It's due to differences in idea of what constitutes a light, medium, and heavy tank. The Germans equates role to class. A light scouts and supports infantry. A medium fights other tanks and supports infantry. A heavy breaks the enemy line so the other two can exploit the gap. Soviets and US used weight and gun to determine class of tank.
@@LAHFaust The Soviets never used the term "medium tank" - they used "breakthrough tank" for their heavy tanks, "fast tank" or "support tank" for their light tanks, and just "tank" for everything else. Their classification system was significantly more nebulous and less rigidly-defined than most western contemporaries.
These are perhaps the best tank documentaries on RU-vid. This is excellent delivery of knowledge and I'd say this and the Chieftain's hatch series play an important role in being Secondary and tertiary sources.
The Inside the Hatch series are by definition primary sources - he's literally filming the tank itself, how much more reliable can you get? What do you want, a .pdf of the blueprints or something?
the mad lads at factory 100 just designing and building a new prototype, instead of upgrades for the IS-2. Quite interesting and fascinating story as the other videos in this heavy soviet armour series.
Remember, these tanks were being developed during the height of WW2, so money and resource constraints weren't an issue (unless something was literally in short supply). It was also reasonable to assume tanks would continue to grow more powerful as the war progressed and after it had concluded. Stalin had his eye on Europe and tanks would be key to his efforts to seize control of as much of it as possible (both during the war as it unfolded and any potential continuation of the war against the other Allies or shortly after the war ended). So, the USSR invested heavily in developing new taks. It would also be beneficial in light of the above if the other Allies weren't familiar with the USSR's best tanks and one way to maximise this was to produce new tank models. Of course, as the new normal became more entrenched, and after Stalin died, tank development (particularly of new tank models) in the USSR slowed down and the Western world followed suit, as the US and the UK had already made many attempts to avoid developing new tank types. The problem up to that point was the intensity of the arms race, for which each side kept on creating new models in response to each others' developments. The Soviets were, for example, determined to have the biggest main gun and most heavily armoured heavy tank. Every time Western countries introduced a larger main gun calibre, Soviet bureacrats hurried to introduce a larger one (as in the case of the T-62 and T-64). Western countries sought to abandon heavy tanks during Stalin's time (particularly in light of ATGM development and to produce budget savings) but as the USSR kept introducing heavier tanks, the need for new heavies was undeniable and the product (M60 and Chieftain) also fed into the USSR's ongoing development of new heavy tanks - both during Stalin's reign and later. It also was used to justufy the adoption of even bigger main guns on MBTs.
I just love the thought of these old dudes locked in their secret room feverishly brain storming ideas for their secret tank, while telling anyone who knocked on the door to piss off.
This series is taking turns I couldn't have imagined. Like it's actually blowing my mind with how these Soviet tank programs developed and the conflicting naming.
I remember when they introduced the IS-6 in War Thunder and the community was (rightly) mad because it was so OP, some guy tried to convince me it was a fake vehicle and all the photos of it were edited from IS-2 and 3
You should've mentioned that the IS-2U design was used by WG to create the fictitious Chinese 110 heavy tank in world of tanks(Stock configuration, the top turret is taken from the IS-8/T-10)
@@yoshineitor well the 112-2 from blitz is the kirovets-1(obj 701-1/ IS-3 early prototype) from pc recolored to chinese color As for the obj 701-II dual barrel tank from pc, that simply used the Kirovets-1 hull, widen the turret to fit two guns and call it a day
I still remember first meeting it Was driving an AVRE Can't deacribe the dumsterfire of a brain i had when i realised out of 4 shots he took he sustaned no damage. Then hebjust shook his barell in disapproval and one tapped me
Its such a typical Soviet tank. Lots of clever ideas, out of the box thinking and engineering and a good bit of political subterfuge surrounding the design proces. And the result looks amazing with the heavy armour, powerful engine and large gun, until you look at the details. So often upon closer examination, Soviet tanks suffer from clear design issues with: -Basic crew comfort. -Poor gearbox and steering systems. -Suspension quality, either weight capacity or poor stability of the suspension. -Engine issues, in part because so, so many Soviet tanks relied on variants of the Kharkiv V-2 instead of more dedicated engines designed for the vehicles. To a degree if the V-2 was too large or not powerful enough, the tank design is in trouble. -View outside of the tank for the crew often being poor. -Lacking hatches in size, design and numbers, both for crew and maintenance. -Emphasis on too large a gun for the turret, complicating ammo stowage and compromising loading and space in the turret. The combination of (some) of these factors, almost always seems to have negatively affected the overal design.
