. The weight of the gun isn't that much compared to the overall weight of a heavy tank.

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