Best battle tanks of ww28/23/2023 He spoke to the AP by phone earlier this week from near the Bakhmut front. “Without the new tanks, we cannot win this war,” said Maksim Butolin, chief sergeant of the 54th Brigade’s Tank Division. With an expected springtime Russian offensive looming, the tanks will also enable Ukraine’s forces to launch new offensives and curb casualties, three military commanders, including two in the army’s tank division, told The Associated Press. The Western tanks could help open a new pipeline for ammunition to flow to Ukraine. Ukrainian soldiers and experts said Ukrainian forces are running low on spare parts to repair old Soviet-era tanks and the specific ammunition they require while enduring relentless barrages of Russian artillery. Their offense wasn’t much better the main gun wasn’t much use against armor.“Tanks will help reduce casualties among our soldiers … then gain new results and win this war quicker,” said Oleksander Syrotiuk, commander of a company in the 17th Tank Brigade deployed in Bakhmut. The armor was riveted rather than welded, so loose bolts were a serious danger to the crew if a tank was struck - and if that wasn’t enough, the machines also had a tendency to burst into flames when sustaining a hit. The first M13/40 tanks to see combat lacked such basics as onboard radios, serving to make their other shortcomings even worse. So it’s really little wonder the hardware put out during WWII was lacking. Benito Mussolini had made no real preparations for war Italy lacked the industrial base of other powers and never properly transitioned into a wartime economy. Italy’s problem was that it had entered the conflict opportunistically when the French were teetering on the brink of collapse. The M13/40 was to be Italy’s main battle tank, and even when it first rolled off the assembly line in 1940, it was obsolete. Although the ineptitude of the Italian army in WWII is often overstated, there’s no denying their tanks were simply not up to par. It’s no surprise to see Italy represented in the collection more than once. It proved as worthless at the end of the war as it did in the beginning. A T-35 was apparently one of the last-ditch tanks used. The museum at Kummersdorf was raided for anything that could be used to protect the capital. For such a heavy tank, the T-35 was surprisingly brittle - it was simply too big for thick armor and had to make do with 35 mm plating.Īpparently, one was used in the defense of Berlin in 1945 by the Germans. The rest were destroyed or captured without inflicting much damage on the enemy. When it was first used in significant numbers against the Germans in 1941, more than half of the 48 tanks broke down before reaching the front. The T-35 required a 10-man crew to operate and many more to maintain. Its performance in the field was another matter. It featured prominently in interwar propaganda, making for a grand sight on parade grounds in the 1930s. Its concept was outdated from the start a five-turret behemoth, it was a battleship on some seriously slow-moving treads. The T-35 was the pride of the Red Army until it was actually used in combat. For all the design flaws, getting anything to run in the circumstances was no small achievement. In the end, only four “Big Bobs” were built and mostly used to raise morale. For reference, a modern Abrams tank costs roughly $6 million. At least the tanks were cheap, at about $5,000 apiece, which works out to about $100,000 in today’s terms. With armor less than half an inch thick, the crew wasn’t well protected. One of the gunners of the eight-man crew had to lie on a mattress to squeeze into the cramped compartments, so he was pretty much done for it if the tank caught fire. To change gear, it had to come to a complete stop, which as you’d imagine might be a little disadvantageous in combat. It was essentially a tractor wrapped in steel with six machine guns poking out at different angles. With limited materials or expertise, Semple and his team based the design on information gleaned from an American postcard. The situation in 1940 seemed grim for the Allies, with the British cornered in Europe and the threat of a Japanese invasion looming, so New Zealand enacted a program to convert tractors into serviceable tanks. The Bob Semple Tank took its name from the larger-than-life New Zealand politician given the task of putting it together.
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