Agreed. It always amuses me how, on the one hand, we are told that when comparing Western Allied tanks the German tanks to forget about the Panzers's impressive numbers because it's the soft stats that matter - crew comfort, ergonomics, turret traverse and rate of fire and that's why western tanks were better. However the Soviet Tankies take the exact opposite track. Who cares about the soft stats? Look how thick and sloped my armour is! Look at the size of my gun! Please overlook the fact that these wonder tanks could barely be operated by their crews at all and were destroyed in quite significant numbers despite the numbers saying it was theoretically impossible. I suspect the exact same problems were the death of the IS-7 - looked great on paper, could only be operated by a dwarf with the strength of Hercules.
@@mattbowden4996 No, the IS-7 was basically as close to the perfect tank as you could get. It was years if not decades ahead of its peers (featuring an auto loader, having armour that made it immune even to the Jagdpanzer, having a 130 mm gun, good speed...) and was unlike many other Soviet tanks a very pleasant tank to drive apparently. It got good reviews across the board. The thing that killed the IS-7 was that it was very expensive to produce (most of the important parts were tailor made so they couldn't just use the same stuff they were using for the other IS types to reduce costs) and was too heavy to be transported by rail nor could it cross most bridges in the Soviet Union as a result. It was essentially the sort of tank you'd get when costs and weight limitations were not really something the engineers had to take into account and they were just told to make the best tank they possibly could.
I am strangely sure crews would prefer armor twice as thick as opposed to comfort. Also, the whole whining about tanks being cramped is stupid, Soviet army deliberately picked shorter soldiers for tank crews unlike the west (taller being sent to paratroopers and specnaz) so the amount of room was pretty adequate, yes, it's tight for modern tall man but it absolutely wasn't the case when the tanks were being deployed. And too big gun? Seriously? Get a clue and look at what they had to fight, would you prefer smaller gun that can do nothing to Tiger II or Ferdinand making the tank completely ineffective and waste of money?
@KuK137 Dude, it's not us in the west saying the IS-6 was too cramped - the Soviets said it was too cramped. All the armour in the world is useless if you physically can't fit inside the tank. As for the rest of their cold war tanks, how well have their design philosophies worked out in practice? The IS-3 was an abject failure in service and the T-72 and it's derivatives aren't exactly covering themselves in glory out in Ukraine...
Imagine hiring staff to do upgrades for a product, only to realize that in secret they’ve been developing an entirely new product, and its way better than the original product💀
Excellent work as always! It's a real pleasure to watch your presentations. I'm always amazed at the footage, documents and other obscure facts you ferret out. Keep up the fantastic work... Thanks again 👍
Gotta love low weegee and sources made it look as if they had consequencial designs yet at the same time it was multiple factories competing to see wich Obyect would become the next main tank
After I read the Tank Encyclopedia article on the Obj 252 a few months ago, I couldn't believe that the developers didn't get sent to the fricken Gulag for working on it without permission.
How about a video about the Sherman M4A4 or should I say the British designation MK V and Firefly, this variant of Sherman saw significant combat in Italy and Normandy with British and Canadian armor divisions
I recently discovered your channel and I really love your videos, when you are done with the soviet tank do you mind talking about the t95e1 and variants?
This is the first time I've heard about the object 253 project.. Fascinating.. Perhaps the engineers are really smoking something in the "smoking room" while designing the object 252 (IS-6) 😅..
I find the later IS series of vehicles to be some of the most hilarious vehicles in the world and deserve the same amount of ridicule that the maus (rightly) receives. Just too ambitious for the time; but that's never the conversation, its always about how devastating they WOULD have been in some hypothetical universe. "The IS-3 shocked the world and the west feared them until the '70s!!!!" But in real life were so bad that the only thing they could do with them was give them to Egypt in the 50's, where they lost to up-gunned Sherman's. (IS3's in 1956 Hungary get a pass because any tank would have issues with street fighting like what occurred) "The IS7 was so amazing that they would have dominated the battlefield! The west would have nothing to stop them!!!"... So you built them and they weren't just a hypothetical sales pitch?
In fairness, the IS-3s mostly lost to Centurion tanks, but the point stands - these late model IS tanks are all just as absurd as Maus. Maus and E100 show us what happens when you try to build an "invulnerable" heavy tank with enough space inside to fight effectively - the weight balloons out to an absurd degree as you try to armour all that volume. The IS-3 and IS-6 show us what happens if you try to build an "invulnerable" tank whilst keeping the weight under control - the internal space shrinks to the point a human can barely fit inside, much less operate the vehicle.
