Monday 28 March 2016

T-34 with Big Guns

"Factory #221
To the People's Commissar of Armament of the USSR, comrade Ustinov
To GAU Chief Lieutenant-General of Artillery comrade Yakovlev

RE: 152 mm gun and 203 mm howitzer SPG

By personal initiative, the design bureau of the factory created a project for SPGs for the 152 mm gun and 203 mm howitzer. Main blueprints and an explanatory note are attached.

The project uses existing components as much as possible, including suspensions, engines, and the guns themselves.

The suspension and engine used are taken from the T-34 tank produced by the Stalingrad Tractor Factory. As for the artillery systems, we propose the use of the 152 mm Br-19 gun and 203 mm B-4 gun produced at our factory, including the use of upper equipment.

This solution allows for powerful SPGs with good mobility, matching the speed of tanks (about 40 kph).

The aforementioned unification of parts and good cooperation conditions between us and STZ ensures that production could be set up very quickly.

We consider that, in this very mobile war, a highly mobile high power SPG would be a very useful asset to the Red Army.

We ask for your cooperation in building and testing an experimental prototype. Namely, we ask for you to order the People's Commissariat of Medium Machinebuilding to order the Stalingrad Tractor Factory to send us working blueprints of the T-34 tank and one T-34 tank (sans turret). The factory promises to quickly (2-2.5 month) produce a prototype and perform trials.

We consider this work to be very meaningful at this time. We expect a quick answer and cooperation on this issue.

Attachment: 13 blueprints, explanatory note
Factory Director Gonor
Chief Designer, Ivanov"

CAMD RF 81-12038-103

I posted about crazy guns on the T-34 before, but judging by the fact that they're only ordering one hull, these guys have an even crazier design in mind.

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