"You can't see the forest for the trees": Sergei Ustyantsev on some nuances of Soviet tank building
We quite often post videos on our website about stories domestic tank building, in which the narrator is Sergey Ustyantsev, a historian and scientific director of the public relations department of Uralvagonzavod. The videos are quite informative, revealing many details in the production of Soviet and Russian combat vehicles.
However, this video is somewhat different from the previous ones, since in it Sergey Viktorovich answers interesting questions and reasonable objections of commentators. So it does not have a specific topic, but contains a lot of interesting nuances.
Among them:
- Explanation of the situation with the British tanks "Vickers" purchased by China in the mid-1930s. More precisely, with the quality of their armor, which was mysteriously significantly worse than the armor of similar vehicles in Poland and the Soviet Union.
- The answer to the question about the inability of Leningrad Plant No. 174 to produce tanks weighing significantly more than ten tons. In particular, how did this affect the refusal to mass produce T-50 and T-46 tanks.
– Details about the creation and production of the T-18 (MS-1) – the first Soviet-designed tank. There is an opinion that it was almost completely copied from the Italian tank “Fiat 3000”. In fact, of course, not, but some solutions were still borrowed.
– The reasons for abandoning the T-1930 tank, which was quite modern at the beginning of the 19s and was supposed to have protection against chemical weapons weapons, be able to swim with the help of attached pontoons and overcome anti-tank ditches.
– The nuances of developing anti-nuclear protection for Soviet T-54 tanks. Including the processes of its creation at the Kharkov plant and the contribution of Uralvagonzavod to this matter.
Of course, that’s not all – there are also accusations of industrial espionage against the Russian inventor Efim Cherepanov, and about the BT-7 wheeled and tracked tanks.
In general, we highly recommend watching this video, created as part of the First Tank project.
Information