You have already 1:28 shown the Obj 245 2 times at the very beginning. Obj 244 has a different suspension, when there are already such errors it is a poor reserch.
@@RedWrenchFilms i think he's referring to the Object 244 having a different suspension or at least different track configuration, kinda like the track in world of tanks
In the factory: "What have you been doing in the smoking room for so long?" -oh just smoking. "I have heard you talking about impenetrable tanks whit superb speed and Suspension" -Yes, we have been smoking a lot.
Vovk: I thought that this is a state-owned company! Im a representative of the state! So I should have an option to go wherever I please! Kotin: Yes, yes, and yes. Vovk: Ok, can I go into THAT room? Kotin: No.
>Heavy tank with the driver's hatch lid as part of the main strike face >No gun depression >Need to expose hatch more >Soviet production syndrome inevitable >Electric system on fire moving forward >No worry, gun has already gassed you out NICE [insert soviet apple slicer joke]
They get enough depression in the winter. But realistically I imagine it's because having gun depression is important in a defensive position more than an offensive one, as the time that you most need it is when going hull down or turret down position behind a hill or similar sloped cover. And because the soviet heavies visibility was so piss poor, I imagine they'd have too much trouble with exposing themselves in a hull down position.
I’m almost sad that the Soviets were building new tanks instead of the funny Russian upgrade process, imagine funny modernized IS2s with spaced armor, HEATFS, APDS, maybe a little APFSDS, Night Vision and other shenanigans
Faster turret rotation. All that turret has to sit on a ring, and they learned how deadly (to the crew) a slow turret is with the KV1 tanks. More weight on the turret ring means either more powerful hydraulics or a lot heavier mountings, which increase weight demands even more. They seem to have been severely limited by not producing new guns or breeches, so they had to design turrets around the gun, rather than designing a gun for a turret.
You also forgot to mention known cases of metal toxicity during forging and exposure to heat and kinetic effect, be it the main gun firing or getting hit,
In short...considering everything about the IS-6, with all it's quirks and features...it just wasn't going to happen, because it had too many faults. Which is why they just stuck with the IS-3 which eventually lead to the T-10 Lenin? Of course, heavies became bleh, and the MBT concept took over with the T-54 and T-64, and all of their later variants and upgrades. (T-55, T-62, T-72, T-80, T-90, and perhaps the best of all time, the T-1000, which is made of liquid metal and can assume any form.)
T-54 wasn't and MBT, it was a medium tank. The 1st Soviet MBT in their own classification was T-64A. Not even T-64, exactly T-64A. Why? Because it featured better than a heavy tank's armour, even a larger and more powerful cannon than that of a heavy tank, but it had the mobility of a medium tank, so it could be classified neither as heavy nor medium tank and thus it became the MBT
@@drunklorry3406 well technically yeah...T-54/T-55 started out classified as a medium, but for all intents and purposes it is like an MBT, having pretty well balanced armor, mobility, and firepower, compared with it's western counterparts.
i mean … the IS-7 Wasn’t a bad tank, far from it, it was (by it’s time) the most advanced tank at the time! and it was reliable, but VERY complex and too costly to maintain, so it was unfortenately not approved for service and was shafted, with (if im not mistaken) one prototype still remaining in kubinka!
@@PanzerHistorian The DESIGN of the IS7 was the most advanced tank in the world at the time. Its a question of whether you place more value on what a design bureau says their design could do or what they actual built can do. Unfortunately, Russia doesn't like to release reports of failed prototypes and all we know is that of 7 prototypes, only one survived testing and the vehicle was not accepted into service. To this day, we still don't know the "official" reason as to why is was never accepted, the reports were buried. We have no idea if the auto loader worked, we know the automatic fire extinguisher system didn't work because we know its automotive components were not sufficient and burned. The only thing we do know is that the IS8/T10 WAS accepted because it was a much less ambitious IS7. The Chrysler TV-8 "Nuclear Tank" was an indisputably more advanced design than the IS-7 only 4 years later, but no one looks at what Chrysler promised and claims it would have a dreadnought effect on par with what the IS7 would allegedly have had. I guess what I'm saying is that don't look at what a video game says a vehicle can do because that's an ideal situation where everything works as it should.
