T-54B 1958 Production (USSR, Tier-9, MT, premium)
The T-54B was adopted by the Soviet Army by order of the Minister of Defense of the USSR No. 00152 on September 11, 1956. It was mass-produced from July 1957 to March 1959 at factories in Nizhny Tagil, Kharkov, and Omsk, with a total of 1,628 tanks built.
The early T-54B models were essentially T-54A tanks fitted with the new STV-2 “Cyclone” dual-plane gun stabilizer. Several design modifications were introduced during production. The tank was equipped with an upgraded set of observation devices, a night vision sight, and a standard OPVT deep-wading kit. Every fourth vehicle was adapted for mounting the PT-54/-54M mine-clearing plow.
During its service, the T-54B could be fitted with two different types of road wheels: early models had cast wheels with internal ribs (the so-called “spider”), while later versions used box-type cast wheels (nicknamed “starfish”). These wheels could be arranged in any order, including asymmetrically between the sides.
