Название: T-34: The Red Army's Legendary Medium Tank
Автор: Anthony Tucker-Jones
Издательство: Pen & Sword
Серия: Images of War Special
ISBN: 1473854709
Год издания: 2015
Язык: English
Cтраниц: 164
Формат: PDF
Размер: 136,1 MB
It could be said that the T-34 was the tank that won the Second World War. In total, 57,000 were produced between 1941 and 1945. Stalin’s tank factories outstripped Hitler’s by a factor of three to one, and production of the T-34 also exceeded that of the famed American M4 Sherman. Not only did this output swamp German panzer production, the T-34 was a robust, no-frills war-winning design—easy to manufacture and reliable. Its sloping armor was innovative at the time, and its wide tracks suited it to off-road warfare. Crucially, it required little maintenance in comparison to German tanks, and its chassis was used as the basis for a range of assault guns: the SU-85, SU-100, and SU-122.
Anthony Tucker-Jones’s photographic history of this exceptional armored vehicle follows its story through the course of the war, from its combat debut against the Wehrmacht during Operation Barbarossa, through the Red Army’s defeats and retreats of 1941 and 1942, to the tide-turning victories at Stalingrad and Kursk, and on through the long, rapid Soviet advance across Ukraine and Byelorussia to Berlin. As well as a range of rare archive photographs and those of a surviving example of the T-34, the book features specially commissioned color illustrations.