@@masonicratit was either the cost or the weight that did the IS-7 in, or a combination of both. Might have been something else, but those problems would have been easier to solve.
I'm more curious on the IS-8/9/10 aka the T-10 as it seemed to take a lot of queues from the IS-3 and adding more modern (for the time) equipment on it
IS-5 (IS-8, T-10) - is a lightweight and simplified version of IS-7. IS-7 and IS-4 were competitors in the same competition in which IS-7 almost won. IS-8 corps is exactly the same as the IS-7, only with thinner armor - even the hatches on the roof of the engine compartment
didnt know the IS-6 was the predecessor to the IS-7, always assumed it was a stupidly bulked up version of the IS-3 that obviously was too heavy for it's stuff and was eventually rolled backed to being an T-10. neat to see the "Pike Nose" layout wernt just limited to the IS-3 family. can i ask about the Obj 703(mounting the fabricated twin gun in wot pc)'s existance? the hull, to be exact- seems like it's the same as the IS-3 prototype(obj.701-1)'s flat upper glasis, and i dont think they'd really separate the testing numbers if all else was the same. turret and the gun was obviously fake so no questions there.
Obj. 703 is the object name for the final IS-3 design, Wargaming just took the Kirovets-1 Widened it a bit and slapped on a second gun, named it the Obj. 703-II
@@thespyfromteamfortress2568 thanks, was confused on the name here. obviously 2 gun is just totally fabricated, but didnt know proper about the obj-703.
Thank you for the amazing IS-6 video, sir! Couldn't wink for 15 minutes, didnt want to miss any of it - a lot of messy information, presented in a very clear and understandable manner! Wonderful vid!
None of the soviet heavies should be as quick as they actually are. KV1, IS2, object 279, all with way better acceleration than should be possible, accelerating faster than a couple "light" tanks even, and certainly reversing faster than many main tanks other than a Leo or strv 103
Me too, but it's understandable in my opinion, their armor layout differed quite a lot to the point we would think it's a different vehicle, as I would always say that IS-6 is a downgraded IS-4, while Obj. 252U is downgraded IS-7 in the past
@@kden9772 Well, the main difference is that 770 was built on absolutely new technologies and construction decisions, thus meant to have bigger modernization potential. Despite the fact, that 277 had slightly better characteristics ( 35 rounds against 28, a bit more powerful traditional-type engine, utilization of TPN-1 and etc.), except worse armour, MOD prefered 770. While 277 was heavily based on T-10 & IS 7 decisions, 770 used brand new, raw "future" techs. This exactly was admired by both constructors and members of MOD. 770 was ment to be the next generation, however just like with 277 later Khrushchev refused. P.S. Don't you know by chance if Wrench stopped the Soviet Heavies series? It's bin a long time since this came out.
Ahh, the Bias-6. To this day it remains as one of the most under-BR'ed tanks in the entire game. If you don't have good angle penning APDS or HEAT-FS it has almost no frontal weakspots outside of the dice-roll that is the mantlet.
Very interesting...good work! I've always been interested in the lesser-known Soviet armored vehicles like (my favorite), the SU-122-54. Keep up the good work!
It's normal for every nation to develop tanks they don't put into service. This applies to all weapons. You develop the technology in advance in case you do need it.
Fun tank in war thunder for sure, despite it being a little power crept and absurdly weak to HEAT compared to some other heavies in the same rank. Can't wait for more from the Soviet Tank series on this channel
You're kidding, right? The IS-6 in War Thunder is a light tank with the armor of a heavy and armament of a TD. It's in no way powercrept, unless your ideal state for the vehicle is being completely immune to anything in its BR bracket, as it was a couple years ago. Even at the current BR it sits, many vehicles can't even pen it from the side, with the only "option" being the rear of the turret.
half the vehicles it meets can't pen it anywhere, the other half can pen it everywhere. that seems fair enough to me, especially since the IS-6 can one tap absolutely everything it sees
@@wallachia4797 "as it was a couple years ago" implies it was powercrept. I dominate IS-6s almost all the time nowadays with how radically the meta has shifted. never gonna say it's a bad tank because it never will be but even you basically admitted it's not the absolute smackaroo of a powerhouse as it used to be
@@jozefdobrovodsky2932 idk as I just mentioned I more often that not see IS-6s bite the dust. to me it seems a little on the short straw especially since it's in the tier where you'll see straight checks to it being all of the IFVs rather than the vehicles that you could have a fun brawl with
